Patience slumped against the hull, and though she was breathing she did not wake, as if her last strength had gone to hold me back from the pirates. Some of the women began to cry, but we all knew by then that sadness was useless. The dead do not mourn the dead.
Sometime after that we came to quieter water in a bay of some sort. My mind felt bleary. My head pounded. I dreamed sometimes of a great banquet being laid for us, but that at that banquet table all the food held poison; the meat tasted of iron rust and the drink tasted like spoiled fish. We slept in the exhaustion of sickness. When I awoke, it was always to hunger. There was no food but hardtack and watered rum. Sometimes they brought uncooked rice or wheat grains we sucked on until we could chew them. Another woman died in our cell and two died from across the way. I felt ashamed that my first thought was that at least there was a bit more room. Maybe they would give us more rice to chew with one less to feed. Hunger had pushed away all the human kindness I owned. Patience would not suck on the rice. I feared she would die next. If Ma would but call out to us, we should take heart, I thought, but I dared not tell Patey that, for she tried to slap me again if ever I mentioned Ma or Pa. I suspected she was angry at me for not running to warn them fast enough.
I plotted to ask the next pirate who came by here to take me to the banquet hall. While I thought of that I searched inside my clothing for any scrap of fabric that was not filthy. When at last I came upon my pocket holding Ma’s little casket I found it was made of two layers, and keeping the lump hidden between my knees I pulled at it on the inside until I got off a shred of linen cloth about an inch or two long. I put that in my cheek and sucked on it. I chewed it and swallowed it. I pulled a larger piece off, and put that in the opposite cheek. I tore loose a third bit and shook Patience’s shoulder but she merely opened her eyes and stared at me. I whispered to her, “Try to eat some of this cloth before you perish. I will ask the next pirate I see, for our sake, to take us to the banquet above.”
“No,” she said, “for we had rather perish than go above.”
“You are mindless for hunger,” I said. “My pocket was still clean inside. Let me help you find yours.”
At that moment sailors shouted from above and we heard a great trampling of many feet. Then followed shouts, chanting words over and over, yet they were nothing I understood. The imprisoned men overhead raised a clamor. This ship’s cannons began firing and the tomb in which we lay filled with a thundering roar. The whole place shuddered with each concussion. At one point the firing grew so constant that I could not draw a breath between one explosion and the next.
A ball came through the side of the ship, not four feet from where I stood. A few women found the strength to scream. Though the cannonball brought with it a great deal of splintered wood, it fell in its path like a dead thing hitting the floor. It rolled the length of this dark cavern, petering down to a crawl. It came to a halt at the end of the corridor. Light poured in through the hole left by the ball. Light and air. The fragrance of clean air lifted my soul from its dungeon and I stood, pressing my face against the bars, gulping at the breeze coming through the new porthole. If I were to die or drown, I swore I would have at least a breath more of that clean air to go with me. I sucked in air and held my breath as long as I could. I let it out with a burst and took in more.
The ship groaned and listed as a full broadside shook us from keel to flag. Men screamed in agony. The water around us churned with splashing and our guns fired again. The sound of small guns followed like plunking stones compared to the cannon. We heard more shouts. First many, then a few, and two men called back and forth, one apparently on this ship and one from the second one.
“We’re saved!” someone said. A few women cheered.
Someone else called out, “One master’s just another master. Them be privateers’ colors I spy. They’re not for sinking this bilge bucket. They’re for taking her!”
“Yes, but they’re English!” another woman said.
“Patey? Wake up,” I said, jostling her. “We are saved by the English.”
Patience groaned and looked at me through filmy eyes. She had dark circles under them and when she tried to speak her teeth had taken a pink color. “English?”
“We are going home, now,” I said, and patted her hand. “Do not try to stand up. Everything will be all right, now.”
A wrenching scream—a man’s voice—tore the air, and a great splashing with more shouting followed that sound. A deep-voiced man said, “Anyone else crave a taste of steel?” The rest of what happened I could narrate only with my ears. The sounds of hard-soled boots clamored overhead. Orders given. Ropes tossed. Saracen pirates were hung, some strangling for several minutes before they died swinging from the yards over the deck. Served them justice, I thought.