The Covenant

by James A. Michener

  The shore party was about to embark for the long trip to Java when a group of seven little brown men appeared from the east, led by a vivacious young man in his twenties. He offered to trade sheep, which he indicated by cleverly imitating those animals, if the sailors would provide him with lengths of iron and brass, which again he indicated so that even the dullest sailor could catch his meaning.

  They asked him his name, and he tried to say Horda, but since this required three click sounds they could make nothing of it, and the mate said, ‘Jack! That’s a good name!’ And it was under this name that he was taken aboard the Acorn and introduced to Captain Saltwood, who said, ‘We need men to replace the convicts. Show him to a bunk for’ard.’

  He was naked except for a loincloth made of jackal skin, and a small pouch tied about his waist; in it he carried a few precious items, including an ivory bracelet and a crude stone knife. What amazed the sailors were the click sounds he made when talking. ‘God’s word,’ one sailor reported to another, ‘he farts through his teeth.’

  Within a week of watching the sailmaker ply his awls and needles, Jack had fashioned himself a pair of trousers, which he wore during the remainder of the long voyage. He also made a pair of sandals, a hat and a loose-fitting shirt, and it was in this garb that he stood by the railing of the Acorn when Captain Saltwood led his little ship gingerly into the Portuguese harbor at Sofala.

  ‘You were daring to enter here,’ a Portuguese merchant said. ‘Had you been Dutch, we would have sunk you.’

  ‘I come to trade for the gold of Ophir,’ Saltwood said, whereupon the Portuguese burst into disrespectful laughter.

  ‘Everyone comes for that. There is none. I don’t believe there ever was.’

  ‘What do you trade?’

  ‘Where do you head?’

  ‘Malacca. The Spice Islands.’

  ‘Oh, now!’ the trader said. ‘We accept you here, but anyone who tries to enter the Spice Island trade … they’ll burn your ship at Malacca.’ Then he snapped his fingers. ‘But if you’re brave, and really want to trade, I have something most precious that the Chinese long for.’

  ‘Bring it forth,’ Saltwood said, and with obvious pride the Portuguese produced fourteen curious, dark, pyramidal objects about nine inches square on the base. ‘What can they be?’

  ‘Rhinoceros horn.’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ In the pages of his ship’s log, on which he had prepared his notes for this great adventure, he had noted that rhinoceros horn might profitably be carried to any ports were Chinese came. ‘Where would I trade them?’ he asked.

  ‘Java. The Chinese frequent Java.’

  So a bargain was struck, after which the Portuguese said, ‘A warning. The horns must be delivered as they are. Not powdered, for the old men who yearn to marry young girls must see that the horn is real, or it won’t work.’

  ‘Does it really work?’ Saltwood asked.

  ‘I don’t need it yet,’ the Portuguese said.

  Wherever the Acorn anchored, Jack studied the habits of the people, marveling at their variety and how markedly they differed from the English sailors with whom he was now familiar and whose language he spoke effectively. At stately Kilwa he noticed the blackness of the natives’ skins; at Calicut he saw men halfway in darkness between himself and his shipmates; at resplendent Goa, where all ships stopped, he marveled at the temples.

  He gained great respect for Captain Saltwood, who not only owned the Acorn but ran it with sagacity and daring. For one dreamy day after another the little vessel would drift through softly heaving seas, then head purposefully for some harbor none of the crew had heard of before, and there Saltwood would move quietly ashore, and talk and listen, and after a day of cautious judgment would signal to his men, and they would bring to the marketplace their bales of goods, unwrapping them delicately to impress the buyers. And always at the end of the trading, Saltwood would have some new product to fill his holds.

  Like all the little brown people, Jack loved to sing, and in the evening when the sailors idled their time in chantey, his soft clear voice, echoing like some pure bell, joined in. They liked this; they taught him their favorite songs; and often they called for him to sing alone, and he would stand as they lolled, a little fellow four feet ten, his slanted eyes squeezed shut, his face a vast smile as he chanted songs composed in Plymouth or Bristol. Then he felt himself to be a member of the crew.

