During my early years as a sailer I was fortunate enough to fall in with a pirate whose exploits and adventures far exceeded the more well known examples of Blackbeard, Captain Kidd and even Long John Silver, at least in terms of excitement and wonder; though despite his great wanderings, few even know his name. Where he did not sail few can say, for the world in those days was not as well chartered as it is now with its many maps and surveys. One thing I do know though, is that the tales he told stretched far beyond what we knew the world to be then, nay even what we reckon it is now. Indeed, it seemed sometimes as if he broke off from this world altogether and found realms of enchantment and obscurity the likes of which no man may see again. But a lot of it was in the way he recounted these stories. Now I'm no great teller of tales like he, nor after drinking large amounts of brandy every night for years now, can I remember so clearly, half the stories he told. So vast was his experience and so deep his knowledge. But I still remember some things, like the time we first met him, the farce he pulled over us and how he had me on a string after that, so to speak.
When we first encountered him he sailed a small boat, which appeared to be in some distress, for as it approached it belched out smoke from a chimney at the rear, which left a cloudy trail in his wake. Naturally our crew did not feel under threat, for what with no discernible artillery and no visible crew other than himself and that vile creature that followed him at all times, we could not tell how the vessel bore towards us with sails down and against the wind.
Once his ailing vessel was alongside us our Captain addressed its sole occupant and gave him permission to board. A ladder was thrown down to the boat and some hands were ordered to help him up. The creature scuttled up ahead of him and caused some alarm amongst the crew. The man introduced himself as Captain Svein. He told them not to mind it and said that it was a monkey from Madagascar and quite harmless. To this day I have never understood the reason for him keeping this impish pet. He was a broad man, not older than 60, with a white beard, who generally wore a large grin. His eyes seemed to glare in a most intense fashion and to burn with mischief and delight. The monkey would climb up onto his shoulder and onto the ropes that hung nearer the deck and was always moving around, getting on everyone's nerves. No sooner was the man aboard than he endeavoured to charm us all with his unusual manner. He seemed not to be concerned for his boat, which had now stopped smoking, and it seemed from the outset that he might know more about our journey than we did.
"It's the clock, is it not? Tell me you're not carrying the clock! It's a masterpiece, I say. A masterpiece! Let's have a look."
He seemed certain that we were some sort of delivery ship delivering some sort of rare clock. Although we knew a clock to be on the inventory, the truth was that none of us were clued up, as it were, about the particulars of our cargo, but that we were getting well paid was good enough for us to be brisk and not be messing around with it. Everything was already boxed and sealed and it wasn't our business to be opening them.
Nevertheless, Svein begged and implored that we treat him to just a peak at the fantastic clock we had on board. The monkey joined him in his whining. Naturally, we refused and continued to do so, and presently his excitement grew to a feverish state. He told us that it was no ordinary clock and that it told not only the time of day, but the whole story of the heavens and the earth the whole year round and could even predict the future. Just after that he outright collapsed, either through excitement or through exhaustion, for the sun was high. Before long we resolved to bring him into the cabin to get him out of the sun. I now know this to have been a bad idea, but who at the time would have rebuked us for attempting the save the life of an ailing old man?
In short, he gassed us once we were inside the cabin, protecting himself with a handkerchief. How I came round before the others (for we turned out only to have lost consciousness) I cannot say; perhaps Fate had ordained it, though I'm not a superstitious man. After I came round, I groggily stepped out of the cabin, and found that he had gotten from our hold a large crate which he now hauled roughly overboard and down onto his boat by means of one of our pulleys. At this point I must confess I was unsure of what to do; being stuck half way between, on one hand, my duty to detain this thief in order to rescue our mission and, on the other, to help this wily old man for whom I held a degree of admiration, having single handedly bettered our entire crew. Thus, as I advanced with my cutlass drawn, it was not without hesitation, and he took advantage of this hesitation to address me.
"Stand and watch an old man struggle, would ya? Come and lend a hand, I say, there's plenty of work for you where I'm goin. What do they pay you, eh? Not much I reckon. Ah, but if you and me were to cash this in between us, so to speak, ah now that would be much better would it not? Diven't worry about the rest o'them they'll be as right as you before long."
It wasn't his words that I found so persuasive. It just so happened that for my whole life I had harboured a fascination with pirates and now here was my chance to become one. For long I had served as a sailer with little reward, and the designs of my superiors seemed to have it fixed that I should never rise in rank and they would always delegate for me the job with the least responsibility. For years I had dreamt of plundering, of treasures, and of a free life out on the waves. Nor would it matter, I thought, what my crew would think had become of me, as they were sure to assume that I'd lost my life to the pirate trying to protect our cargo and might perhaps have given me some sort of funeral. I went back to the cabin and they were all still out cold.
When he saw that my heart was in it, he walked over and produced a bottle of smelling salts, which smelled absolutely revolting and all but brought me round. I then climbed down the ladder onto White's boat and helped to bring aboard the crate which must have weighed a tonne. Once onboard, its weight caused the small vessel to sink noticeably, but not dangerously so, at least as long as the good weather held out. The monkey did not help, but rather hindered our progress by repeatedly running up and down the pulley and screeching in our faces as if he could not contain his excitement at acquiring the mysterious package.
Then we cast off and he ordered me to take the helm and to head South by south east, where apparently we would soon land. I saw no indication of land anywhere on the clear horizon, but had no problem with these enigmatic commands, rather relishing the new faith which he put in me and the feel of the new vessel against the wind and the waves. We had originally been sailing from Antwerp to London on a routine delivery trip, but now we seemed to be headed for Dover or Calais. We had a good southerly which bore us speedily in that direction and all I had to do was to keep course. All the while we never said a word.
