Terese Svoboda - Pirate Talk or Mermalade

I once had luck fishing in the night. Once only, and didn’t eat it, though the fish be bigger than even that turtle.

Why not, by the boils of St. Augustine!

You don’t hear the singing?

No songs, none. Boil the sand inside that whale’s eye you pocket and eat that.

That’s hardly fish. You’d do better to keelhaul yourself and pray you scrape barnacles off the bottom of the boat with your chest. They attend only to god, these fish below.

Minister fish, a whale. The second mate will catch nothing.

Or the fish will catch him, like Shanks, out from the bottom of a wave. That shark leapt like a marlin to catch him. I felt sorrow for the shark, having Shanks to chew. Here, wet this bit of knot and snap it at the watch in the crow’s nest. Leeward, now.

Those were real curses. My brother used to say pirates cursed for nothing, just to put fear into anyone’s hearing, but I think we curse most often to hear ourselves alive.

More like fiends than men. Let us curse altogether and get the sails up.

Bloody sails. I do miss the Yo, ho, ho. I wish Luggams would have it.

Turn your head thus and sing yourself:

Booty, ho! By the blood of Our Lady .

Booty, ho! Put gold to my shingles

and pied silver to my latch

and teeth all gold in a row—

Booty, ho!

Mind the line there.

I’ll bury my gold and live out my days full to the ears with grog and no one will come around accusing me.

To have lost every penny of the last run.

They were bigger than us.

Bigger, ha. Too bad about the booty. You voted for Madagascar?

The Cape, the Cape is the way. Prizes going to the bottom of the ocean for want of pirates at the Cape.

We’ll need a heap of wind to get there.

And a bit of bread or a haunch. With a spit turning right on deck, and dandyfunk, and flip in our cups to the top.

Gunpowder punch! Wait, the line be fouled there.

I’ll lend you a hand. That last island we tried, there was a lad who swam out — He looked so like yourself. A copy in black.

So they say. ‘Tis a favorite island of mine, it is. I’ve stopped and gone down a dozen times.

Others have called it a little Boston, after you.

Once or twice, I admit, we’ve had to pull anchor in haste. See the dawn star off port?

Aye.

That’s no storm coming before it with the daylight — a sail’s upon us.

Ahoy!

Ship ahoy! Arm yourselves!

It’s a terrible moment when you thrust your head over the side, a-scrambling for purchase when they could stick your throat so easy—

Aye, and we go ahead in this wind so slowly you’d think we were towing our pots astern and the mattresses.

Huzzah!

Ocean makes me sick.

Grog makes you groggy. Land made you landbound. Drink a little saltwater to let the sea settle in. Pirates always take a dose just before the swells start.

I won’t fall for drinking one of your wee grogs a second round. There I was, about to land and start a new life—

Of clocks and watches! Not even your beloved bone. I’ve saved you twice tonight, once from the other cutthroats aboard, and once from your own life.

Did you have to hit me bang on the pate quite so hard?

You’ll get used to it.

I’ll never be getting used to taking blows from my own brother.

This is a pirate ship.

Yes, yes, so they say. Just make up a paper that declares you took me by force then I’ll give you no trouble. You have me now, brother, in the burden of a prisoner.

Hush. You’re no prisoner. Luggams remembers you. He’s taken you on to pull my mate’s line.

Is that so? I am sorry to have killed your mate.

You did not have to run him quite through.

I did! I did have to run him through! He would’ve done the same to me.

My mate was fair that way, though you would have liked him. From Boston, where the Tattoo King put his marks upon him. Here, take the sail hand-over-hand with the needle and mend these exploded holes. At least the man had sons a-plenty.

And you have regained a brother.

But lost a cutlass.

He fell to the deep at my single thrust.

He did. Throw me the line.

But I thought pirates kept chests full of weapons, everything shared, that’s what I thought, and then divided it in the pirate way, which means, for one, I should have seen a bit of what we were hauling that you ate right after the taking? At least a bit of it. When does the cheese from my boat stop at me, with the haunches of lamb, sheep and beef, given out in the proper pirate’s way? On a regular vessel at least they offer around the gristle.

Stop, you must stop. Every boat rides its own sea, whatever it becomes. Do you think we sign in a circle, the way they tell it, or swear upon a hatchet instead of the Bible? Smith, the quartermaster, tells it true.

They call him quartermaster, this lawless brine-mouthed bunch?

This be the pirate life, says Smith, the new pirate’s: he should be tarred so that his skin turns pale, as pale as a turnip — that is, after all the peeling — and that it is the paleness that kills the cowards and not the sharks he screams to be fed to, all blown up with white after the tar’s gone, and bleeding red blood through the skin. Pale as a turnip — it is a nice turn of the tongue. That’s the start of a pirate life got right, the way Smith tells it. You wait.

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.