Captains of the Sands Read Online Free Page A

left in search of another dwelling, the darkness of a doorway, underneath a dock, the warm body of a bitch. And other rats returned to rule until the Captains of the Sands cast their eyes on the abandoned building.
    At that time the door had fallen off to one side and one of the group, on a certain day when he was strolling along the extension of their domains (because all the sandy area of the waterfront, as all the city of Bahia too, belongs to the Captains of the Sands), went into the warehouse.
    It would be a much better sleeping place than just the sands, than the docks of other warehouses where the water rose so high sometimes that it threatened to carry them off. And from that night on a large number of the Captains of the Sands slept in the old abandoned warehouse in the company of the rats, under the yellow moon. Before the vastness of the sands, a whiteness without end. In the distance the sea breaking on the beach. Through the door they saw the lights of ships entering and leaving. Through the ceiling they saw the sky with its stars, the moon that lighted them up.
    Then, later, they transferred the collection of objects that their day’s work brought them to the warehouse. Strange things then entered the warehouse. No stranger, however, than those children, urchins of all colors and of the most varied ages, from nine to sixteen, who at night lay down on the floorand under the dock and slept, indifferent to the wind that howled about the building, indifferent to the rain that often bathed them, but with their eyes fastened on the lights of the ships, their ears fixed on the songs that came from the smaller vessels…
    Here too is the dwelling of the chief of the Captains of the Sands: Pedro Bala, the Bullet. He has been called that since early times, since he was five years old. Today he is fifteen. For ten of those years he has wandered about the streets of Bahia. He never knew anything about his mother, his father died of a bullet wound. He was left alone and he spent years learning about the city. Today he knows all its streets and all its alleys. There isn’t a shop, store, establishment that he doesn’t know. When he joined the Captains of the Sands (the newly-constructed waterfront attracted all the abandoned children of the city to its sands) the chief was Raimundo the Halfbreed, a strong and copper-colored mulatto.
    Raimundo the Halfbreed didn’t last long in the leadership. Pedro Bala was much more active, he knew how to plan jobs, he knew how to deal with the others, he had the authority of a leader in his eyes and his voice. One day they fought. Raimundo’s misfortune was to pull out a razor and cut Pedro’s face, a scar that he had for the rest of his life. The others intervened and, since Pedro was unarmed, took his side and waited for the revenge that wasn’t long in coming. One night when Raimundo tried to beat up Outrigger, Pedro took over for the little black boy and they rolled around in the most sensational fight the sands of the waterfront had ever seen. Raimundo was taller and older. Pedro Bala, however, his blond hair flying, the red scar on his face, had a frightening agility and from that day on Raimundo not only gave up the leadership of the Captains of the Sands but the sands themselves. A while later he signed on board a ship.
    Everybody recognized Pedro Bala’s right to the leadership and it was during that time that the city began to hear about the Captains of the Sands, abandoned children who lived by stealing. No one ever knew the exact number of children wholived that way. There were at least a hundred, and more than forty of them slept in the ruins of the old warehouse.
    Dressed in rags, dirty, half-starved, aggressive, cursing, and smoking cigarette butts, they were, in truth, the masters of the city, the ones who knew it completely, the ones who loved it completely, its posts.

NIGHT WITH THE “CAPTAINS OF THE SANDS”
    The great night of peace in Bahia comes from the