My enemy. I refuse to write his name, though it is a name well known, oft-illuminated by the gaudy lights of money-raking theatrical houses, where it is exploited for glamour and gain. Wherever his name is lauded mine is hissed. We are forever linked. The same audiences who pretend to save a supercilious fairy’s life by applause either laugh at me as a piratical clown or sneer at me as the Devil Incarnate. Children cast the least popular child to play me in the nursery, while their professional counterparts hire histrionic overachievers to portray me. Heavens, what villainy! And all because of a lying tale told by a dour Scotsman that casts him as Hero and me as the Dastardly Villain who would stop at nothing to see him dead.
Well, perhaps at one time I would, but it’s his own d—mnable fault. I loved him as a brother once. But I race ahead of my tale.
I promise you this, dear reader: I will not lie about him as he (and his biographer) did of me. Allow me to name but a few of these slanders, if only to defuse my wrath before I continue with my story.
I will begin with my name. It is Cook, it has always been Cook, I was christened Cook, confirmed Cook, and Cook I shall remain. The Scotsman says so himself in his description of me: “Hook was not his true name.” But because of the wicked attack that maimed me for life, I will be forever called by that other name, as Doctor Flynn became Gin, as Headmaster Carlyle became Old Carlyle: a joke, a simple rhyme, a reference to an unfortunate physical burden. Potential publishers, I’ve been warned, may insist on naming this history with the very nickname I despise (possibly using the word pirate, which I never was, somewhere in the book’s description), because “it will sell better, old man, and you can gripe about it all the way to the bloody bank.”
And for some inexplicable reason, possibly having to do with the undeniably pompous actor who first portrayed me professionally, I will always be depicted as bearing an unfortunate likeness to King Charles II. Frilly shirts, long curly hair, high-heeled pumps (ye gods!) are my affected wardrobe in all depictions of the Pirate Moi, though I have never dressed as such in my entire life. True, my hair is black and has grown to some length, but I do not curl it. Nor do I sport a beauty mark on my cheek (or anywhere else for that matter, although my eyes are indeed a lovely periwinkle blue). I have (sadly, but for the eyes) nothing beautiful about me; my face is ordinary, and my costume consists of ordinary seaman’s garb perfumed with an ordinary seaman’s fishy smell. I have (to my inestimable sorrow) exchanged expressions of sincere devotion with only four women in my life thus far (the first one being my mother), a list that doesn’t begin to compare with the notorious harem of King Charles. I bear neither undue admiration nor disapproval toward that Good Sovereign, but I am not him! Though I do like a dash of color on certain celebratory occasions.
Nor was I (I’ve said it before and say it once more) “Blackbeard’s bo’sun,” as the Scotsman claims. Another lie! That pirate’s morals were beneath contempt; besides, he lived a century and a half before me.
And as for that duplicitous fairy, not to mention sweet Tiger Lily—bah! In time, my good readers, all will become clear. Until then, permit me to return to the predicament in which Cabin Boy Cook found himself at the end of the terrible storm.
* * *
Those of you familiar with my enemy’s account already may have made an educated guess as to the identity of the sunny island burning less than a mile to the Roger’s port side, but you would be wrong. It was but one of a dozen islands in this tropical archipelago, the largest of which you know as Neverland (there—I’ve said it!), a fanciful title that makes absolutely no sense once one has set foot on that very real oasis. No, Neverland has mountains and jungles and wild animals, while this isle was flat and sandy and sported but a few palms to shade it from the burning sun. We called it Long Tom, after the sailor among us who first hailed it. It was, I suppose, relatively Long, but had nothing Tom-ish about it.
By midmorning, a boat was launched to explore the island. Volunteers were requested, and I readily raised my hand. Four of us were lowered in the ship’s longboat, and we began to row vigorously.
My heart leapt at the possibility that here was the treasure my father’s map had promised. As we neared, I, positioned at the rudder and thus facing the island, believed I saw a marker of some sort. Could the spot be so obvious? As soon as we four waded ashore I identified, sticking out of the hot sand near the base of an extremely tall palm tree, the handles of two shovels marking (I hoped) the treasure’s grave. I raced toward it, followed eagerly by the other three. Long Tom (being one of them) nearly outdistanced me, for his legs defined his name, but my excited enthusiasm gave me the energy to pull ahead, and it was myself who tripped over the human leg bone lying semiconcealed in the dunes.
