Pirate Freedom by Gene Wolfe Page A

got here the company sold me to Lesage, a hunter and a cruel man. He told me he had bought me for five years. I said, no, three, and he beat me. After that, he beat me often. He did not feed me or give me clothes, though the paper I had signed said I was to have good food and clothes from my employer. My clothes wore to rags, and I lived on what I could find when he was away hunting, and what I could steal. Sometimes other hunters gave me something. Sometimes they would not. Some of the other hunters had servants, too. Some were treated badly, but all were treated better than I. When we had meat to smoke for our employers, I ate some if I could. If I was seen to eat it, I was beaten.

    "The rack burned through, and some meat fell into the fire. I knew I would be beaten to death for that. I took some of the burned meat and this knife I had been given to cut the meat and ran into the jungle. Francine followed me. She had been one of Lesage's dogs. Perhaps it was because I petted her sometimes, perhaps only because I had the meat.

    "I have lived here ever since. It is not as good as home but better than being starved and beaten. There are many wild fruits here that can be eaten. I know them all. I throw my stick at birds—some are very good to eat. Sometimes the hunters shoot the wild horses for sport and leave them to rot. I wait until they have gone, and eat. Horseflesh is good food. There is more food along the shore, but I do not go there often. I am afraid Lesage will see me, or that others will and take me back to him."

    I am not sure anymore how long Valentin and I stayed together. Two weeks is probably about right, but it could have been three or even four. When we heard shots, we got out of that area. I think that happened twice. We stayed away from the places where the red flies and mosquitoes were worst, or tried to. Valentin said there were a lot of farms on the southeast end of the island, where there was more flat land. We did not go there.

    There were a few farms on our end of the island, too. They grew tobacco, mostly, and had a few cattle. Valentin told me that the farms on our end were French, those on the other end Spanish. The Spanish farmers triedto chase the French out sometimes, he said. They had more men, but the French were better fighters.

    We hunted birds sometimes. I had no birdshot for my musket, only round bullets about as big around as my thumb, so I had to shoot them sitting and try not to spoil too much of the meat. There were ducks and wild geese, and a big bird Valentin called a turkey, although it was not. Those big birds were the best. The ducks and geese were so fat I used to be afraid they would melt away to nothing. When I shot them on water, Francine would swim out and get them for us. It was pretty safe, because waterbirds would not land on water that had crocodiles in it. When Valentin told me you could not shoot crocodiles because the bullets would not go in I tried to shoot a couple, and he was right. On Hispaniola you wanted to stick with clear water all the time, so you could see the crocodiles if there were any.

    Mostly we hunted wild cattle and wild pigs. The pigs were dangerous, because they would try to kill you. If there were lots they would probably scatter, but they might try to mob you. If there were only a few, they always scattered, but one might rush you just the same. They had tusks and clicked them together when they were mad—that was the sound I had heard the first time we killed a pig.

    So the cattle were safer to hunt, but it was not easy to get a shot at one. It always took a lot of stalking, and three times out of four you came up empty. I got two while I was with Valentin, and one more pig. We always had plenty to eat, and meat to smoke, too.

    Storing it was the problem. If it got wet it would rot like any other meat, and there were wild dogs that would take it if we were not around to protect it. What we did at first was hide it in a dry hollow in the