The Sailor's Folly

I had grown ill. Struck with the sickness of the long agony of my prolonged predicament; and when the Master at Arms at length removed the irons about my limbs and permitted me to sit, my senses had begun to dwindle.

The trio comprising the court-martial spoke in length of my fateful endeavor, of my impropriety and deception, when at last they passed judgment. The words of your sentence to come were the final distinction of clarity that reached my ears, and all manner of words faded. This was expected in my state of mind, for in that present moment, I was too ill and grieved to listen intently to their words.

My sight skewed from them and toward my hands, the haze of tears overcame my sight. They once more conveyed to the core of my soul the object of their perceptive idea of my deception - that deception they spoke of is that my true self was disguised to be the favorable and relatable sex of man on board the ship - and no longer was respectable and trustworthy to the Admiralty. After that, their voices muddled in their conversation, faded to sounding like a consistent hum.

I felt the grip of the tanned and freckled hand of the Master at Arms on my meager shoulder. It sent forth a sensation of entrapment amidst my hopes defeated and thrown into the void. I raised my head to the mention of my name spoken by the captain; his appearance of white and blue clothes faded to his white face and pale eyes of stoic firmness to his unmoving ruling. His lips moved once more to say the decrees of fate's hand thundering upon me, and my soul sank into unbreathable depths with their resolution upon me.

They fashioned my name into the logbook - my name they had known me for nearly a decade, of which was also my Christened birth name - and I shuddered to the sound of each stroke of the quill as it wrote my condemned endeavor and the date set with precise time.

In my frailty and fleeting sight, I noticed the dance of the waves out the great windows of the captain's quarters; moving to the rhythm of the wind and the sleeping leviathans under its mirrored surface remained silent and invisible in the bottomless depths below.

I saw too, just briefly in a moment of delirium, the movement of the veil enwreathed over the doorway to an adjoining room to my left, but just it be the breath of the wind to move it and I turned forward to the captain for the third time in my saddened haze and ailment. He waved his hand and once more I was upon my trembling legs, chained, and lead away by the Master at Arms.

The upper deck had faded from boisterous tone; to silence and intense stares focused upon me. Hidden under stoicism of my own, I was led through the gathered sailors who parted to clear a path in the cramped deck. The faces were unclear but for their eyes burning under the lantern's light; mostly ones of fierce anger in betrayal toward one they had once considered a shipmate. There were a small number about them - I could count on one hand - that gave pity and concern, and a few more indifferent on the matter; numbed they were to the disciplinary actions imposed by the officers, and frowned when another was under the lash.

Among them, I noticed that a familiar face was hidden back in the crowd. The emotionless expression cracked some about the eyes and the chiseled jaw clenched in thought. Those eyes, though, had struck my soul with their deepest pain and sorrow. The deepest blue eyes like the sea when the storm clears were the eyes of a man who had sympathy, and intrinsic fear for a shipmate he had known these many years. It was just a glance I took, but it felt like a lifetime in one frozen moment before I was taken below.

The descent from the captain's quarters to the imprisonment that had become my quarters was slow, with the Mater at Arms' grip firmly on my arms and preventing me a few times from miss-stepping or falling in the ailment and brokenness of my body and soul. It was but a few steps more, a turning of the keys in a lock, and the removal of irons about my wrists when at last I had found myself alone in the damp and crude solitary room of my prison.

The room was without light and all the sound heard was the creaking of the hull. I felt already the greater sensation of swooning overcome my body from the strain before I was plunged into darkness and silence as I drew closer to the bench.

Quite suddenly, when much time had elapsed, my soul had recalled the familiar sensation of sound and feeling. The sound and feeling were that of my racing heart as its rhythm filled my ears with each stroke to the walls of my bosom. What followed next was a prickling tingling in my hands and feet traversing through my body. Lastly, the urge for sight in my consciousness returned, though I hesitated to even crack them open. I felt I was on my side, with still shackled legs and a heaviness to my body. I blinked open my eyes to the faint light through the cracks above.

I had found my person lying rather peculiar from the bench on my side, where an amount of pain penetrated my sense of feeling for a moment. I moved to a sitting position and glanced about in the faint light while recalling vainly the events that transpired the day prior where I had trouble remembering certain moments. A court-martial, yes, that was my trial. I was harshly ridiculed, shamed, and demanded to explain a reason for such a deception.

But I never spoke, never dared open my mouth in defense of my hide or soul. I had no means of excuse or reason to give that could satisfy the tribunal, nor would they be as forgiving if I told the truth. I could only sigh at that moment with welled eyes when I glanced about the room sorrowfully.

