The covenant - James A. Michener [53]
The shore party was about to embark for the long trip to Java when a group of seven little brown men appeared from the east, led by a vivacious young man in his twenties. He offered to trade sheep, which he indicated by cleverly imitating those animals, if the sailors would provide him with lengths of iron and brass, which again he indicated so that even the dullest sailor could catch his meaning.
They asked him his name, and he tried to say Horda, but since this required three click sounds they could make nothing of it, and the mate said, 'Jack! That's a good name!' And it was under this name that he was taken aboard the Acorn and introduced to Captain Saltwood, who said, 'We need men to replace the convicts. Show him to a bunk for'ard.'
He was naked except for a loincloth made of jackal skin, and a small pouch tied about his waist; in it he carried a few precious items, including an ivory bracelet and a crude stone knife. What amazed the sailors were the click sounds he made when talking. 'God's word,' one sailor reported to another, 'he farts through his teeth.'
Within a week of watching the sailmaker ply his awls and needles, Jack had fashioned himself a pair of trousers, which he wore during the remainder of the long voyage. He also made a pair of sandals, a hat and a loose-fitting shirt, and it was in this garb that he stood by the railing of the Acorn when Captain Saltwood led his little ship gingerly into the Portuguese harbor at Sofala.
'You were daring to enter here,' a Portuguese merchant said. 'Had you been Dutch, we would have sunk you.'
'I come to trade for the gold of Ophir,' Saltwood said, whereupon the Portuguese burst into disrespectful laughter.
'Everyone comes for that. There is none. I don't believe there ever was.'
'What do you trade?'
'Where do you head?'
'Malacca. The Spice Islands.'
'Oh, now!' the trader said. 'We accept you here, but anyone who tries to enter the Spice Island trade .. . they'll burn your ship at Malacca.' Then he snapped his fingers. 'But if you're brave, and really want to trade, I have something most precious that the Chinese long for.'
'Bring it forth,' Saltwood said, and with obvious pride the Portuguese produced fourteen curious, dark, pyramidal objects about nine inches square on the base. 'What can they be?'
'Rhinoceros horn.'
'Yes! Yes!' In the pages of his ship's log, on which he had prepared his notes for this great adventure, he had noted that rhinoceros horn might profitably be carried to any ports where Chinese came. 'Where would I trade them?' he asked.
'Java. The Chinese frequent Java.'
So a bargain was struck, after which the Portuguese said, 'A warning. The horns must be delivered as they are. Not powdered, for the old men who yearn to marry young girls must see that the horn is real, or it won't work.'
'Does it really work?' Saltwood asked. 'I don't need it yet,' the Portuguese said.
Wherever the Acorn anchored, Jack studied the habits of the people, marveling at their variety and how markedly they differed from the English sailors with whom he was now familiar and whose language he spoke effectively. At stately Kilwa he noticed the blackness of the natives' skins; at Calicut he saw men halfway in darkness between himself and his shipmates; at resplendent Goa, where all ships stopped, he marveled at the temples.
He gained great respect for Captain Saltwood, who not only owned the Acorn but ran it with sagacity and daring. For one dreamy day after another the little vessel would drift through softly heaving seas, then head purposefully for some harbor none of the crew had heard of before, and there Saltwood would move quietly ashore, and talk and listen, and after a day of cautious