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Authors: Terese Svoboda
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skirts.
It is hard to distract him. Just the sound of my pegleg upon deck and he comes at me again with his lash.
He calls me his bête noir.
Isn’t that one of those little cakes? He is stupid not to force you or we would be dead and at the bottom of the drink, both of us, from your lack.
They had dugong the week before.
“Zee fair mermaid of zee zea.” He has taken you away so often to “heez zuite” it’s hard to believe he has not tired of the farce.
I keep him off with stories—how boats will sail underwater by the power of cannonballs, one ball smacking the other, of the prince who cuts off his finger and a new prince grows from it, of the mermaid who sang to the wrong man—you know, whatever I can twist together.
We would still be swanning the decks if the parrot hadn’t flown from your bosom and ruined our Mayflower story. And the magistrate had to be impotent! Spending so long on that island even the gossip goes green. But the shackles are the same.
At least I don’t have to bear them on my ankles. It would be hard to sneak down with their clink, clink, clink.
If I ever get hold of a cat o’ nine tails—
You sound pirate enough now.
Aye, I’ll cut that parrot down first, and then the rest of them too. Avast ye, and the like.
Where can we escape to? The swells are high enough without us.
See the paleness in me.
Pale as a pirate’s turnip.
Bother. Let’s talk of the soup they kept in the Turk’s Head pot, across the gibbety square, the fine bones and mustards we never ate as pirates.
We’re in the soup now.
It is rough today.
Everyone else in chains goes aboveboard but you.
I don’t want to go up. There’s Silas and Fremont, dead of the fever and if the Frenchman finds them, I’ll have to haul out their bodies and my wrist is finished, a bloody stump from these shackles. I might as well get a hook now and be done with it.
You should not have got your hand caught in that loop of rope.
I was trying to grab for his faretheewell when he walked down with his whip, and my peg tripped me. But what of you? You’re a gimlet-eyed false woman with your fineries so fair, so many castoff jerkins you look about to birth a nation of castaways.
They do round me. He lets me keep them all, even the lacy bits.
No more talk of the Frenchman. Let’s talk of women,
the women of my wants, the women in my life.
The harridan, your wife?
She made me drink quince at every meal and diced my socks with rough yarn. There is nothing like that kind of a woman to suck you down.
The anchor that pulls you under.
The woman we courted, now there was a woman.
Aye. A pirate’s woman before we were pirates.
I daresay she had an eye for you in my dazzling wake.
An eye, yes, but not a foot. She didn’t stray from your path.
The last woman I heard had a tip-tap so light on deck it could have been a goat.
It was a goat. You could smell it roast for hours.
Not food, not so much food in our talk. Me-hearty me with a song if you must. My wrist!
Avast ye, creature of Ma-a-a-mmon,
Bail ye, swine, past long lost Adam—
You rhyme without shame.
I hate this belowdecks of yours and my getting pale for a slavers’ auction. Let us talk of fish instead, of the fish swimming alongside us, a’singing.
That was a swell, no fish song.
They sing what fools we be, you a scrimshaw saint, I a dead mother’s helpmate.
Your foot is in my hair.
I thought it was vermin!
The fish sing that the wind is upon us now. The fish, the wind—they sing together.
Your bowels are so loud I can scarce hear myself.
Now a scratching only, a fish come to gut us from below.
21
Six Months and a Storm
All hanz on deck! Methinz zee ship is zinking or I have fallen into me glasz! Where is zee crew?
Washed over or strung out on the line, shackled and drowned behind the boat.
I zay drink to zee drowned then! Where is the plug to plug ziss hole?
Lightning green on the rigging, the spar’s loosed up on deck, and the waves—
A
It is hard to distract him. Just the sound of my pegleg upon deck and he comes at me again with his lash.
He calls me his bête noir.
Isn’t that one of those little cakes? He is stupid not to force you or we would be dead and at the bottom of the drink, both of us, from your lack.
They had dugong the week before.
“Zee fair mermaid of zee zea.” He has taken you away so often to “heez zuite” it’s hard to believe he has not tired of the farce.
I keep him off with stories—how boats will sail underwater by the power of cannonballs, one ball smacking the other, of the prince who cuts off his finger and a new prince grows from it, of the mermaid who sang to the wrong man—you know, whatever I can twist together.
We would still be swanning the decks if the parrot hadn’t flown from your bosom and ruined our Mayflower story. And the magistrate had to be impotent! Spending so long on that island even the gossip goes green. But the shackles are the same.
At least I don’t have to bear them on my ankles. It would be hard to sneak down with their clink, clink, clink.
If I ever get hold of a cat o’ nine tails—
You sound pirate enough now.
Aye, I’ll cut that parrot down first, and then the rest of them too. Avast ye, and the like.
Where can we escape to? The swells are high enough without us.
See the paleness in me.
Pale as a pirate’s turnip.
Bother. Let’s talk of the soup they kept in the Turk’s Head pot, across the gibbety square, the fine bones and mustards we never ate as pirates.
We’re in the soup now.
It is rough today.
Everyone else in chains goes aboveboard but you.
I don’t want to go up. There’s Silas and Fremont, dead of the fever and if the Frenchman finds them, I’ll have to haul out their bodies and my wrist is finished, a bloody stump from these shackles. I might as well get a hook now and be done with it.
You should not have got your hand caught in that loop of rope.
I was trying to grab for his faretheewell when he walked down with his whip, and my peg tripped me. But what of you? You’re a gimlet-eyed false woman with your fineries so fair, so many castoff jerkins you look about to birth a nation of castaways.
They do round me. He lets me keep them all, even the lacy bits.
No more talk of the Frenchman. Let’s talk of women,
the women of my wants, the women in my life.
The harridan, your wife?
She made me drink quince at every meal and diced my socks with rough yarn. There is nothing like that kind of a woman to suck you down.
The anchor that pulls you under.
The woman we courted, now there was a woman.
Aye. A pirate’s woman before we were pirates.
I daresay she had an eye for you in my dazzling wake.
An eye, yes, but not a foot. She didn’t stray from your path.
The last woman I heard had a tip-tap so light on deck it could have been a goat.
It was a goat. You could smell it roast for hours.
Not food, not so much food in our talk. Me-hearty me with a song if you must. My wrist!
Avast ye, creature of Ma-a-a-mmon,
Bail ye, swine, past long lost Adam—
You rhyme without shame.
I hate this belowdecks of yours and my getting pale for a slavers’ auction. Let us talk of fish instead, of the fish swimming alongside us, a’singing.
That was a swell, no fish song.
They sing what fools we be, you a scrimshaw saint, I a dead mother’s helpmate.
Your foot is in my hair.
I thought it was vermin!
The fish sing that the wind is upon us now. The fish, the wind—they sing together.
Your bowels are so loud I can scarce hear myself.
Now a scratching only, a fish come to gut us from below.
21
Six Months and a Storm
All hanz on deck! Methinz zee ship is zinking or I have fallen into me glasz! Where is zee crew?
Washed over or strung out on the line, shackled and drowned behind the boat.
I zay drink to zee drowned then! Where is the plug to plug ziss hole?
Lightning green on the rigging, the spar’s loosed up on deck, and the waves—
A
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