Free Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber by L. A. Meyer Page A

Sometimes I do not.

    "Well met, John Harper," I say, sitting myself down next to a man I now recognize. The johnnycake is good and the tea is hot, at least.
    "Well met, Jacky," says Harper, smiling slightly. "Or I should say,
Miss
Faber." He is the man who fingered me as the one and only Jacky Faber the day before. The last I saw of him, he and I were both lookouts on the
Dolphin
on the day the ship was blasted and sinking and without hope. He is young but balding cleanly back from the forehead, and he affects a goatee, which makes him look like a devilish Spanish pirate, but I know him for a good man.
    "So, Johnny, what kind of berth have we found here? Are there any more Dolphins aboard?" I ask. I finish off the cake and sip at the tea.
    "As for Dolphins, alas, nay. As for the other question, I go on watch as lookout on the mainmast when the watch changes." He looks around at his fellow crew members and casts me a significant look.
    I understand. We swap harmless tales of former shipmates and then I knock off the rest of my tea and stand. "Till later then, John Harper."
    I know every eye in the place is on me, so I lift my chin and loudly say, "Good morning, mates. Thank you for sharing your breakfast with me. Is it not a glorious thing to be serving His Majesty the King on this fine day!"

    With that, I turn and stride out of there, bootheels rapping on the deck, leaving a roomful of gaping mouths behind me.

    I go back up the foremast and get to the topgallant brace and wait till I see Harper take over from the lookout, and then I take the foregallant brace, a line that goes between the two masts for support of both and is under such tension that it's like the wire a circus performer would walk, and I go over, hand over hand, till I reach the mainmast and the grinning Harper.
    "Still at home in the riggin', eh, Jacky?"
    We are on a very small platform, high, high on the mainmast. Back on the whaler this would be called the "crow's nest." It is where sharp-eyed men looked out constantly across the waves for the spume of a blowing whale.
    "May it ever be so, John, as I am never happier than when I am up here," I say and settle myself against a brace. "So what's the story on this bark?"
    His face darkens. "'Tis a Hell Ship, for sure, and I've never been on a worse one and it's all on the Captain's head."
    "Careful, John," I say, looking about to make sure we are not heard, "you're getting close to mutiny."
    "Mutiny!" he snorts. "The crew has been at the edge of mutiny for months. The officers should have done it long ago, but they are frozen in fear of him, just like anyone on board. He has flogged men half to death for sport and he keelhauled a man last month for merely lifting his hand in protection from a beatin' by the Bo'sun. Poor Spooner was alive after he was hauled back aboard, but he was cut up so bad by bein' scraped against the barnacles on the bottom that he died soon after from the infection."

    That sends a shiver up my spine. Keelhauling is a cruel punishment wherein a poor seaman is taken up to the bow and a long rope is tied to each of his legs and he's thrown overboard and the ropes are walked back, one on the port side and one on the starboard side, drawing the man underwater all along the encrusted keel and back to the stern of the ship, where he's hauled back up, half drowned and bloody. I have never seen it done, Captain Locke of the
Dolphin
being a good and fair man, but I have heard accounts of it.
    Harper's normally cheerful face is full of anger as he continues. "... And he gave Teddy Smallwood a hundred lashes, a
hundred
!—just for havin' a bad shave, for Christ's sake, and Teddy still can't stand up straight or put on his shirt in any comfort. I tell you, Jacky, the only times when this ship breathes easy is those times when the Captain is sick and stays in his cabin." Harper pauses and calms himself and sighs, "But he is sick a lot, and we thank God for it."
    "Can nothing be done?" I