‘PIRATES!’
The sail-maker who acted as lookout swung round from his position on the prow of our boat to face the captain. ‘Pirates!’ he yelled again.
‘Could we parley with them?’ Captain Cosimo demanded. ‘What flag do they fly?’
‘None,’ came the reply. ‘That’s how I know she’s a brigand. And by the size of her, she has more guns and men than us.’
I stopped with my ladle half in the water barrel and gazed out to where the lookout was pointing. The sail of a larger galley was now visible on a southerly heading.
The captain swore and banged his fist on the table in front of him, causing his jug of water to tumble over and roll down to the lower deck.
I leaped forward, picked it up and refilled it from the barrel. I glanced at Panipat, and the oarsmaster nodded for me to return it to the captain.
A conversation rose amongst the men.
‘Have they noticed us?’
‘Have they changed direction?’
‘Why would they bother? Can’t they see we’re a trading vessel?’
We could see the other boat more clearly now, a long low craft with double-banked oars. And we also saw that they were altering course to intercept us.
‘Perhaps they think we carry gold instead of almond oil and salted fish.’
‘They’ll be looking for good rowing men to sell as slaves,’ I heard Lomas say. He called out to Panipat in a louder voice, ‘Get us out of their way, oarsmaster! I want to see my boy again, not be taken for a slave or done to death in a fight we cannot win!’
The rest of the freeman rowers joined in with shouts of agreement:
‘Go on, Panipat! Use the whip if you must!’
‘Set us a pace and let us row away from here!’
The pirates were lowering their sail to prepare to give chase using their superior oar power.
Captain Cosimo chewed his lip. He studied the map before him. I followed his gaze and saw a wooden disc placed to the left of a large island with the letter M inscribed on it – Mallorca? He glanced up again. ‘How is she gunned?’ ‘Three,’ shouted the lookout. ‘A full cannon and two
culverins, with perhaps another piece in the stern.’
‘Outmanned and outgunned,’ the captain muttered.
As if to confirm his observation, there was a dull roar as the enemy fired off a warning shot to tell us to heave to.
The ball landed well short, but caused an outcry from the crew. They began to curse the captain for his incompetence in setting a course that had brought us into the path of a predator. They blamed the lookout, saying it was his fault, as if by noticing the pirate galley he was responsible for conjuring up this enemy out of thin air. And when they had vented their initial anger, in fear some turned to prayer, imploring God and other supernatural powers – even the spirits of the sea – to come to their aid.
The captain peered at the map in agitation. ‘We need an island – somewhere, anywhere we can run aground.’ He raised his magnifying glass to his eye and brought his face down close to the map.
‘There,’ I said, and pointed to the drawing of a tiny island west of the wooden disc that I guessed represented our boat.
‘Well spotted, boy,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve found an island!’ he said more loudly. Then he called a heading to Panipat.
The crew had crossed dangerous waters before. Our sail was already stowed, the men in position, and Panipat was alert, waiting for the captain’s order. The oarsmaster roared out his instructions and our boat turned round. The oarsmen set to, and we sped away across the sea. The men laughed as the gap immediately widened between the two boats.
But the island was further than it had looked on the map, and when I glanced back, the pirate boat was in hot pursuit. The sight of this boat travelling at such a pace behind us, the oars flashing back and forth, fascinated me. I couldn’t tear my gaze away. There was no time to give the men water, and anyway, I had enough difficulty in keeping my balance, for our boat had never travelled at this speed before. As I watched, I could see that the pirate ship was closing.
The oarsmen couldn’t afford to glance up or break their concentration. The wellbeing of everyone on board depended on their skill and effort now. Panipat, stalking along the wooden boardwalk, was aware of the danger. He cracked his whip above their heads, growling and snarling as he sought to lengthen their strokes, to maximize their energy. The muscles rippled on their torsos. With each backward pull they half stood, and on the return movement bent their knees to almost a sitting position, using the cushion or padding under their haunches to slide their bodies forwards swiftly.
‘Pull!’ the oarsmaster bawled. ‘Pull! Pull! Pull away, you dogs! You misbegotten sons of Adam! You vile carcasses of rotten meat!’ Panipat appeared to grow in stature, and flecks of white spit sprayed from his mouth, along with the abuse he poured onto the heads of his men. ‘You scum!’ he berated them. ‘You driftwood! You flea-ridden vermin! You rat-infested corpses of decaying mould! You pieces of useless flotsam! You worthless, good-for-nothing woman-defilers. You blasphemous, rabid snakes that crawl on your bellies and eat the dirt of the Earth! Pull! Pull, I say!’
