the necks of beer-bottles, eased the corks out carefully and poured the cold beer into glasses.
“Oh, my! That is good!” said Blue Peter, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “Captain, would you be good enough to pass me those crustaceans?” Mumblin’ Jake’s picnic-basket included a damp cloth full of boiled shrimps.
“Surely, Peter!” the Captain passed the shrimps and a pot of pepper relish, “but you may call me Sylvestre, or even Syl, as this is my banyan day.” He took a bite of a sandwich of cold roast pork and mustard, then took a gulp of beer. The grim cast which had darkened his face for a year had faded, and he looked at ease. They ate in companionable silence for a while.
“I will speak freely, then, Sylvestre,” said Blue Peter. “I suspect that you have a hidden purpose in this, your banyan day, and that you wish to converse with me without the possibility of eavesdropping, yet to conceal that purpose within an apparent madcap lark, to prevent invidious or far-fetched conjectures among the crew.”
Captain Greybagges turned to look at Blue Peter.
“You should have been a lawyer, you scoundrel!” He took a draught of beer. “You are right, for the most part. The idea of the madcap lark came first, as I looked at those damn’ ledgers, but I had been seeking such an opportunity anyway. Do not underestimate the roborative effects of a madcap lark, though. This day, my banyan day, has already taken a great weight from my oppressed spirits...”
The Captain would have continued, but Blue Peter raised his hand.
“Indeed, Captain ... Sylvestre ... I can see that. I can also sense that you are going to discuss affairs of great importance. May I give you advice? In the land of my birth such matters were discussed with due ceremony, and that usually involved an exchange of information and compliments; ‘do your father’s feet still stand firm upon the earth? and does the sun still shine upon your seemingly-endless maize fields? and does your mighty heart still encompass the love of ten wives?’ That sort of thing. It’s all nonsense, of course, but it seemed to work. Perhaps we should colloquise for a while longer, enjoy your banyan day a little longer,” Blue Peter ate a shrimp and took a swallow of beer, “before plunging into matters profound and weighty.”
“In England we are not so different,” said the Captain, helping himself to a sausage. “In fact, there’s a phrase; ‘less of the old how’s-yer-father’ meaning ‘stop trying to cozen me and get to the point.’ As pretty maids are often the ones being cozened it has taken on the secondary meaning of amatory congress; a young lad from the Parish of Bow might say ‘I’m a-goin’ upta the ol’ Bull and Bush for a bit o’ how’s-yer-father’, meaning he would be going to the pub to find a lady of easy virtue. You are right, though, and I take your point. What do you wish to talk about?”
“Tell me about your boyhood, how you played cricket in sunlit carefree days.”
“Cricket? Carefree sunlit days? I did indeed play cricket on the village green, up at school and up at Cambridge, too, and I do love that England dearly, it is true. To play a game of cricket, even to watch a game of cricket, to spend all of a lazy sunny summer day just watching cricket, that is a rare delight. Yet even in those happy memories there are dark shadows. I was packed off to Eton, and that damn’ school nearly did for me. A brutal place where one is either the bully or the victim, take your choice. Cricket at Eton was politics, too, not the simple joy of a game on the village green.”
The Captain picked up a biscuit, examined it critically, then ate it.
“My young boyhood was happy, mind you. My mother passed away when I was young, and I only remember her as a kind of a vision, but my nanny, Goosie, was the kindest and most good-humoured soul that ever walked the green earth. My father - ‘the Pater’, as they made us say at Eton - was a different creature altogether. The mean old bugger spent his entire life obsessing about his damn’ estates, so he had nothing to talk about except the price of corn and the villainy of the yokels, and what the grasping old skinflint was thinking every waking minute was how to tighten further the screws on his field-hands and tenants. The money, some of it, went to making me a lawyer, because he wanted a shyster he needn’t pay, so that he could make his neighbour’s lives more miserable without spending his own money to do it. Eton, Cambridge, the Inns of Court ... and a damn’ good lawyer I was, too! I could exonerate the guilty or convict the innocent, as required, and take my fat fee whether justice was served or not. Some cases, though gnawed at me, until it occurred to me that the fine people in their fine clothes were themselves no better than thieves, or indeed pirates. Worse, in fact, for a lusty freebooter wagers his own life, not the lives of others, and does his business honestly with the edge of his cutlass, not with secret whisperings in dark corners and dirty deals in back-rooms. It further occurred to me, after I had broken a cider-jar over my father’s head and been disinherited, that piracy may be just as morally corrupt as the practice of the Law, but it is certainly much more fun. So here I am.
“We are pirates, Peter! The Free Brotherhood of the Coasts, for all its many faults, will take any buccaneer into its membership whether black, white, brown, yellow, red, or even,” he waggled his beard, “partially green. Even women! And all are equal! To be a pirate is to be more free, more democratical, than even those ancient Greek coves in Athens knew of. We take people’s money, and sometimes we have to kill them, but that’s a small price to pay for freedom. If you ever go to England, Peter, go as a pirate and be proud of it. They will either hang you at Tyburn or make you Equerry Of The King’s Chamberpot, it cannot be foretold which, but if you go as a would-be squire they will put you in a cage and charge gawpers a shilling to look at you, and half-a-crown to poke you with a stick.”
“Sylvestre, you have crushed my dreams!” laughed Blue Peter. “Is there indeed a custodian of the royal pisspot?”
“Indeed there is. He is called the Chamberlain of the Stool, if I recollect a’right. It is a position of great influence and power. I dare say the fellow doesn’t touch a po these days, that is merely the origin of the title. Such a fellow must have access to all the King’s private apartments and all of his private affairs, and so must be loyal and trustworthy.”
Captain Greybagges rose to get another bottle of beer from the bucket, and stretched lazily, looking out to sea, unable to resist scanning the horizon. He settled back down again, searching around for his knife to open the beer.
“Tell me of your boyhood, Peter, if you will.”
Blue Peter took a swallow of beer, wiped his mouth and burped.
“Where I was born there was little distinction between summer and winter. There was the season of the rains, but it was still hot then, so one couldn’t call it winter. Time was reckoned in lunar months, but I suppose I was about eight years old when I was given into slavery by my uncle, my mother’s elder brother. I was what you would call the heir apparent. My father was the chief - the sachem, if you will - of the tribe and I was his only son. My mother and my father died, one after the other, and, after a period of mourning of thirteen months, I was to be made chief. My uncle, who was acting chief, pro tempore, took me to the sacred grove alone, as was the custom, said the sacred words and cut my cheeks with these marks.” Blue Peter indicated the cicatrices on his face. “He rubbed ashes into them, then some fellows came along and he told me to go with them. I thought it was part of the ceremony, so I did.”
He drank some beer.
“Good Lord!” said the Captain. “Do you believe that wicked man killed your parents?”
“I’m not sure. He may just have taken advantage of circumstance. He had a son the same age as myself, and alike to me in looks. I believe he may have cut his own son’s cheeks, but savagely, to disguise him, and passed him off as me. Those that detected the substitution would pretend they hadn’t, since my uncle had been chief for thirteen months and, presumably, had firmly seized the reins of command. I was young, of course, and my recollection is fragmentary, so these are mere suppositions.”
“Why, then, did he cut your cheeks?” asked the Captain.
“So that I was unsuspecting