Terese Svoboda - Pirate Talk or Mermalade

This could be but the eye, just the eye of the storm.

I’ve heard tell of it.

We’ll swim home.

Don’t dance in the rigging yet. I’ll climb the crowsnest.

Maybe we are drowned and don’t know it. The blue-painted ocean — who said that? Why do you dally so?

Don’t tip the flagon so deep. Wait until I make my report.

Report?

It’s a trick of the weather up there. Is there a rope yet to belay me?

Under that cask that is split.

I don’t see a cloud in all of the sky, not a one.

My stump be a’tingle, how can it storm more?

We’ll need real luck this time. The parrot—

— left its feather.

I’ll take a drink now. What — just the dregs?

If the wind comes, athwart is where I’ll be the safest. I’ll lie down there.

It’s black above now, you drunkard.

There’s a face at the scuppers, a dead slave come to haunt us. Oh, god from above!

A woman?

They say they come at the last.

Only a screaming wind and more wave.

Best we lash ourselves down.

Yes, the deck at last.

Not both of us to one plank or we’ll both go to heaven.

One for both, or none. No swimming for me.

Nor for myself neither.

The wind! The wind!

Come away from the side. The heaving’s less here, hold to the hatch.

The heaving’s worse, the wine — I’m—

All over me.

I saved you.

I thought the fish saved me.

That terrible fish? It was as big as the size of yourself and roiled through those waters like two men, it was as big as the water pigs Bligh told us of.

Must’ve come up from the deep on account of the storm.

It had you afloat on its scales until I came at it with my cutlass. I couldn’t see its face—

You stuck it with the cutlass. Almost through the gills.

Gills or gullet, I couldn’t see for the thrashing. Waters like hell, they were. It had ahold of you and you were going full to your end, going down, down, down in all your many clothes.

My pockets will drown me yet.

Take out the coin next time.

I had no coin. I saw other fish circling, while it had me.

Not I.

Others came up around it in the swirl of the blood and the storm.

You did not see that. You were too soon holding fast to my leg and blowing to the surface.

I saw what I saw. The fish was less holding me than pulling me down as sure my leg now dangles for the sharks to trim.

I saved you with my wooden leg afloat.

If the wind hadn’t fallen, we would have been finished, wooden leg or no.

The wind fell.

The wind is falling more now.

Falling.

Falling.

The water is cold and will be colder — this current sweeps north.

More boats north.

The waves will decide, boat or not.

So soon? What ho?

Those rogues never turned our way before, unless to gull us. Stay low.

Let’s hullo them.

No — wait for a sign—

We should wait while sharks and the other fishy demons eat off our last three legs?

We should. That’s Smith at the bow, that villainous grogman, the keeper of the stories of brothers Bungleston and of pirates pale as turnips. From Luggams’ crew.

Friend or foe? I don’t remember.

Friend, friend — I don’t know. Someone we know.

You two, whatever you be doing in the drink swimming like the fish knew your names? Get on aboard and rest your fins.

What happened to your face?

Lightning.

It was not lightning. As true as I am the Reverend Baltrick and have run before many a sail on the open seas, never have I seen what I saw with Smith. It was a fish that hit him. It flew up and hit him across the nose on his way up the mast that last day we were becalmed off the Cape. A plague of fishes such as the Bible speaks of had flown onto the boat, even into his pockets and down his shirt. They flew in from all the heavens and one hit him.

Poor fish.

Aye, Smith even found fish in his bed a day or so later, didn’t you, Smith?

As you say it, Reverend. But the lightning did it.

He smelled to heaven.

I say it was lightning, Saul’s true lightning, that mess of fish coming at me in the air, the Lord’s will. The Lord knows. He sent a fish flying up out of the sea a’flapping to my face as sure as lightning.

The Lord? Is this the Smith that sailed the seven seas with Luggams and myself?

Yea, I be that Smith. And this be your brother from the takings?

Aye, and a fine pirate my brother was after he was hauled.

True pirates, drinking the sea in shifts, hanging onto that leg for hours.

Pray, put thy swords and the small knives in the chest there and drink some of our wee grog to stop your shaking from the cold of the deep. The cutlass chest is eight paces hence, more or less, put it there. That’s it.

Mind the pegleg.

Why, our thanks to you, Reverend Baltrick. The grog is good, not the burnt peas we drink that slavers make.

Well, we be not slavers. Have no fear of that. And no blow will sink us because we have cleared the sucking sump of the gates of hell and are bound over the farthest seas in Our Lord’s name back to our port. But now I must see to changing the course. Smith, thou wilt stand watch.

Baltrick, Baltrick — I believe I heard our mother speak of this Baltrick.

Could he be the Baltrick of the Heaven Sent, the preacher of the Seven Seas she did once have the acquaintance of, as they say?

This Baltrick knows no women.

None? Not even in the seeds of his youth? Our mother swore on her deathbed—

Reverend Baltrick is not the man of your mother’s bed, death or not.

Our mother did swear of many.

You have his very eyes, brother.

You can see that, with your one?

What are you two whispering?

We have much to be grateful for and thank the Reverend indeed.

The Reverend has it that you must attend the rigging now, with my help. There’s a loop that is bent wrong from the blow.

I’ll take the halyard.

So, Smith, how did you come into this service from Luggams’? To my memory, you left his boat just before we were wrecked.

It was just a matter of shifting my doss, you know, when nobody was looking. After Luggams came to nothing and a bad doubloon, owing to the fine crew he shipped, I quit him for a tighter lot. That is to say, I sail now for the Lord Almighty straight out of Boston Harbor even on the blackest of days, and in storms, in search of souls.

Our Smith, the pirate? I say it again but I can’t believe it.

I rescue pirates and return them to the Bosom of our Lord, or as the Judge sees fit.

Judge?

This one with the leg isn’t right, is he? Always wanting to repeat. Has he been lightning-hit as well as me?

He’s right enough, Smith. Go on with it.

My task is to steal the heinous souls of pirates back for God and Mammon, and on the occasion of a soul unrepentant or as a judgment against the people, the Reverend here sails them in and then the Judge tries them and hangs them.

For a bounty, of course.

The wise-legged one! He at least knows the cost of saving the souls of pirates for our Savior who both giveth and taketh away the way. Do not worry, we are not so far from land, a day’s journey, no more, and you too will soon be taketh away.

Smith!

The storm pulls hard when you have the Lord Almighty coming for you. Belowdecks, now.

We too be saved and sorry, and will be full of joy to abide in the searching for souls with you. Let us enter Boston in triumph, for the judgment of pirates other than ourselves!

It’s the eye patch no one will believe. You shan’t pass for naught but pirate.

I’ll pluck it off and offer my eye-hole.