Pirate Freedom

by Gene Wolfe

  If I had been smarter, I would have walked east, following the coast. What I tried to do instead was cut across to the south coast, walking southeast so as to be near Santo Domingo when I hit it. If I had known more about Hispaniola, I would have known how dumb that was.

  When I started out, I was hoping to see some of those wild cattle Capt. Burt had told me about. I thought I would kill one and cook some of the meat. By the time I had been walking an hour or so, I just wanted to get away from the bugs. I finally found a place that was clear of them, up on one of the mountains. It was rocky and wide open except to the west, but there were no bugs and that was where I spent the night. The next morning I found a spring, drank as much water as I could hold, and started walking again. I did not have a clear idea of how big the island was or how far I could walk in a day, and thought I could probably cross it in three days, and maybe in two. Just for the record, Hispaniola is about seventy-five miles across, and a hundred or so the way I was going. Walking the way I was, navigating by the sun and working my way through rough country, ten miles would have been a really good day.

  Just for the record, too, I did not just look at maps after that. I studied them. There were maps on the Magdelena, good ones, and by the time I was through with them I could have drawn them myself.

  Now it seems to me like it was forever, but I think it was probably the second or third day when I met Valentin. I came out of the rain forest onto a chip of prairie, and I saw a naked man over on the other side. I yelled "Bon jour!" and he was gone as quick as that. I went over to where I had seen him and started talking all the French I could lay my tongue to. I said that I was lost, that I did not want to hurt anyone, that I would pay somebody to help me and so on.

  Pretty soon somebody said, "You are not French." He said it in French, of course, and he sounded scared.

  "Non," I yelled. "I just speak it a little. I'm American."

  "Spanish?"

  "American!"

  "Not Spanish?"

  "Italian! Sicilian!"

  "You will shoot me?"

  I wanted to say heck no, but I was afraid I would screw it up. So I just said, "Non, non, non!" and laid my musket down. Then I held up my hands, figuring he could probably see me even though I could not see him.

  There was a lot more talking before he finally came out. He was about my age, had not had a shave or a haircut in a long, long time, and wore nothing but a strip of hide in front. There was another strip, pretty thin, around his waist that held up the first one, and his knife hung from that, too, in a sheath he had made himself. I gave him my hand and said, "Chris." After a minute, he took it like he had never shaken hands in his life and told me his name. Pretty soon his dog came out. Her name was Francine. She was a pretty good dog, but a one-man dog. She never did trust me a lot.

  From the time I had eaten on the Weald until the time I met Valentin, I had eaten nothing but a couple of wild oranges, and by then I was plenty hungry enough to eat Francine. I asked Valentin whether he had anything, and he said I had a gun and he would show me where there would be good shooting.

  We walked another three miles or so before Francine flushed a wild pig. I shot at it and missed, but Francine got out in front of it and turned it back toward us. It went past us faster than I would ever have thought a pig could run, but Valentin cut it with his knife as it went by just the same. Francine went after it, yelping now and then to let us know where she was, and we listened for her and tried to follow the blood trail the pig had left.

  Pretty soon Valentin stopped me and pointed. "In there." It was thick cane, but I listened for a minute and he was right. I could hear Francine growling and a click-click noise I did not understand back then. When I had reloaded, priming the pan and all that, I went in with the safety catch off, trying to keep the muzzle down all the time and reminding myself that if I shot his dog, Valentin would probably go for me with his knife.

  Francine was keeping the pig busy, dodging the pig's short rushes and trying to get behind it. When I fired, I was so close I could almost touch the pig with the end of the barrel.

  I do not think I have ever been more aware of the delay between the time I pulled the trigger and the shot than I was right then. It is only a little piece of a second, but that was when I began to understand that little piece of time is the key to good shooting. A man who thinks his gun is going to fire when he pulls the trigger is going to miss. Pretty soon I learned to wait for the hammer to fall, for the powder in the pan to flash, and for the gun to fire. It is fast, sure. But it is during that quarter second or so that the man who pulls the trigger has to have his sights right where he wants the bullet to go. When I had trained myself to do that every time I was a good shot.

