Cities of the Red Night

distant green smudge on our starboard side. Strobe and Thomas scan the skyline with telescopes.

'Guarda costa...' the boys mutter uneasily.

Capture by the Spanish means torture or, at best, slavery. If overtaken by a Spanish ship we will abandon ship in the lifeboats, leaving The Great White to the Spanish. The boarding party will receive a surprise, for I have arranged a device which will explode the entire cargo of powder as soon as the doors to the hold are opened.

Now the ship rounds and heads towards land. Strobe, stripped to the waist, has taken the wheel, his thin body infused with alertness. Two boys are taking soundings on both sides, and the escort ship is a hundred yards beyond us. We are sailing through a narrow channel in a reef, Mr. Thomas and Kelley calling out orders as the ship slips like a snake through a strip of blue water. The coastline is ever clearer, trees slowly appearing and low hills in a shimmer of heat. An inaudible twang like a loosed bowstring as the ship glides into a deep blue harbor a few hundred yards from the shore, where waves break on a crescent of sand.

We drop anchor a bare hundred yards from the beach, The Siren a like distance behind us. From the harbor the town is difficult to discern, being sheltered by a thick growth of bamboo and set among trees and vines. I had the curious impression of looking at a painting in a gold frame: the two ships riding at anchor in the still blue harbor, a cool morning breeze, and written on the bottom of the frame: 'Port Roger—April 1, 1702.'

The Oarsmen

Thin copper-red bodies leaning against the oars as boats glide forward in a silver spray of surf and flying fish against a background of beach and palm trees.

Unloading the Cargo

Bright red gums, sharp white teeth, buttocks exposed as the cargo is passed over the side with much singing and laughter. The boys make up songs about the cargo as it is passed along to the rafts and relayed to the beach. These songs, translated by Kelley, who has sidled up to me in his pushy ghost way, seem flatly idiotic.

The boys are unloading powder kegs. We offer to help but the Indians sing. 'White man's hands slippery like rotten bananas.' Now they pass up the powder kegs.... 'This go boom boom up question's ass.'

I ask Kelley what is this 'question'?

'Short for Inquisition.'

Boy holds up keg of opium.... 'Spanish no get this, shit come in pants, very dirty muy sucio.'

'And Kiki is getting a hard-on because he knows I look at his asshole when he bends over for opio.'

'I was thinking of Maria.'

'Take off the cloth and show us Maria.'

Kiki blushes, but he must obey the rules of this game. He takes off his loincloth, smiling shyly to reveal lush purple-pink genitals, nuts tight, cock straining up, the flower smell of it fills the hold.

'Maria his asshole. I fuck him her spurt six feet....' He looks around, challenging the boys who sit on the opium kegs.

Some of the boys extract gold nuggets from little pouches at their belts cunningly contrived from Spanish testicles.

'He love this so much I keep it in his nuts. Soon get rich like him.'

'That should be easy for a bastard like you.'

'Put your yellow shit where your mouth is, sister fucker. I see you do it with my own eyes.'

An area is cleared and carefully measured off and the bets placed. Kiki bends over, hands on knees. The other boy, who looks like Kiki's twin brother, uncorks a little-phallus-shaped vessel of pink coral, and a powerful odor fills the hold, already heavy with the smells of opium, hashish, and salt