The skeletons were two, dressed in rags rotted by the sea air. For a moment I thought that these were the last survivors of some previous ship that had landed on Long Tom. They had starved, or died through lack of potable water, or perished from loneliness and despair. But closer examination made it plain: they were the unfortunate wielders of the shovels whose task was to bury Something beneath the shifting sands before a third party inserted a musket ball into each of their skulls. We learned this when Long Tom picked one up, affecting to play at Hamlet, and a rusty iron orb fell from Yorick’s eye socket.
The other two, Sniffles and Bloody Pete, seized the shovels and proceeded to dig with great enthusiasm, hoping to uncover the chest that all four of us imagined buried at our feet. Visions of Spanish gold, Incan chalices, necklaces of precious jewels pirouetted in our heads, and these dreams served only to deepen our horror on finding, instead of a chest, four more corpses, some with flesh still clinging to their browned bones. Two sailors had buried the bodies of the unfortunate others, and these two—when their gruesome task was completed—were in turn dispatched by some third villain: thus was the secret of Long Tom revealed, though its mystery remained unsolved.
After three of us became thoroughly sick (Tom, our ship’s fool, clapped his hands with delight at the gruesome discovery), all four returned to the longboat. It was then, stumbling in shock across the beach, that I came upon another treasure, one that would change my life forever.
A flock of gulls was pecking at something buried in a small dune, and as I approached they screamed at me and flew away. I looked closely. A deposit of nearly two dozen eggs lay embedded in the sand; food for the gulls and—better yet—fresh food for us. Whether of turtle or bird I cared not. I called to the others, and soon our shirts were nesting our find. On returning to the boat, we told of the mass grave while handing over our culinary treasure; indeed we were so starved for something other than salt beef and hardtack that the eggs were valued higher than a chestful of doubloons. The cook (whose name was Bill Jukes) snatched them, scrambled them, and the crew ate its fill.
I have mentioned here some names—Sniffles, Bloody Pete, Bill Jukes—without formally introducing their owners, and while we devour our omelets perhaps I should acquaint you with our crew, even though most of them will disappear before too long and play but minor parts in my tragedy.
Our captain, Roger Starkey, was also known as Gentleman Starkey, and with good reason. A man in his middle forties, he too had been publicly schooled, like myself, though he had lasted somewhat longer than I at his particular institution (which, for the sake of its reputation, shall remain anonymous). The circumstances of his dismissal were dark and bloody, and I will say nothing of them save that only one boy died, and I’m certain that even in that instance Starkey was soft-spoken and polite as he drew the murder weapon. He was ever thus. In disposing of Captain Styles, Starkey asked him “pretty please” to turn around. Styles obstinately refused, and so it was not Bad Form that forced Starkey to shoot him in the back; it was our late captain’s stubborn pride. One misconception about Starkey, hinted at by the sorry Scotsman, was that he was a “jolly” Roger; Starkey’s smiles were frequent but cold. Our ship, named for him without the adjective, was never Jolly.
Of the other sailors, the ones who will play some part in my story are quickly enumerated. There was Cecco, very Italian, so Italian that his English was incomprehensible, and whenever he spoke to me I was unable to tell whether he was remarking on the weather, describing his homeland, or detailing one of his many assassinations. Bill Jukes was our sea cook, a pleasant fellow with little affinity for the galley; he had been trained under one John Silver, and his sole innovation was to put apples in every recipe; unfortunately there were no apples to be had on the Roger, so every dish to come from his oven tasted as if it lacked something. Black Murphy was very black and not very Irish; his teeth were filed to points and his earlobes hung loose with large holes for bejeweled insertions that had long since been lost in gambling (one of his many bad habits), so that whenever he became agitated or animated—which was often—these lobes swung like tiny nooses dangling from his shaven head. Noodler, it was rumored, had had his hands removed by Doctor Gin and then resewn on backward; this was patently false, for he suffered sadly from a muscular disease that caused his extremities to contract severely. On land he limped as on a rolling ship—it was only at sea that he walked balanced and upright. Sniffles, a darling name if there ever was one, was anything but darling; he was possibly the most bloodthirsty of us all, if the tales he told of himself were true. He once claimed to have tickled a Frenchman to death with his cutlass; he imitated Monsieur’s dying screams to our delight whenever we held a Night of Talent and Entertainment (a sort of music hall at sea consisting of rum, bawdy jokes, sad songs, rum, bawdy dance, mimicry, and rum). Bloody Pete was neither cruel nor bloodthirsty; his name was derived from the frequency with which he cut himself shaving or hammering his thumbs or running a nail through his hand. He was our ship’s carpenter, and his scars—the one time I saw him naked—were numerous as the freckles on a redheaded seaman. Long Tom, as I have already mentioned, was something of our ship’s fool: his father thought him worthless, and the cruel man’s frequent beatings had literally dented Tom’s head, so that it too bore an elongated shape that may have contributed as much as his legs to his nickname.
