On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers Page A

Friend smiled too—all this was so much easier here than it had been back in the eastern hemisphere—and then he turned to Elizabeth Hurwood. “We can return to the fort now,” he told her.
    She stared at him. “That’s all? You ran down here, so fast I thought your heart was going to burst, just to see that man throw up and get hit?”
    â€œI wanted to make sure that was all that did happen,” said Friend impatiently. “Now come on.”
    â€œNo,” she said. “As long as we’re here, I’ll say hello to John.”
    Friend turned on her furiously, then caught himself. He smirked and raised his eyebrows. “The keel-scraper and brigand chef? I believe he’s here,” he said, simpering, “unless what I smell is a wet dog.”
    â€œGo back to the fort,” she said wearily.
    â€œSo you c-can…have c-c-congress with him, I suppose?” sputtered Friend, his voice shrill with scorn. He wished he could refer to sexual matters without stuttering. “B-banish that thought, my d-d-d—Elizabeth. Your father commanded me not to let you out of my sight.” He nodded virtuously.
    â€œDo as you please then, you damned wretch,” she said softly, and with a flash of uncharacteristic and unwelcome insight Friend realized she wasn’t using
damned
as a mere adjective of emphasis. “I’m going to go and speak to him. Follow or not.”
    â€œI’ll watch you from here,” said Friend, and he raised his voice as she walked away from him: “Fear not I’d follow! I’d not subject my nostrils to proximity to the fellow!”
    The confrontation by the fire being over and more or less settled, some of the pirates and prostitutes nearby looked toward Friend for further amusement—and evidently found some, for there were whisperings and guffaws and giggling behind jewel-studded hands.
    Friend scowled and raised his hand, but already he could feel the strain in his mind, so he lowered his hand and made do with just saying, “Vermin!” and striding away to stand on a slight rise, his arms crossed dramatically, and staring at Hurwood’s daughter. She had found the Shandy fellow, and they’d moved a dozen yards away to talk.
    Despise me, he thought, all of you—you’ve only got about a week left to do it in.
    For the first time in years, Friend thought about the old man who had started him on the…he paused to savor the phrase…the road to godhood. How old had Friend been? About eight years old—but already he had learned Latin and Greek, and had read Newton’s
Principia
and Paracelsus’
De Sagis Earumque Operibus
…and already, he now recalled, envy of his intellect and his sturdy physique had begun to cause small-minded people to dislike and fear him. Even his father, sensing and resenting a greatness he could never hope to comprehend, had abused him, tried to make him take up pointless physical exercises and reduce his daily allotment of the sweets that provided him with the blood sugar his body required; only his mother had truly recognized his genius, and had seen to it that he didn’t have to go to school with other children. Yes, he’d been about eight when he’d seen the ragged old man leaning in the back window of the pastry shop.
    The old fellow was obviously simple-minded, and drawn to the window by the smell of fresh-cooked fruit pies, but he wasgesturing in an odd way, his hands making digging motions in front of him as if they were encountering resistance in the empty air; and for the first time in his life Friend’s nose was irritated by that smell that was like overheated metal.
    Already graceful and sure-footed despite what everyone thought about his bulk, Friend had silently climbed onto a box behind the old man to be able to see in through the window—and what he saw set his young heart thumping. A fresh pie was moving jerkily through