The covenant - James A. Michener [54]
Like all the little brown people, Jack loved to sing, and in the evening when the sailors idled their time in chantey, his soft clear voice, echoing like some pure bell, joined in. They liked this; they taught him their favorite songs; and often they called for him to sing alone, and he would stand as they lolled, a little fellow four feet ten, his slanted eyes squeezed shut, his face a vast smile as he chanted songs composed in Plymouth or Bristol. Then he felt himself to be a member of the crew.
But there was another tradition, and this one he disliked. From time to time the English sailors would cry, 'Take down your pants!' and when he refused, they would untie the cord that held up the trousers he had sewn and pull them down, and they would gather round in astonishment, for he had only one testicle. When they questioned him about this, he explained, 'Too many people. Too few food.'
'What's that got to do with your missing stone?' a Plymouth man asked.
'Every boy baby, they cut one off.'
'What's that got to do with food?' The Plymouth man gagged. 'My God, you don't . . . '
'So when we grow up, find a wife, we must never have twins.'
Again and again when the voyage grew dull the sailors cried, 'Jack, take down your pants!' and one sultry afternoon in the Indian Ocean they brought down Captain Saltwood. 'You'll be astonished!' they said admiringly as they sought the little fellow, but when they found him and stood him on a barrel and cried, 'Jack, down with your pants!' he refused, grabbing himself about the middle to protect the cord that tied his trousers.
'Jack!' the men cried with some irritation. 'Captain Saltwood wants to see.'
But Jack had had enough. Stubbornly, his little face showing clenched teeth, he refused to lower his pants, and when two burly sailors came at him he fought them off, shouting, 'You not drop your pants!' And there he stood on the barrel, resisting, until Saltwood said quietly, 'He's right, men. Let him be.'
And from that day he never again dropped his drawers, and his self-stubbornness had an unforeseen aftermath: he had been the sailors' toy, now he became their friend.
The part of the journey he liked best came when the Acorn slipped past the great Portuguese fort at Malacca and wandered far to the east among the islands of the spice trade; there he saw for the first time cloth woven with gold and the metalwork of the islands. It was a world whose riches he could not evaluate but whose worth he had to acknowledge because of the respectful manner in which his friends handled these treasures.
'Pepper! That's what brings money,' the sailors told him, and when they crushed the small black corns to release the aromatic smell, he sneezed and was enchanted.
'Nutmeg, mace, cinnamon!' the sailors repeated as the heavy bags were heaved aboard. 'Turmeric, cardamom, cassia!' they continued, but it was the cloves that captivated him, and even though guards were posted over this precious stuff, he succeeded in stealing a few to crack between his teeth and keep against the bottom of his tongue, where they burned, emitting a pleasant aroma. For some days he moved about the ship blowing his cloved breath on the sailors until they started calling him Smelly Jack.
How magnificent the East was! When the Acorn completed its barter, Captain Saltwood issued the welcome command: 'We head for Java and the Chinese who await our horns.' And for many days the little ship sailed along the coast of Java with sailors at the rail to marvel at this dream-swept island where mountains rose to touch the clouds and jungle crept down to dip its fingers in the sea.
Captain Saltwood found no time to enjoy these sights, for he was preoccupied with two serious problems: he had traded so masterfully that his ship now contained a fortune of real magnitude and must be protected from