Miss Polly Patience was Captain Leander Morris's persistent passion, of that there was little doubt. While away at sea the tough old seadog tenderly pined for his wife, in his own inward way that admitted of no outer signs, sighs or confidences to any shipmates. This was just another of life's storms to survive. Men kept such sentiments to themselves and sailed on alone, each one's sails filled with their own secret sorrows, driving them on to the one destination where all voyages end and partings are final upon arrival.
From the start of their tempestuous courtship both knew that such separations would be inevitable and prolonged, just be a matter of time, subject to its endless ebbs and flows such as the ocean suffered. In those days husbands and wives were often apart for many months at a time, a year or more was not uncommon. With seamen, moreover, the time ashore, times together, were brief and fleeting, often measured in weeks, sometimes mere days, before the beloved shipped out again on the sirenic bosom of the ocean.
Polly coped differently, given her open and outgoing nature which was always quick to call a spade a dirty old shovel. She confided her loss and loneliness to her close friends, of which she had several, unlike the Captain who was in command of his crew and could afford to keep none. He was always in control, of his emotions above all, impersonally friendly and affable to all, but never close, confiding or revealing any weakness. Lives depended upon this, with great power came great responsibility.
"Sally," she shared with her next door neighbor who had dropped in for a tot of port in front of the fire after hours, "I sorely miss the Captain abed of an eve, o'er-mastering me, driving his stiff jolly boat into my moist lagoon. How he will roger me deep in the night, down to my most delicate depths. Lifting me upon the crest of waves to break in froths of creaming spume and spindrift."
Sally shared the sentiment, her Dick shipped to the Grand Banks, the bountiful North Atlantic fishing grounds. His long tricks were only over when the Wanderer's holds were bursting with salted cod stacked stiff as boards, the premium quality to satisfy the discerning Italic nose for baccala, the pricey cargo delivered to Venice and from thence a return cargo of precious spices from the Middle and Far East off-loaded in London to some tidy profit.
"And I simply miss him snuggling next to me in the night, wrapped in his arms, chatting in the dark, later both of us deep in dreams. Our confidences and confessions, you know? Sharing our closest thoughts. Then before I awakest, mayhap he slips his stiff sword again inside my still-sleeping sheath and ravishes me afresh in one of those dreams without wakening."
"Reading the Bible aloud to each other facing the fading kitchen fire alone together after all guests are abed. Supping of a meal cooked by my hand especially for us. Hearing the wild tales that he tells to all and sundry around the blazing hearth of the taproom. So strange they might even be true. The sacred and solemn feeling that o'ertakes us seated side by side in church. Such are what I pine for."
"So too do I yearn'st the briny semen from my salt seaman to flood my secluded cove. His skilled horny hands ken my many, complicated ropes controlling the sails of heaven, stroking sure and gentle 'pon my wanton tiller, filling my solitary soul. And yea, those other things of finer grain and nobler quality ye speaketh of as well, so I do suppose."
With that, the fire fading and a touch tipsy, for one tot had turned into two, then three, carrying candles they mounted the steep back stairs of the inn to the family quarters above pursued by the bounding brindle bitches. They disrobed in the faint flickering light, admiring each other's feminine forms, as women will always do, donned thick linsey-woolsey nightgowns and snuggled down together under eiderdown comforters in the sacred marriage bed.
It was blowing seven bells off the North Sea over The Wash on this cold winter night, the gusts keening under the eaves and prising for entry like errant thieves. The two friends spooned together for warmth in the drafty unheated chamber. The mastiffs were deployed, Pinta to port, Nina starboard and Santa Maria to stern athwart their feet. It was a three dog night.
Various sleepy confidences, cuddles, fondling and kisses ensued between the friends on the edge of dreams. Presently they were caressing each other's clits with their fingertips, then deeply penetrating and exploring each other's cunts with newly hot hands. The chill night and loneliness were forgotten memories. They were marooned on a desert island, the only people left alive in the universe.
And it was now a steamy tropical island at that under those covers. They came up for air and sniffed their fingers, tasted the slightly fishy low tide smell with their lips, kissed, turned turtle, head to toe, then sucked each other's pussies with unsuspected but unfeigned passion. They came together like waves crashing onto a windswept beach. It wasn't the same as with their own captains, "mais zut alors, une grande jouissance ma petite amie, pas mal, pas mal de toute."
