​“But you know how to row, don’t you?” sailor William, my friend, asked me in a whisper.

“I do,” I whispered back.

“Well, then, by the Grace of God, do it!”

Having felt in the darkness for the edge of the boat, I jumped in, found my seat, and set down at my feet the small bundle which contained all my earthly possessions. I reached for the oars. William pushed the boat away from the shore and took place at the helm. Finding myself on the water, I finally breathed a sigh of relief: I was a wanted man.

After we glided on the river a few hundred feet, we were picked up by a strong current—the tide was going out—and we began to speed towards the mouth of the James River.

It was barely past midnight. A fine drizzle fell on the fog-covered river and the coastal granaries of Jamestown. There was no sound except the muffled splash of our oars and the gurgling of water behind us. Virginian January cold chilled us to the bone.

Suddenly, William started to cough. The sailor tried in vain to stop. Warmed up by several glasses of grog, with which I had plied him at a waterfront tavern, he now choked cruelly on the cold air. Between one bout of coughing and the next, he cursed the world and tried to stop up his mouth with his sleeve, but this helped very little. I became afraid that the noise might bring the river guard upon us and thwart our getaway. Fortunately, my companion stopped coughing soon.

Before us, on shore, there appeared a single light: the customs house. I stopped rowing. The current was carrying us forward in the right direction, even without me rowing, out to the mouth of the river, where a ship lay at anchor—the destination of our overnight flight.

We now heard distant voices calling out from somewhere onshore, but they weren’t shouting about us. Unnoticed, we sailed past the customs house, and when we went beyond a bend in the river, and its light disappeared, we both sighed a sigh of relief. The danger was behind us; in front of us lay our ship.

William grunted and, interrupting the silence, said:

“Well, the worst is behind us. Two more hours of rowing and…”

And he bent forward towards me with concern and kindness, which I had never noticed during our two-day acquaintance, and asked:

“Johnny-boy, ain’t you scared?”

“Why? Why should I be afraid?” I pouted, offended.

“Hell and damnation, my boy! You’re going on a privateer, Johnny! I told you already—we don’t play nice. We fight and plunder, and if the Spaniards catch us, we’ll dance the hempen jig, as sure as Amen, and maybe they’ll toy with us first—and real good, too.”

I stopped rowing.

“No. I am not afraid of fighting. I have done a bit of it already. Willie, you try to frighten me in vain.”

“Well, if you ain’t scared, then you should be, my foolish friend! Our old man is a blackguard and a hangdog! The worst scoundrel of a captain in the whole Caribbean! Life on that tub is pure hell. Damn hard to take it sometimes.”

“But you’re holding up somehow? And others, do they not hold up?”

“Fiddlesticks! We’re a different set of gents! We’ve all been on the water since we was children. But you’re a landlubber, kid.”

Touched to the quick, I shot back:

“Hey, Willie, do not insult me with this landlubber talk! I have seen enough trouble on the frontier and have looked death in the eye more than once. You know why I’m running.”

“I know, I know.”

I was running away from the revenge of the Virginian gentry—the English lords, the cavaliers.

 

Nearly thirty years earlier, my pioneer father shipped out to America in search of cheap land. He wandered off with his family to the western outskirts of Virginia and, over there, deep in the wilderness, at the foot of the Alleghenies, built himself a cabin. Clearing the forest, constantly under the threat of Indians and bandits, struggling with wild animals and hostile nature, he survived many arduous years until, in the end, he began to reap the fruits of his labors. Following in his footsteps, others came and settled nearby. The valley grew in abundance and began to flourish.

And then, a year ago, a thunderbolt from the blue sky! Agents of lord Dunbury showed up, telling us that the land was his. They flashed in our eyes some royal grant or other from a dozen years earlier, allegedly granting our land to the Dunburies. We complained to the authorities in Jamestown, but the government there was all in cahoots with the lords and cavaliers, all henchmen of lord Dunbury, and we were unable to obtain justice. But hell if we were going to take it lying down, and when the greedy lord’s wet boys returned to the valley to clear us out, we gathered together several dozen frontiersmen like ourselves and put up a fight. And I was among them.

The cavaliers, afraid that the thing could get out of hand, like it did half a century earlier in the days of good old Bacon,[1] immediately threw against us an overwhelming force. They blasted us into smithereens, and exemplary reprisals followed. They did not go easy on the hemp. I fled, but they put a price on my head. There were only two places for me to flee: into the mountains, to the Indians, or to Jamestown and then out to sea. I ran away to Jamestown, and I hid in an inn near the shore.

