Free On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers

to Chandagnac’s relief, someone yelled that the food was ready. He left the puppets in the barrel and joined the rush to the cooking pot, where he was handed a board with a hot, wet, bloated-looking chicken on it. It smelled fairly good, though, for the bucket he’d seen emptied into the pot earlier had contained a curry that some other crew had found too spicy to be eaten, so he shucked his chicken out of its loosened skin and then impaled the bird on a stick and held it over the flames. Several of the pirates who also were less than enthusiastic about half-boiled chicken did the same, and after they’d all eaten, and chased the still-dubious food with more brandy, someone called out a proposal that the puppeteer should be made the official cook.
    The idea drew assenting shouts, and Davies, who’d been among the number who had followed Chandagnac’s cooking example, got drunkenly to his feet. “Get up, pup,” he said to Chandagnac.
    Choosing to regard the term of address as a diminutive of the word puppeteer, Chandagnac stood up—though not smiling.
    â€œWhat’s your name, pup?”
    â€œJohn Chandagnac.”
    â€œShandy-what?”
    â€œChandagnac.” A board in the fire popped loudly, throwing sparks into the sky.
    â€œHell, boy, life’s too short for names like that. Shandy’s your name. And plenty of name it is, too, for a cook.” He turned to the rest of the pirates, sprawled like battle casualties across the sand. “This here’s Jack Shandy,” he said, loudly enough to be heard over the perpetual babble. “He’s the cook.”
    Everyone who comprehended it seemed pleased, and Skank perched one of the unclaimed boiled chickens on a three-cornered hat and made Chandagnac wear it while draining a mug of rum.
    After that the evening became, for the new cook, a long foggy blur punctuated by occasional clear impressions: he was splashing in the surf at one point, taking part in some complicated dance, and the music was a drumming that took in as counterpoint the surf roll and the warm wind rattling in the palms and even Chandagnac’s own heartbeat; later he had broken free of it and had run ashore and then wandered for a long time between the water and the jungle, skirting the fires and whispering “John Chandagnac” over and over to himself, for with a new name assigned to him he could imagine forgetting the old one, out here in this world of murder and rum and small, vivid islands; and some time after that he saw a gang of naked children who had found his puppets and were making them dance, but weren’t touching the wooden figures in any way, only cupping their hands near them, and each tack-head in the jigging puppets was glowing dull red; and then finally he found himself sitting in softsand that would be even more comfortable to lie down in. He lay back, realized he still had the hat on, fumbled it off, accidentally thrust his hand into the cold chicken’s abdomen, jackknifed up to vomit a couple of yards down the slope, then sank back again and slept.

CHAPTER THREE
    THE SUMMER of 1718 was not a typical one for the outlaw republic on New Providence Island. Traditionally the Caribbean pirates careened their larger vessels in the spring, and when the hulls were cleaned of weed and barnacles, and all rotten planks and cordage were replaced, they stocked the holds with food, water and the best of the winter’s loot and then sailed off to the northwest, skating around the Berry Islands and the Biminis and then letting the eternal Gulf Stream assist them as they worked their way up the North American coastline. The governors of the English colonies generally welcomed the pirates, grateful for the prosperity their cut-rate goods brought, and the Caribbean in summer was a steamy breeding ground for malaria and yellow fever and every sort of flux, to say nothing of the hurricanes that chose that season, more often than