 Welcome back friends. Thank you for joining me again and tuning in to Rhythm's Riddle. This is Tons Gauntlet with you again as usual, and I wanted today to continue to extend my playlist entitled Fresh Letters, the one where you'll find excellent poetry and literature from the world over. I'll be reading again from Jorge Luis Borges right now. This is the Widow Ching pirate, and for more information on this collected fictions of Borges translated by Andrew Hurley, please go to the info section. The Widow Ching pirate by Jorge Luis Borges. The author who uses the phrase female corsairs runs the risk of calling up an awkward image. That of the now faded Spanish operetta with its theories of obvious servant girls playing the part of choreographed pirates on noticeably cardboard seas. And yet there have been cases of female pirates, women skilled in the art of sailing the governance of barbarous crews, the pursuit and looting of majestic ships on the high seas. One such woman was Mary Reed, who was quoted once as saying that the profession of piracy wasn't for just anybody, and if you were going to practice it with dignity, you had to be a man of courage, like herself. In the crude beginnings of her career, when she was not yet the captain of her own ship, a young man, she fancied, was insulted by the ship's bully. Mary herself picked a quarrel with the bully and fought him hand-to-hand in the old way of the aisles of the Caribbean. The long, narrow and unpredictable breach loader in her left hand, the trusty saber in her right, the pistol who failed her, but the saber acquitted itself admirably. In 1720, the bold career of Mary Reed was interrupted by a Spanish gallows in Santiago de la Vega on the island of Jamaica. Another female pirate of those waters was Anne Bonny, a magnificent Irish woman of high breasts and fiery hair who risked her life more than once in barding ships. She stood on the deck with Mary Reed and then with her on the scaffold. Her lover, Captain John Rackham, met his own noose at the same hanging. Anne, contemptuous, emerged with that harsh variant on Aisha's rebuke to Boabdil. If you fought like a man, you needn't have been hanged like a dog. Another woman pirate, but a more daring and long-lived one, plied the waters of far Asia. From the Yellow Sea to the rivers on the borders of Anam, I am speaking of the Doughty Widow, Qing, the years of apprenticeship. In 1797, the shareholders and the many pirate ships of the Yellow Sea formed a consortium and they chose one Captain Qing, a just though strict man tested under fire to be the admiral of their new fleet. Qing was so harsh and exemplary in his sacking of the coasts that the terrified residents implored the emperor with gifts and tears to send them aid. Nor did their pitiable requests fall upon deaf ears. They were ordered to set fire to their villages, abandon their fisheries, move inland and learn the unknown science of agriculture. They did all this and so, finding only deserted coastlines, frustrated invaders were forced into way-laying ships, a depredation far more unwelcome than raids on the coasts for its seriously threatened trade. Once again, the imperial government responded decisively. It ordered the former fishermen to abandon their plows and oxen and return to their ores and nets. At this, the peasants, recalling their former terrors, balked. So the authorities determined upon another course. They would make Admiral Qing the master of the royal stables. Qing was willing to accept the buy-off. The stockholders, however, learned of the decision in the nick of time, and the righteous indignation took the form of a plate of rice served up with poisoned greens. The delicacy proved fatal. The soul of the former admiral, a newly appointed master of the royal stables, was delivered up to the deities of the sea. His widow, transfigured by the double treachery, called the pirates together, explained the complex case, and exhorted them to spurn both the emperor's deceitful clemency and odious employment in the service of the shareholders with a bent for poison. She proposed what might be called freelance piracy. She also proposed that they cast votes for a new admiral, and she herself was elected. She was a sapling, thin woman, of sleepy eyes, and a smile that carried a riddle. Her oiled black hair shone brighter than her eyes. Under Mrs. Qing's calm command, the ships launched forth into danger and unto the high seas. The command. Thirteen years of methodical adventuring ensued. The fleet was composed of six squadrons, each under its own banner, red, yellow, green, black, purple, and one, the admiral's own, with the emblem of a serpent. The commanders of the squadrons had such names as bird and stone, scourge of the eastern sea, jewel of the whole crew, wave of many fishes, and high sun. The rules of the fleet, composed by the widow Qing herself, were unappealable and severe, and their measured laconic style was devoid of those withered flowers of rhetoric that lend a ridiculous sort of majesty to the usual official pronouncements of the Chinese. An alarming example of which we shall encounter shortly. Here are some of the articles of the fleet's law. Not the least things shall be taken privately from the stolen and plundered goods. All shall be registered, and the pirate received for himself out of ten parts only two, eight parts belonging to the storehouse, called the general fund. Taking anything out of this general fund without permission shall be death. If any man goes privately on shore, or what is called transgressing the bars, he shall be taken and his ears perforated in the presence of the whole fleet. Repeating the same, he shall suffer death. No person shall debauch, debauch, or at his pleasure captive women taken in the villages and open spaces and brought on board a ship. He must first request the ship's purser for permission and then go aside in the ship's hold. To use violence against any woman without permission of the purser shall be punished by death. Reports