by Gene Wolfe
Those stones kept moving because slaves were doing the work, and they got it with whips if they quit working. In one way it was not much different from being a sailor. We got hit, generally with a rope with a knot at the end, if we did not work and work hard. And I knew by then that we could get flogged, too, if we did something really serious. The difference was in the faces and the eyes.
We had come aboard because we wanted work, and we would get paid when the ship got back to Spain. We were loose now in Veracruz, and if we wanted to walk away there was nobody to stop us. (I was thinking a lot about that right then.) The slaves were not going to get paid, or even get enough to eat. They were chained together in gangs because they were going to run away the first time they got a chance and everybody knew it. The guards sat in the shade with muskets in their laps, and yawned and tried to scratch under their armor, and once in a while one said something to someone else. But they did not sleep. They were soldiers, I found out later, and besides their muskets they had the long straight swords that soldiers call bilbos. The slave drivers were civilians, guys who knew (or were supposed to know) how stone walls ought to be built.
The slaves were mostly indios, what in English you call Native Americans. The rest were black. I want to say Afro-Americans, only later at one of the churches I tried to talk to one and he did not know any English. Or much Spanish either.
The fort was the first thing I had gone to look at, because I had seen it while we were unloading. It was only later that I went around to the churches. I had gone to the market hoping to steal something to eat. Let me be up-front about that. Pretty soon I saw a man unloading a wagon and helped him, and when we were finished I asked for one of the mangos we had been unloading, and he let me have it. So I walked around some more, peeling it and eating, and wondering where the heck I was and what had happened to me. And two of the churches were right there at the sides of the market, so I sat down in the shade to watch the slaves finish the tower for the bells.
Pretty soon a priest came out with water for them. He was forty or fifty and pretty fat, but he went out into the hot sunlight where they were and let them each drink from his jug until the water gave out, and talked to them a little. He had a wooden crucifix, pretty big. He would point to it and talk. Then he would go back into the church. And by and by he would come out with more water.
He was sweating a lot, so after I caught on to what he was doing I followed him back inside. I found him in the patio, sitting in the shade and fanning himself with his big hat. "Padre," I said in Spanish, "why don't you rest here awhile and let me do that?"
"Would you, my son? It would be a most noble work of charity."
I said sure and that I was a sailor, and I gave him the name of my ship. After that, he showed me how to hook his jug to the well rope. You could not give it too much rope, because it would float and come unhooked until it got quite a bit of water in it.
When I went out with the jug I saw a scrap of rope, so I pulled off a strand and stuck it in my pocket. After that I climbed the scaffolding to where the slaves who got the stones in place were. I let them drink until my jug was empty, and talked to them a little, and went back inside. When I went to the well the priest wanted to know what I was doing, and I showed him how I could close the hook with a couple of half hitches. He shook the hook to see if the jug would come off. Naturally it did not, so we lowered it and pulled it back up when it was full.
"My son," he said, "you are an angel of God, but I should not have permitted you to do my work even once. It is my duty to bring the knowledge of Christ to those poor souls."
I said, "Well, I tried to do that too, Padre. I know I'm probably not as good as you at it, but I told them that God loved them so much that He had sent Jesus so they could be His friends again."
After that we sat in the shade and talked awhile. Then he took the jug out again. When he came back, he shut the hook the same way I had. It took him longer, but he did it. While the jug was filling, we sat down and talked some more. I said the slaves ought to be free, that nobody ought to be a slave.
"I agree, my son. But what benefit would they have from their freedom if they did not know God? They would not save their souls, because they could not."
"Maybe they could find God better if they were free to look for Him," I argued. "Besides, they wouldn't have to work as hard, and they could eat better."
"That last would certainly be true, my son, if they enslaved others as they themselves have been enslaved. The men who own them are free to look for God, I would say. Do you think they have found Him?"
I shrugged.
"Answer, my son. Do you?"
I had to admit that it did not seem like it.
