The Pelican

“Get up lad!”

Joshua stirred from a restless slumber and lifted the corner of the little black notebook he’d bolstered with his crooked nose like an old cruck house. As he did, the relentless midday sun breached in slivers around a loose gunport. It glimmered, twisted and caroused its way through the ropes and cannon and bounded to the back of Joshua's one exposed eye.

“Get ...UP!”

All at once, the book and Joshua tumbled to the floor from their high hammock. He felt a sharp thwack in the small of his back.

“We're given’ chase, get yer’ station!”

Joshua rubbed his eyes with the calloused pads of his fingertips and felt the sting of potassium and sulphur, the residue stained his cheeks and gave his collar a blacksmith's hue. “Giving what?” he sputtered in shock from the rude awakening and the long side of a handspike still in his back. “Get on your damn legs boy!” the voice howled again, this time with such intensity that the deck shook and the hammocks swayed. It was Aker, the gun captain, and the man that had managed to -with little effort, and too much ale- convince Joshua to board this god forsaken trough in the first place.

This ‘trough’ was The Pelican, a tiny, race built galleon of black wood and oak launched in the year of our lord 1577 as the flagship of one ‘El Draco’, or so the Spanish called him. Her bowsprit gleamed, as did her stern, with gilded figures and arched windows lined with polished lead. The forecastle stood proud and deep crimson, she was mighty and she was feared. But to Joshua, poor, seasick Joshua, it may as well have been a clinker, or a tender or, in fact, a shoe. It certainly smelt like one after these six months out of Plymouth Sound.

“Chasing what?!” Joshua was shouting now too, sliding a grubby hand underneath his twisted back in an effort to dislodge his new wooden appendage and quell the pain. But finding no solace in this endeavor, he proceeded to jerk and holler. Acker grabbed the dirty blonde mop of hair that sat on Joshua's head and with one sudden wrench, pulled the boy to his feet. All at once a weevil-like cacophony burrowed into Joshua's senses. The bosun's whistle blared, shouts and footsteps made him quiver and the hot, rotten smell of sweat, sea and iron made the air as thick as soup. A command could be heard from the mouth of The Dragon on deck “Clew up the mainsail! Ready about!” Joshua was now so close to Acker’s ochre teeth and bloodshot eyes that there wasn’t space for a chock between them. “Now you listen boy, get those damn gunports open or I'll ‘av your guts for garters. It be The Santiago we’re chasing”. Acker threw Joshua hard against the barrel of the six pounder.

He leapt up, suddenly more awake than ever and brutally aware that what was to come, what he had been dreading, was mere moments away. His first battle. Adrenaline coursed through Joshua. He had almost forgotten the welts on his back and his perpetually turning stomach. He grabbed one of the coarse, salted rope that hung through iron hoops, and with a powder boy on the other, hauled a mighty haul, exposing the dimly lit gundeck to all that the western sky had to offer.

“POWDER!” The first command rippled through the belly of the ship. “RAM” a well-practiced arm pounded the powder home followed closely by a wad of canvas. “BALL!” Joshua craned six pounds of iron into the gaping bore and let it roll down with a ‘cusshhh.. thud’. “RAM!” All along the flanks of the galleon the well-oiled machine seated the cannonballs. “PRIME- LIGHT YOUR MATCH!” The powder boys presented horns to their gun captains. “HAUL!” Ropes were hauled and the iron beasts fought to stick their ornate noses into the breeze. All the while The Dragon on deck continued breathing fire, “Slack off the headsail sheets, let aft go and brace round forward!” And after a moment, “Stay course”. The ship fell silent. Silent as the grave. Even The Pelican herself held her breath. The gun captains stooped with matches in hand and Joshua, poor, brave Joshua, peered from the port.

Nothing. The ocean sparkled and cast waves of gentle rippling light onto the faces of the gun crew. The enormous sky, like the inside of a crystal ball, met the flat cool ocean behind a hazy far off fog so that it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended. Joshua flattened his face against the rough interior planking of the gunport. He closed his left eye and squinted the other in a curious attempt to spy The Santiago. Perhaps, he thought, just off the starboard bow. But still there was nothing but the murmur of water passing beneath them and the creaks and groans of rubbing timber. Still, they waited.

Abruptly a ‘thump thump’ grew close and loud. Joshua peeled his face from the splintered gunport and fixed his eyes on the source. It was a barefooted powder boy running down the stairs and the length of lower deck to the stern dropping his powder horn and fighting with an armful of wadding. He dived behind a cannon, so that only his grimy toes poked into view and started to whimper. Then the belly of The Pelican once again fell silent.

A few more dreadful moments passed as the matches oozed a gravity defying trail of white liquid that settled amongst the beams and pinned a smoky woollen blanket above Joshua's head. Without warning, a great shadow crept along The Pelican. Like blowing out a row of lanterns, one by one, the darkness coated the men. Joshua took a sharp inward breath as the black mass revealed itself. Acker, thinking it an impending yelp, swiftly wrapped a curled palm and thick, tobacco stained fingers around Joshua's hanging jaw. “Steady now lad”, Acker whispered.