The room was purposely small, arched, and walled on all four sides. It was big enough for a cramped bench and thin feathered mattress with a single blanket to stretch from one side to the next, and I barely had room to stretch wholly out and be comfortable given my average height to be three inches short of five-foot-six. To imagine a taller and more robust man residing here would imagine the torment the man would suffer; his body contorted and bent to find some form of comfort in his suffering. Not much else resided here, outside the lone chamber pot and the single lantern devoid of a candle's warm light that hung above a small shelf.

I brought to mind once more what the captain had said, what he may have sentenced me to suffer for my insubordinate behavior these many years. I certainly had not supposed myself to have already died, for I felt every strain, every prick of pain, and each beat of my heart assured that my life was still entrapped in mortality. Such a thought, notwithstanding understanding, still retained a layer of truth to my current predicament.

Still, where and what would my demise be? Normally, those condemned to death I knew were hung from the yard arm, or keelhauled - and I knew that one of my fellow crewmen had gone through such a demise but three days before my sentencing. There was no end to the tyrannical merit of the Captain when he was assured of insubordination, nor could the lieutenants and the midshipmen go against his ruling. Moreover, my small prison seemed to close even further on me in the faint light from the beams above.

A frightful thought crept over me, which drove my heart into unbearable drumming when I heard a pair of voices emerging from the darkness. I started on my feet to the lantern, igniting the lone candle from the spark of a stone. I wildly lifted the lantern and looked about, every fibre of my being trembled convulsively.

I saw nothing of the people speaking in those wretched voices; not another soul was within the cramped confines of my prison. However, the voices still spoke in a whispered tone; incoherent mumbles echoed about, and shadows moved across the light from above in a gliding fashion. It was a debilitating haunting, a torment of eerie whispers proved in a continuous mumble.

I could almost interpret what they spoke about. A rocking, limbless flag of cloth and meat dancing on the winds by a cord, hacked away by a flock of seabirds and crows. A drenched rat stretched by its hands and tail and graded by the barnacles along the keel, gasping for hopeless breath. The crackling of a cat-o-nine as it lined the backside of the swine it kissed with its leather tips and knotted cords. The crackling musket fire at the bird which stood aghast in misery and fearfulness, losing its small life to one lead ball into its heart...

The whispers were constant and horrifyingly graphic enough that I was compelled in much anxiousness to cup my hands over my ears; refusing to acknowledge their tormented words of death and hopelessness, to fates that could potentially be mine. But the whispers penetrated through the skin of my hands, sending my blood to rush to my heart and I swooned in a flush of overwhelming sensations.

Consciousness was aroused in my soul when my senses were aware of the gentle brush of a hand on my flushed cheek, burning of illness. It sent my heart alight in a flutter; such tranquility amid the pain of fondness and the bitterness of the aching soul. That hand of callused velvet upon my skin withdrew slowly when the wind blew the creaking door closed, and the chimed song of keys distanced themselves from my prison. My eyes opened to the faint light and anguishing silence when no one but myself remained in my prison, to fall upon the bowl of porridge and a mug of lukewarm grog left on the little shelf mounted to the wall.

A good soul ensured well-being in the form of generosity, with the simple offering of enough food to spare this caged and condemned soul. My eyes burned with the salty water rising to their banks when I consumed the food, grateful that an angel in the guise of a crewmate was onboard; watching out for me.

My strength grew as the illness weaned, a surge of hopeful confidence running in my veins. It would come in time for the arrival of the day that was to see my sentence fulfilled. The Master at Arms had replaced the irons about my wrists and led me on an ascent to the main deck, the rushing sound of a drum and the howling voice of the Captain of the Marines was all I heard as my heart once more raced in fear to the beat of the drum.

The sun through the canopy of sails was my first greeting; its golden light from the greyed clouds was a hopeful comfort and warmth to cold and stiffened bones, despite the shielding I took when it skewed my sight towards blindness temporarily. The sight before me now had sent a painful shudder through the very fibre of both body and soul. What awaited me was worse than a quick death by the yard, the turning over the keel, or even a simple lash: I was sentenced to walk the gantlet.

In the form of a rectangle about the main mast, the men had made a line and faced one another; in their hands were birch sticks and small whips of three prongs. The thronging of vague rumors and horrors I heard came to thought at that moment - ones I had often considered fables - but yet, they held plausible truth and a sense of strange and ghastly horror ran through me; for I heard their words even now spoken, beyond the confines of a whisper.

