The Flying Dutchman

Chapter 17

14

The Crystal Key had already reached tropical waters, saluted the sun with its orange pennon, and was now obediently following its scorching, shining pathway. But the sun kept slipping away from the ship, hiding behind a wave or a cloud, then behind the next. It winked, dazzled, blinded, and did all this with such enthusiasm that the sailors were forced to wrap rags around their heads. Drinking water was rationed.

Off duty, the sailors took refuge in their quarters and spun yarns.

“…he was married six times in a row, each time unhappily. And all his wives were called Dora Peters… No, no, he didn’t keep marrying the same woman, they all just happened to have the same name. He was married to each of them for three months. And now whenever he sees a girl he fancies, he calls out to her: “Hey, Dora Peters!” If she looks up, he turns heel and runs.”

The sailors guffawed.

“Hey, Jaap, you telling the truth?” asked someone curiously.

“What do you care if he’s telling the truth or not, so long as it makes you laugh?” smirked another.

“What’s in a name,” declared one old sailor pensively.

Up on deck, Dirk Slothem was checking the rigging. Catching sight of the captain’s young first mate as he happened past, the bosun asked him:

“What’s he like, that physician?”

Van der Weide shrugged.

“Who knows… An Italian, born in Florence, but he speaks with a Spanish accent.”

“I don’t like him,” Dirk said.

“Yeah, the philosophy of likeability,” the young first mate said with a smile. He was an educated chap, had even studied at university once upon a time. “Let me tell you a story about a man who was very popular. They even sang songs about him.”

It had to do with a certain Spanish colony known as Santa Anna. It was overseas, I won’t tell you exactly where. The governor, Don Alvaro de Fuentes, liked his peace and quiet, but it was his lot to govern the colony, in other words, to busy himself with matters far from peaceful or quiet. More than anything else Don Alvaro loved to play the harpsichord while his officers were off chasing pirates. Actually, the governor hadn’t given the order, but his officers were a very lively bunch. The pirate ships would scatter like wasps shooting from their nest when it’s hit with a stick. Sometimes the stick struck one or two of the wasps, but they never managed to get the meanest and most stubborn one. He was called Chassan. He’d already sunk dozens of merchant ships, killing most of the crew; he never took prisoners.

The officers had been hunting him for eight years with no luck. Finally, Chassan came to them himself – he crept into town one night after some wench and bumped right into the sergeant the next morning, and the sergeant recognised him. When they took the pirate, he took that sergeant’s life, unarmed as he was, just throttled him with his bare hands.

The prisoner was brought before the Governor, who was just sitting down to tea on the veranda in his mansion. This black-bearded creature stood before him – crafty, fearless, merciless, and the Governor’s officers proposed an equally merciless hanging.

The Governor had dedicated that morning to Couperin’s minuet. Don Alvaro’s younger daughter had already mastered it, and he was about to demonstrate the subtleties of his interpretation to her, a daunting task which cast a concerned shadow over the governor’s golden-haired brow.

‘Execute him?’ uttered Don Alvaro, surprised, as beads of sweat appeared on his brow. ‘You want to do away with all your troubles— yours and his—so easily? No, let him feel the full weight of inevitable retribution, the barest necessity of a harmonious life.’

‘But Don Alvaro, he’s a murderer!’ cried a scar-faced young lieutenant, de Castro, stepping forward. ‘He’s killed ninety-six people!’

‘Well, that’s not a hundred, my dear fellow,’ smiled the Governor. ‘The death sentence is such a dull solution. Throw him in a cell.’

Chassan glowered at him, his eyes like those of a rapacious beast given the chance to live, and a smile flitted across his lecherous lips.

And so the pirate was taken away. The officers didn’t let up, but the Governor wrinkled his brow, pained. “It is unbecoming to insist.”

Days passed. Chassan was sitting in the cell listening to the sound of the harpsichord through the air vents. After a week he was so bedevilled by these sounds that he broke through the wall with the bedstead, crawled through the chimney to the Governor’s quarters and suffocated two of his daughters along with his wife. As for the Governor himself, Chassan snapped in him half and stuffed him in the harpsichord.

Fleeing the mansion, the pirate smashed the four guards over the head with a heavy candlestick and then, as if by way of compensation for his trouble, grabbed a pouch of coins. But on discovering they were not gold, the brigand flung them to the beggars.

The townsfolk woke next day to the gurgling sound of the French horn belching forth from the pirates’ brig like an eruption from a sick bowel. Lieutenant de Castro unleashed a belated volley after them from the howitzer.

And so the pirate got his tally up to over one hundred, still not a nice round number. They said that if the next governor had been elected rather than nominated, it would most certainly have been Chassan.

“So now tell me what you think of likeable and unlikeable individuals, and of popular ones,” said the captain’s first mate, as he finished his tale.

But the bosun found himself at a loss for words.