  So I was not, but I was lucky with the pig. I was trying to hit its shoulder. My idea was that if I could break something in there, the pig could not run. I missed the shoulder but I just about hit the heart, and the pig went down. It did not die, but lay there shaking until Valentin stabbed its throat.

  We pulled it out of the canebrake then and butchered it. I had my dagger, but I did not know how to butcher. Valentin did and worked five times faster. We gutted it, and gave Francine the heart and the liver, plus whatever else we threw away that she wanted. We cut off the head, too, cut off all four feet and skinned what was left. Then we used strips of pigskin to tie the rest to a sapling we could carry on our shoulders. I got my bullet back, and while we were drying the meat, I held it on a rock and tapped it with the little flintknapping hammer in my pouch until it was round again.

  Before I did that, we built a fire. Valentin told me that making fire was the hardest part of living in the rain forest like he did. He had to make a fire by scraping the back of his knife with the right kind of a rock to make sparks. He tried to save fire when he had one, but usually it did not work-it was just ashes and charcoal by the time he needed it again. Since I was there, we made ours by putting a little priming powder on a piece of tinder and snapping the lock of my musket.

  We roasted meat and ate, and Valentin showed me how to rub pig fat on the places the mosquitoes like best to keep them off. It was messy and got to smelling bad, but you had to do it or they would eat you alive. Even with a lot of pig fat on I still got bitten, but nowhere near as much.

  After that, he taught me how to build a rack of green sticks so we could smoke the rest of the meat. Boucaner is what the French say. After that, we had to keep the fire going without getting it too high. That was pretty tough, because pig fat kept running down and burning, which meant that the hotter the fire was already, the hotter it got. We had to keep pulling it apart with sticks and pushing it back together.

  We had time to talk just the same. It was in French and I do not remember Valentin's exact words, but I asked him how he got where we were.

  "I was a servant on a big farm in Languedoc. I signed a paper, so the company would take me across the ocean. I was to serve three years, then I would be free. I meant to claim land and farm it for myself.

  "When I got here the company sold me to Lesage, a hunter and a cruel man. He told me he had bought me for five years. I said, no, three, and he beat me. After that, he beat me often. He did not feed me or give me clothes, though the paper I had signed said I was to have good food and clothes from my employer. My clothes wore to rags, and I lived on what I could find when he was away hunting, and what I could steal. Sometimes other hunters gave me something. Sometimes they would not. Some of the other hunters had servants, too. Some were treated badly, but all were treated better than I. When we had meat to smoke for our employers, I ate some if I could. If I was seen to eat it, I was beaten.

  "The rack burned through, and some meat fell into the fire. I knew I would be beaten to death for that. I took some of the burned meat and this knife I had been given to cut the meat and ran into the jungle. Francine followed me. She had been one of Lesage's dogs. Perhaps it was because I petted her sometimes, perhaps only because I had the meat.

  "I have li
ved here ever since. It is not as good as home but better than being starved and beaten. There are many wild fruits here that can be eaten. I know them all. I throw my stick at birds-some are very good to eat. Sometimes the hunters shoot the wild horses for sport and leave them to rot. I wait until they have gone, and eat. Horseflesh is good food. There is more food along the shore, but I do not go there often. I am afraid Lesage will see me, or that others will and take me back to him."

  I am not sure anymore how long Valentin and I stayed together. Two weeks is probably about right, but it could have been three or even four. When we heard shots, we got out of that area. I think that happened twice. We stayed away from the places where the red flies and mosquitoes were worst, or tried to. Valentin said there were a lot of farms on the southeast end of the island, where there was more flat land. We did not go there.

  There were a few farms on our end of the island, too. They grew tobacco, mostly, and had a few cattle. Valentin told me that the farms on our end were French, those on the other end Spanish. The Spanish farmers tried to chase the French out sometimes, he said. They had more men, but the French were better fighters.