Was my insubordination that great to warrant a line of lash and cane to my back? A prolonged torment none of us would even dare to utter about? Heaven knows I had not felt that my secrecy was that great. It had merely been a means to fulfill that lifelong desire to traverse the waves freely under the scrawny, quite fair, boyish guise I wore proudly to conceal my womanly ways and physique. I knew that, at the time of my reckoning to my sentence, my crewmates would take it upon themselves - under orders of the Captain - to inflict great wounds for my insubordination.

I stood before the captain, high up on the fo'c'sle of the ship, with his lieutenants and midshipmen standing erect in formality as looming statues of indistinguishable likeness amid their authority of command in the Navy. The Captain's eyes still burned intensively toward me, with such sternness within his stoicism that I trembled internally. The time for silence was hastened as the Articles of War were read thoroughly; highlighted were the ones specific to the day's event. Eventually, his gaze looked down at me.

“Faraday Perry, Able Seaman,” he said in a commanding voice. “You have been charged with insubordination, concealment of important information, and disrespecting your officers. As you have decided to be among men, your punishment will be equal to that of your crewmates. Therefore, the sentence served is the gantlet, where your crewmates will punish you each with a single lash until all have struck. Have you to object to your sentence?” I kept my head lowered as I shook it slowly side to side. “Does anyone else object on her behalf?”

The silence from his proclamation was deafening, even to the sound of waves dancing the waterline of the ship. I glanced over my shoulder and many frowned in their aversion to meet my gaze. However, one was looking in my direction from his position; those stormy eyes a worrying cascade of bundled emotions instilled behind an emotionless mask and dutifulness. His jaw shifted in a furious inner turmoil whether or not to speak, or to remain mute.

Please, God, do not let him speak his mind; to suffer an inescapable torment under the captain, I would rather die, for him to live unbroken. I pleaded inwardly, looking forward in silence and readiness. Not a word was spoken among the crew, and the captain spoke up once more. “Very well. Begin the sentence.” The Master at Arms fulfilled his orders dutifully as I was brought before the line of the gantlet, stripped of my shirt and vest to expose the flatness of my chest and bared my back, and bounded my hands before me.

Though a woman I am in many regards since my creation by the hands of God - and such characteristics were always present despite minor masking - some remained less distinctive and aided in my concealment. Therefore, shameless was I being exposed so, that other women would be embarrassingly and rightfully shamed by. I held my head high at the moment, facing my torment and supposed death with willing humility and a courageous heart beating in my bosom.

At the command of the First Lieutenant, the Master at Arms drew his cutlass from its scabbard. The point pricked the arch of my lower back and I marched calmly into the line of men as I saw in the corner of my sight the first of many pendulum strikes.

Birch, lash, birch, lash… they fell in nearly a rhythmic pattern to the drumbeat upon me, and it called to mind amid the sting the jigs we would have sung in boisterous voices over the flute, violin, and drum in the evenings. As the song would have grown in pace and joy, so did the strikes and considerable pain of every blow over already pained and reddened strikes. I bit my lip to control the urge to relinquish my voice, only focusing on my pace and footfall which became my distraction, and tasting blood in my mouth.

My ears rang with the swings of the birch and whip that would strike my back, and soon I felt the skin break, with the warm running of blood staining my skin and trousers. The faces of my messmates began to change from pure anger bittered by betrayal, to pity and remorse with downcast eyes and relaxed brows. Some paled at the sight of my back, and others glanced away when they swung; some missed my back and struck my arms and sides.

Even that gentle angel of a friend had been forced to stand in line with a birch in his hand, but what would have been a thunderous strike like so many, came down like a velvet tap on my shoulder and barely left a mark on my skin. An act of mercy for one greatly tormented and burdened.

I prayed in my pained silence, and Lord knows how often I had stumbled on my words with each strike; trying to dissuade me from my prayers as much as wound me to my very soul.

My back was growing numb and my legs began to tremble as much as my arms. Blood ran, my ribs ached unbearably, and my breathing quickened with my heartbeat. To say a few little scratches on the back would sting as much as a bee's kiss, or the swipe of a cat's paw when they would defend themselves; but to me, at that moment, it felt like a constant, unyielding, strike of a sword alight with a burning fire that inflamed my blood and charred my skin.

The Lord as my great witness, I wanted to cry out my prolonged misery in a great wail, to let the river of tears flow from my brown eyes and into the sea to accept this burden. Forcefully, I remained silent for dignity and reputation's sake, never once allowing myself to plead for the wishful mercy of that rogue and tyrannical man; his smug expression watched from his perch in delight - like a vulture for his prey to succumb to his agonizing death - the prolonged torment he judged and invoked upon me.