There were many others (and a few to be added), but for the moment my cast list of vital supporting characters is complete.
After I had eaten my ration of omelet, I went on night watch, climbing the rope ladder to the crow’s nest. The sea was calm and the sky beautifully starlit; Danger was not on the horizon this blessed eve. After the ordeal of the storm, I was certain that most of the crew would sleep soundly, and I spent my nesting hours in dreamy solitude. At one point I reached into my pocket for a smoke (yes, even at fourteen I had begun that delightful habit), and found alongside my tobacco pouch one egg that I had overlooked.
I pulled it out and studied it by starlight.
It appeared to be a pale mottled green. What bird had laid it? I wondered. Perhaps, because it was buried on the shoreline, it was not avian-sourced at all, but held a tiny sea turtle within. Indeed the eggs that Bill Jukes had served had had an occasional crunch to them; tiny bones scrambled in among the yolks gave texture to a meal that Bill complained “wanted of apples.”
This egg was all mine. I contemplated eating it, with no one being the wiser. But the softness of the night had made me think of home, and of my mother, and I suddenly felt sorry for the little one inside. Perhaps its mother was dead, like mine. I resolved to keep the egg a while longer, to hide it from the others, to hatch it if possible, and to raise the tiny creature as I would my own child, offering it all the love I had to give (which was then and is now nearly infinite).
And so I placed it in a shirt pocket stitched across my bosom. I wondered if it would hear my beating heart.
* * *
The next morning dawned bright and early. My more astute readers might respond that all mornings dawn early, but I mean the expression literally: the darkest part of the night seemed to last no more than five or six hours. In fact one of the peculiarities we soon noticed about this stretch of sea was that the twenty-four-hour period we were used to calling “day” lasted here but nineteen or twenty hours. Time was shorter, but the further effects of this curiosity on us we had not begun to realize.
During the night, of course, Captain Starkey had come on deck to measure with sextant the distance between the crescent moon and other celestial bodies; the problem he encountered was that no stars or constellations above us were recognizable. As soon as the sun rose he was on deck once again, using both sextant and quadrant to determine our precise location. His calculations matched the exact latitude and longitude on the treasure map, though we appeared to be nowhere near where we had encountered the gale that swept us here. Furthermore he learned, as we set sail in what appeared to be a southerly direction (our storm-battered sails having been repaired and replaced during our day of rest), that the latitude and longitude never changed ! Even after the island we called Long Tom had sunk beneath the horizon, his measurements remained fixed. And perhaps what was most remarkable was that, though north and south were clearly indicated by his compass, the sun actually rose in the west ! Of course we sailors knew nothing of this; we assumed that wherever the sun first appeared was more or less east, and where it set was in the direction of the Americas. Starkey kept the astonishing truth to himself, and it wasn’t until some weeks later that we learned of these anomalies.
That second day after the storm we spent traveling at sea, headed (so far as we knew at the time) in a southerly direction. The day passed without event, but on the morning of the third day we all awoke to the cry of “Land ho!” It was an island decidedly larger and taller than Long Tom, and though Black Murphy had spotted it and therefore should have provided its name, Captain Starkey had always wanted something more than a ship named for him and so claimed the island as his own. Starkey’s Island it was originally called, but soon this was shortened to Stark’s Land, then Starkland, and stark it was. As we sailed closer it seemed nothing but rocks, rocks piled on rocks, culminating in a large round mound in the middle so that the island resembled nothing other than a gigantic bald head (with caves for eyes) rising out of a heap of rubble, with the occasional oasis of palm trees growing askew and clumped like tufts of wild hair about its ears and nostrils.