  But there was another tradition, and this one he disliked. From time to time the English sailors would cry, ‘Take down your pants!’ and when he refused, they would untie the cord that held up the trousers he had sewn and pull them down, and they would gather round in astonishment, for he had only one testicle. When they questioned him about this, he explained, ‘Too many people. Too few food.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with your missing stone?’ a Plymouth man asked.

  ‘Every boy baby, they cut one off.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with food?’ The Plymouth man gagged. ‘My God, you don’t …’

  ‘So when we grow up, find a wife, we must never have twins.’

  Again and again when the voyage grew dull the sailors cried, ‘Jack, take down your pants!’ and one sultry afternoon in the Indian Ocean they brought down Captain Saltwood. ‘You’ll be astonished!’ they said admiringly as they sought the little fellow, but when they found him and stood him on a barrel and cried, ‘Jack, down with your pants!’ he refused, grabbing himself about the middle to protect the cord that tied his trousers.

  ‘Jack!’ the men cried with some irritation. ‘Captain Saltwood wants to see.’

  But Jack had had enough. Stubbornly, his little face showing clenched teeth, he refused to lower his pants, and when two burly sailors came at him he fought them off, shouting, ‘You not drop your pants!’ And there he stood on the barrel resisting, until Saltwood said quietly, ‘He’s right, men. Let him be.’

  And from that day he never again dropped his drawers, and his self-stubbornness had an unforeseen aftermath: he had been the sailors’ toy, now he became their friend.

  The part of the journey he liked best came when the Acorn slipped past the great Portuguese fort at Malacca and wandered far to the east among the islands of the spice trade; there he saw for the first time cloth woven with gold and the metalwork of the islands. It was a world whose riches he could not evaluate but whose worth he had to acknowledge because of the respectful manner in which his friends handled these treasures.

  ‘Pepper! That’s what brings money,’ the sailors told him, and when they crushed the small black corns to release the aromatic smell, he sneezed and was enchanted.

  ‘Nutmeg, mace, cinnamon!’ the sailors repeated as the heavy bags were heaved aboard. ‘Turmeric, cardamom, cassia!’ they continued, but it was the cloves that captivated him, and even though guards were posted over this precious stuff, he succeeded in stealing a few to crack between his teeth and keep against the bottom of his tongue, where they burned, emitting a pleasant aroma. For some days he moved about the ship blowing his cloved breath on the sailors until they started calling him Smelly Jack.

  How magnificent the East was! When the Acorn completed its barter, Captain Saltwood issued the welcome command: ‘We head for Java and the Chinese who await our horns.’ And for many days the little ship sailed along the coast of Java with sailors at the rail to marvel at this dream-swept island where mountains rose to touch the clouds and jungle crept down to dip its fingers in the sea.

  Captain Saltwood found no time to enjoy these sights, for he was preoccupied with two serious problems: he had traded so masterfully that his ship now contained a fortune of real magnitude and must be protected from pirates; but the fortune could not be realized unless he got his ship safely past the fort at Malacca, across the seas, around the Cape of Good Hope, through the storms of the equator, and home to Plymouth. It was with these apprehensions that he anchored in the roadstead off Java and was rowed ashore to bargain with the Chinese merchants who might
want his rhinoceros horns.

  While the Acorn lay at anchor, waiting until the next fleet formed for the journey to Europe, Jack had an opportunity to explore the trading center that the Dutch had established on Java. He lounged by the waterside, learning to identify the varied craft that worked these Asian waters: carracks with their bristling guns, swift flutes from Holland, the amazing proas from the islands—by shifting the location of their mast, they could sail in either direction with equal speed—and best of all, the towering East Indiamen.

  It was while watching one of these monsters unload that he became aware of a tall, thin Dutchman who seemed always to preempt the best cargo for his warehouse, which stood close to the harbor. Traders called him Mijnheer van Doorn, and he seemed a most austere person, overly conscious of his position, even though he could not have been more than twenty-three. Jack was awed by his stiff dignity and spoke to him in broken English, which Van Doorn as a trader had to know.