  We hunted birds sometimes. I had no birdshot for my musket, only round bullets about as big around as my thumb, so I had to shoot them sitting and try not to spoil too much of the meat. There were ducks and wild geese, and a big bird Valentin called a turkey, although it was not. Those big birds were the best. The ducks and geese were so fat I used to be afraid they would melt away to nothing. When I shot them on water, Francine would swim out and get them for us. It was pretty safe, because waterbirds would not land on water that had crocodiles in it. When Valentin told me you could not shoot crocodiles because the bullets would not go in I tried to shoot a couple, and he was right. On Hispaniola you wanted to stick with clear water all the time, so you could see the crocodiles if there were any.

  Mostly we hunted wild cattle and wild pigs. The pigs were dangerous, because they would try to kill you. If there were lots they would probably scatter, but they might try to mob you. If there were only a few, they always scattered, but one might rush you just the same. They had tusks and clicked them together when they were mad-that was the sound I had heard the first time we killed a pig.

  So the cattle were safer to hunt, but it was not easy to get a shot at one. It always took a lot of stalking, and three times out of four you came up empty. I got two while I was with Valentin, and one more pig. We always had plenty to eat, and meat to smoke, too.

  Storing it was the problem. If it got wet it would rot like any other meat, and there were wild dogs that would take it if we were not around to protect it. What we did at first was hide it in a dry hollow in the rocks, and put a big flat rock on top to keep out the dogs. Later Valentin told me there was a dry cave we might be able to use.

  We went to look at it, and there were bones in it, the bones of at least a hundred people. I wanted to know who they had been, and he said sauvages. Native Americans, in other words. They had hidden in that cave, but someone had found them and massacred them there. We dumped the bones at the back of the cave, and left our dried meat in there. Before we left we piled rocks in front of the mouth to close it. It was not very big, but the cave was a lot bigger inside. I told Valentin I was surprised there were no bats in it, but he said it was too low for them, they liked to sleep a lot higher up. I said it was too low for me, too, because I had never been able to stand up straight in there, although Valentin could.

  The next day I think it was, I shot the wild bull. It chased us up on the rocks, and that gave me a chance to reload and shoot it again. Altogether I shot at it five times. I know that, because I counted my shots. When we butchered it, I had hit it three times. So that was pretty poor shooting.

  After that I got to worrying about what would happen when I ran out of powder. I could get my bullets back, sometimes, and use them again. But when all the powder was used up I would be out of luck, and sooner or later I was sure to lose my last bullet, too. I thought about making bows and arrows. I was pretty sure we could do it, but I did not know anything about shooting with a bow. And if it was as good as a gun, why did people stop using them when they got guns?

  So while we were cooking our dinner, I started asking Valentin about the hunters again. I said that it was all right, living like this in the rain forest, but the hunters probably lived better than we did. They could get powder and bullets from the ships they sold meat to, for one thing.

  "Rum, too, Christophe. Needles for sewing, and the coarse thread for sewing sails. That is what they sew their clothes with. Money, and they go to Tortuga to be drunk and lie with women."

  "Then why don't we join them? We can hunt."

  "They would return me to Lesage, and he would beat me until I died."

  "Not if they didn't recognize you. Aren't there different groups? The captain who left me here told me there were lots of buccaneers on this island."

  "Oh, yes."

  "Then we can go with a different bunch, and if Lesage sees you, I'll get you away from him. How long has it been since he saw you last?"

  Valentin shrugged. "A year, perhaps. Two."

  "It sounds to me like your time might be up already. Did you have all that hair on your face back then?"

  He shook his head.

  "Fine. You don't shave it off, just trim it up. You give them a new name, and if somebody says you're the guy who ran away from Lesage, you say he's lying to get you into trouble, and you saw him murder another man while you were living out here. Valentin, this is all kindergarten stuff-my father taught me this stuff when I was a little kid."

  "They will not take me unless I have a musket. One must have a musket to hunt."