"Can you free their slaves, my son?"
I shook my head. "It would take a cartload of reales, Padre, and I don't have any."
"No more can I, my son. But I can show the overseers and the guards, and the slaves themselves, how a Christian ought to act toward his fellow men."
After that he told me about another church a few streets away, and I went over and had a look at it. I did what I could there, and when I went back to the ship I was pretty tired.
Senor had stayed on board, with the bosun and Zavala, one of the old guys from the larboard watch. They made me come over and sit with them so they could kid me about girls and so on. I just grinned and shook my head, saying I had not even met any. Which was the truth.
When they saw they could not get me mad, they talked about other things. That was how I learned that Veracruz was a treasure port. A galleon would be coming to take the treasure back to Spain, and we were going to wait for it and sail back with it.
"To have the kindness of fifty guns" was how Senor said it. I wanted to hear more about the treasure house and find out where it was. I knew nobody would tell me if I asked, so I just kept quiet and kept my ears open.
A few more sailors came back, all pretty drunk. Senor let them sleep on deck or go into the forecastle, which was fine with me. After a while, I just lay down on the deck myself, and went to sleep listening to them talk.
Way too soon, the bosun shook me awake. I remember I did not feel like I had slept long at all, but the moon was up and pretty high, too. The captain had come back, there were more sailors sitting around talking, and Senor, the bosun, old Zavala, and I were going ashore to round up as many as we could.
So I ended up going to all the cantinas and talking with a few girls there, too. Some of them were pretty nice, and some were the pits. And just about all of them kidded me more and worse than Senor and the bosun had. "You come back alone, and we'll show you things you've never seen." "Sit with me and I'll straighten out that crooked nose."
"Yes! It will stand tall and proud." With a whole lot more, some of it pretty dirty. Italian is a real good language to talk dirty in, but sometimes I think Spanish must be the best in the whole world. Those girls had a great time teasing me, laughing at me and anything I happened to say, and enjoyed themselves so much that I told them, "Listen up! You owe me, all of you, and one of these days I'm coming to collect."
The next day the captain put me back on starboard watch. We worked until it got hot, cleaning up the ship and replacing some of the rigging that was getting worn, and then we got to go ashore again. This time I knew that most of the men who promised they would come back did not mean a word of it and would not come back until somebody came and got them.
Which I was not about to do again. At first I thought I would just find a place on shore where I could get some sleep, maybe in the church where I had gotten to know the priest. Then I decided that the thing for me to do was to sneak back on board without Senor's seeing me. If I could do that, I could come back early, sling my hammock in the forecastle the way I always did, and crash. That would be a lot better than sleeping in a hiding place in some alley-I had done that a lot before I joined the crew-and I would not be breaking my word. I had not promised to report back to Senor, or any such thing. Just that I would come
back to the ship that night.
The first thing I did, though, was to strike up a conversation with somebody in the market and find out where the treasure house was. It turned out it was behind where the fort was being built, and I had been pretty close to it without knowing when I had watched the slaves work there.
I went there to see it and hung around looking at it, and pretty soon I had a real piece of luck. Mules and soldiers came-there must have been a hundred mules-and the big doors were opened. Those mules had been carrying silver bars, each bar heavy enough to make a pretty good load for one man, and I got to see the soldiers unload them and carry them inside.
The treasure house was not very big, or very high either-not even as high as our little chapel at the monastery. The walls were thick just the same, the doors were big and heavy and bound with iron, and the top of it looked like the top of a castle, with openings between the big stones for soldiers to shoot through. I was not thinking of getting the silver or anything like that then. But I saw right away that if somebody was, the thing to do was to get it while it was still on the mules.
After that, I went back to the harbor for a look at the Santa Charita before sunset. There I got lucky again. A big galleon was making port, and I got to watch the whole thing. It was about five times the size of our ship, with crosses on all the sails and a lot of carving and gilding on the stern.