The Captain, for his part, stayed solitary at sea, confiding and sleeping only with his stern and judgmental God. Not for him was the company of cabin boys, although this was a common enough custom at sea. His first mate always chose the youngest and comeliest of the wharf rats to fill this important (supine or kneeling) position, tousled blond lads with rosy cheeks, firm shapely butts and amply endowed, 'fully rigged' he put it, as he always confirmed first hand before signing the sailing papers. Their attractions, however, left the Captain cold, although he personally had nothing against discrete buggery among his men. A little sodomy after the small daily ration of rum went a long way toward relieving tension and boredom in the crew.
Leander spoke with his Lord in a quite natural and familiar way, as if to a best friend, as if with his wife. Such was always a central Puritan value, to cultivate an up close and personal relationship with the Creator, unmediated by outside influences. The promptings and sea changes of one's conscience were the voice of God speaking, requiring careful listening, close attention and humble consideration.
But He was an intimidating bestie at best. Sometimes almost a wild beast, snarling as he did during storms when none would not be sore afraid of His mad wrath which might know no reasonable bounds when fully unleashed.
In times of deep trouble, say during equinoctial gales raging in the Roaring Fourties, deep questions arose demanding deep answers. As they might of anyone close to one's being who seems to turn traitor on us and fly in our face. Questions such as Job in his plights and trials or Jonah in the stinking bowels of the whale posed, "Why God?"
Good question that. "Why?" "Why God?" Moreover, more to the point personally, "Why me?"
"Why?" being the simplest but most difficult, often unanswerable question. "When, where, who and what can usually be parsed quickly. But why is seldom so simple.
Always keep an eye out on the simple things. They can't be trusted to be at all what they seem on the surface. Never let them out of your sight, lest they come back to bite you. Maybe 'tis a gift to be simple, but it's often a case of Greeks bearing gifts, and we know how that turned out. All simplicity is strictly on the surface, masking true motives and swirling chaos below.
God's answer on the subject is usually silence. Why? Maybe he doesn't know the answer himself. If he's so omniscient, omnipotent and all-seeing, as the Hindus chant, well why not?. "Why not?," that's a valid question too, maybe even more so. "Why not, God?" Maybe He's oe'r mastered by the Prince of Darkness, whose deceiving wiles strive to keep all souls in the dark. Or who knows (not God evidently), maybe stuff just happens in the scheme of things. The captain, although no skeptic, tended to favor this theory. There are more things in heaven than known to the mind of God.
I guess you could call this process prayer, but it seems to me it was a lot more in the way of busy parallel in-and-out-bound shipping lanes, a constant back and forth dialogue rather than a mere one way street of constant petition and confession. Indeed God was his-copilot, speaking freely, frankly and frequently. This might have been the bumpersticker slapped on the stern of his ship, but this was, by and large, a mercifully ad-innocent, bumper-free age. Not only that, but wherever he was, high seas or far land, he could talk to Polly through God and she spoke back and forth to him through Him as well, both being spiritual believers, communicating Christians with a connection outside common space and time.
Then there were the long letters he penned home to Polly from his captain's cabin high sternmost aboard the goodly galleon 'Virgin Queen', asea, quayside or swinging at anchor in some far harbor.
Many were the sheets of foolscap, goose quills and sticks of India ink expended in scratching out his heartfelt missives. The swinging whale oil lamp cast fantastic shadows over the chamber's paneled chestnut walls, the pages at hand on the chart table and his vivid, always susceptible imagination. Liberal tots of rum from the ship's stores also lent wings to his words.
Sometimes he wrote while ashore, sipping solitarily in deserted seaside tavernas. But in such boites he was usually to be found roistering with the local lasses, charming the panties off them with his gentlemanly attentions and tales of wild exploits upon the heaving bosom of the seven seas. Then berthed in a dark corner booth, he caressed heaving maidenly bosoms under unbuttoned blouses and explored the spicy sea-scented latitudes below the equator, while soft hands tightly grasped then with increasing fury stroked his stiff main spar until the desired, also sea-scented, effusion erupted.
My Patient Polly,
We came unto the Caribbees [Lesser Antilles] driven by Trades seasonably blowing briskly off Afric's dry deserts wafting golden sands 'loft 'cross the Atlantic to dust our decks. Scents of fragrant tropical flowers and spices swirled 'cross the waters ere we spied the steep jungle-caparisoned mounts of La Grenade [Grenada] rising slowly from the sea.