  ‘Where you from?’ the Dutchman asked, looking down as if from a great and sovereign height.

  ‘Many days.’

  ‘You’re not black. You’re not yellow. Where?’

  ‘Setting sun.’

  The interrogation was so unsatisfactory that Van Doorn summoned a sailor from the Acorn and asked, ‘Where’s this fellow from?’ and the man replied, ‘Picked him up at the Cape of Good Hope.’

  ‘Hmmmm!’ Van Doorn stepped back, looked down his long nose at the little fellow, and said, ‘The Cape, is it a fine place?’ Jack, understanding nothing of this, laughed and was about to retreat when he spotted a white person about his own size, a boy of thirteen whom Van Doorn treated affectionately.

  ‘Your boy?’ Jack asked.

  ‘My brother,’ Van Doorn replied, and for the last two months that Captain Saltwood idled off Java, Jack and this white lad played together. They were of equal size and equal mental development, each striving to understand the complex world of Batavia. They formed an attractive pair, a thin little brown man with bandy legs, a stout Dutch lad with blond hair and wide shoulders, and they could be seen together in each of the quarters allocated to the different nationalities: Malay, Indian, Arab, Balinese, and the small area in which the industrious Chinese purchased almost anything offered for sale, but only at the prices they set.

  One day young Van Doorn explained that Dutch children had two names; his other one was Willem. ‘What’s yours?’ he asked.

  ‘Horda,’ his playmate said with a blizzard of click sounds. ‘And his name?’ he asked, pointing to the older Van Doorn.

  ‘Karel.’ And while Jack was repeating the two names, Willem produced his surprise. Having noticed that Jack owned only the clothes he wore, he had procured from the Compagnie warehouse an additional pair of trousers and a shirt, but when Jack put them on he looked ridiculous, for they had been cut to fit stout Dutchmen, not dwarfish brown persons.

  ‘I can sew,’ Jack said reassuringly, but after the clothes were altered he reflected that aboard the Acorn whenever one man gave another something, the recipient was supposed to give something in return, and he very much wanted to give Willem van Doorn a gift, but he could not imagine what. Then he remembered the ivory bracelet hidden in his pouch, but when he handed it to Willem it was too small to fit his stout wrist. It was dour Karel who solved the problem. Taking a silver chain from the Compagnie stock, he fastened the ivory circle to it, then hung the chain about Willem’s neck, where the combination of silver, ivory and the lad’s fair complexion made a fine show.

  That night Captain Saltwood, richer than he had ever dreamed because of the trade he made on the rhino horns, informed his crew that since no other ships were preparing to depart for home, the Acorn had no alternative but to make a run up the Straits of Malacca to join with some English fleet forming in India. ‘It will be a grave adventure,’ he warned his men, and they spent that night preparing their muskets and pikes.

  At dawn Jack wanted to slip ashore to say farewell to his Dutch friend, but Captain Saltwood would not permit this, for he wished no interference from Dutch authorities and intended sailing without their knowledge or approval. So Jack stood at the railing of the Acorn, looking vainly for his companion. Willem knew nothing of the departure, but toward eleven a Dutch sailor ran into the Compagnie warehouse, shouting, ‘The English ship is sailing!’ and Willem, fingering his ivory gift, stood by the water’s edge watching the ship and its little brown fellow disappear.

  It required two weeks for the Acorn to transit Java waters, sail along the coast of Sumatra and past the myriad islands that made this sea a wonderland of beauty as well as fortune, but in time the sailors could see that land was beginning to encroach on each side of the ship, and they knew they were headed directly into the critical part of their voyage. To port lay Sumatra, a nest of pirates. To starboard stood the massive fortress of Malacca, impervious to sieges, with nearly seventy major guns on its battlements. And fore and aft would be the pestilential little boats filled with daring men trying to board and steal the prize.

  The fight, if it came, would be even, for the Acorn was manned by men of Plymouth, grandsons of those doughty fellows who with Drake had routed the ships of King Philip’s Armada. They did not intend to be boarded or sunk.

