Joaquim Silva had never liked being on the sea. Although his home town of Viana do Castelo bustled with sailors and fishermen, and over half the life of the town revolved around the sea, Joaquim was much happier standing on the shore and simply looking at the ocean than being on a small boat and being sick. His father and grandfather, both fishermen, were disgusted by his refusal to accompany them on every trip, though his mother was secretly relieved that her only surviving son did not seem to want to follow in their seafaring steps. She was assisted in her defence of her son due to his small stature and slight build as well as his interest and hard work with the small plot of land the family farmed, and his apparent ability to coax healthy plants from the thinnest of soils.

It was pure bad luck, then, that had Joaquim daydreaming his way down the Rua da Alta Mira that ran by the port as he was returning home with a bag of seeds given to him by his aunt.  He didn’t see the small gang of men from the Santa Maria as they pushed their way down the street until it was too late and he suddenly found himself being marched towards a ship moored close by, the seeds trailing behind him from the bag split in the sudden scuffle.

Life on board the ship was even worse than being on his father’s fishing boat. He spent the first few days being violently sick, but this only seemed to amuse the ship’s crew. The Captain, it seemed, took special delight in making Joaquim run from one of the ship with messages, and the ship’s cook made sure that the buckets of food for the crew, which he had to carry from the galley to the foredeck, were as full and as heavy as could be. He slept on the lower deck, oblivious to the hard wooden planks as he fell into an exhausted sleep each night.

When the Santa Maria reached South America he had to stay on board while most of the crew went ashore with the Captain. They stayed there for over two months, and during that time Joaquim only went ashore twice. Both times he felt seasick all over again as he tried to find his land lubbers legs. He was on shore for the second time when the crew and the Captain returned, the donkeys they had acquired laden with baskets and boxes stuffed with all manner of gold and jewels. Joaquim had little idea of the value of what the sailors had brought back with them, and once back on board he found his sleeping place had been filled with hard metal and stones, which he proceeded to make into a nest in which he could retreat from life on board and try to recall the memories of his mother and their little farm, memories that were fast retreating from reality into dreams.

He was carrying two extraordinarily heavy buckets of food for the crew when the alarm was sounded.  It seems that a pirate ship had been sighted.