Gladly we made land after weeks at sea, berthing the Carenage girding the sheltered harbor of St. George's 'compassed 'midst an ancient drowned volcanic caldera of copious dimensions and depth. I ventured into the capital town, wrought-ironed, pastel-painted in colorful Creole manner, much as New Orleans.
Ashore, I fetched L'Auberge Sirene seaside o'er Le Carenage, near charming as our Saltmarsh Inn. Grenade being French, I supped 'pon steaming trenchers of bouillabaisse. The Caribbee version, while delicious, is different from that in Marseille. Chatting the chef, as is my wont, I discovered the difference lieth in the peculiar local fruits de mer et legumes: grouper, red snapper, tile fish, conch, sea urchin, bamboo clams, mussels, prawns, scallops (said mixture determined by God's daily bounty from la mer), chayote, Scotch bonnet pepper, chayotte, cilantro, callaloo, coconut milk and rum.
Lingering, drinking in the failing light, I fell to converse my neighbor, parsing with struggle his thick island patois, 'though I speak Francais passing fair. He treated me a round of a liquer new to my lips, absinthe. Quick the anise potion eased my longing for you, but a few rounds later inflamed it to a greater degree, falling me into a brown study. Mon amie, divining the cause of my despond said "On dit,' l'absinthe rend le coeur plus affectueux'." And indeed, 'absinthe maketh the heart grow fonder'.
We are come unto this isle, varying our purpose since parting, to obtain a copious cargo of nutmeg. While lading at London, I did'st learn that noix de muscade is newly known, par quelques médecins, sovereign 'gainst the plaque, the frighful peste noire which still doth scourge England and all lands east unto the Pacific. Once knowledge of its physic be broadcast, the price of this spice will skyrocket. We purpose to secure the sole supply of nuts on this isle and thereby corner the English market to our great increase.
Stories of my friend Sinbad come to mind. He, after great tribulations and arduous adventures, did return to Basra, his ship laden with nutmeg, muskrose he called it, and other spices of the Moluccas which did secure him his first personal fortune in the 'Venice of the East'. Perhaps you will recall my telling of his voyages.
So, for the nonce, farewell.
"Remember! How could'st one forget? Gathered 'round hearth of a rainy, fog-girt March eve, peat burning bright driving off damp chill. Sally, her daughters, our sons, Edward Evans, the night watch, Dooley, our fishmonger, Parson Peters, Mr. Stout, several other of the inn's guests I recall not and the three bitches warming our toes of course. All rapt in wonder, hanging on every word, as Leander recounted fantastic stories of Sinbad the Sailor, whilst I did'st concoct Flaming Bishops and Rum Toddies, yea with generous lashings of grated nutmeg."
When just above a lad and still wet behind the ears, I shipped afore the mast aboard the ship 'Sea Witch' out of Plymouth. Hard was I used and little to my advantage. We arrived to trade in the beautiful seaport of Basra after a long, storm-plagued passage 'round Cape of Good Hope, for so the southern-most peninsula of Africa is cynically called. Confined aloft on watch I was by Captain Skeeg for many consecutive tricks, soaked and frozen, worked and weary to the bone, near dead than alive.
I wandered said city searching the cheapest boite to fling away my last piasters in drowning my many sorrows. Rambling by a substantial manor in the most tasteful Moorish style, I fell to converse with guards at its gate. From inside the merry sounds of festivities, aromas of fine Arab cookery and music of ouds, tambors and nightingales wafted out on the cooling evening air.
"Who, may I ask, owns this most impressive mansion," I inquired of them?
"Sinbad the Sailor," one replied, famed throughout the city and in many far-flung foreign ports.
Being a newcomer to the parts, the name meant nothing to me. But, still sore with my shipboard sufferings, I loudly despaired, "Sailor ye say! What damned piracies did'st this rascal commit to afford such a filigr'd pile of alabaster and ebony, not to mention the means to carouse so lavishly? And I, an honest, storm-battered seaman, eking out a 'poverished existence, barely binding body and soul together.
Unbeknownst, my craven carpings did'st drift through an open window where Sinbad's keen ears listeth my lament. Anon a servant appeared from the house and saith, "Sailor, for so you seem by such salty usages, Sinbad craves your company at his feast."