  That was when I understood why Capt. Burt had given me a musket in the first place. I thought about it, then I said, "Okay, here's what we'll do. I'll go alone. There's muskets for sale on Tortuga?"

  "I suppose. I have not been there."

  "There have to be. The buccaneers' guns must wear out and break like anything else. I don't like getting drunk, and there's probably not one sow there I'd want to screw. So I'll buy a musket for you when I get more gunpowder and bullets for me."

  I got a new idea. "I'll buy scissors and a comb, too, and a little mirror. Maybe some clothes. I'll leave all that stuff in the cave with the meat we smoked. The next time you go there, you'll find it. Then you and me will be goodfellas again like now."

  "I would be able to go home…"

  "Right! Save some money instead of blowing it on Tortuga. Then you'll be able to book passage back, or maybe we could find you a ship going back to France that needs a hand." It took more talking than that, really, but I finally got him to liking the idea.

  If you get this far you will be wondering about Lesage by now, and believe me, I was wondering ten times as much. I tried to get a description of his Lesage out of Valentin, and he said strong, shorter than me but taller than he was, big nose, mean face. It could have been a hundred guys. My Lesage had been a pirate, his had been a hunter, and I had the notion that Lesage was a pretty common name in France. So I did not know, and the only thing I could do was keep on wondering if they were the same man.

  After that we found a buccaneer camp, and I walked in alone. I thought I was going to get a load of questions and had my answers all worked out, mostly lies. They were not big on questions, though. When I said I had been left on shore by a ship, I thought they would ask why the captain did not want me anymore. They did not. They asked whether I had hunted before. I said I had killed two pigs, a cow, and a bull while I was looking for somebody, and smoked some of the meat. (I showed them some.) That was that. I was not French, and they must have known it, but I had been talking with Valentin for two or three weeks by then, and some of them spoke pretty bad French, too. There were five hunters, a pack of dogs, and a couple servants. The servants kept fires burning to keep off the mosquitoes while the rest of us slept.

  Next day we went hunting. I got a good, clea
r shot at a bull and missed. At the end of the day, we had a calf, two cows, and a bull, none of them mine. We cleaned the carcasses and carried them back to camp, where the servants skinned them about as fast as I can write it, and started cutting up the meat to smoke.

  I asked whether we were not going to save some for dinner, and the man I asked spat at my feet. His name was Gagne. He missed them and I think he meant to, but I did not like it. After that, one named Melind explained to me that by the Custom of the Coast no one could eat unless the hunting party killed at least as many animals as there were men in it. I just about ate some of the smoked meat I had brought with me that night when everybody else was asleep, but I did not.

  We got six the next day, none of them mine. When we were back in camp and the servants were cooking for us, Gagne asked to see my dagger. I drew it and handed it to him. He looked at it in an admiring way and asked for the sheath. When I gave him that, too, he stuck my dagger back into it and put it in his belt.

  When I asked him to return it he just cursed me, so I knocked him down, kicked him a couple of times, and took it back.

  About the time I did that, the others grabbed me and told me we had to fight, Gagne and me. Melind explained that it would be a fair fight, which it was, with muskets.

  Here is what we did. Melind paced off twenty paces for us just outside camp. We stood there, twenty paces apart, and fired our muskets into the air so we would each have a fresh load to fight with. After that we reloaded, pouring powder down the muzzle, ramming a ball, priming the pan, and so forth. Gagne was a lot faster than I was, and stood with the butt of his musket on the ground and the barrel in one hand while I finished. Melind made me stand like that, too.

  "Now I'll count to three," Melind told us in French. "At the count of three, you're free to fire. If you both miss, you can reload and fire again if you choose. When one draws blood the combat is over."

  It meant I had to win with my first shot, because I had seen that Gagne could reload a lot faster. I figured he would be a lot faster to aim and shoot, too. So here is what I planned. I would shoot first, very fast, drop my musket, and run. It was almost dark, everybody was tired, and I figured I would have a good chance of getting away. I would get my musket back when they were asleep if I could. If I could not, I would live in the rain forest like Valentin until something else turned up.