It tied up at a different pier, and I went over there for a closer look and so I could see who got off. It was a pretty good show, too, with trumpets blowing and soldiers with red pants and polished armor escorting the captain. I jumped up and touched my forehead the way you are supposed to, and nobody said a word to me.
Walking back to the quay, I could see the starboard side of the Santa Charita, and I got an idea. If I could get something that would float that I could stand on, I could reach up and grab the edge of the anchor hawse, pull myself up, and climb in through the hawsepipe. That would put me on the weather deck, where the capstan was, forward of the foremast and right over the forecastle. Senor and whoever he had with him would be in the waist where they could watch the gangplank. If I stayed low, I could keep an eye on them over the edge of the weather deck. When they were busy with something, I could hold the edge of the deck and swing myself down into the forecastle. All I had to do was wait until it was good and dark, and borrow a boat to climb up from. I found a nice shady spot to sit in, and dozed off for a couple of hours. When I woke up I went looking for the kind of boat I needed, one small enough that I could manage it by myself but big enough that it would not capsize when I stood up in it. Of course it had to be a boat nobody was watching. Once I got into the hawsepipe, I would let it drift away. The owner would probably be able to find it without too much trouble unless the tide carried it out to sea. Still, he would not like what I was going to do, and I knew it.
That was a pretty tall order, and I had hardly started prowling through the hot, dark night when I spotted a boat in the harbor with two men rowing and another in the stern who seemed to be looking for something too. I thought they were probably soldiers or night watchmen or something, so I strolled along like I did not have a care in the world when they seemed to be looking my way. Out toward the end of one of the piers, I stepped on a round piece of something-probably a boat pole-that rolled under my foot. I just about went into the water, and I yelled, "Oh, shit!"
As soon as I said that, the man in the back of the boat sang out, "Ahoy there! You speak English?"
He had a British accent and was a little hard for me to understand, but I waved and yelled, "Sure!"
The other two rowed him over and he jumped up on the pier. I am taller than most people-my father told me once he got me engineered that way-and I was taller than he was by quite a bit. It was too dark to see a lot, but it seemed to me that he had more hair on his face, even though he did not seem like he was a whole lot older than I was.
"Say, this's luck! We've been hours tryin' to get our bearin's. None of us speaks the lingo, you see." He held out his hand. "Bram Burt's my name. Midshipman Burt that was, late of His Majesty's Lion and these days skipper of the Macerer."
He had a good handshake. I could tell the name of his ship was French from the way he said it, but I did not know what the word meant. I gave him my name, called him sir, and explained that I was just an ordinary seaman from the Santa Charita.
"Bit of an accent there, eh? You're a Day-You're Spanish?"
I said, "I'm from Jersey, but I speak Spanish."
"That explains it. Have to, on a Dago ship. Parlez-vous francais?"
I told him I did, a little, saying it in French. Then I started trying to tell him about the monastery.
"Belay that. Bit too quick for me, eh? You'd be a handy sort to have 'round, though. Half my bloody crew's French. See here now, the dear old Macerer's markin' time out there, eh? Outside the roadstead. They goin' to get huffy if we make port tonight?"
I explained that some of the guns were up in the fort already, said I would not try it, and showed him where he could find the harbor master in the morning.
"What do you think our chances are of gettin' a cargo here? Sold every-thin' in Port Royal, eh? No cargo for us there, so we're lookin' about. Saint Charity havin' much luck?"
I shrugged. "They say we'll load tomorrow, Captain, but I don't know what it is."
"That's interestin'." It was too dark for me to be sure, but I believe he winked. "Gold doubloons, hid away ever so snug. Put it in kegs marked BEER, eh? They're shippin' gold back to the Spanish king like 'twas sand, we hear."
I shook my head. "I'm sure it's not that, sir."
" 'Cause of that big lad?" He pointed to the galleon.
"Yes, sir, the Santa Lucia there. She'll carry the treasure."
