THE GALLOWS
Porto Paraiso, Brazil April 14th, 1773
The tall, cadaverous, one-eyed hangman overseeing my execution had a cold. A particularly nasty one. Despite his best efforts, the man couldn’t restrain a thunderous barrage of rapid-fire explosive sneezes. To the mob’s delight, each sneeze contorted his ugly face into something extraordinarily laughable.
The hangman’s tortured facial expressions recalled that of a bare-arsed man sitting on an angry hornet’s nest. I couldn’t help myself. Despite my deadly predicament, I laughed through my gag.
With my life precariously hanging by a thread, loudly laughing each time the afflicted man endured a sneezing fit was probably not prudent. However, in my defense, most of the assembled onlookers and even the hangman’s assistant also roared with each outbreak.
Our laughter triggered another murderous glare from the executioner as he wiped the contents of his bulbous nose onto his filthy shirt sleeve. And, judging by the depth of the encrusted debris, his illness wasn’t a recent ailment.
I may have felt sympathy for the hangman if it weren’t for my own sorry predicament. This morning, a bizarre set of circumstances had left me standing on the rough, wooden gallows with a hemp noose around my neck and a cloth gag in my mouth.
At that point, one might have thought it highly unlikely that things could get any worse––but trust me, they do.
In this part of the world, the locals didn’t bother with the ‘niceties’ like a leather hood for the condemned. With my eyesight left free, I could make eye contact with some of the more rabid members of the motley crowd––particularly those women with children who pushed their way to the front of the mob to enjoy the spectacle of my imminent demise better.
A pretty little girl, dressed in her bright red Sunday best, used one hand to cling tightly to her mother and the other to hold a badly worn stuffed doll. She stared at me as if inspecting a creature from another world. Although I wasn’t feeling overly playful, I winked at her and, after a spell of shyness, received a tiny smile in return as my reward.
Despite the searing mid-day heat, the crowd appeared to be waiting for something. Many of the mob shaded their eyes to peer skyward. Finally, an evil-looking older man wearing a soiled baker’s apron, on spotting a flight of seagulls circling overhead, started the mayhem by loudly chanting, “Alimentar as aves! Alimentar as aves!”
Like wildfire, the chant soon spread across the parade ground. In unison, they screamed ‘Alimentar as aves’ over and over. My Portuguese isn’t great, but it was good enough for me to do a rough translation. The mob yelled, ‘Feed the birds! Feed the birds!’
In response to the crowd’s demands, the hangman’s assistant, a dwarf with skin as black as coal dust, raised a wicker basket and a blue ceramic bowl high over his head. When his action met with a resounding cheer, he bathed in the waves of adulation for several moments before setting the basket and bowl aside.
The dwarf dragged a wooden step stool over to my side, stepped up on it, and waved a wickedly sharp, gleaming blade in front of my unprotected face. Then, with a smirk and a flourish, he slashed the white linen shirt off my back. He stepped off the stool and bowed to the crowd before swirling my ripped shirt triumphantly over his head. The dwarf did a victory lap around the platform as the mob roared their approval.
I couldn’t determine what was in store for me next, but my instincts told me it wouldn’t be pleasant. While I waited for the next step in this travesty of justice to unfold, I cast my mind back to the previous day––that peaceful moment before my unwarranted arrest.
After docking at Porto Paraiso in the dead of night, I woke at daybreak this morning with a heart full of joy at the prospect of being reunited with an intriguing woman. But now, instead of reveling in her warm embrace, I find myself standing in the shadow of an undeserved death with my ship and crew impounded.
I passionately say the word ‘undeserved’ because I'm an innocent man, as God is my witness. The truth is I’m a victim of mistaken identity, plain and simple.
I know what you’re thinking. Guilty people always claim the pure white mantle of innocence when it comes time to pay the price for their misdeeds. That may be true, but I promise you, I’m standing on the gallows today only because of someone else's actions.
I realized the hangman’s assistant didn’t give a shite about my guilt or innocence. The dwarf had a role to play in the spectacle, and from the look of anticipation on his ugly face, he relished his part. He held the basket and the ceramic bowl up for me to see the contents. The basket contained chunks of stale bread, while the bowl contained something that suspiciously looked like dark brown syrup.
“Para as gaivotas,” the dwarf chortled.
After mentally translating his words to mean ‘For the seagulls’, I naively assumed the dwarf was preparing for some local pre-hanging ritual offering. As his subsequent actions showed, this proved to be another grave mistake on my part.
To the roars of the mob, the little man danced across the rough-hewn platform. Then, with grand theatrical gestures, he dipped a hunk of bread in the syrup and fastened the sticky lump to my right nipple. He repeated the process with my other nipple before sticking two more chunks to my right and left earlobes.
He stopped, pointed at my eyes, and then, even more frighteningly, gestured in the immediate direction of my genitals. The dwarf cocked his head to the side as if asking my approval to continue. I’m not a coward, but I was petrified. I didn’t know what they had in mind, so I shook my head vigorously in denial. Unfortunately, the syrup was sufficiently sticky to hold the existing chunks in place despite my movements.
