Stowaway at Sea

1588-01-10
Aboard the Westward Trader

I hid myself among barrels and rope as the Westward Trader slipped away from Bonona’s docks.
My plan was simple: ride the waves until fate placed me on a new shore.
Within a day a sailor’s boot nudged my ribs, and I was hauled before the captain.
He could have thrown me overboard or chained me to the pump; instead he set a brush in my hand and ordered me to earn my passage swabbing decks.
The punishment stung my pride more than my back, yet it gave me time to watch.
These men were sailors, not fighters; their hands were sure on lines but uncertain on hilts.
When I mentioned that I had studied in Maraisbourg and Bonona, the captain’s eyes narrowed with interest.
He asked me to show him a cut, then another.
Soon the swabbing brush was traded for a stick, and I chalked an eight-pointed star on the planks.
We spent calm mornings practising footwork and simple cuts: the circling molinero, the descending stremaçone, the thrusts that follow.
At first the crew laughed, tripping over each other, but by the third day they moved as one.

Black sails rose on the horizon like teeth.
The raider brig bore down, oars biting, drums beating a hard measure.
Grappling hooks flew and bit the rail; ropes thrummed; men swung in arcs over the foam with knives between their teeth.
The first boarder landed hard, knees wide, blade high.
I called the beat and the line: step off the second ray, point forward, structure first.
Pietro’s belaying pin darted like a quill for the wrist; Niall’s oar became a half-pike; my own stick sang a short molinero that hid intent, then fell into stremaçone that drove the man to his heel.

More hooks clanged home.
Three raiders swept in together, bodies penduluming from rope to deck.
We let their force pass and answered with angles.
An axe came low for my shin; I slid back along the star and cut across the line, a Krumphau in wood instead of steel, catching haft and hand and turning both aside.
To my right a hookman tried to yank the rail clear; Marla’s boot trapped the rope, my stick rose on a tight circle, and her dagger found the gap where leather failed.
Sand from the caulker’s bucket scattered under my boot; I kicked it forward and the nearest pair blinked salt and grit, their timing broken.
We heaved one grapple loose and the rope snapped taut; a raider still clinging swung wild and crashed into his fellow, both tumbling into green water speckled with tar.

They tried to bridge the gap with a plank.
I cut the bearing line with the short edge of my stick, Pietro shoved, and the plank slid back with a slap that swallowed curses.
The captain’s voice held the crew steady while I kept the count.
We advanced when the drum on the brig faltered and recovered when it rose.
What we had learned in quiet minutes became the spine of the ship.
Hooks fell away.
The last pair leapt for our rail and found only empty space and cold sea.

Silence arrived all at once, broken by breath and gulls.
We had bled, but we had kept our deck.
Afterwards the crew slapped my shoulders and called me “Master Faelar” with grins that tasted of brine.
The captain poured me a measure of watered wine and the crew spoke of opening a guild when we reached land.
For the first time since leaving Bonona I felt less a stowaway and more a teacher again, as when I taught music in quieter years; only now the lessons travel through steel as surely as they ever did through song.