Cinnamon and Gunpowder Read Online Free PDF Page B

in his gut. God forbid I should ever need his attentions. Further, as far as I can see, Mabbot does not use compass or astrolabe but relies instead on Pete, a shriveled old savage of mysterious origin, calloused as bark, who sits upon a specially rigged chair out over the bowsprit and stares at the sea sunrise to sunset. While it is clear to me that poor toothless Pete has entered his second infancy, Mabbot says he is “counting the waves” and trusts his direction as God’s word.
    Mabbot takes a twice-daily walk, touring the ship as she goes, sometimes giving a two-word order. I have seen, as she passes, something moving in the deep pockets of her long coat. It is unsettling. The men in the berths whisper absurdities: that she keeps the plague in her pocket like a pet, that she has a wolf’s maw where her generative organs should be. Such is the grip she has on their minds.
    Her rounds bring her always to Pete, the little man at the forepeak. They speak, he points, sometimes they consult a map, then she returns to her cabin. It is a wonder the ship is not rotting in the deepest crevice of the seafloor, and yet she has made herself a menace to the Pendleton Trading Company for nearly fifteen years; indeed, her ambushes are the stuff of legend. The rumors of her resurrection after execution by firing squad and drowning are ridiculous, but I could be convinced that the woman has a pact with the devil. It would explain much.
    Too, this ship is so full of Mohammedans I find myself wondering why God does not simply push it under with His finger as He did Gomorrah.
    The men eat in the forecastle mostly, sitting on their lockers and holding their bowls on their laps. As a prank they invited me to sit at a small table, only to guffaw when my porridge slid across on a swell and dropped with a splat on the floor. In the future I must remember to think twice before accepting courtesy from a pirate and to keep one hand on the bowl at all times. Still, bit by bit, I allow myself to make simple conversation with the sailors here. Though I stammer sometimes at the sight of their pierced faces and lewd tattoos, I tell myself: They’re just men. Held together with wire and spit, but only men, after all.
    With one exception, I have not regretted these conversations. I have been obliged to linger in the galley, assessing my tools and resources, scant and rusty as they are. This has meant tolerating Conrad’s long tongue.
    A word on Conrad: I cannot call him a cook. Nor, having eaten so much of his fare, am I comfortable calling him a Christian, though he claims to be. He is a man, I grant. Many of the foulest things of the earth come from men.
    His sores are in need of calendula. Happily we need not look at him while eating, for he wisely avoids the men at mealtimes. But having heard his wet cough, having smelled in the narrow passages the cheesy ropes of his braids, having witnessed, even once, his hobby of staring out at the horizon while his hand scuttles about his neck like a crab looking for some promising lesion to pick, one finds it hard to locate one’s appetite.
    How does this man, who would lose his post to a donkey on land, achieve such a position at sea? “Ship’s cook,” it turns out, is not properly a position but a punishment. Not only does he spend his days cramped in a steam-filled chamber, churning with a shovel enough food for an army, but worse, Conrad must bear the derision of the crew who look to a meal as one of the sole respites in a long hard day. Finding sand between their teeth and even the hardtack sour, they turn their frustrations upon poor Conrad. What pleasure they can’t get by appeasing their tremendous appetites, they find instead in taunting the man who takes their hoots and howls with stoicism.
    I have already learned that being at sea breeds romance and fantasy. Whether it is the monotony of the horizon, the confined perambulation, or the intoxicating ethers that boil from the deep I cannot say,