He led me inside, by a side door, that he might garb me in an elegant caftan to cover my worn, salt and tar stained rags. At a signal we entered unto a great hall with walls of hammered gold and ivory under a a dome studded with jewels sparkling like stars.
All my senses were assailed at once by rich sights, sounds and smells. Houris and concubines disported themselves in sensual garb, dancers with bared bellies and finger cymbals gyrated to sounds of an orchestra as said nightingales chorused, while the scents of delicious dishes, wines and sweet perfumes seduced my nostrils.
We trod intricately figured Oriental carpets to the head of a long teak feasting table. There reigned a man of fearsome and forceful mien whom I would soon know as our most genial host. He inquired my name, bade me sit beside him and served me himself of delicious dishes - mezza, marinated and grilled kebabs, ortolans (small songbirds spitted, roasted and eaten bones and all), pilafs, dolmas, falafels, couscouses, passion fruit and pistachio sherbets, baklava - with potent arak and fine wines. The best viands ever to cross these hungry lips.
"Now Leander, I listeth through yon window while thou did'st impugn of me piracy and sundry rascalities to lead a life of indolent leisure. What say you?"
I hung my head in shame. "'Tis true, sir, I can'st deny 'twas I. The extremis of my sore and dire circumstances asea hanging heavily about my frail person forced me to speak so rashly and rudely in ignorance. I crave thy pardon."
"Before granting such, please acquaint of me these trials and travels."
These I then related and after some thought Sinbad said, "Indeed, you have suffered - somewhat. I extend my pardon at the offense of thy overwrought speaking. The substance of thy calumny itself, however, I can'st let pass unopposed, not countering thy woeful ignorance."
"Your sufferings are as nothing compared to the travails, trials and troubles I did'st encounter in my world-girding travels . Permit me to relate to you and our company the tales of my seven voyages. You will see I came by my riches honestly and at great sacrifice to my person, such as would make the richest prince alive blanch and return his riches to have avoided such calamities and cruelties."
"With greatest pleasure, I'm all ears," I readily replied.
At this point, the appetites of our guests 'round the inn's hearth piqued to a pitch hearing of this fabulous Mesopotamian feast, I offered a restorative repast ere we set sail 'board Sinbad's ship.
Two sorts of baked pasties, lamb and shrimp, baked potatoes with soured cream, roasted chestnuts and fried codfish cakes. These with pickles of cucumber, pepper and watermelon, plus sharp nose-tickling English mustard [think Colman's nowadays] rounded out our far more modest East Anglian fare. "Hold the ortolans for me," Dooley requested, but then he considered all fowl to be foul and seldom supped but of the leftover fishes he peddled from his pushcart 'round King's Lynn.
I then replenished mugs to fortify all for the voyage we were 'bout to embark upon'st in Leander's telling, which he then resumed, giving new wings to Sinbad's words. Although I've heard'st this tale more than twice told, I've still never heard it told twice, if you espy my drift. Not to cast aspersion on the captain's elaborations, extensions and evolving explanations as I'll gently put it.
"Sinbad started thusly," Leander began.
My father, a wealthy merchant of repute, did'st bequeath me a substantial estate which I wasted on wine, women and song. Carousing and feasting in uproars with fellows thought friends, houris maybe loved and whores simply lusted after. In time, the money dwindled down to several thousand sequins. Facing bankruptcy, foreclosure and destitution, I resolved to walk in my late father's upright footsteps and rebuild said squandered fortune with these last funds, using his ship the 'Will of Merciful Allah', which he had left me.
To that end, I traveled to Baghdad to secure stuffs of value which to trade 'round the Indian Ocean, exchanging such profits for nutmeg of the Moluccas, much in demand in the Middle East and shipment on to Venice, whence it was dispersed o'er Europe.
Having secured a suitable consignment of sundry goods, we were returning by camel train back to Basra when brigands, forty thieves I believe, beset and o'erwhelmed us near Najah, stealing all down to our undergarments. Allah knows they might have done that as well but for a naked appeal to the Almighty, where'pon they sniffed said, then mercifully flung them back to us with much holding of noses and rude flipping of middle fingers.