Obliging people put me in touch with William, a hand on a privateer standing at the mouth of the James River. Ships always needed sailors, and William liked me and readily agreed to smuggle me onto the ship. And so, one rainy night in January, we found ourselves on a boat quietly gliding down the river.

 

More than two hours passed when William’s voice woke me up from my musings:

“Somethin’s ahead.”

It was our ship, for sure. We announced ourselves by hailing, and someone threw us a rope, which we climbed onto the deck. William led me down to the forecastle and ordered me to sleep. At dawn, he woke me and took me to the Bosun. The Bosun, a shaggy, ugly beast, threw me a grim glance, poked my arms and calves doubtfully, spat with contempt overboard, and, mumbling, ordered me to follow him.

“What is it, boy?” he asked me over his shoulder. I did not understand what he meant.

“What is your name, you piece of—?” he boomed.

“Yan,” I replied, giving my Polish name because that’s what my family called me, as did the rest of our forest neighbors.

“Say what?” the Bosun grimaced.

“John,” I said, giving my English name.

“Well, talk like a Christian, damn you!” he growled.

He led me down to the captain’s cabin and shoved me rudely inside. The captain, an obese hog with bulging, staring eyes, was sitting by a table on which his breakfast was laid, but he was not eating. Before him stood two young Indians, his slaves—as I later found out. The captain was furiously whipping the elder of the two, a youth of about eighteen, over the head, with a cat-of-nine-tails. When we came in, he stopped but did not lower his hand and just glowered at us.

“Our new sailor, John,” said the Bosun stressing “sailor” with irony.

The captain nodded angrily, swore, and sent us to the devil. The Bosun dragged me out, closed the cabin door quickly, and said:

“You’re one lucky son of a bitch!” he rasped. “The old man was kind to you.”

The question pressed itself onto my lips: how I was lucky—or the captain kind—and why he was whipping the Indian, but the Bosun shoved a bucket and a brush into my hands and ordered me to scrub the deck.

And thus, I started my service on the privateer.

But I was glad to have left Virginia and slipped my pursuers.

 

Not a Privateer, Exactly

 

The ship was named The Good Hope and was a brigantine. She remained at anchor for several more days, and I began to fear that the Virginian authorities might sniff out my presence on board, but William, an experienced hand in these matters, calmed me down.

“Once you’ve climbed up here,” he said, “you’re as good as dead. They’ll never find you. They don’t care. You’re dead.”

And indeed, no one came looking for me, and soon we raised anchor and went to sea.

Discipline on the ship was terrible; corporeal punishments rained on us for the slightest of offenses. The crew was a collection of proper cutthroat thugs, but everyone feared the captain like the devil himself. As a new recruit, I was put to the worst jobs. I had no respite from dawn till late at night. If it had not been for the helping hand and a kind word from William, I don’t know how I would have survived my first month of sailing. William was a rough but sincere soul, and though he was good twenty years older than me, he gave me his true friendship. Every day, before turning in to rest, we had a chat.

When the word spread among the crew that within the short quarter of a century of my life, I had hunted and fought both Indians in the forest and the Cavaliers on shore, the men grew more civil towards me, and now I got fewer blows. The Bosun assigned me to William’s cannon and ordered him to make a proper cannoneer of me. There were a lot of guns on board.

“This is a floating fortress!” I said to my friend in amazement.

“The devil take it, what did you expect? A country dance?”

In the bowels of the ship, there were cavernous holds that looked like prison dungeons, full of chains and handcuffs.

“Why so many chains?” I asked William.

“Why, to chain the folk we’ll take,” he replied with a straight face.

“People we will… take? Surely, you jest!”

“Why would I jest? I never jest.”

“What people?”

“Whoever. Africans, Indians, Mestizos, Danes, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Spaniards—anyone who will fall into our hands. But never the English.”

“And what do we do with them?”

“What do we do? Why, amigo, we sell them, of course. But not the whites, the whites we hold for ransom. They are worth more that way.”

“But… that’s piracy!”

“You don’t say?”

 

As I looked about more, scales began to fall from my eyes: I was not on some worthy privateer, a private ship in the service of her nation’s navy, but—on a pirate ship. We did not care for the nation, we were not its warriors. We were thugs happy to take whatever booty we could because a war gave us the cover to do so.

When we reached the high seas, we took course south towards the Lesser Antilles and the Spanish Main. There, prowling between islands, we intended to attack minor settlements and rob blind everyone we could. While lurking in wait for passing ships, we hoped for rich loot, having foremost in our mind the slaving ships from Africa. That cargo was the most valuable.

