“Men, and women, will often lie, as it is the natural thing to do. I have often observed this, and not only as a brief in the courts, I assure you,” said Captain Greybagges. “Yet when a man begins to lie to himself each step he takes carries him further down the sloping path to Hell. You must loathe your uncle greatly.”
“I do indeed, but that has taught me the futility of hatred. The forest grows quickly, trails and rivers change their course, villages move. I cannot even be sure which barracoon I was taken to, since they are all alike from inside a stockade of logs. There are no maps of the interior of the African continent, nor likely to be. Retracing my steps back to my homeland is impossible now; it is quite literally a lost kingdom. Strangely, when I was a slave I never met a single soul from my own land, or indeed any slave who even knew of my country, so I have not spoken my own tongue since, except to myself. I met some few who spoke similar languages, so that we could talk after a fashion, but never my own mother-tongue.”
Blue Peter heaved himself up to get a bottle of beer. When he had made himself comfortable again against the tree, with a full glass in his hand, he continued.
“I will not speak of the barracoon, or of the sea-crossing on the slave-ship, as they are foul memories. I was bought by a family in Virginny, who, because of my scars and my size, thought it a fine jest to make me a page, and dress me in a little jacket and knee-britches of pink silk. This was a lucky thing for me, as a house-nigger I was not treated too brutally, and I was encouraged to learn a fine clear English and even to read and write. The plantation owner’s younger brother taught me, and gave me some Latin and Greek, too, and some other learning. He was a drunk and a pederast, but I think he had a genuine affection for me. He never molested me, and my times learning under his often-bleary tutelage were some of the happiest I experienced as a slave. The family were great despisers of the English, thinking all Englishmen to be effete, pompous and sly, whilst counting themselves rugged pioneers, despite their life of luxury and idleness. I have few illusions about the English, Sylvestre, but if the likes of Master Chumbley and his vile wife hate them, then they are the fellows for me! The dislike of the English is becoming widespread in the colonies, and it will smoulder into flame one day, I feel sure. Not all Colonials are like the Chumbleys, of course. As you once said, ‘the Colonials can be rare plucked-uns when they be a-riled-up’, and indeed they can be, but in such a circumstance the Chumbleys would be hiding under their beds a-shivering and a-praying, not getting a-riled-up, the sanctimonious hypocritical sods.
“When I was fourteen I punched the son of the family on the nose, which he richly deserved, and they flogged me and then put me to work in the fields like a beast of burden. To my small surprise the other slaves despised me as a house-nigger, so I had to punch a few of them, too, and got flogged again for damaging the livestock. The years in the fields put muscle on me, so, after the last flogging, I was able to pull the ring-bolt from the wall and knock the overseer unconscious when he came a-calling. I would have dearly loved to have killed him, but that would have led to a larger hue-and-cry, so I took his keys and chained him up with my shackles and gagged him with his own socks. I went to free the other slaves but only one of them was game, a skinny old fellow of the Kroo tribe. The Kroo boast that they’ve never been slaves or owned slaves, so he had a point to make, I suppose. Strangely, the Chumbley’s daughter, a skinny little madam who was always spying upon me, saw me and the Krooman sneaking away, but she only grinned and put her finger to her lips, childishly thinking us upon a mere lark, I suppose. We made our way to the Great Dismal Swamp and joined some other escaped slaves, cimarroons, who were living there. It was nearly as damn’ dismal as slavery, that swamp, so I took off for New Amsterdam. The few glimpses I’d gotten of the ocean on the slave-ship had intrigued me, so I signed on as a sailor. After a couple of voyages before-the-mast, I met Bulbous Bill Bucephalus in a tavern in New Orleans, he was sailing with Jean Lafitte back then, and I became a pirate. So here I am.”
“That is an extraordinary tale, Peter,” said Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges, “I understand better your detestation of the slave-owners of Virginny. A little suit of pink silk! That is almost satanic in its cruelty!”
Blue Peter threw an apple core at him, and they both laughed, then lay against the trees in silence for a while, gazing at the sea and sipping their glasses of beer.
“It has been truly excellent to sprawl here, eating, drinking and yarning with you on my banyan day,” said the Captain at last, “but I fear I must now darken the occasion with serious talk. As the Bard wrote ‘I now unclasp a secret book, and, to your quick-conceiving discontent, read you matter deep and dangerous’, and it is indeed deep and dangerous, what I have to say, so harken to me now!”
And Blue Peter turned to him, and listened.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH,
or The Captain Unclasps a Secret.
“Before I start my grim tale I must explain a couple of things,” said Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges, “or you will be confused.”
He scratched his belly and drank some beer.
“In your readings, Peter, you may have heard of the theory of Nicolaus Copernicus.”
“From his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, or ‘On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres’,” said Blue Peter, “in which he coyly suggested that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe.”
“Indeed, and he was right, and that cove Newton, whom I saw at Cambridge but never spoke to, put the whole thing square by identifying gravity - the force that makes the apple fall and the cannonball curve in its flight - with the force which holds the moons and planets on their courses,” said the Captain. “Furthermore, you may have heard of the ideas of the Italian monk Giordano Bruno.”
“I was thinking of him only this morning, and how I was not unduly surprised that the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition tied him to a stake and burned him, by way of a critical appraisal of his work.”
“He was right,” said the Captain.
“What? That the stars of the welkin are suns alike to our own sun?”
“Yes.”
“And that planets may orbit them as our Earth orbits the sun?”
“Yes.”
“And that creatures may inhabit those distant planets?”
“Yes.”
“And that those creatures may be intelligent aware beings, such as we are?”
“Yes.”
“Ay caramba! Be you serious? You seem very certain, how can you be sure of that?”
“Because, Peter, I have met some of them,” said Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges.
Blue Peter was silent for some time, then he drained his glass of beer in one long swallow. The Captain stood up and looked in the sailcloth bucket.
“The last two beers,” he said, handing Blue Peter a bottle. He settled his back against the tree-trunk again. “Now you are thinking that I am bereft of my wits, or else engaged in some kind of egregious spoof, or leg-pull. I am neither insane nor jesting, I assure you. You can see why I have kept this to myself for nearly a year.”
Blue Peter poured his beer, a thoughtful expression on his face.
“Pray continue, Sylvestre. I shall reserve judgement for the meantime, although this tale is becoming a little rich to easily swallow.”
“When I rowed around the point into Nombre Dios Bay a year ago, dressed all in black, with my face blackened, in a black boat with muffled oars, I believed myself invisible. I was not. As far