No sooner had Starkey gathered us on deck to ask for volunteers for the longboat than we heard a booming sound, followed shortly thereafter by a projectile landing heavily in the nearby water, missing our port side by only a few feet and splashing some of us with sea brine. On turning in the direction of the sound, we spotted, rounding one corner of the island, a ship not unlike our own, its sails spread and flying Her Majesty’s colors. A puff of smoke drifted above the mouth of its large black cannon: it had fired upon us! Before we could reply in kind, the distant cannon fired again, and we could do nothing but watch as a large black ball arced through the air, heading in our direction. Had not a fortunate wind arisen and carried our floating home a few feet farther into the bay, the ball would have poked a terrible hole midships through which the ocean could have pioneered. As it was it missed us by inches.
Under Captain Styles we had all rehearsed what to do in the unlikely case of attack, and now instinct and habit kicked in. Our one large port-side gun was quickly pulled back from its porthole, then primed with gunpowder and loaded and tamped (by Long Tom) before being pushed back into place. Noodler struck a match and lit the fuse. By this time the enemy ship had had time to fire off a third cannonade, which projectile sailed over our heads, taking out some top rigging and snapping off the tip of one of the masts.
Our gun fired and sent its missile whistling through the air. It landed very near its mark: Cecco (in charge of the gun) had a near-infallible aim and a second shot was sure to succeed. The cannon was retracted, but a giggling Long Tom was in such excited haste that he neglected to sponge it clean. Instead he inserted powder and ball, then rammed the charge home. Before he could remove the rammer from the mouth of the gun, the heat from the last shot ignited the powder, and Tom, whooping with joy, went sailing with ball and rammer over the water toward our enemy. Those of us watching could see him waving back at us as he traveled, and though one would suppose that the added weight would drop the missile far short of its mark, Tom, rammer, and ball landed instead smack in the middle of the enemy’s deck. A mysterious explosion followed, near the place where Tom landed, followed by screams of men in panic. This, it seemed, was enough to end the battle. Before our gun crew could recover from the loss of Tom and reload, the enemy ship began to turn. We were not prepared to follow them; a sea battle was the last thing we were expecting, and we needed time to catch our mariners’ breath.
We later learned that Tom had landed on top of the enemy’s powder keg. His clothes, ignited by the cannon blast, were smoldering with tiny embers, and it was his incendiary self that set off the mysterious explosion. The rammer, in turn, had rammed its way through the man in charge of their gun crew, incapacitating him sorely, just as the cannonball itself had unceremoniously slammed a hole in the enemy’s deck before dropping straight through their ship’s rotting wood into the crew’s quarters below. There a snoozing midshipman stopped its descent (to his widow’s regret), else it would have continued down through the hull and sent the ship to the bay’s bottom.
Our eventful morning ended with a short service for Long Tom, after which we named our port-side gun after him. Ah, to have both an island and a weapon christened in one’s name within the space of forty-eight hours—Tom would have been proud and his father suitably chastised for thinking him worthless!
* * *
After we had recovered from our attack, and still scratching our collective heads regarding the presence and identity of our attacker, the crew gathered to elicit volunteers for exploring Starkland. Captain Starkey himself intended to alight, and I asked to tag along. Black Murphy and Bloody Pete joined us, and soon we were skimming across the water toward the rocky beach. As the island was so much larger than Long Tom, we split into four different directions to reconnoiter.
I headed straight upward toward the two socket-like caves. I still harbored hope for a treasure, and thought that, were I a pirate, I would secure my loot deep in one of these convenient grottoes. But the climb was steep, and the scree over which I initially scrambled constantly gave way under my feet, so that it took me nearly an hour to reach the base of the steeper rock. Then it became a matter of cracks and toeholds, and a refusal to look down. I later learned of an easier way to access the sockets, but for now this was the only path that was apparent, and my boyish sense of adventure reveled in the challenge. After another hour of ascent (and descent and re-ascent in between patches of recovery), I reached the lip of the nearest socket.