After that he asked me what treasure I meant, and I told him about the treasure house and seeing the mules unloaded there. I offered to take him to see it, and he thanked me.
"Interestin', I'll be bound, but my duty's to my ship, eh? Got to get back to her. I'll go sightseein' tomorrow, it may be."
"In that case, could you run me by the Santa Charita? It won't take you much out of your way, and I'd like to get aboard without being seen."
He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. "Slipped off, did you? I've done the same once or twice. Got a masthead for it once, too."
I jumped from the pier into his boat and sat in the bow, as he directed. When we lay against the hawse of the Santa Charita, he whispered to the rowers to ship oars and join him in the stern. That raised the bow a foot or more, and it was no trick to pull myself into the hawsepipe, or to slip into the forecastle as I had planned. The next day I looked around the harbor for the Macerer without finding her, and I soon forgot Capt. Burt and his ship in the work of stowing cargo.
It was mixed, as they say. There were big bales of leather, box after box of dried fruit, and crates of terra cotta cookware. There were also seven parrots in cages, a private investment of Senor's. They had to be carried out of the hold in fine weather and set on the weather deck, and carried back to the hold at night for fear they would catch cold.
The rest of the crew hated them because of the extra work they made, and their noise and dirt. I thought they were cute and did my best to make friends, talking to them and scratching their necks the way Senor did. After one died, I was assigned to water and feed them, clean their cages, and take care of them generally.
It brought me closer to Senor, and that soon paid off in a big way. He would come out and shoot the sun at noon every day, check the logbook just like the captain did, and calculate our position. Then he and the captain would compare their results, and go over their calculations, too, if the results were too different. About the time we went through the Windward Passage, I started asking him about it.
I had been taking care of his birds and talking to him about them, and we were pretty good friends. He was still Senor to me, and I still touched my forehead and all that. But I had showed him he could relax with me
and I would still jump when he gave an order. So he answered my questions when there were not too many, and showed me how to work the astrolabe. Basically what he was doing was measuring the angle of the sun at noon. Once you know that and the date, you know the latitude. The farther north you are, the farther south the sun rises and the lower it is at noon in the winter. If you know the date, the table gives you your latitude. Certain stars can be used the same way.
There are a bunch of problems with this system, as you can see. For one thing, it is hard to get a good measurement unless you happen to be standing on a rock. When the sea is calm, you take three measurements and average them. When it is rough, you can forget the whole thing.
And that is not all. In dirty weather you cannot see the sun, so no measurement. On top of that, your compass is pointing to magnetic north, not true north. There were tables for compass deviation, too, but you had to know your position to use them. So what I used to do (now I am getting ahead of myself again) was check the compass bearing against the North Star. If this is starting to sound complicated, you have no idea. I have just given the high spots.
When you have found out your latitude, you still need your longitude, and for us the only way to know that was to measure our speed with the log, and record it in the logbook, which we did every hour. The log is on a line with knots in it to measure speed. You throw the log off the back of the ship, watch the little sandglass, and count knots.
Of course if you are in sight of land, it is all different. You take bearings from objects on the chart, which gives your position-if the chart is right, and if you have not picked the wrong island or mountaintop or whatever.
By the time I had learned even half this stuff, we were a long, long way out from Veracruz. So good night!
4
Spain
Wecrossed the Atlantic with the galleon, which meant we had to match its speed. In light airs, it would hardly move, so we spent days and days creeping along under reefed topsails. When the wind whistled in the rigging and spray came over the side, the old slowpoke Santa Lucia turned into a racehorse, setting sails in places most ships do not even have and creaming the sea for a mile behind her. We had to do our best to keep up, all plain sail set and the deck so steep you couldn't walk on it without holding on to something. I do not know how close we were to capsizing, but I would not want to come an inch closer than we came a dozen times a day. When we finally split up-us heading north to Coruna and the Santa Lucia east for Cadiz-we were all praising God and blessing the Virgin. It was the only time I ever saw the whole crew smiling.
