In a humid Mexican tavern, Juan Perez hunched over a faded tankard of frothy ale and threw hopeful glances at the entryway. Other sailors and families with young ladies and chaperones in mantillas stared back.

Plunk! On the scarred wood table where he sat, a small soft bag with drawstring landed with the unmistakable clink of pieces of eight. Don Ignacio, wrinkled and gaunt with an unlikely cascade of curling yellow hair, stood before him.

 Finally! No other investor trusted a seaman who had maneuvered rivers and byways but not sailed the established route to the Philippines. This silver would infuse life into Perez’s stagnant career. A start to a possible future commission as Captain.

Don Ignacio was not alone. At his side, a boy with milky skin, cobalt eyes, and silken waves of hair like reddest wine cowered.

“A wanton woman claimed this is my son,” Don Ignacio stated. His pristine waistcoat and fitted breeches contrasted with a breath that spoke of raw onions. “Then La  Viquinga promptly died.”

Perez nodded. All Acapulco knew the randy Don and the red-haired whore who claimed to descend from Vikings.

“My legal wife and heirs arrive soon. I cannot present Sebastián to them.”

“What am I to do with your son?”

“You decide.”

Perez tapped his oddly long, slim fingers on the table. “Sir, I am unmarried at thirty-two and impoverished, but not a sodomite.”

“Use him as cabin boy. Should some accident befall him, you will not be held accountable.” Outraged at that implication, Perez embraced his fate on the high seas with a boy not his son.

During their first trip, the eight-year-old grew bloody blisters on hands struggling to lift heavy ropes, form knots, swab decks, and sew sails. A prideful sight for Perez who considered the beautiful boy his personal source of good fortune.

By throwing his voice, Sebastián amused sailors missing legs or eyes. In return, old salts told him gruesome tales to widen his eyes and make him tremble.

“Carib Indians castrate boys like you. They roast you alive over a spit until your flesh crackles black. Then they eat you.”

Olivo, a black former slave and galley cook interrupted. “Kings, princes and all great men kill or die.” He looked at a toothless sailor and back to the boy. “See how Old Simon’s eyes glitter in your direction? Careful of him. He intends to bend you over.”

Perez glared at Simon and Olivo. “Not while I live. Sebastian, avoid the ship’s dark nooks where evil might wait in ambush.” The boy took to hiding a jagged knife inside his shirt instead. When both the knife and Old Simon disappeared during a violent downpour, Perez did not pursue a connection. No matter how strong, a child could not subdue a muscular man. Men and possessions had quietly washed overboard since sea travel began.

End of possible problem.

By Sebastián’s twelfth birthday, he had grown as tall as Perez who strove to fight the influence of ignorant, dangerous sailors. Perez read to the boy. The exploits of the Greek Odysseus especially appealed to Sebastián.

“Do you understand the hospitality moral behind this story?” Perez asked.

“Mierda.” Sebastián cursed. “Knaves rampaging.”

“Speak properly,” Perez commanded.

“Odysseus and his men murdered and plundered like their king,” Sebastián said. “He and his crew boasted about it and broke in homes to gorge like locusts on the goods of their hosts. They demanded generous gifts before they left. If they did not receive the gifts openly, they stole. Why should I give anything to someone I do not know and did not invite to my house? Visitors should be the ones to bring gifts and food. They should not break in and make demands. Kill or be killed. That is the lesson.”

Perez snapped the book closed and stored it away. “No more Cyclops stories for you!”

During the years that Perez advanced from seaman to piloto, he neglected his lucky charm. Sebastián’s head towered above the shoulders of the tallest sailor, and evil rumors circulated.

“That devil hunts heads in Brazil!” Perez ignored fanatic nonsense. What could Sebastián do with shrunken heads? Illiterate Dutch sailors who feared redheads as witches wagged their tongues the most. Yet, crew disappeared. Perez checked the manifests of all ships with disappeared crew. Sebastián’s name appeared each time.