Of course, in my adolescent enthusiasm and lack of foresight, I had neglected to bring a lantern, or any means of starting a fire. The cave was dark, and its coolness and dampness increased the farther I ventured into its depths. So too did the stench, which was sickening, and I soon learned its source, for a misstep stirred a mini–rock slide and in a trice the air around me was filled with the wings of bats, soaring, diving, brushing my hair, my face, my body, so that I could do nothing but crouch and wait for them to tear out into the light. Their guano crunched under my feet, or stuck like glue where it was fresh, and emitted an odor that would have made a charnel house seem a bouquet of roses by comparison.
Once the bats vacated, I inched forward, holding my breath. Before long I could go no farther; the darkness was so dense as to be impassable. As I waited several minutes for my eyes to become accustomed to the lack of light, I felt with my hand a set of markings carved into the starboard stone wall. They must have been etched into the rock with some sharp instrument, and by tracing them over and over again with my fingertips I was able to make out the letters of two individual messages. The first read “Here a Panther Became a Man”; the second spelled out the sentence “Gunn visited for a time.”
I never learned who or what Gunn was (in this part of my history, that is), but I did meet the Panther of the first phrase, to my Joy and eventual Sorrow.
* * *
Stumped in my exploration of what I will call the “starboard eye socket,” I headed across the bridge of the nose to enter the port-side one. It was here I found a kind of Treasure, one that brought me surprising Delight along with incredible Pain.
The stench in this particular eye socket was considerably milder; either the bats preferred the other cave, or already I had become accustomed to the odor. I quickly learned that the first choice was probably the correct one, for no sooner had I taken a few steps into the mouth of the socket than I heard a sound, like that of an animal stirring. I quickly picked up a rock; I had never expected to find a living being on the island, and so I had neglected to bring a knife or a gun. I waited with bated breath. I heard nothing more. As I eased forward, rock at the ready, I squinted my eyes to see better into the blackness before me. After a moment I made out a patch of whiteness lying on the ground. I stood very still. The whiteness seemed to shift. I waited. It pounced.
The attack was unexpected, and even though I had my rock in hand, I was so startled that I dropped it as the thing sprang to my chest, pushing me backward. My head hit the ground behind me; it was a miracle that I retained consciousness. I felt its hot breath, heard its growl. Its face was covered in fur and its teeth were white and flashing. Before it could tear into my throat, I seized its neck and squeezed. Its claws raked my chest, ripping my shirt and drawing blood. It knelt on my groin, and the pressure made me breathless. I knew that if I did not save myself within seconds and break its neck, I soon would be Victim and most likely Meal. My feet found leverage and I heaved my body up and to port side. In a moment our positions were reversed, and I was on top of the beast. I released one hand from its neck and seized hold of the rock that I had dropped, and as I raised the stone to strike, I saw that the beast below me, its eyes wide now with fear, was human.
I sprang backward in shock, and soon was on my feet again, rock at the ready, for the battle seemed far from over. The man—for it was a man—was on his knees, then on his feet in a squat, ready to pounce a second time. For a long moment we faced each other—I the Crusoe in defense of his life, and he the cannibal Friday crouched to attack. Then he fell to his knees again and bent his head to the ground to grovel at my feet. His sobs were heartrending, and I could do nothing but kneel beside him and stroke his head as I would that of a frightened dog.
After several minutes he looked up at me with grateful, tear-filled eyes. “What’s your name?” I asked. He looked bewildered. I spoke louder this time: “Who are you?” But either he did not understand English or he was still in such shock that words failed him. I touched his face and he nuzzled my palm. Then he kissed it, again and again, and I knew its meaning at once. He was lost and now he was found. He was hungry and I could give him sustenance. He was lonely and I would be his friend.
Gradually I eased him out of the cave. The sunlight blinded him, and he dropped to his haunches and covered his eyes with his hands. But the sunlight gave me sight, and I could now discern this unexpected Treasure more readily.
He was quite naked. His hair was long and matted, as was his beard; his skin—where it peeked through the crust of dirt that covered him—was so white it appeared as if he had not left his cave for some months. How he survived I could not imagine. He snuck out of the cave at night, I later learned, to harvest birds and their eggs when he could find nests, to pick berries from the low fruit-bearing bushes that dotted the island, to crunch on the occasional crab that scrambled among the seaside rocks, or to snare the hapless fish that might have washed ashore.