brought back by prisoners state that the mess on the pirate ships consisted mainly of hard tack, fattened rats, and cooked rice. On days of combat, the crew would mix gunpowder with their liquor, marked cards and loaded dice, drinking and fan tan, the visions of the opium pipe and little lamp filled idle hours. Two swords simultaneously employed were the weapon of choice. Before boarding, the pirates would sprinkle their cheeks and bodies with garlic water, a shirt charm against injury by fire, breathed from muzzles. The crew of a ship traveled with their women. The captain with his harem, which might consist of five or six women and be renewed with each successive victory. The young emperor Chia Qing speaks. In June or July of 1809, an imperial decree was issued, from which I translate the first paragraph and the last. Many people criticize its style. Miserable and injurious men, men who stamp upon bread, men who ignore the outcry of tax collectors and orphans, men whose small clothes bear the figure of the phoenix and the dragon, men who deny the truth of printed books, men who let their tears flow facing north, such men disturb the happiness of our rivers and the erstwhile trustworthiness of our seas. Day and night, their frail and crippled ships defy the tempest. Their object is not a benevolent one. They are not and never have been the seamen's bosom friend. Far from lending aid, they fall upon him with ferocity and make him an unwilling guest of ruin, mutilation and even death. Thus, these men violate the natural laws of the universe where fences make rivers overflow their banks and flood the plains. Sons turn against their fathers, the principles of wetness and dryness exchange places. Therefore, I command thee to the punishment of these crimes. Admiral Quo Leng, never forget, clemency is the emperors to give. The emperors subject would be presumptuous in granting it. Be cruel, be just, be obeyed, be victorious. The incidental reference to the crippling ships was, of course, a lie. Its purpose was to raise the courage of Quo Leng's expedition. Nine days later, the forces of the Widow Qing engaged the empires. Almost a thousand ships did battle from sun up to sun down, fixed chorus of bells, drums, cannon bursts, curses, gongs and prophecies accompanied the action. The empire's fleet was destroyed. Admiral Quo Leng found occasion to exercise neither the mercy forbidden him nor the cruelty to which he was exhorted. He himself performed a ritual which our own defeated generals choose not to observe the committed suicide. The terrified coastlines and riverbanks. Then the 600 junks of war and the haughty Widow's 40,000 victorious pirates sailed into the mouth of the Zhu Jiang River, sowing fire and appalling celebrations and orphans left and right. Entire villages were raised. In one of them, the prisoners numbered more than a thousand. 120 women who fled to the pathless refuge of the nearby stands of reeds or the patty fields were betrayed by the crying of a baby and sold into slavery in Macau. Though distant, the pathetic tears and cries of mourning from these depredations came to the notice of Qing, the Son of Heaven. Certain historians have allowed themselves to believe that the news of the ravaging of his people caused the emperor less pain than did the defeat of his punitive expedition. Be that as it may, the emperor organized the second expedition. Terrible in banners, sailors, soldiers, implements of war, provisions, soothsayers and astrologers. This time the force was under the command of Admiral Ting Kui Hu, the heavy swarm of ships sailed into the mouth of the Zhu Jiang to cut off the pirate fleet. The widow rushed to prepare for battle. She knew it would be hard, very hard, almost desperate. Her men, after many nights and even months of pillaging and idleness, had grown soft. But the battle did not begin. The sun peacefully rose and without haste set again into the quivering reeds. The men and the arms watched and waited. The noontimes were more powerful than they and the siestas were infinite. The dragon and the vixen. And yet, each evening, lazy flocks of weightless dragons rose high into the sky above the ships of the imperial fleet and hovered delicately above the water, above the enemy decks. These comet-like kites were airy constructions of rice paper and reed, and each silvery or red body bore the identical characters. The widow anxiously studied that regular flight of meteors and in it read the confused and slowly told fable of a dragon that had always watched over a vixen. In spite of the vixen's long ingratitude and constant crimes. The moon grew thin in the sky and still the figures of rice paper and reed wrote the same story each evening with almost imperceptible variations. The widow was troubled and she brooded. When the moon grew fat in the sky and in the red-tinged water, the story seemed to be reaching its end. No one could predict whether infinite pardon or infinite punishment was to be let fall upon the vixen. Yet the inevitable end, whichever it might be, was surely approaching. The widow understood. She threw her two swords into the river, knelt in the bottom of a boat and ordered that she be taken to the flagship of the emperor's fleet. It was evening. The sky was filled with dragons. This time, yellow ones, the widow murmured a single sentence. The vixen seeks the dragon's wing as she stepped aboard the ship. The apotheosis. The chroniclers report that the vixen attained her pardon and that she dedicated her slow old age to opium smuggling. She was no longer the widow. She assumed a name that might be translated as the luster of true instruction. From this period, writes historian, ships began to pass and repass in tranquility. All became quiet on the rivers and tranquil on the four seas. People lived in peace and plenty. Men sold their arms and bought oxen to plow their fields. They buried sacrifices, said prayers on the tops of hills and rejoiced themselves by singing behind screens during the daytime.