“Accusations against you mount.” Perez peered into the young giant’s eyes for signs of duplicity.

“Ignorance and folk tales confuse lonely men.” Sebastián’s cobalt blue gaze held steady.

Despite denials, suspicion assaulted Perez.

Sailors and officers alike feared and avoided the hairy behemoth Sebastián became by his twenty-fifth year.

Captain Perez pressed his eighty-two-foot frigate Santiago along the Northwest coast. He was still a handsome man now often mistaken as weak because he hated staining his hands with blood.

The ship’s bow sliced through blue waves of the Pacific Ocean creating a white spume that clung along both its sides. The full-rigged warship’s three masts groaned as Perez urged it forward at faster speeds. He was on two secret missions. Officers knew the first, which would bring him glory. Lay claim to new territory at 60˚ north for his Viceroy. His second secret mission, for the enemies he would make, might cause his death. Save his former friend newly imprisoned in Perez’s cabin.

Brutal lands required brutal acts. Perez understood that. Yet, never in his seafaring career had he heard of such a change in someone close to him from quiet cabin boy to accused cannibal.

Wield sword or hangman’s noose to a friend’s neck or deliver him to authorities who will do so? What is the difference?

Perez brooded. Timbers creaked and cargo slipped and banged below but his crew’s noisier ranting presented a greater danger than shipwreck. Their hostile glares burned into his shoulder blades. Above the sounds of surf and rush of salt scented wind, a challenge reached him: “Captain, hang the maggot bugger!” The boatswain’s oversized, knotted neck scarf could easily serve as a garrote.

To distract that idiot, Perez shouted to his lookout. “Watch for Sodomite dogs! English spies may be after us.”

“Why so nervous?” Esteban José Martínez, his junior pilot, asked. “This is a well prepared warship.” More like stocked with one huge mistake. Allowing Sebastián to sign as crew. On deck, fury had marked crewmen’s faces at first sight of Sebastián. Knife fights erupted. One death led to Perez imprisoning Sebastián in his cabin. Perez did not answer Esteban.

“Throw him overboard!” A crewman shouted.

“Do what the crew asks,” Esteban said. “None will fault you.”

Without having seen the crimes with his own eyes, Perez would fault himself if he took the life of a man he considered almost a son. He peered at the coast.

Giant fir and spruce grew straight up from the edge of the sea, and climbed to heights impossible to reach. The tide rolled to narrow shores and lapped away at the base of trees near the waterline. One cracked and grunted as it toppled and crashed into the ocean. That there was no place to anchor to dispense of Sebastián added to his anxiety.

Low clouds spread over the foliage of the mainland and created a mist that swayed and separated through tree leaves like long, thin fingers. Perez squinted at a grillwork of trees behind a haze that veiled stretches of land above the Californias.

In the sky, geese on the wing honked. He thought he heard from far off a moose bellow a nasal eeeah. Perez smiled. Game made this a perfect wild land to abandon his former cabin boy, now turned beast. Too many accusers to ignore came forward at the worst possible time. The mutinous leaning of his crew when he most needed their cooperation to obey his viceroy would not allow the prisoner to survive a week’s voyage anywhere. The crew would flay him, hang him and throw him overboard. If by some miracle Sebastián survived the weeks needed to return home to Mexico, authorities there who rarely found anyone innocent would behead him or stand him in front of a firing squad.

Perez followed an ancient map drawn by a long-dead Greek to veer close to a small strait of water that divided two tracts of misty mainland. The old Greek’s diary helped him identify landmarks, log his position and aid his plan to maroon Sebastián in a wilderness. His sole option to give Sebastián the smallest chance of survival.

“Prepare a small rowboat, Esteban. Set apart a keg of rum, a box of beads and buttons, knives, blankets, a loaded musket, an ax and any old hats or shoes you find.”

“You would dip into the crown’s stores to provide the monster with bribes for the natives?”

At Esteban’s accusation, the ship’s priest, Fray Crespi, moved closer the better to spy.