Such was this noble ship onto which my fate had taken me. Once on board, I had no way back: the gates of hell had slammed shut behind me. And, as an old Polish saying has it, having fallen in among the crows, I now had to crow with the rest of them.

When I complained to William that he had not made this all clear, his blue eyes widened in astonishment.

“Jonny-boy, hell and damnation, what did you expect?” he spoke with reproach in his voice. “I told you this bucket was a privateer and that we fought and plundered. Have I lied?”

“No, but—”

“Besides, my young fellow, don’t you come from the jungle somewhere, these forests out west? Weren’t you in some proper brawl? Didn’t you rebel against the colonial authorities, and didn’t they want to make you an outlaw? They wanted to hang you. They sent bounty hunters after you, yes? Was it not so? You were an audacious, brave boy. Were you not?”

“I was, but—”

“So you can be audacious and brave here, too. You lived like a man in your forest, and now you will live like a man at sea. Your heart will not wither here.”

I wanted to explain to him the distinction in my mind between putting up a fight in a just cause in the forests of Virginia and using the same arms for the purposes of robbery at sea, but I stopped myself—seeing his cloudy, almost good-natured look. I realized that I would never be able to get such a fine moral point across to him.

But perhaps his conscience was not entirely clean because he tried to guide our conversation to other topics. He offered me a beaker of rum and asked:

“Why did they in those forests of yours call you “Yan,” and not John, which is a proper name?”

“Because my mother was Polish, and my father, though an Englishman, had come from Polish stock.”

“Ah, Poland! The Turks and Vienna!” William showed off his broad knowledge of geography and history.

I waved my hand, laughing.

Asked that I tell him something about my family, I reported what I knew. When in 1607, three English ships first landed at Chesapeake Bay, they brought onto the new continent not only freeloaders, adventurers, and crooks: they also brought some craftsmen meant to be useful in the new colony, and among them, there were seven Polish tar-makers, taken into service by the Virginia Company to create the local tar industry. And among them was my great-grandfather, Yan Bober.

Now, these tar-makers set to work, and soon they produced tar, pitch, potash, and charcoal for the colony. And they did it so bravely that the company hired even more tar-makers from Poland (which was then the leader in Europe in that industry).

From that time, an extraordinary memory remained, the memory of an extraordinary event. Namely, in about ten—or however many—years after the creation of the colony, the settlers managed to secure for themselves certain political rights, consisting mainly in that that they now had the right to elect from amongst themselves a council meeting in the capital, Jamestown. When the Polish tar makers, as foreigners, were excluded from the elections, they became indignant, laid down their tools, and stopped all work. But since tar and pitch were vital to the colony and the tar makers wouldn’t budge, the authorities finally admitted them to full citizenship, on par with the English colonists.

“Brave men, these tar-makers,” grumbled William with admiration.

Now, my great-grandfather married an Englishwoman, and that probably saved his life. Namely, two years later, when his wife became expectant, my great-grandfather took her from the forest down to Jamestown, where she could have help during delivery. But just then, a war broke out with the Native Americans in which a great number of the colonists perished, including most of the Poles at the tar stations. Only Jamestown managed to defend itself, and its inhabitants survived.

About my grandpa who was then born, I can’t say much, except that his name was Marchin, that is Martin, and that he lived in the forest as a settler, married another Englishwoman and had several kids, of whom one—Thomas, born in 1656—was my father. And as my father came upon twenty, the Susquehanna[2] attacked the settlers. A certain Bacon, a frontiersman, organized a militia and exterminated those Indians to the last man. My father was one of his volunteers.

Now, Bacon enjoyed such fame that men came from all over Virginia to join his ranks. But the cavaliers ruled in Virginia, rich people who owned almost all their land thanks to rich royal grants.

(If you were your Queen’s lackey and she wanted to reward you but had no cash, she’d give you a million acres in Virginia, saying, you go and get it, my boy, it’s all yours).

And their leader was the governor of the colony, sent from England, a lord Berkeley, a right proper tyrant and oppressor of the poor. Seeing the growing masses gathering around Bacon, lord Berkeley sent his army against him even while Bacon was still fighting the Indians. And so, Bacon turned against the governor’s troops and began to raid cavalier estates. A regular civil war started in the colony, and Bacon’s men won every engagement until they pushed the government forces right against the shore.

And then—Bacon died. And that was a killing blow for the insurgents. Berkeley took advantage of the disorder and panic and went at them. Leaderless, the Baconians broke. The victors went berserk and laid the country waste with fire, sword, and gallows. That was the year Anno Domini 1677, a year of evil memory.