I walked alone on foot back to Basra, again taxed my much depleted funds, and with fresh caftan walked back to Baghdad, securing a similar cargo. This time, however, we took the precaution of arming ourselves to the teeth with divers deadly weaponry and beat back these selfsame brigands several times, dispatching some to the lowest levels of the underworld reserved for their evil ilk.
Returned safely to Basra, I searched for crew and captain. Crew I secured on promise of payment at the end of the voyage, but no even half-way competent captain would accept such terms. Not that I blamed them in the least.
Facing even greater ruin as a result, I decided to undertake these responsibilities myself. I had done some sailing, mainly in my father's elegant felucca accompanied by courtesans and sports on balmy days drifting idly 'round Basra harbor to tryst and carouse on secluded offshore isles. Other than that where, shameful to admit, I fancied I cut a dashing nautical figure decked in yachting whites, I was completely inexperienced.
But now, near desperation, we laded such cargo as I'd been able to afford and set sail. My plan was to trade at Indian Ocean ports, increasing our capital at every stop, as I had learned from my father, then exchange all for a shipload of nutmeg to bring back to Basra and so secure my fortune. If, and this was a big if, if everything went perfectly according to plan and supposing I proved a capable captain and navigator.
We flew along on fair winds under sunny skies until, 'midst the Indian Ocean, a terrible typhoon o'ertook us without warning. Though I doubt not an experienced skipper might have predicted such to timely avoid its punishments.
In the teeth of this fierce gale 'The Will' slogged alee under bare poles, all sail unbent, cast hither and thither on cresting waves 'til it seemed the ship might poop or broach at any instant. We drifted I knew not how far or to what point of the compass off course until all dead reck'ning was useless and I had'st not the slightest idea where we might be.
Driven and pounded hard on a reef the rudder sundered off our stern in splinters and tiller flew out my hands afore we blew over, scraping all barnacles off the hull into the bargain, if not some measure of planking. Now helpless to steer, we fetched up upon an isle and beached on soft coral sands.
The storm having finally blown its fury, our carpenter set to work replacing the lost rudder with such woods as we shipped aboard for repairs. Meanwhile I went ashore to explore the island for fresh water and food.
Wandering inland I followed a wadi tracing a vacant valley, deeming the isle deserted.
Suddenly I was cast into deep shadow, the sky went dark and dreadful shrieks rent the silence. Directly overhead a massive Roc, a primordial bird I thought but mythical, flapped its wide wings, the size of sails on the largest seagoing vessels.
Circling, eyeing me the while, it presently evacuated from its posterior the most massive pooper ever known of man, so big that it fell slowly and I so gained precious seconds to flee for my life. Otherwise, I'd not be here and now telling this tale. None the less, I was sorely soaked and splattered with the effusion of its explosion upon landing.
"Gracious ladies," Sinbad interjected, "I grieve having to acquaint you with such sordid details as you sup, but to omit said would be to fudge the facts (erm, so to speak)."
Scraping off such defecants as I might, I stared at the stinking pile confronting me. Rocs dine on hippopotamus and elephant with toxic adders for appetizers, denude treetops for salads and down killer beehives for desserts. Such sustaining fare was all too evident in these leavings.
But then I noticed this reeking mound was sparkling in spots. Within this odoriferous bird compost were studded large diamonds. Evidently the Rocs required these rocks as roughage to digest foods in their crops (as all avians do) and from time to time a few were ejected.
Wrapping my turban tight around my nose to efface the terrible stench, I ventured in and plucked several substantial diamonds out of the stinking pile of poop. These I washed at a small watering hole, put in a pouch inside my caftan and headed back to our beached ship. Here I was greeted with held noses as to my personal hygiene - and sailors are seldom particular of such things.
Our rudder and tiller rebuilt, we kedged off the hot pink sands and pulled through a narrow channel in the barrier reef by no small dint of sweat. When free in the offing we hoisted sail once more and shaped an easterly compass course. Shooting the sun every noon throughout our island exile, I felt certain as to our latitude, but after reworking and second guessing our dead reckoning still had only a hunch as to longitude. But that didn't really matter, running the parallel we were 'pon east we must needs reach Southeast Asia then simply had to pilot southerly down the coast to gain the Timor Sea.
A week on, a pirate corsair appeared from behind an island hanging on the horizon, approached swiftly and assaulted our ship. After a fiercely fought fight they overwhelmed us with sheer numbers, if not skill. Hamid, our cook, armed only with an ox spit to do battle, lost his life and soon the rest of my crew were in headlocks with sharp sabers shaving their throats in a most menacing manner.