The dwarf ignored my silent protests and began slowly unbuttoning my trousers, presumably to reach his next target. Still, he stopped abruptly when the sounds of distant drums filtered into the parade ground. His sour look told me the drums probably heralded the approach of his superior––a man who would no doubt authorize my demise without a second thought.
With time running short, the hangman took charge. He roughly shoved the dwarf aside and began to throw chunks of bread high in the air. The crowd roared as, seemingly from nowhere, several large seagulls trapped the morsels in mid-air.
An unseen signal, somehow known only to the gulls themselves, summoned a vast flock of ravenous birds. They circled overhead, squabbling loudly in frustration when the hangman stopped tossing chunks into the air. He threw the last few chunks onto the platform near my feet to lure the birds down.
The dwarf, miffed because none of the birds showed interest in the targets on my body, picked up a chunk from the platform and tossed it at my bare stomach. The bread piece bounced off my skin and fell to the platform. One gull, more adventurous than the others, hopped over to peck at the prize. With the platform now bare of food, several of the seagull’s mates rushed over to fight for a share of the last piece.
That was a signal to the dwarf. While the birds fought and squawked at my feet, he quickly dipped another chunk in syrup and threw it at my stomach, where it stuck in place. Two large gulls flew in pursuit of the morsel, but they shied away in a flurry when I vigorously shook my head.
I couldn’t defend myself with my hands tied behind my back. So, eventually, the more aggressive bird decided the prize was worth the risk. First, it flew up and tried to pick the bread off without landing. When the syrup held, the frustrated gull attached itself to my stomach with its claws and began pecking.
Each rapid bob of the bird’s head produced a searing pain as its sharp beak penetrated through the soft bread into my skin––I screamed under my gag.
The crowd roared when the entire flock moved in. Within seconds, I looked like a living birdman. Dozens of gulls fought for the bread attached to my nipples and earlobes. The intense pain, simultaneously erupting from several sensitive areas, caused me to black out momentarily.
When I regained consciousness, the birds were gone, leaving me with trails of blood dripping from hundreds of tiny fissures. My skin felt on fire. I could only imagine how much worse it would have been had the dwarf managed to include my eyes and private parts in the brutal torture.
Seeing I was awake, the hangman slouched across to stand contemptuously at my side. Having already assumed my guilt, he glared at me with his one good eye. Being innocent, despite my pain, I glared back. We remained locked in a battle of wills until he finally broke away.
“Morte aos piratas,” he grunted as he spit at my feet and scuttled back to his position.
I ignored the hangman’s ‘Death to Pirates’ insult and concentrated instead on the beating of the approaching drums. They were closer than before--much closer. With my voyage to eternity rapidly drawing nearer, I felt my heart begin to hammer against the walls of my chest–-partially from fear but also from the tidal wave of regret washing over me.
Ignoring the growing sounds from the crowd, I flashed back to the fateful day, three years past, when my world changed forever. Despite the passage of time, I still remember the look on the Crabb’s ugly, twisted face when he issued his final ultimatum. Because of my circumstances, the bastard knew I had little choice but to accept his dastardly assignment. In hindsight, I should have violently resisted instead of caving in.
In fairness, I realize I must assume some responsibility for my dilemma. If I dared to tell the Crabb to go to hell instead of meekly giving in, this would be a different story. But I was weak. I let myself be bullied by a tyrant, and now, three years later, I’m paying the price.
I felt a surge of red-hot anger wash over me, knowing I would be safe today, but for the insatiable greed of two despicable individuals. Two men determined to hoard all the world's light regardless of who or what it hurt.
I closed my eyes and cursed the names of the two individuals who, by rights, should have stood in my place.
Captain Black Bart Upton–– and a man named Rolland Silas Crabb.
THE CRABB
London, England. April 11th, 1770- Three years earlier.
My uncle, Rolland Silas Crabb, is one of the biggest money-grubbing, backstabbing, all-around bitter individuals who ever crawled the earth’s surface.
The despicable man has more well-earned enemies than a dog has fleas. Because of his money-grubbing ways, his employees hate him, his partners hate him, and his housekeeper hates him. Even the company cat, Oscar, hates him. I could rattle on with an endless list. But I’m sure you get the picture.
And a friendly word of warning: If you ever have the misfortune of being in a position where you can’t avoid shaking Rolland’s hand, make it fast and count your fingers twice before he walks away.
In summary, Uncle Crabb doesn’t have a friend in the world, nor does it appear to bother him. He’s utterly oblivious to the looks of scorn or the whispered insults that trail behind him in an invisible cloud as he makes his daily inspection of his fiefdom.
As well as being my uncle, Rolland is the managing partner of Halton, Barney & Crabb, one of England’s largest importers of general merchandise. Exotic products flowed into the company’s vast array of warehouses from all parts of the world.
The business is obscenely profitable because our leader rules the company with an iron fist. ‘The Crabb,’ as we refer to him, constantly searches for the next penny to squeeze. And God help the person who stands between him and that coin.
If I had a choice, I’d stay as far away from this irritating little man as possible. However, circumstances didn’t leave me with much of an alternative. Unfortunately, my late father, William Whitehall the Third, had proved to be as inept at gambling as he was in running the family estate.