  It was Captain Saltwood’s strategy to remain hidden behind one of the many islands to satisfy himself that there was adequate wind, and then to run the gauntlet at night when the Portuguese might be inattentive, and this plan would have succeeded except that some Malay sailor, lounging on the northern shore, saw the attempted passage and sounded an alarm.

  It was midnight when the battle began, great guns flashing from the fort, small boats darting out in an attempt to set fire to the English ship, larger boats trying to ram and board. Jack understood what was happening and knew from conversation with the sailors what tortures he and the others might expect if their ship was taken, but he was not prepared for the violent heroism of his English mates. They fought like demons, firing their pistols, thrusting and stabbing with their pikes.

  Dawn found them safely past the looming fortress, with only a few small craft still trying to impede them; like a bristling beetle ignoring ants, the Acorn swayed ahead, its sailors shooting and jabbing their attackers, and before long, pulled away. The dangerous passage was completed.

  In India, Captain Saltwood faced a major disappointment: no English fleet would sail this year. So once more he went on alone, a daring man carrying with him enough wealth to found a family and perhaps even acquire a residence in some cathedral town. Getting home became an obsession, and he sailed the Acorn accordingly.

  At Ceylon, pirates tried to board; off Goa, Portuguese adventurers had to be repulsed. South of Hormuz the Plymouth men ran into real danger, and at Moçambique two crazed carracks lumbered out to give chase on the remote chance that they might take a prize, but when the Acorn sailed serenely on, they abandoned the pursuit. Finally Sofala was passed to starboard, with Captain Saltwood saluting the unseen merchant who had sold him the rhinoceros horn. The southern coast of Africa guided them westward, and the morning came when a sailor shouted, ‘I see Table Mountain!’ and Captain Saltwood himself handed him the silver coin, saying, ‘We’re one step nearer home.’

  When the bay was reached and the longboat prepared, Jack said farewell to his accidental friends, standing on tiptoe to embrace them. Once ashore, he walked slowly inland, pausing now and again to look back at the ship whose victories and tribulations he had shared for nearly four years. But the moment came when the next hill must close him off forever from the Acorn, and when he passed this and began to see familiar rocks and the spoor of animals he had always known, a strange thing occurred. He began divesting himself of the sailor’s uniform he had worn these many months. Off came the shirt, the carefully sewn trousers, the leather shoes. He did not throw them away, nor the extra raiment given him by the young Dutch boy at Java, but tied them carefully into a little bundle, which knocked reassuringly against his leg as he walked homewar
d.

  When he reached his village he was sucking a clove stolen at Java, and when his old friends poured out to greet him, he breathed a strange odor upon them, and undid his bundle to display what he carried, and to each he gave a clove in remembrance of the many times during the past four years that he had thought of them.

  By 1640 the grim-faced Dutchmen who proposed to rule the East from Java had endured enough: ‘Those damned Portuguese at Malacca must be destroyed.’ In stinging reports to the Lords XVII, the businessmen who controlled the East Indies Company from their dark offices in Amsterdam, they had complained: ‘The Catholic fiends in Malacca have sunk our ships for the last time. We are prepared to besiege their fortress for seven years if necessary.’

  The Lords XVII might have rejected this daring proposal had not a gentleman whose grandfather was burned at the stake while trying to protect Dutch Protestantism from the fury of Spain’s Duke of Alva argued passionately: ‘Our fortunes teeter in the balance. Malacca must be destroyed.’ His oratory carried, and plans to crush the Portuguese had been approved, not by the Dutch government but by Jan Compagnie. The hardheaded citizens of Holland knew in what kind of hands responsibility should be placed. Merchants with something to protect would know how to protect it.

  When authorization reached Java the local Dutchmen responded enthusiastically. Funds were made available. New ships were built. Javanese natives in sarongs were taught to handle tasks afloat. And of equal importance, ambassadors were dispatched to large and petty kingdoms to assure them that when the Dutch moved against Malacca their interest was not territorial: ‘We intend to take no land belonging to others. But we must stop the Portuguese piracy.’