IAM'S OUTPUT

April 14 1907 or 1742

High up in the mizzen mast the wind wrapped at my door like an urgent call or a troupe of Carollers.

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Avast Ye Merry Gentlemen, I was urged to shout but I did not. Instead the clouds fell and the rain came down and I was chill to my bones. Argh 'twas a pitiful life which had befallen this here wretch of a tinker's son. Never come to much since I was clinging at my ma's petticoats as she straddled the gutters of Chapney Street, Golden Corner and of course the Round House.

There was a time, thinks I as a particularly strong gust of evil near knocks me from my senses - damn you weather lords - there was a time when my dear father lost his tiny marbles in a game of chance mooning for the gamblers of Jigger Town and I very nearly ended up being traded into a Noble family by the name of Perryfield.

They was merchants now, but had been mineralists back centuries before and anyhow was gentlemen merchants, not of your usual ilk. Anyhows, was what was.

The land is there in the distance. The edging reality of it very prickles my salty senses and I breathe this wet air in now as if 'twas my ma's womb waters.

How like a fish I am, how very suited to my environment, my outlook and yet not at the same time. How did this come to pass?

I remember the weeks at the boarding hostelry. I still shudder to recall Oman, the kitchen whacker and his cowardly yet menacing even-calls, urging all us skivvies into putrid action, weeding out whatever rot we could of that place.

I do look back and see that I was woken by the port constabulary on more than one occasion and advised to pitch a rigging career or roll myself into the briney.

A man so simple as I, with no woman nor child to my name - nor at least any that would care to call me kin. Simple Jackob the Wastrel. Babby worth nothing, kiddie the same. Now man of penniless pocket book and black teeth. Oh send me a weapon that I may wield it at whatever fate-witch pulled these ropes. Or was it me?

Was this world in actuals a Heavenless one? We're it a God-lacking place.

The sail whipped my legs and I grappled with the chain rope. Something wet but faintly solid slapped onto my cheek.

I wiped it off and plunged on into this wind.

Could the Manny be right in saying the good lord had left this place, given up on His Great Creation seeing what we done to it? Us an old abandoned mob of folk, cursed by the very being what gave us our existence.

The bearded holy roller who took me in one too many times fair thought this was the fact of the matter and true this is a growing thought these days.

He’s gone. Now what are we left with? The feckless skills of a bunch of wastrels. Had I a lance for this boil of humankind I feel I would take us all down, for it can’t be worse than this. Living on a forsaken disk, with no watcher but the Devil himself.

But oh how I’m so spinning this on through my own mind. Sick thoughts such as these do seem to come to me when I’m on mizzen duty. Too much spray and salt.

Time for one of the other lads to take their turn before we pass this cape and make for the southern bays. Down inside I’ll go. Down into the smoke hole where the dank laughter and tarot games abound and I can sink these wet bones into my cot with a fire in my mouth, my hearth and my belly if I’m lucky.

The morrow will bring fresh pain and joy no doubting you sir.

No doubting.

For now Jackob, simple Jackob, who never did amount to much is writing off in my copy book, closing this uneventful chapter for another day.

Mayhap, that Lord out there somewhere will grant us an audience once more and we all, we few, we one can gain direction. But ah them’s the dreams of a fool in the wet wind, atop a swaying mast. The gentlefolk I’m sure have no such fancies and are as guaranteed of their thoughts as any man may be. At least perhaps in my smokey dreams this night I may venture to meet with one such and ask them for the Truth.

They may even tell me.

Farewell

Jackob Le Sallo

Oct 1471