"Captain, your crew is at my mercy. A fine quality, but none I'm 'specially famed for," the biggest bully of the buccaneers snarled. "Bloody massacre is more in our line of business and, to put not too fine a point on it, my personal pleasure. Now you can make this easy or take it hard. We're taking all your cargo, of course, but there's more booty secreted somewhere aboard. I can smell it."
"Now you start talking or we start slitting. Throats. One by one. 'Til your decks run as red as those sails." He gestured aloft. "Or that setting sun." Pointing to the flaming sun sinking into the sea.
"You've made your point quite keenly," I replied. At this I handed over our diamonds, all except for the one exceptional diamond I'd cleaned, buffed and bonded to a gold chain secreted 'sous ma chemise'.
They poured out the pouch on a hatch cover. A rush of amazement then naked covetousness struck them dumb. At that, all thoughts of our grosser cargo were banished. "Damn," thought I, "these pirates are pretty particular as to their pelf." But the sight of this fortune sated their blood lust, my men were spared a crew cut and their captain departed with a handshake and most heartfelt, "Pleasure doing business with ye. May we meet again, Allah willing. Bon Voyage!"
Making landfall in Siam, we began trading the goods disdained of by the pirates as being beneath their nouveau riche dignity, although what shred of dignity piracy possesses I fathom not.
Continuing our commerce down the Malay Peninsula, to our great increase, we then bore north on the Trades through the Straits of Timor for the Bandas, Spice Islands of the Moluccas.
From afar they appeared to arise like apparitions from the sea, hover shimmering on the horizon, then soaring, surmount the division 'tween earth and heaven and, plucked from the sea, become of the sky, mantled with thick green jungle verdure. Such a sight 'specilly strikes those from desert countries, as the spotting atop a camel, those 'ships of the desert', of an oasis in a wilderness of sand, which is similarly barren and wave-shaped as the rolling sea.
A fragrant breeze mingled of flowers and nutmeg, wafted off the island o'er the waters as the ship beat windward toward our destination. We had survived and arrived, all praise the 'Will of Merciful Allah'.
We secured sure holding ground in the sheltered harbor. This is always preferable to lying alongside a wharf, which invites infestation by unwelcome intruders - thieves, lice, trollops and rats of both two and four feet.
I rowed ashore with those of our crew on leave and proceeded to inspect the Hongs of nutmeg wholesalers lining the harbor. The smell of the spice, mingled with the heavy, some say heavenly, fumes of hashish wafting from adjacent hongs, hung in the air, overwhelming and intoxicating.
I noted all the merchandises on offer but bought of none on the spot, such being my way of doing business, learned of my trade-savvy father. "Every deal improves with delay," he would say. "For every one transaction you loose by ignoring the imperious knock of opportunity, seven others will be won to your far greater advantage by waiting and exhibiting an air of indifference all the while as to the outcome. Keep a cool head, stiff prick hid in your pants - and always play the waiting game."
Allowing several days to pass, I again cruised the waterfront and revisited the 'Hong Orang Kaya' ['Fat Cat's Trading House', roughly], whose fragrant wares at fair prices had previous caught my eye and nose. For such of our entire cargo as described, subject to approval, they would'st lade our capacious hull to its fullest capacity. We sealed the deal with a handshake, hug, kiss and hookah of potent hashish, as is the commercial custom of these parts.
After inspection and approval of our cargo by the Dongshi, the hong's head, he spoke. "The copious quantity of crop you require is beyond our modest means at the moment. A month or so ago we suffered a grievous typhoon which did'st untimely strip the nascent nuts from many trees. Indeed, mayhap thou encountered said storm in your sailings. We must await a fresh supply from the men of the mountains. Please to be patient."
"Pas de probleme, je pense, la patience est une vertu. Mais je vais besoin d'une pause dans le prix." And the price did go down somewhat. It takes two to play the waiting game.
