Terese Svoboda - Pirate Talk or Mermalade

It’s the patch and Boston harbor only a tide away, and the number of pirates we find who are scarce as you hereabouts, except after storms. And, of course, there’s the bounty. Stand just here on your pegleg — another point of the pirate.

I’m a watchmaker, not a pirate.

Reverend, they go not willingly to God.

No — not the irons again—

We hoist sail and wash the decks better than most. Our last captain — a Frenchman he was — thought well of our handling of the line. This hook I have be the best ballast for a sturdy knot.

To blows then!

Good for you, Smith — in one strike. But methinks you should have found a better set of shackles in port. What do we go out for if we have only this soft tin — to rescue crippled sailors from their watery grave? Fetch the bit and the cord from the chest.

Not so tight.

Smith’s a blackguard, Reverend. I tell you in our sainted mother’s name.

Yes, perhaps he seems reformed at hand, but he’ll tow you to hell and back for your ship. Whilst ourselves, we are just poor boys afloat, rescued and homeless from the terrible storm.

Quiet, the two of you, or I’ll belay you both again with the “hand o’ God.”

Have pity. We are your sons indeed, sent by and by. Our very mother tells us Baltrick’s the one, aye, Baltrick, and we set sail to find him, no reason other than for the recovery of our father.

Prithee?

Oh, father!

Why did they have to hang Smith in such a dead wind? Row faster and the stench will lighten. I’ll watch the course.

I see nothing but the blasted moon of your back.

Just row and we’re bound to hit something.

Baltrick.

Sea wolves and jackanapes! No wonder Ma didn’t hold to him. I’m sure the heat of hate has already set his sail, if not the stink of Smith, Baltrick’s bonus.

Smith always did stink.

He stank up the whole of the colony. The gaoler told me the surgeons were wanting a try at him, to have a peek at his heart and suchlike but the gibbet was too soon fouled by crows dissecting on their own, having a look at the black heart themselves.

You are a one for disappointing that gaoler. He didn’t like Smith.

I sang when the noose came up.

And what be the tune? I may need it yet.

The song is on my tongue tip, it is there but I can’t tell you, it is gone the way they say it goes. But you can be sure I didn’t stand around trying to catch it again — I ran. Pray, how did you stall your gaoler’s fancy?

With the figures I put into the gaol wall using the spoon butt—“St. Peter Choosing the Keys.” My years of practice for the bone repaid me well. For every prisoner the gaoler said he would always get the cleverer, and I was the cleverest of all.

Aye. The burying you told him was.

Oh, but those eight buried silver bars, I say like I have laid eyes on them, even hauled them halfway around the world. Like pirates float to the beach on bars of gold or silver!

That would be a shipwreck.

I made mention to the gaoler of that fresh water running in the glen just outside the town. A right marshy place, I say. Then he tells the hangman I need time to repent and brings me double rations and forgets to close the door quite so hard as before. We be needing a new door for half a year now, he says and he lifts his eyebrows like they aren’t his own.

It’s the spoon you stole they’ll hang you for next time.

It’s the ring in my ear.

They have the teeth of pirates is what the woman called out from the hanging crowd. Look at their teeth, will you? They have the teeth of the islands, soft from the cane and the scurvy.

Never trust an innocent girl.

With us still heaving out of the sea. And Smith talking of the Lord as quick as he could.

It was his sister that didn’t like him, that was the poxed woman who called out. We did a bit of convincing with Baltrick too.

Just row a bit to my shoulder, I think I see the shine of the sea starting under that slice of the moon.

No. A squid jumping to the light.

These good town fathers chose to have a man hold a red hot iron just for stealing a chicken.

The gaoler followed close on me in the night, with a fat cudgel ready to put me in that hole he was going to dig for the treasure.

I saw bits of his shirt left on the thorn that keeps that harbor so quiet.

You saw him then?

I followed his shirt and stole up behind him and he nearly dropped his shovel, he was taken with me so sudden. I said, Here, I said, I am dead, and I gave the shovel back to him. The silver’s ten paces farther, I walked away saying. Pieces o’ nine, I heard him say while I turned to find you, pieces o’ ten. Like he was counting it already.

We must watch ourselves exact at this latitude or he’ll have us on the boil.

Unless he finds O’Henry’s chest.

Only O’Henry’s own mother knows the whereabouts of that chest and she is carving the rock that is over it with a teaspoon, keeping the leavings in a bag under her skirts. Besides, O’Henry turned Mohammedan before he left Luggams. You can hear him moaning in that part of the marsh, My foreskin, oh my front piece.

Stop, stop. I haven’t laughed for a week.

It would be enough for the gaoler to find his gaol empty of the pirate next to be hung, but for the gaoler to be found guilty of the unlawful stealing of a pirate’s treasure unlawfully got!

The judge will see to the finding — and then split it.

Maybe there are truly bars of silver buried in there, resting? With the trees, the mud, the easy confluence of drowned sailors and ships and O’Henry moaning in the marsh?

Our ploughed luck. And here’s more of it — we might as well be glued to the sand with this leadbottomed skiff of yours, it sits so heavy in the water against a tide like this.

A ship will come along, a better one than before.

There’s a tolling now.

Three. Time moved slow waiting for you to come out of the muck before I heard your whistle.

Row to the next cove, there’s bound to be a ship there, in such a pirate’s drink.

But whose?

Row, just row.

It’s a danger—

Wish we were served with Smith’s flying fish today. I could eat two raw, still flapping.

Nothing will come along, ship or whale. We’ll have to row to Timbuktu.

Hanged.

Egad!

It means we are on the right road.

Like the devil’s hawk it is, waiting for me in the damned true hunger of my youth, fluttering above.

Hanged.

Food, food at last — that’s what I hear. Flying swankey.

Row. And row.

Sometimes I think you’re happy to have that leg of wood, to trail it beside my rowing and tease the bird.

Oh, many’s the time I wanted such a leg, oh, yes. To go with mine eye and hook. Get to your rowing hard. Harder!

Hanged.

Hush, hush — a ship.

It’s got Baltrick’s prow on it.

You thick-witted, skull-less, one-legged, one-eyed idiot-brother — not so loud!

They must be out carousing.

The boat, hold the boat — Don’t hit it again. Where’s the line?

Hanged.

Not if the watch is drunk and sleeping.

Let’s see what we can take before they take us.

A pleasure to plunder our dear father, be he yours or mine.

Beef, beef — and that one that holds the corn — the lightest one’s leather. See, the chalk marks?

A little more of the candle and I could see — move the candle thus. Your arm ruins the light—

I hope the watch can’t untie your knots.

His head is knots.

Here’s a cask about the right size of the ones I heard Baltrick was taking on, though it’s not dry. Hear it?