Port Royal #1 Story Index Story Notes Port Royal #3
Port Royal Ancedotes #2:
Sweating the Captives
by Sandy Robb Gyll (Steve Argyle)
Being an excerpt from the memoirs of S. R. Gyll, esq., a planter of Virginia and sometime privateer, gentleman of fortune, &c.
We caught the Spaniard against a lee shore as she was beating her way up the Mosquito Coast. We came out of the sunrise with the weather gauge and all of our guns run out. She had nowhere to run, and didn’t even put up a fight. What she did do was heave to and try to conceal from us that she was lowering a boat on the lee side. I snugged the Megaera in behind the Spaniard and grappled, the muzzles of our starboard broadside rubbing the gilt off the ornate carvings on her stern gallery.
When we saw the jolly boat pulling hard for the beach and lowered our own pursuit boat, the docile Dons came alive like an upset beehive. They practically boarded us, and we had warm work to repel them and finally gain the upper hand. Our boat caught the other as it hesitated before the surf, and towed it back.
I looked into the eyes of the defeated Spanish captain as the fugitive boat pulled alongside. His sour expression seemed to indicate that he would rather be at the bottom of the sea than where he was. He rattled something at me that sounded desperate.
“Jason!” I called, “What’s this pompous, beribboned fish saying?”
Blackthorne, who spoke fluent Spanish, tossed a curt interrogatory at the Don.
“He asks you, on your honor, to kill him quickly before he has to witness any of the inevitable horrors that will result from his failure to protect the senorita.”
“What senorita?”
“That one, I would imagine.” Blackthorne waved to where the occupants of the jolly boat were climbing aboard.
She was as dainty and jewel-like a wench as I had ever seen. Raven ringlets framed a face like Cathay porcelain. She was a confection of gilt lace, wine-colored taffeta, lavender scent, and fragile femininity. A hush fell across the deck as she stepped aboard, followed by an iron-boned duenna glaring daggers at my crew, and a frightened little slave girl.
“Well,” I said, when I had caught my breath, “tell the good captain that I’ll see if I can’t postpone any horrors for a while…Jason!”
Blackthorne started and tore his eyes from the string of pearls rising and falling on a pearly, agitated décolletage. “Huh?…Oh! Of course.” He tried to reassure the Spanish captain, who looked around at the gaping faces of my lads and groaned.
Just then, Toothless Ned poked his head up from the hatch. “Cap’n,” he called, Look’ee what we found below!”
He then led on deck three of the sorriest young men imaginable. They were obviously of noble birth, but their lace ruffs drooped abominably and they stank of the bilges. Their finery was filthy and they were manacled hand and foot with galling iron gyves. Senorita gasped and whimpered, Duenna made some scathing remark, and Captain groaned again.
Sensing a tale worth hearing, I promptly had the highborn prisoners transferred to the Megaera for safekeeping while the lads finished the inventory of the prize. I had the ladies locked in my own cabin, the manacled dandies shut in the purser’s cupboard, and the captain brought before Blackthorne, Marcus, and myself at the taffrail.
With Jason acting as interpreter, we wheedled the story out of the Spaniard. The lovely senorita was the Viceroy’s own daughter. The three pathetic youths in chains were admirers whose only crime was writing impassioned love poetry to the girl. Papa was sending his little treasure to the safety of a convent near Segovia and was making a harsh example of any swain bold enough to raise his eyes to the girl. Our fatalistic captain was convinced the Viceroy would do things to him that even my crew of cutthroats couldn’t imagine. I felt sorry for the pack of them. A little.
“I’ve an idea for some sport!” I said suddenly. I dismissed the Spaniard and explained my thoughts to Marcus and Jason.
Later that night, I had Jack call all hands to the waist of the Megaera. Speculative muttering ran through the crew as they saw the baize bag in Jack’s hand. A space was cleared around the main mast and the poetical prisoners, still in their chains, were positioned evenly around it. Then each was handed a cat o’ nine tails from the bag.
“Men!” I called, “Each of these poor sods fancies himself in love with the toothsome wench ye saw today.” A few pertinent observations about the wench in question were called out by members of the crew, to general laughter. “Blackthorne here is going to tell these lubbers that whichever one of them is left standing will spend the night with her in my own cabin!” A chorus of approval caused the pathetic poets to glance around in apprehension.
“You realize, of course,” Marcus whispered, “that the lady’s ransom value will be significantly higher if she is returned to the Viceroy virgo intacta?”
“Of course,” I replied. “And I intend to get a top price for the piece. But those poor dogs don’t know that. Watch now.”
Blackthorne had finished instructing the amazed captives, who glanced at us, glared at each other, then, still wearing their irons, began to stalk one another warily. Wielding the cats almost timidly at first, then with increasing fury, the versifiers laid on with a will as my men howled in approval.
“You know, this proves,” observed Marcus dryly, “that bards of a fetter flog to get her.”
[Published in the September 2004 issue of No Quarter Given]