With the final two men each bringing down a blow to my marred back and one to the side of my face, the cry of “Halt!” was heard, and I collapsed onto my knees in much relief; the sting of tears had begun to be too much to hold back, for the pain of my back was overwhelming and dreadfully searing. My hands shook uncontrollably on my knees, clanking the chains between the irons. I heard some words spoken fade to distant whispers as I fell forward in another swoon of my senses and darkness encased all about me in the sweet relief of a cold breeze with one word faded into silence by that unmistakable voice.

Many days had passed in silence and sickness. It was dark when at last I was aroused from my prolonged state of unconsciousness; my senses returned in a dazed and slow fashion. Senses of the body were first to return, and I was dreadfully pained and stiff, with each little twitch that had brought a thousand stings throughout; akin to fire burning my skin. My back was seared with a great burning pain, but my forehead felt cool and damp with water. When my lids flitted open and looked about in the clearness from the haze, and stared into those familiar eyes of a stormy sea.

“Fara?” William said in a whisper with that smile upon his handsome face; so soft and musical to the ears, unlike his normal tone of the harshness of a Boatswain's Mate. “William.” Was my response to him, in such a weak voice just above a whisper. His tensed outward pose relaxed into calmness, as he perched himself beside me on the little stool; sighing worriedly while he looked deep into my eyes with such pain and remorse beyond their brilliant color.

“Fara, I hope you can forgive the men… and me.” He pleaded quietly to me, bearing his deepest remorse before me. “You didn't deserve such a sentence, and many have grown ashamed of this deed done to you. I… I should have spoken in objection so that you would've been spared. I was always on your side but grew cowardly, and so I remained mute.”

“Oh William,” I sighed, gaining his attention when I took his hand into mine gently. “I have no anger, nor bitterness, towards our crewmates who obeyed the orders given. Nor any towards you either, William. I was just glad that I survived, and you had not followed me in fate.”

“You are far more forgiving than most, Fara.” He replied within the confines of a rather relieved smile, his prolonged worries had drawn back to the void they had emerged from and his focus had become primary on the assurance of my recovery.

The surgeon had hardly said a word about it, nor cared to know his reasoning in assisting in mainly the healing of my wounds. His velvet hands were gentle and cold to the burns of the deep wounds, often rebandaging my backside after the bindings had soiled from the blood and ooze from so many atop one another. His voice gave to hope in positivity, setting my strength to grow while chasing away the remnants of fear that plagued my thoughts since my imprisonment. Even when my dreams darkened to the memory of each stroke of the birch and whip, and the fire of cannons signaled like a constant burst of unending rapid drumbeat, his presence was what comforted me when I awoke in pain and fatigued fright.

He had become my beacon on the shore, shining his light of hope and strength to my wounded boat lost in the shoals amidst a tumultuous gale of the heavens. That guiding light had brought me to a sense of safety, of sound shore, and of will in overcoming the fears brought forth by the storm of impotence.

It was some time when my back was nearing its completion of healing and I rose from the sickbay. I felt more capable of work, and with orders given, I was back to my duties of the Carpenter's Mate; to the work of repairing the figurehead from a round of shots of a small battle while I was recovering still. I was constantly under the scrutinized eyes of the Captain and officers, but still was there my support not far away in careful watchfulness of his own. The Captain had continued to tighten his control on the crew as we sailed for the port of Cayenne of French Guiana, and we all grew weary of the demands and unjustified sentences.

That was when William had pulled me aside in the depths of the ship, halting our works for a moment of the pressing matter he had on his mind. “Fara, let us abandon ship, once we're in Cayenne.” I was certainly taken aback by his suggestion of desertion. It was gravely known that to desert in cowardice or willing pridefulness was a hanging offense, as we were seamen onboard the Naval Clipper Ship Orion. “I know a safe route we can take from there and return to the Americas safely. We won't have to be burdened with such malice anymore.”

“William, it's too risky! If we're caught, we'll swing from the highest yard.” I was quite reluctant to disobey or cause any more problems onboard that would warrant another round of torment onto my body, and the remnant of pain from my back reminded me so. To my utter surprise, he shook his head and I saw a faint smile upon his face in the glow of the lantern's light.

“We won't, Fara, not as long as we have these.” He retrieved two folded and sealed letters from his inner coat pocket. Miraculously, he had been given a pair of discharge letters with the name of our current captain and that of our former and honourable First Lieutenant - now Captain of another ship - granting honors of a discharge from the ranks of the Navy.

It was our token of freedom, and at length with much relief, I conceded in much gladness.