My father was caught and would have been hanged, but somehow his Polishness saved him—some crook in the law—and his only penalty was deportation. And so he went to Poland, not knowing one Polish word.

After several years, he married an educated Polish woman from a craftsman family in Cracow. But my father was never happy in Poland and longed for the old life in the forests of Virginia. As soon as softer political winds blew in Virginia and a general amnesty was announced, he returned home to the Alleghenies with his wife and children. And there, in the last year of the seventeenth century, I came into this world. And despite the fact that my mother was Polish, I hadn’t retained much of her language, but she did teach me to read and write in English.

And, to finish the story, in the twenty-sixth year of my life, it fell to me to fight the cavaliers, gun in hand, and, after our defeat, to escape to sea.

 

“A damn-good story, what a hard-headed family,” William smacked his lips with pleasure. “Nothing but rebels and rioters! Great-grandfather rebel, father rebel, rebel son. You were born a privateer!”

“To rob and kill?”

“No! To win glory and fill your pockets with gold!”

“Not sure I see much glory in that!”

Living deep in the forest, I had led a colorful life filled with adventure. But, if one were to ask me what experience impressed itself the most upon my soul during that time, I would have to answer that it wasn’t hunting—even though I shot my first bear at twelve—or the bloody events of the later years, but the impression of another, quite unexpected nature: a book. Yes, reading a book.

A book!

Two years ago, it fell into my hands, and when I started reading it, I became as if dazed and felt breathless at times. As long as I was reading, I could not tear myself away. The title of this book alone hinted at how thrilling the content was:

 

 

 

THE LIFE AND STRANGE SURPRIZING

ADVENTURES OF

ROBINSON CRUSOE

OF YORK, MARINER: WHO LIVED EIGHT AND TWENTY YEARS, ALL ALONE IN AN UNINHABITED ISLAND

ON THE COAST OF AMERICA,

NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE GREAT RIVER OF OROONOQUE; HAVING BEEN CAST ON SHORE BY SHIPWRECK, WHEREIN ALL THE MEN PERISHED

BUT HIMSELF. WITH AN ACCOUNT HOW

HE WAS AT LAST AS STRANGELY DELIVER’D

BY PYRATES. WRITTEN BY HIMSELFE.

LONDON; PRINTED FOR IN. TYLER AT. THE SLUP.

PATER-NOSTER MDCCXIX

 

A book published in London in 1719 and written by one Daniel Defoe.

Now, that was a book! Those were some impressions! Nothing has ever shaken me as much as reading these adventures of a man shipwrecked on a deserted island. And when I read it to the end, I started from the beginning once again, and then once again, learning whole paragraphs by heart. Sometimes it seemed to me that it was me who had been shipwrecked on this tropical island, bred goats, and saved boy Friday from cannibals.

Running from the Cavaliers, I took very few things with me but did not forget the book. It came with me into exile. Now, aboard The Good Hope, I told William about it, and my friend became so enthused about it that in moments free from duties, I had to read it to him out loud, for he himself could not read.

“Do you know this Robinson Island?” I asked him once. William scratched his head with a gesture of uncertainty.

“There are thousands of such islands off the Spanish Main. The mouth of the Orinoco River alone consists of hundreds of islands, but there are no hills there like there are on Robinson’s Island. There is an island like that, called Trinidad, but surely that is too big.”

“And the Antilles, which we will soon see?”

“There are hundreds of islands there, all kinds and sizes. Some are big, some small, some are mountainous and wooded, some are populated, and some are deserted. But Robinson’s Island was near the Spanish Main, while the Lesser Antilles are like a chain running north to south, far away from the Main.”

We delighted in each and every word of the book, but it disappointed us that the author did not name his island or describe its location more precisely.

“Wait, Johnny-boy!” exclaimed William, animated suddenly by a new thought. “I just thought of something: Tobago! It is, I think, the last island in the chain of the Lesser Antilles. It is this final island, the southmost. Tobago! From Tobago, on a clear day, you can see Trinidad. Tobago is an island, but close to the Spanish Main. So Maybe Tobago is Robinson’s Island? It’s got mountains and forests. Everything would agree.”

“And is it uninhabited?”

“There are some people there now, English, I think, but formerly the place was uninhabited.”

“That sounds right to me! So it was there, on Tobago. He lived on Tobago!”

“I don’t know, Johnny-boy, maybe yes, maybe no?”

And so we talked on but could not establish where, amidst all those islands, Robinson’s Island lay.