“I would not insult my crown with beads, buttons, and old shoes.” The useless old priest opened his mouth to protest. Before he could speak, Perez continued. “Take all other items from my personal reserves.”

“Is there none other more deserving of your largess?” Frey Crespi licked his lips.

No. “Esteban, if you will?”

Esteban motioned with his pistol. Three crewmen came forward. Esteban then tucked his pistol into his belt, and gripped the hilt of his sword.

Perez led the four men to his cabin though he felt uneasy turning his back on his zealous junior pilot who was never without drawn weapon around Sebastián. As a precaution, Perez locked the cabin as soon as he and Esteban entered.

Books lined the walls. Sea air rotted their covers. Perez’s habit of licking his fingers to turn pages warped them with his saliva and many of these books formed stacks on the floor around his prisoner. Lanterns swinging to the rhythm of changing tides cast demonic yellow gleams on the giant. Bound by rope from ankle to neck Sebastián thrashed and twisted. He growled like a cougar, tried to roll over and failed. Ropes the width of three fingers held him fast. He gnawed the hemp that imprisoned him. From him arose the stench of unwashed armpits and genitals.

“Shall we dowse him with salt water again?” Esteban asked, covering his nose.

“That will not be necessary.” Perez held fast his musket and made ready to read the charges.

Esteban stood behind a desk littered with old maps. A sudden surge raised and dropped the massive frigate. With one hand, he steadied himself. With his other hand, he gripped the handle of his cutlass.

“Arrwkk!” Sebastián imitated a parrot. “Safeguard my manhood when you cut loose my bindings, you old sea dogs.”

“Shut your mouth, you obscenity,” Perez said. He heard the shuffle of his crew milling about outside his locked cabin door.

The reading of the charges served a dual purpose. One was Perez’s last attempt to wake the man inside the beast Sebastián became. The other to squash any mutiny growing in the men. Perez unfurled a scroll with tattered edges.

“Rally the crew on deck.”

“Make room, men,” Esteban shouted through the door. He unlocked the cabin door and pushed the ship rigger’s assistant out of his way. “You!” He pointed to the galley cook. “Get another man to help carry that demon from hell.”

Few fell over themselves to volunteer. They noted Sebastián’s progress as he gnawed at his fraying bindings. Another day at most before the ropes gave way. Sebastián was one of the few sailors who kept all his teeth. They were thick and gleaming white, the incisors sharp. A source of the cannibal tales. Four burly men hoisted Sebastián by his feet and shoulders.

“No one who accompanies this red ape anywhere on land or sea returns alive.”

“Not even dead. No one sees or hears from them again. He eats them.”

“Enough of that stupidity!” Perez commanded. “Unless you have proof, do not bear false witness. Shut your toothless maw.”

Cries and shouts rose. “Mates told me before they died,” and “An uncle bore witness and disappeared.”

Forging ahead with his plans, Perez read.

“Sebastián de Cordova y Høeg, you willfully conspired with and aided an African slave to hack and dismember peaceful and valuable slave cargo belonging to the crown.”

“Not true!” Sebastián said. “Those slaves fought and killed each other.”

“You sabotaged the galley by feeding human flesh to crewmen in an effort to win converts to your evil ways.”

“Think back, Captain! The ship lost cargo in storms and all starved. Fevered eyes turned wild with hunger pants. They ran to poke their ugly noses in the food bowls. They slurped, gulped, and filled their bellies asking not whence meat for stew appeared. Some are present.”

Several sailors, slack jawed, shielded their eyes.

“If not for the galley cook you would not live this today.”

Perez’s stomach roiled.

“You fornicated with the maggot-riddled corpse of a half-eaten female you kidnapped from the indigenous population of Peru.”

“I like my women moaning and biting. She chose my company while she lived until a hungry jaguar attacked her and her jealous husband took an opportunity at revenge.”

Sensible. Why fornicate with a corpse if a live woman conspired?

