In less than a quarter of an hour the shallop and the brigantine, sailing smartly on opposite reaches, were within cannon-range of each other. Dozens of the brigantine's passengers were crowded forward to see the shallop, possibly the first vessel they'd met in weeks; they waved hands and kerchiefs in innocent salute. The pirates, every idle hand of whom was similarly occupied, responded with a fearsome cry and fired a round into the water dead ahead of their quarry. It was not until then, when the others screamed and ran for cover, that Ebenezer began to guess in a general way what was afoot: every one of the passengers he could see was female.
"Dear Heav'n!" he breathed.
The captain of the brigantine realized the shallop's intention and came about to run north before the wind, at the same time firing on the attacker; but his defense came too late. Anticipating exactly such a maneuver, Captain Pound had his crew already stationed to follow suit, and the shallop was under way on the new course before the brigantine finished setting her sails. Moreover, although the several square-rigged sails of the brigantine were better for running before the wind than the fore-and-aft rig of her pursuer, the shallop's smaller size and lighter weight more than compensated for the difference. Captain Pound ordered his men not to return the musket- and pistol-fire; instead, taking the helm himself, he cut so close under the brigantine's stern that the name Cyprian, on a banner held by carved oak cupids, was plainly legible on her transom. At the very moment when the shallop's bowsprit seemed about to pierce the victim's stern, he veered a few degrees to starboard; the cannoneer in the bow fired a ball point-blank into the brigantine's rudder, and the chase was over. The Cyprian's crew scrambled to take in sail before the helpless vessel capsized. By the time the shallop came about and retraced her course the brigantine was rolling under bare poles in the swell; the crew stood with upraised arms, the first mate ran a white flag up the main halyards, and the captain, hands clasped behind him, waited on the poop for the worst.
The pirates were beside themselves. They thronged to the rail, shouting obscenities and making lewd gestures. It was all Boabdil could do to bring the shallop alongside, so preoccupied were they all with their joy: the Moor himself had stripped off all but his tall red headgear and stood like a nightmare at the helm. At length the grapples were made fast, the sails struck, and the ships lashed together along their beams, so that they rode like mated seabirds on the waves. Then with howls the pirates swarmed over the rails, cursing and stumbling in their haste. The Cyprian's crew backed off in fright, but no one paid them the slightest attention: indeed, Captain Pound had finally to force three of his men at pistol-point to tie them to the masts. The rest had no thought for anything but breaking open the companionway and cabin doors, which the terrified passengers had bolted from inside.
Their savagery made Ebenezer blanch. Beside him where he stood near the shallop's foremast was the oldest member of the pirate crew, Carl, the sailmaker — a wizened, evil-appearing little man in his sixties with a short, dirty beard and no teeth at all — chuckling and shaking his head at the scene.
"Is the ship full of women?" the Laureate asked him.
The old man nodded mirthfully. "She's the whore-boat out o' London." Once or twice a year, he explained, the Cyprian's captain took on a load of impoverished ladies who were willing to prostitute themselves for six months in the colonies, where the shortage of women was acute. The girls were transported without charge; the enterprising captain received not only their fares but — in the case of girls with special qualifications such as virginity, respectability, or extreme youth, or comeliness — a bonus as well from the brothel-masters who came to Philadelphia from all over the provinces for the purpose of replenishing or augmenting their staffs. As for the girls, some had already been prostitutes in London, others were women rendered desperate by poverty or other circumstances, and some simply hard-reasoning young serving girls bent on reaching America at any cost, who found six months of prostitution more attractive than the customary four-year indenture of the colonial servant.
"Every pirate on the coast keeps his eye out for the Cyprian this time o' year," the sailmaker said. "There's better than a hundred wenches behind that door. Lookee there at Boabdil!"
Ebenezer saw the naked Moor push aside his shipmates and raise a huge maul that he had found nearby, probably left on deck by the brigantine's carpenter. With one blow he splintered the door and dived headlong inside, the others close behind him. A moment later the air was split with screams and curses.
Ebenezer's knees trembled. "Poor wretches! Poor wretches!"
"This!" scoffed Carl. " 'Tis but a bloody prayer meeting, this is! Ye should have shipped with old Tom Tew of Newport, as I did. One time last year we sailed from Libertatia to the coast of Araby, and in the Red Sea we overhauled one o' the Great Mogul's ships with pilgrims bound for Mecca; a hundred gun she carried, but we boarded her without losing a man, and what do ye think we found? Sixteen hundred virgins, sir! Not a maidenhead more nor less! Sixteen hundred virgins bound for Mecca, the nicest little Moors ye e'er laid eyes upon, and not above a hundred of us! Took us a day and a night to pop 'em all — Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Portogeezers, Africans, and Englishmen, we were — and ere we had done, the deck looked like a butcher's block. There is not the like o' that day and night in the history of the lickerish world, I swear't! I cut a brace myself, for all I was coming on to sixty — little brown twins they were, and tight as a timber-hitch, and I've ne'er got up the old fid since!"
He rambled on, but Ebenezer could not bear to hear him out. For one thing, the scene on deck was too arresting for divided attention: the pirates dragged out their victims in ones and twos, a-swoon or awake, at pistol-point or by main strength. He saw women assaulted on the decks, on the stairways, at the railings, everywhere, in every conceivable manner. None was spared, and the prettier prizes were clawed at by two and three at a time. Boabdil appeared with one over each shoulder, kicking and scratching him in vain: as he presented one to Captain Pound on the quarter-deck, the other wriggled free and tried to escape her monstrous fate by scrambling up the mizzen ratlines. The Moor allowed her a fair head start and then climbed slowly in pursuit, calling to her in voluptuous Arabic at every step. Fifty feet up, where any pitch of the hull is materially amplified by the height, the girl's nerve failed: she thrust bare arms and legs through the squares of the rigging and hung for dear life while Boabdil, once he had come up from behind, ravished her unmercifully. Down on the shallop the sailmaker clapped his hands and chortled; Ebenezer, heartsick, turned away.
He saw Bertrand a little distance behind him, watching with undisguised avidity, and recalled his plan. The time was propitious: every member of the shallop's crew except old Carl was busy at his pleasure, and even Captain Pound, who normally stood aloof from all festivities, had found the Moor's trophy too tempting to refuse and had disappeared with her into the brigantine's cabin.
"Look sharp!" he whispered to the valet. "I'm going for the Journal now, and then we'll try to slip aboard the Cyprian." And ignoring Bertrand's frightened look, he made his way carefully aft to the doorway of Captain Pound's quarters. It required no searching to find what he sought: the Journal lay in plain view on the table, its loose pages held fast by a fungus-coral paperweight. Ebenezer snatched it up and scanned the first page with pounding heart: a transcription of the Assembly's convening, meaningless to him. But on the recto —