My mouth hung open in shock. Sweat ran from each man’s face and chest and back and legs and arms.
‘Pull!’ Panipat bellowed. ‘Pull! Or I’ll kill you where you stand!’
And they pulled: for their oarsmaster, for the captain who kept them well fed and well paid, for the cargo they hoped to profit from, for their pride in their work, for the race to outrun the enemy, they pulled for their very lives.
Our boat shot through the water, swift and true like an arrow in flight.
Yet still the enemy boat gained on us.
‘Pull!’ Panipat’s voice was hoarse. His whip cracked out. ‘Pull! Pull!’
The captain was hopping from one foot to the other in a dance of fretful rage, but he knew enough to stay out of Panipat’s way and not to interfere.
I saw that the slaves were pulling hard, in time with the rest – which they didn’t always do. And it wasn’t fear of Panipat that made them do this, I thought, for at this moment he could not single out one man to punish; it must be that they believed their fate would be worse in a pirate ship than if they remained with Captain Cosimo. I saw then that the occupants of our boat had some respect for this man they called the crazy captain, even though they believed his navigation was faulty.
But it appeared they were right in their belief, for still there was no island in sight, and the toll of the hard push began to tell upon them.
Lomas shouted out, ‘Where are we going? Don’t send us all the way out over the Ocean Sea to the lost lands!’
‘An island,’ Captain Cosimo shouted back confidently. ‘The boy saw an island on the map. We’ll take refuge there.’
The horizon remained empty, and suddenly I knew how the captain had felt in times past when the promised port had failed to appear. There had been an island on the map, well marked: I had seen it. Was it merely a fancy of the mapmaker or an inaccurate sighting by some mariner? If it existed, where was it?
The captain saw my concern and he spoke rapidly. ‘The lady sea is deceptive. She’s like a woman: when you first meet her she is pleasant and calm, she sparkles with light and she bewitches you; but then she reveals herself as fickle and will not yield up her secrets.’ He slammed his hand down upon the table and damned all mapmakers to the eternal fires of Hell.
The pirate boat loosed another shot, and this time the cannonball sang above our head and landed with a splash on the port side.
Our boat slowed by an infinitesimal amount as discouragement entered the minds of the men. And all Panipat’s fury could not bring them back to their previous rate. I felt the slackening action under my feet and my breath shortened in fright, for like the rest of the crew I knew that I wouldn’t fare so well under the command of a pirate commander.
‘Land! Land!’ The lookout, crouched down for safety in the prow, had risked raising his head. He yelled and pointed. ‘The island! I see it! Praise God and His Holy Mother!’
The men shouted in joy and gave thanks to the saints in Heaven. I could feel tears start to my own eyes and I swept them away with my hand.
We swung a degree south. The oarsmen renewed their efforts. Then they began to call out:
‘An island!’
‘There is land in sight!’
‘Praise be!’
‘Is there a beach?’
‘Don’t steer us onto the rocks, Panipat!’
By now the lookout and the oarsmaster were working together, guiding us through the ring of a semi-submerged reef towards a sandy shore.
My heart continued to thud. I didn’t understand how this would make us safe. I could see that the island was uninhabited – no village or sign of any building, and no citizens to whom we could appeal for help – and the pirate galley was closing fast.
‘What can we do?’ I asked the captain. ‘We cannot fight them ashore any more than we could at sea.’
‘We’ll run her aground,’ he told me. He was now busy rolling his maps and picking up his navigational aids. The carpenter-cook was throwing his tools into a sack while the rest of the crew gathered up the flint box, harpoon and spears, and other vital pieces of equipment. ‘You go and fill each man’s water bottle as quickly as you can. Go!’ the captain shouted in my face as I stared at him stupidly.
I raced to do his bidding. Panipat was already kneeling beside the chained slaves, using the key on his wrist to unlock their shackles.
I glimpsed an expanse of white sand. And then the boat jarred home and I was pitched forwards.
‘Out! Out!’ Panipat yelled, and the men jumped out and dragged the boat up the sand as far as they could.
The pirate boat was only a few hundred metres away.
