Free Pirate Freedom by Gene Wolfe Page B

crew if he would swear loyalty to me. He could not wait, so I got the keys and unchained him. He knelt and swore in his own language (bowing to me about twenty times while he was still on his knees), and I gave him one of the cutlasses. His name was Mahu, only later Novia and I called him Manuel.

    After that I went back to the big man I had picked first, scribed a line on the planking with the point of my hanger, pointed to Mahu, and indicated that he had been on that side, where the slaves were, but that he had crossed over to my side. The big man nodded to show he understood, and I had Mahu ask whether he wanted to do the same thing.

    He nodded a lot, talking in his own language, and Mahu explained that he agreed and would obey me as his captain. He got his chains taken off too, swore, and got a cutlass. His name was something I could not have remembered for five minutes, so I told him his new name was Ned. Big Ned was what we called him, and is the way I remember him. He generally looked like he was mad enough to kill somebody. The funny thing was that he did not mean it—that was just the way his face was. He hardly ever smiled, but he had a big booming laugh. I would not have wanted to fight him.

    When the larboard watch came on, I got the whole crew together and told them Big Ned and Mahu were part of the starboard watch now, it would give us more hands when we needed them, and it was up to everybody on board to teach them seamanship. Nobody disagreed, so I told Red Jack that as quartermaster he was in charge of the larboard watch, and turned the one that had been mine over to Lesage.

    You can guess what came after that, and so did I. The larboard watch said they were even more shorthanded than the starboard watch had been and wanted me to let them have a couple of slaves, too. I frowned and pointed out that freeing so many slaves was going to cut into our profits. They said we had better than two hundred on board, not counting women and children, andtwo gone would not matter. Finally I said we would have a meeting next day and vote on it. It was pretty hard to keep my face straight through all this, so I went into my cabin and slammed the door before I got to giggling.

    Here is the way I saw it. There was a good chance of trouble with the six pirates I had gotten from Capt. Burt. Any four of them could have voted me out, to begin with. Magnan would vote against me as sure a gun. Lesage would probably vote for me unless they were going to make him captain. If they were, that was two against me already—two more and they could vote me down. Or one of them might just waste me. There was not a one of them who would not as soon kill a man as eat alongside him, and if somebody had a grudge and thought he could get away with it, why not?

    All right. But the slaves I had freed were bound to think that with me gone there was a swell chance they would get chained up again—and wind up grinding sugarcane on somebody's plantation, too. They would not take kindly to anybody knifing me, and if it came to a vote I would have five right there, my four gromettos and me. If we could win over one pirate we would be a majority.

    The downside was that they might try to free some of their friends and take over the ship, but that was really an upside for me. The pirates would think of that, too, and they could not help seeing that if we did not stick together we would not stand a chance.



7
The Windward

    WITH TWO WATCH-KEEPING officers, I got to spend a bit of time in my cabin, and one of the things I did there was play around with the pistols and muskets in the arms chest. My father had two guns. There was a big one he wore when he went out of the house, and a little one he wore all the time, even when he was sitting by the pool. Both of them had laser sights—you squeezed the grips, and the laser jumped out to show you where your bullet was going to hit. I knew about those because he showed them to me one time, but I was just