 

Meanwhile, our vigilance increased with each mile because we were approaching French islands and could at any moment come across a desirable prize. It was general knowledge that different sea routes crossed in the vicinity of Guadeloupe, and one could find not only French but also Danish and Dutch ships there.

One day we saw sails emerging over the horizon, but it turned out to be an entire flotilla, well-armed, and we had to flee so as not to be captured ourselves. Our captain, sorely disappointed, decided to head further south, closer to the Spanish Main, where there were Spanish ships, which were easier and, if one’s luck was good, more valuable.

“Nothing in the world like a Spaniard,” said our petty officer in his rare moments of good mood. “It’s so pleasant to cut their throats, and they have silver by the hatful!”

I gnashed my teeth that I got myself into such wicked company, but there was no helping it except smile at his exuberance. On the plus side, I was gaining the grudging admiration of my fellow pirates because I was making good progress with the cannon.

Past Guadeloupe now, we passed other islands, all significantly smaller, though equally mountainous and covered with forest.

“Is this Martinique?” I asked William.

“No, Johnny-boy. Martinique lies a bit on farther south. This is Dominica. We, English, we have been whetting our appetite for it for a long time, but many a man will die on her shore before we get a bite.”

“Is the access so difficult?”

“Access is easy… But the island is still overrun by the natives, and they are quick with their war clubs. No easy way to take them.”

“Whoa, William!” I said surprised. “Are you sometimes wrong? I thought the whites have done away with all the Indians in the Antilles?”

“Well, done away on many islands, yes, but not everywhere. Here is Dominica, that’s Indian. If, in a couple of days, we should manage to pass by Martinique, we will soon see Santa Lucia. There the Caribs still rule, like in the good old days. Next on south is Saint Vincent, and that too is overrun by that vermin, and many a fine sailor has gone into their pot. We’ve been there a few times hoping to take slaves, but—damned beasts—they kick and scream, so we quickly turned tail. One day their time will come, but not yet.”

I have been raised in a bitter hatred for the Indians and have heard many woeful tales about them, and I knew that in his youth, my father had fought against them under Bacon. But it was hard for me to share William’s hate for these islanders. They sat quietly on their islands, like field mice in their holes, and did not bother anyone. It did not surprise me that they defended themselves and fought like hell, not wanting to go into captivity. Maybe these savages felt the yoke as painful as I did? Like every one of us?

“Are they cannibals?” I asked my friend.

“Sure!”

“How do you know?” I tried to find out more.

“Come on, Johnny. Every kid knows this.”

Apparently, I didn’t look convinced because William seemed ready to take offense, but after a moment of reflection, he laughed. He said:

“If you want to know, why don’t you ask Arnak, the older of the lot two slaves of the old man? He comes from the south, somewhere from the mouth of Orinoco. Not from these islands here, but he is a Carib like the rest of them.”

“But how can I talk to him?”

“Easy. He has English. Just be careful with the captain! If the old man finds out that you’re hooking up with his slave, he’ll snap your head off. And one more thing: hurry up, Johnny, while the Indians are alive because his slaves don’t live long.”

“That really drives me mad! How he bullies and tortures these boys!” it slipped my lips. “Why does he do that?”

“Why? Don’t you understand, amigo? This is his only pleasure in life. Such is the devil’s vile nature: he always has to have some victim and slowly drive him to death. He had a young Negro before and tortured him for months until the bastard died. Like my name is William, I am sure that these two Indians will not finish this cruise alive.”

“This is horrible!”

“Don’t be stupid, Johnny. It’s great.”

“I don’t understand!”

“It is a good thing that the old man has his Indians for torturing because that keeps him busy, and he leaves us alone.”

William, in fact, did not have a bad heart, but the perverse life on the pirate ship messed up in him any conception of good and evil. I liked the old sailor, and I decided in the secrecy of my heart that if I ever returned to America, I would get him off that damned ship, and take him into the forest, maybe in Pennsylvania, and there I would yet make an honest man of him. In Pennsylvania, there were no cavaliers, and their writ carried no weight there.

 

 

[1] Bacon’s Rebellion (1676-77) was an armed rebellion by Virginia settlers against the British administration of Virginia.

[2] The Susquehannock people, also called the Conestoga by English settlers, were Iroquoian Native Americans who lived in areas adjacent to the Susquehanna River and its tributaries, ranging from its upper reaches in the southern part of what is now New York down to the mouth of the Susquehanna in Maryland along the west bank of the Potomac at the north end of the Chesapeake Bay.