As promised, several days later a fresh consignment arrived from the deep interior of the island. It was borne on the backs of the strangest men ever espied. None were more than three cubits tall and some closer to two [3-4 feet]. None the less, they expressed savage visages with many scarifications, tattoos and piercings, all weathered most swarthy with many missing limbs and appendages sported as proud badges of their wicked warlike natures. And armed to the teeth. Speaking of which, their teeth were filed to the finest points until they appeared as carnivorous cadavers when grimacing. And all were obviously hugely high on hashish, perhaps with an admixture of nutmeg, of which they reeked, mingled with the worst body odor in the known world and possibly several other unknown ones as well.
The pig-me's offloaded our cargo and set to lading the nutmeg. Their work almost done, however, I began to smell a rat. A cargo of nutmeg has an overwhelming smell, but this didn't. Not like my father's ships, not like the hongs I'd visited. Then I noticed our diminutive porters were shouldering the bags as if they were filled with fleece. The stoutest longshoreman will bend under a load of nutmeg on his back.
I ordered a bag dropped on the aft hatch cover and slit the burlap down its belly from stem to stern with my dirk. There, buried in the middle, half the load consisted of 'nutmegs' cleverly carved from aloes wood and stained with the juice of tico berries to counterfeit the genuine nut. The imagination and perfidy of human nature is indeed endless!
I commanded the master of the hong aboard and confronted him with the evidence, slitting bag after bag open to the same result. "I demand the lawful right of complete return and total recompense for this heinous fraud.
"Leave. Fly! Depart posthaste," he demanded. "Stand not on the order of your going but go at once. My men thirst for blood and the merest summons is all that stands between your redest massacre and the merciful safety of the deep blue sea. You have until sundown, not many hours hence, to cast off and set sail." With that he and his henchman stevedores withdrew into the hong.
I summoned my courage, fresh born of hot and holy indignation to convene a council of war with the crew in my aft cabin below.
"Men," Sinbad began in a low tone not overly brimming with optimism, "none of us know not what stakes we face, nor the odds stacked against us. Our fate and a fortune hang in the balance. Death dogs us at every direction. We must turn the tide! It's down to do or die. What shall be done to not untimely perish? What hand shall we play to live?"
"Here's my plan, desperate though it be. The pirates did most grievously disarm us. We must need'st fashion fresh weapons out of such poor and most un-warlike stuffs as we possesseth aboard."
"Butcher knives," my first mate cleaved the air after an ominous silence from the crew, "ground and honed to gleaming edges." "Rigging knives," another cut in. "Fish gaffs." "Caulking hammers and irons." The weapons flew fast now. Slingshots armed with nutmegs, the real ones, hard as beach stones." "Axes and saws," our carpenter fell into the spirit." "Scourges of fishhooks," another offered.
The crew fell to work with a will and soon had fashioned a cache of fearsome, if unconventional, armaments and ammunition. For my part, I passed around bottles of arak and, as they were drained, scribed their bases with the diamond hanging 'round my neck which, when tapped, released the bottoms to form sharp, jagged teeth, much like those of our pig-me's.
At dusk, well primed in every sense, we attacked the hong. The pig men swarmed out and warfare waged on the wharf. The weapons of these little ankle biters were drawn at the height of our balls, ours level with their eyeballs. Balls, either theirs or ours, would soon fly. I beseeched Allah's blessing on my jewels, that dangling 'round my neck and those tender ones tucked 'tween my legs.
Our initial foray felled several of their fellows with fatal flesh wounds. This routed them back inside the hong to talk tactics and toke of more hashish, as wafting fumes from their hubble-bubble pipes soon signaled the spies in our noses.
Staggering forth for a second sally they wildly swung their crude clubs and cutlasses only to be cut down by our crack slingshots blinding them with their own nutmegs. Others of us then fell upon and carved them up with the kitchen implements of our improvised arsenal.
Another retreat ensued and the fog of war again fumed forth from inside the hong. So far we had suffered but two casualties to their two dozen. I directed my men to a pile of teak logs on the wharf awaiting lading, chose the stoutest and we charged the substantial doors of the hong rending it into splinters under repeated blows. The pig-me's meanwhile effected an escape out the back door and hied for the hills.
We returned to the ship and cast the entire cargo into the harbor. The ersatz nutmeg, dyed with tico berry juice and mingled with our enemies flowing blood, stained the waters alizarin in red setting sun. We reclaimed our cargo, reladed it and set sail, flying to the north on the fairest of following winds.
I later learned that the incident became famed in island lore as 'The Bandan Nut Toddy'. Indeed, God is a humorist, as well as casting long shadows into the future.
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