“You engaged in pirate acts in the Caribbean,” Perez continued, “and you absorbed the despicable habit of hunting heads prevalent in the jungles of Brazil and did seek out fellow crewmen on whom to visit your demonic practice.”

Perez remembered ships’ manifests. “You are unrepentant of your crimes against God, the crown and humanity.”

“No one person could commit all those crimes. Let me face my accusers.”

When did he have time for piracy? Doubts remained in Perez. Years of rumors and secret accusations turned to spoken and written accusations, but never proof from live witnesses.

“You ate them!” One gold-toothed Mexican shouted. “That’s why they cannot face you.”

Perez received that answer to his objections each time. He extended the scroll to Esteban to encourage him to release his gripped sword. The man glared at him.

“Sebastián de Cordova y Høeg.” Perez chanted in affected official tones. “On this summer eve, year of our Lord, 1774, you will be marooned in a savage land to suffer the same disgrace to which you subjected your victims. You will be set into a rowboat and placed at the mercy of heathens stronger and smarter than those you have met in the past.”

“Night falls.” Esteban spat. “Just kill him.”

“This is not our last voyage,” Perez said. “As civilized men we should not stain our hands with the blood of a countryman. He is bound, naked, and barefoot. The only thing he can incite is a bird to peck his backside. It will take him hours to free himself. Throw him on the bottom of the small rowboat as he is.”

Esteban opened his mouth but the captain frowned to quiet him.

“Thank you,” Sebastián said. “For not raising your weapon against me.” Their gaze met and held. “You were better than my own father, Juan Perez. I have disappointed you and am sorry, but I did not do the things of which I am accused.”

Perez’s lips twisted as if he tasted bile. He reached his hand out to pat the man he still felt as a father to, and then let it fall. Regretting whatever surrogate parenting he did wrong, he lowered his head.

The crew loaded the rowboat. As they did so, they swapped nervous glances.

Blackness sheathed the shoreline of this unfamiliar land. The darkness played tricks on their eyes. The foliage seemed to move. The crew hesitated.

“Timely, now,” Perez urged. “Let us act while it is night and the savages sleep so we can return home to our kind as gentlemen of mercy.”

Crewmen sat at the oars on the long boat. Perez, Esteban and the priest descended into it. They shoved off into the murky waters. Ropes from the long boat pulled along the smaller craft that held Sebastián.

Perez held a lantern in one hand. With the other, he raised his musket. He aimed in the general direction of the shoreline. When the rowers slowed, he aimed it at them.

The darkness swallowed what little light flowed from the lantern.

Pinpoints of light moved in the distance. Torches!

“Move!” Perez pressed.

Gasping with fear, the sailors paddled as quietly as possible. The strait was shallow and narrow, the currents strong. Their rowboat and its cargo veered toward a part of steep mainland. The lantern lit a willow that leaned over the water. On that tree, they secured the small boat.

“Good-bye, Sebastián,” Perez said. “May God and men forgive you.”

His mission accomplished, they returned to the Santiago.

“He may be dead in two days without help,” rowers told the captain.

“Or he will be dead as soon as savages find him.”

Before he sailed his frigate away, Perez gave a last glance. He strained his eyes but could not find the small craft tossed by a swelling tide near shore.

“Let all note I claim this land for the crown of Spain.”

“You did not set foot on land,” Fray Crespi objected.

“Would you fight natives in the dark?”

That silenced the priest yet other enemies he made this day by not killing Sebastián could look for a way to exact revenge whether by knife or poison in future.

Regrets surfaced. Perez’s chest tightened. Had he taken a coward’s stance? He did not exert a lethal blow but marooning Sebastián might have stained his hands with blood just the same. Like an annoying mosquito, a fleeting question bit him. By throwing Sebastián away, had he thrown away his good fortune?

Perez sailed north to his destiny. Barring bad weather, he would find a manner of fulfilling his royal mandate to claim the specified territory for Spain or face an end to his career as Captain. He shuddered as his ship entered a fog of frigid air.