‘Every man for himself!’ the captain bawled. ‘Run! Run!’
He reached for his splendid coat of peacock blue, and I stooped to get it and hand it for him. It was heavy. He would run less well with that on his back. His vanity must be great, I thought, that he should want to keep it when it might cost him his life.
‘Here,’ he said to me. ‘You’ll be swifter than I am.’ He dropped the maps into a long cylindrical case made of stiffened leather, oiled to be waterproof, and gave it to me to carry. ‘Go to cover first,’ he told me, ‘and then make for the highest point on the island.’
The oarsmen grabbed the possessions they kept under their benches, each sailor having a bag of bits and pieces with their private goods. I had nothing but the map case, but I knew that it was important. And in a childish way I felt pleased that I’d been given charge of it.
We scattered, running away from the ship towards the dense foliage of the island’s interior.
‘I’ll light a fire on the beach when they’ve gone,’ Captain Cosimo called after his men. ‘You’ll see the smoke and know to come out.’
‘Pray that there are no cannibals here,’ I heard one man say as we plunged among the trees.
‘Or if there are, let’s hope they’re not hungry.’
Relief at being out of the firing line of the enemy made them joke.
The captain followed me, slashing out in front of him and on each side with his bamboo cane. Where the men ran in any direction to get the most cover of the trees and bushes, the captain told me to make for higher ground. Labouring under the weight of his jacket, the captain toiled upwards until he was some distance from the beach and a good bit higher.
‘Let’s find out what they’re up to.’ He took up a position behind a tree and handed me his spyglass. ‘What do you see?’ he asked me.
I focused on the pirate ship, which had come to rest just outside the reef that protected the bay where we’d run aground. ‘They’ve launched a skiff with some armed men aboard. Will they wreck our boat?’ I asked, afraid that we might be marooned and left to die of starvation.
The captain shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. It’s not a religious or political war with that kind of crew. It’s commerce; their way of doing business. They steal and sell.’ He looked through the eyeglass himself and then handed it back to me. ‘I’m hoping they only want our water. Our cargo is of little use to them.’ He glanced at the sky. ‘Evening’s almost upon us. They won’t waste the time or effort or ammunition hunting for us in this undergrowth, for we might kill some of them before they capture any of us. If we’d been caught at sea it would’ve been a different end to the story. They’d have taken the fitter men off for slaves and probably set the boat adrift with the rest of us in it.’
I watched the pirates come ashore and search through our galley. They looked like ordinary seamen, and I said this to the captain. He laughed. ‘What did you expect? That they’d be ten feet tall with long black beards, carrying a sword in each hand and a knife between their teeth? Most of us at sea have done some pirating from time to time.’ He laughed again as he saw my eyes widen. ‘Even ships of the line, flying the flags of their own countries,’ he assured me. ‘They’ll not hesitate to stop and seize goods they fancy on some pretext or other.’ He drew his peacock jacket closer around him and stroked the sleeve. ‘I may have done it myself on occasion.’ And he smiled in a crafty manner.
I looked at him more closely then, and I thought about what had happened today.
As we were forced to wait on the island until the pirates left, and I was no longer constantly on the run supplying thirsty men with water, I had more time to consider various aspects of these events.
I realized that our Captain Cosimo had a secret that he shared with no one. His sight was failing. Now I knew the reason why, although he was a good sailor and a canny man, he sometimes blundered in his navigation. We mainly followed a route from port to port, never straying far from the mainland, because our captain couldn’t properly discern distant objects. It was when we had to venture onto the open sea that he found it most difficult. He hadn’t seen this small island on his map because the inked mark that indicated its location was tiny and faint. He’d sent me ahead to find the direction of the hill on the island and followed after, striking out before him with his cane, as he did on the boat, to feel his way forward. During the daylight hours while we waited for the pirates to leave, he gave me the spyglass to report to him, for he could probably only see figures as a blur in the distance. And none of this did he wish anyone to know. It must be a recent affliction and he’d not be able to conceal it from his crew for very much longer, but for the present he’d rather be thought an idiot than let it be found out that he was going blind.
I admired him for his courage. And because he never treated me cruelly I decided that I wouldn’t betray him. Out of misplaced loyalty I kept his secret and told no one what I knew.
I was too young and inexperienced to appreciate that a half-blind captain would finally and inevitably lead his men to their deaths.