Once he had seized hold of me, he would not let me go. He clung to me as a babe to its mother. Again he sobbed, and his tears dug rivers of white out of the crust of filth on his cheeks. He pressed his face to my chest, and left grimy stains on my white shirt. I knew at once what I had to do. Taking his hand, I raised him to his feet and made signs that we would descend together to the shore. When I headed toward the steep path up which I had climbed, he tugged me in the other direction and showed me an easier way, a longer but gentler descent to the bay.
Halfway down he suddenly turned and raced back to the top. I called for him to stop, then followed after. He was too quick for me, and by the time I breathlessly arrived back at the socket, I was sure I had lost him. But I was wrong: just as I was about to shout for him again, he emerged from his cave, bearing a burlap sack bound with string and containing something oddly shaped and heavy. Happy at last, he readily followed me to the ocean side.
Upon arriving on the beach, I hallooed for my companions. There were no signs of them as yet, but that pleased me well, for it gave me time to make my new friend somewhat presentable. I led him into the water, which he was reluctant to enter, until I ventured a few feet and sat in the tide line, the water coming up only to my hips. He followed suit, and I proceeded to wash some of the dirt off his back. He soon understood my intent, and before long he was washing himself, legs and arms and chest. We never succeeded in this first bath in cleaning him entirely, for what he needed was soap and a good long soaking, but we made sufficient progress to display him as more man than animal. I then removed my own shirt and tied its sleeves around his middle, so as to conceal his nakedness and make him acceptable to our modest Christian society, at least insofar as we on board the Roger were modest and Christian. We then waited for the others, and I chatted to him as if we were at tea. He smiled a little and seemed to understand.
He did not appear to be as terrified of our ship—which was visible on the edge of the bay—as I assumed he would be. I was certain that he had glimpsed something of the battle at sea: had I been in his place the first explosion would have drawn me to the window of the cave and from there I could have watched the entire adventure. I later learned that this was indeed what had happened. It was the other ship that terrified him, and he viewed us as his defenders.
Soon the others returned and I made my introductions. They were astonished at finding me with company. They called him Friday, after Crusoe’s fellow, and Bloody Pete even made to shake his hand. My new friend grasped the proffered hand and took it to his lips. With his other hand Pete quickly drew his knife, expecting to lose a finger or two to Friday’s hunger, but my friend merely kissed the hand, then fell to his knees and kissed Black Murphy’s hands and Captain Starkey’s feet. Starkey drew back suddenly, and when my friend met Starkey’s eyes, there seemed to flash a gleam of recognition.
As we five entered the longboat, my companions reported their lack of success. Captain Starkey and Black Murphy had found nothing of interest; Bloody Pete had found sharp rocks, upon which he slipped and fell and drew blood, as well as some crabs, which he tried to catch and which pinched him and bit him and drew blood.
We returned to the ship, where Bill Jukes fed Friday some salt beef and hardtack that my new friend devoured as if they were sweetmeats and cake. He was then given what remained of Long Tom’s wardrobe (though it was a bit long in leg and arm), and put to rest in Long Tom’s hammock, where he slept for the next twenty-seven hours. When he awoke he was moved to the sick bay for observation. His burlap sack remained ever by his side, and he was wary of anyone who might be curious enough to open it. We let him keep his treasure secret for the moment, certain that in time it would be revealed.
I collapsed into my own sleeping berth, exhausted by my adventures, and before closing my eyes made certain that my dear egg had not been discovered. Before I had departed on the longboat that day, I had tucked my fragile charge into a corner of my knapsack-pillowcase. I had left pillowcase (and egg) lying in the warmth of the afternoon sun, and I now reached inside to ascertain whether my egg was still safe. Instead of finding the egg, I found but bits of shell. My heart sank. Had a shipboard rat located my treasure and made a lunch of my precious souvenir? Exploring further, I felt a sharp sting. I quickly extracted my hand from the pillowcase and found attached to it a tiny creature, its jaws sucking blood from my middle finger as if it were a teat. I gently removed this bloodthirsty infant from its source of nourishment and held it high for examination. Its yellow eyes blinked back at me with surprise and, I like to think, a modicum of affection.
It was a newly hatched crocodile. I named it Daisy, after my mother.