The captain was in his cabin at table before a silver plate of meat. “Captain,” the master purred. “My captain, I’s thinking, this boy’s trip should not yet be done. Let us steady his keel, weather his daring by our own hand on our own grim vessel. I’d wager that the prize you seek can be won with but a few drops of red, and then”—the master paused at this point to grin conspiratorially—“at the nearest port, we can sell him, as he were … off the rack. What says you, sir?”
The captain, reaching deep into his sea chest of compassion and jurisprudence, replied, “Torture, my good man. It’s as effective as truth serum. What’s flayed onto the back speaks more plain and true than lines found in the hand.”
He would have Moishe stripped, the better to see the naked shmeckel of his immortal soul. Then he’d let the cat out of the red bag that hung from the impressive manhood of the mainmast. He would flog the boy—who was, naturally, free at any time to present a cogent refutation of the accusations against him—until he bled like an innocent saint or a pestilent piss-veined devil. Certainly, the lash spilled stories from the accused, but those who first confessed would still be flogged so their tales, tanned into their backs, became incorruptible and permanent as leather.
They waited until dawn appeared blood red on the new sky of the next day. The morality play of punishment made more acute by a vivid setting. The crew gathered, the other cabin boys making box seats of barrels for a close view. Moishe’s clothes were rent to rags on the deck, then he was bound to the mast.
“Sir,” he began to wail. “Very good, sir.” He had command of few words that they’d understand, and most of those learned from his heymishe parrot.
The bo’sun, a desiccated and diminutive mamzer with rings in his twisted, labial ears, lifted the cat and brought it down hard on Moishe’s back. A crack as of lightning splitting a great tree. A moment only and then rivers of blood seeped from the raised banks of the boy’s flesh.
“Hogshead,” Moishe cried, bursting open his meagre word horde in desperation. “Rumfustian.”
The bo’sun struck again.
“In nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti,” Moishe wailed.
At this the bo’sun paused. Who could flog man or boy who was saying prayers? And in Latin.
At least what man who feared offending the captain? The bo’sun would have flogged Jesus himself since it gave opportunity to sear flesh with the lash and draw a rich red city map of fresh blood on the mortal canvas of his Lord’s bare back.
“He knows his Mass, Cap’n,” he said. “What should I do?”
“We’ve drawn the Christian out,” the captain said. “It’s like tenderizing meat. Perhaps we have saved the boy.”
No one, except for the master, knew what they’d saved the boy for. He’d be sold soon as they anchored.
They untied Moishe, who could hardly stand, though he’d received thirty-seven lashes less than Moses’ law, the usual prescription. Salt water was poured from a waiting bucket to stave off infection. He could walk no more than an eel and so, frogmarched below deck, he was deposited wet and sloppy into his hammock.
Sleep. Silence save for a few moans.
Nightfall.
Moishe woke and covered himself with an abundant and foamy tide of his own puke.
Chapter Five
By the next morning, the dawn sun was but a pallid cue ball beside the raging red rising on Moishe’s back.
“Get your dog’s body out of bed, boy,” the master shouted. “Unless you seek another lashing?”
Moishe staggered to his feet. Soon he was struggling to lug an enormous piss bucket up a ladder, stale urine sloshing over his cross-hatched flesh.
“Over the larboard side, you thieving piss monkey,” the master said. “Into the wind.”
There were no chains binding him. The ship was restriction enough. If he jumped overboard, the waves would snatch him in their wet paws, Moishe their plaything while it pleased them. Then—mazel tov!—he would be pulled down into the lair of blind fish and luminescent cucumbers, where the contents of his lungs would find their way to the surface while he died.
And like most sailors, he couldn’t swim.
Did the captain provide him vittles for a sultan’s nosh? Feh. He was fed only enough to keep the bones around his marrow. Who needs such decoration as that provided by the ostentatious hoo-hah of flesh and blood?
One doesn’t re-shoe a horse that is to be glue.
The bucket emptied, he collapsed on the deck. He was roused, made to return down the ladder, then haul up another bucket of farshtunkeneh bladder-rum squeezed from the syphilitic shmeckels of his bunkmates.
“Lad, the spume of the sea be cruel, but spurn the sailor’s code and we be crueller.”
All morning Moishe was compelled to toil. By afternoon he collapsed on the deck and fried like a side of Yiddish bacon under the griddling sun.
The dog’s watch bells rang.
As if conjured from the silken sleeve of the duplicitous ocean, three ships appeared close behind, moving quickly. They flew the red St. George’s cross.
A shout from the crow’s nest. “Caravels. At seven o’ the clock.”
The master and the captain appeared on deck.
“English, I’s reckon,” the mate drawled. “They fly the Genoese ensign and pay the doge for the privilege.”