No more than six feet away, the figure of a lion lavishly decorated in amber and deep sea green met curved lumber and a pitted, steel grey anchor chain. The Santiago. New unfamiliar voices, muffled but distinct, gnawed the silence aboard The Pelican. Joshua had heard this speak before, what felt like a lifetime ago.

For Joshua, just 17, a farmer's son from the Tamar Valley, it seemed that his life, like so many, was predestined. “This is how it has to be”, he had thought as he sat, forlorn in his local freehouse pressing pewter against his rough lips. He took a large gulp. “¿Uno para mí?” The unfamiliar voice had warmed the otherwise frigid evening air. Joshua raised his head slightly, scanning the room with weary eyes to make absolutely sure this was meant for him. “Sorry?” he said, taking a last swig. “One for me?” Joshua turned, he was sitting bolt upright now. There she was. Blonde hair, tousled and wet from the few drops of rain that had breached her bonnet. She seemed to glow, as though her ruddy complexion rejected the unworthy lamplight. She had worn a red cloak draped around her shoulders and crimson boots. He obliged her request, and hours were passed with stories of Spanish sunsets, grand Mediterranean oceans, and snowy mountain summits. Her name was Abril, And so it was, that Joshua loved. It wasn't long before she was with child and Joshua was skilled with words but empty of pocket, he set off to Plymouth to prove himself a good man.

“ACKER, FIRE!”

The command came like a bolt of lightning. It shot down Joshua's spine and pulled his skeleton through his skin, wrenching his shoulders back and burning at the bottom of his skull. Without hesitation. Mr Acker bore his match down on the small pool of powder that sat in the breach.

BOOOM! The noise was terrible and solid. It smacked Joshua's chest, robbing a lungful of air. The cannon whooshed backwards like a stead rearing in its carriage and billowed tremendous thick, white smoke from its nostrils that climbed The Pelican’s flanks. The flung iron sphere routed a giant wormhole in the Santiago side, striking between two closed gunports. With ears still ringing, cries were heard from the bowels of the Spanish ship.

Joshua watched, dazed as the sponge was rammed home, adding hot, sulphurous steam to his overloaded senses and waited for orders. Moments later came a celebratory roar, a young deckhand leapt down to the gundeck and gave a cry, “Surrendered! They've surrendered! Old El Draco’s done it again!”

So it had been, that on the firing of Acker’s cannon and the raising of El Draco’s notorious flag, the captain of The Santiago had fallen to his knees, thrown his sword to ground and prayed for nothing but mercy. She held a cargo of such immense wealth, it could hardly be believed. Within 30 claimed pine chests strapped with iron lay rough emeralds, rubies and sapphires, gold in coins and in bars, silver plates and pearls. For the investors in the voyage there was to be a small fortune but for Joshua, not so much as a token.

It was a while later, once the sun had started to set over the shimmering horizon and the treasure lay soundly in the hold, when Joshua, poor, homesick Joshua, lay once again in his softly swaying hammock, his little black notebook draped over his weary eyes when he remembered why he was there. ‘Abril, my darling, how I wish to get back to you. For you I'd do anything, try anything’ he thought as he lay motionless, listening to the snorts and shuffles of the sleeping crew. ‘For I would die for you, and surely I'll die aboard this ship. I would steal a thousand sparkling jewels for…’ The thought froze his every muscle and produced pearls of cold sweat, which rolled freely from his forehead. ‘But how?’ he thought. Already though, he found his body involuntarily pulling him up. ‘Just a look’. With more grace and elegance than Abril herself, Joshua danced between lumbering swaths of canvas, over crewmen's chests, and down, deep down, into the heart of the ship.

The small wooden door to the hold was guarded. A lamp silhouetted a single man, in calico cotton slouched forward, his chin resting on his chest. ‘Without even a fight?’ Joshua silently moved closer. He noticed with a chill that he had started to draw his knife. “Sorry Robert”, came a whisper from Joshua's undeterred lips as he held it against the man's neck. He pointed the tip and pushed, hard. A gurgle, a splutter and a stream of hot viscous liquid rolled down and pooled. Before he knew it, the hold door was open and there, the prize.

Joshua emptied a hessian grain sack onto the floor. He stuffed it with gold and gems, pearls and silver, all that he could. He threw the sack over his shoulder and bolted up to the gun deck, up into the open sea air, up to the crimson forecastle. With a mighty vault, he swung himself and the sack into a longboat. He heaved and swayed, shifting his weight until the little boat swung over the water. He took his knife, and sliced the suspending ropes, one end, then the other. With an almighty crash he landed and launched. Joshua threw the oars into place, putting ocean between him and The Dragon.

In the middle of the Pacific, with The Pelican drifting into the distance, he sat, opened the old grain bag, emptied his pockets and took an inventory. Before him lay a little black notebook and $20,000 in treasure. He lay back and soaked in the majesty of the night and with one deep, wallowing breath and said to the sea, ‘I suppose then, I should become a writer’.