After a few hours, the captain went into the cabin, where he remained for some quarter of an hour. I contemplated my situation, with what little brains I had back then. By the time he came out the sun had sank and the wind had dropped. Having observed this, he made us take the sails in, as was the custom, and we hauled anchor for the night. It turned out that the Captain had laid out in the cabin a modest feast of foods that were unknown to me then, but to which I was later to become well accustomed. Presently, I began to notice the interior of the cabin and what an extraordinary thing it was to behold. For all around us sat, stood and hung, objects of the most curious and most marvellous appearance. I fancied most of them to be of a scientific nature, while some were more artistic and others just downright unfamiliar. There were a great number of clocks and beneath the sound of the sea one could hear the mechanical rhythm, which together they all played. Every hour some of them chimed. One of the larger clocks had two doors at the top; out of one came a miniature figure of Death with his scythe, who, upon each hour, was chased by Christ through the other. This, I think, was my favourite as it brought to mind my own mortality, and filled me with a vague sense of purpose. Other dials of the clock showed bearings relating to the heavenly bodies, and others still showed signs of the zodiac as well as symbols which I didn't recognise.
I held no superstitious opinions about the power of these objects, thinking them no more than expensive curiosities and testimony to mankind's genius. To White though, they were his treasure and his pleasure, and it seemed his curse that he was destined to hold all of these things for only a brief period before handing them over, as we shall soon learn.
I beheld finely carved military figures made from ivory, which I later learned were pieces of a noble game called Chess, in which players try to outwit each other by moving the pieces around on a chequered board. Captain Svein claimed to have discovered the game in India and he was always trying to get people to learn the rules so that he could play them. But it was too complicated for most and some even thought that he was making the rules up as he went along to his own advantage, which was probably true.
It soon became clear that this was no ordinary pirate that I sailed with, not least because of the presence on board of certain objects virtually unheard of aboard any pirate vessel, namely, books. Yes, there plenty of these articles piled everywhere and squeezed into any little safe corner which availed itself. Most of them were very handsomely bound, some looked very old and all of them were in different languages. Some names I recognised, like Aristotle, Homer and other Greek writers, Roman names like Ovid and Virgil, and some that looked Arabic or Oriental. Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, I'd heard of, but all that stuff was above my head and though I had never been a believer in what they call heaven or hell, I still regarded all of this stuff with a weird fascination. Many manuscripts lay about, some folded and some rolled up. Some of the books, I had time to discover, seemed to not to be in any language at all but in an illegible scroll alongside strange illustrations which teased the imagination. I dared not ask the Captain what these were, lest he feared me ignorant. But there was no fear of that, for I know now that he would never have let me be his first mate had he suspected that I had the faintest idea about anything.
The clock we had stolen was evidently a model of the one in Strasbourg Cathedral. Although it was a masterwork of design and engineering it was, he said, little different to the many fine examples on display in the cabin, and its value would have been relatively little on the black market, were it not for Captain Svein's connection with an illusive French collector known only as the Count, a man of immeasurable wealth and eccentric tastes. Rumour had it that he owned a huge chateau whose halls were filled with innumerable timepieces of all ages from all over the world; that the walls resounded with the very sound of time perpetually ticking and tocking and chiming; that he employed a keeper of these clocks, and that this man was the most hideous and most fearsome man that ever were seen, or so the few who claim to have seen him testify, for his job was surely the hardest of all as it could never be quite done, and the sound of the clocks falling out of time drove him to distraction so that he ran manically through the halls at all times, groaning, slobbering, and crawling up the walls, winding the clocks and moving the hands, desperately trying to keep them all in sync. It was to these halls that the all the clocks in this cabin were now destined.
The Count was never seen, at least not knowingly, but Svein dealt with him onshore through a network of well-to-do agents, all of whom claimed to work for him yet none of whom could claim to have met him. Some of them speculated, half-jokingly, that the Count was none other than the legendary Comte de Saint Germain who, amongst other things, was believed to have been immortal. This would have accounted not only for his immeasurable wealth, for apparently he was able, through the use of alchemy, to produce diamonds and gold from lesser matter and moved freely in aristocratic circles, but might also account for his obsession with time, for perhaps all the clocks in the world might just be enough to give him some indication of the passing of eternity.
All this, however, I was to learn in good time. For now we sailed straight past Calais, to my great surprise, and made for a point further west along the French coast. It was around here that the wind dropped and the sails fell limp. Now the Captain showed me how the boat could move without sails and without oars, for behind the cabin and underneath the aforementioned chimney, was a furnace which he stoked from the rear. This fire fuelled an engine which powered a propeller underneath the stern which, when turning, pushed the boat forwards. Indeed, this small craft was one of the world's first steamboats, now a commonplace sight on our seas. As it used fuel, the captain would only employ the engine when the wind was down.
Eventually we harboured at Brest on the North west tip of France. We were met ashore by two distinguished looking men who wore tall hats and purple robes, and looked not at all like seafaring men, but more like courtiers. Svein later told me that they were Knights of the Templar. Now this fact may strike our more learned readers as being somewhat inconsistent with history, as it is well documented that the Templars were all put to death some centuries ago. However, it did not strike me as being odd at the time, for I knew nothing of their legacy. I was surprised when he handed over to them all of the booty in his cabin that was meant for the Count, taking nothing back from them but what looked like a few months of provisions and a small bag of coins. There were and still are many things about the Captain which I do not understand.
We were then driven by coach to a grand house not far from the port, but hidden within a dense plantation forest. There we were shown to rooms far more luxurious in nature than to which I was at that time accustomed, where we were allowed to bathe and prepare ourselves for dinner. In short, we were treated as guests of honour. However, these next few nights which we spent with the Templars, brought about some of the most bizarre experiences to which I have personally been subjected.
