A story like that’s why I prefer belowdecks, I’ll take belowdecks anytime. Without the sea in my face, I can think of the land.
No air below except a rat’s cough. I’m for sleeping under the sheets midships and chancing I’ll get my throat cut when someone slips on board to right the wrongs and retake the treasure, such as we did on your boat. A great wont of treasure on your boat I might add, unless we count the watch plaitings.
Treasure for some. You didn’t have to throw every bale over.
You won’t be wanting those plaitings now anyway, that job is gone. You can get the boat’s works set straight for us instead.
Set me off on land!
Here be the Smith I was telling you of.
The two of ye quarrel so, you’d think you were made of one mother, bad luck to us and to you both. They say brothers save each other and none of the rest.
We are not so much brothers, not really. Not according to our Ma. Besides, we quarrel away, and stick the loser.
I fought with the brothers Bungleston who raged the seas the back end of the ‘80s. Aye, I served under the Roger — not the jolly, mind you — and for fun, one brother would take a plank and magic it right across the water, over one wave and another, and sometimes he would signal to us, all the while sinking into the foam. Fish took the other brother when he, for spite, at last put the board under himself and sank straight down. Brothers they were for sure.
A danger to themselves and others.
But this boy’s got arms on him that could lift a barrel of sand and a face that would belay a mother, if she saw two of them together. You boys keep the deck quiet with yourselves if you can, and take the watch whilst I have a hand of whist, and wait.
Aye, aye.
Aye. Aye, aye, aye.
You are giddy, fearing for your life.
I can’t stop laughing. What were the chances of my own brother falling prey to us? At least I can laugh, I am falling down laughing at that. It’s time to laugh.
We are the only two aboveboard now.
Not so loud. We have a job to do.
We?
Tie the wheel down, brother.
What is about to happen?
Luggams knows. He’s folded his spyglass like a snail’s trick and taken it below.
Brother?
I’m the pirate captain now, like atop the whale. If you weren’t so green, you could scale the ropes and sing out verses from the f’osicle in honor of Luggams who hates them.
You remember wrong about that whale. It were me atop.
You were gouging at the eye, the bloody eye. I stood atop and heard it sing.
It were the woman Peters took, singing.
She couldn’t sing, she could only count.
You weren’t listening. I wish I had a cutlass. I don’t like the quiet.
They do keep a chest full of cutlasses below.
I knew it so.
They sort them after a boat-taking such as yours. Myself, I snatch any one that comes my way. Roger and Ebert, the plunder lads, they’ll be joining us at the next ocean.
I’d like one with bone at the hilt or a ruby and a broad blade like an Indian’s.
Leave the whalebone and watches and you might make a pirate yet.
A cutlass, just for protection. To cut my way back to land.
Hear that?
You could hear a bream breathing. That’s nothing.
You don’t know the half of the fear that swims under to get at you. All seamen worth their salt — and that’s heaps of salt — know there’s strangeness under their feet, about how it’s us or our cousins at the very bottom, walking around as usual, breathing in and out the actual water.
It’s a strange life, the sea life, I’ll grant you that.
Soon you’ll have the look of the strange yourself.
All this glug-glug-glug of grog, and the hold, and me with a bump on my head.
One of the others would’ve quartered you with two blows.
This be the price I pay, this and the yo-ho-ho. I hate the water more than before. Hear it again?
That’s weather, that’s nothing.
A hole’s starting in the side of the ship, a hole where someone’s swum under with a poleaxe.
You’re just trying to frighten me. That sound’s been breathing since the fishes swam, since the sun came up on your quartermaster Smith telling his story. You don’t hear anything.
They’re sharpening their cutlasses on each other’s cutlasses. They’ll be over the side even sooner and sharper. We have to go first.
Some ship must’ve seen you take mine.
Water’s seeping into the side of the ship. We’re going to have to swim for it.
There’s no one in sight.
Only the Malagasy swim, with their daggers in their mouths, and so jolly the rest of the time.
I’ll tell them I was taken by force, I’ll say I never did what pirates do except that you would kill me if I didn’t. Let’s hide.
You landlubbing coward. Take this pig knife. It will make a pike if you lashed it to the mop with a length of line and twist the line double. We’ll board them first, as quick as they show themselves.
With all the cutlasses you save for yourself, you’ll soon be safe and lifting grog in Marseilles, impressing the women with your pirating.
Stop kicking at the door. They’ll think you’ve been hung and never come out. You have to make it sound like happiness. A jig. Like this. Dance the way you danced with Cap’n Peters’ girl.
I never knew you could pick up your feet like that.
Ma could, when she wasn’t practicing to dangle. Or when she dangled. The fiddler knew.
Let’s wave the white flag before we stain it with our own blood, let’s tell them Luggams made us do it and show them Luggams. If I hoist this—
Keep your shirt on.
Before I die, let me show you the bone I carved on the voyage out, bought with the last of my money. “Man Sawing at a Tree on the Occasion of His Betrothing.”
The title is bigger than the piece.
Aye.
Don’t break the door down. Someone is as liable to come through with a plate of brisket as with a knife.
We’re the plate of brisket. Don’t you see? We’re the tasty chum and that’s why they’ve left us up here, to draw them out. I think the deck leans. They’re counting the powders and purses below.
These coves we’re passing do stink of the Spanish or at least of a Moor tied up in them, burying treasure by the chest as if it were a crop. I say, two boats in a week! What luck!
Hullo! Over here! Bring them on!
They come on like flies.
I’ll clean the foredeck with this fork. You get the others up out of their coffins belowdecks — let them fight to their ends and not ours.
12. Hours Later
Get up now and quit your moaning. Best we mop the deck with the blood of the others.
My leg.
Get up, I say. I think we’re the last. No one else is looking alive.
Leg.
You can move that leg. You can, I saw you move it when that Moor went after you.
See his cutlass, how it shines — it shines like a jewel in a jar.
Move your leg.
Tomorrow. See the light on the edge of it?
I’ll move your leg myself then.
My leg!
Don’t scream. Give me your kerchief to stop the blood. And your cutlass.
Not the one I wrested from three brigands and a captain with just your pigknife held between my teeth?
Magnificent, you were. So fierce their eyes didn’t blink but you had them shaking. You slashed and slashed. I wondered where you found your piracy so quick, it must be in the family. Now, give me the cutlass.
You’ll have my own knife at your throat, you will, just like I had the captain with it.