(a noir-pirate mashup)
It were a calm night at sea for a change and The Pretty Panoply anchored well. Me and Cookie, the bosun’s mate, were in the galley, enjoying a bucket of salty rum popunders, aye, and a game of Dead Man’s Bones. One-Eyed-Pete was in the forecastle, looking for his other eye, while Dog was cuddling with Rapeclaw, the ship’s cat. The rest of the crew were barnacles on the ship of this here tale.
And then she walked in. Her well-oiled coat from shoulders down to the top of her boots, thick black boots that only a woman could wear, or perhaps a small man. Her tricorner hat cocked at a jaunty angle, although I keep forgetting to ask Cookie what ‘jaunty’ means. Her hair of spun gold, except much more coarse, and not gold as much as a kind of sea-dirty brown. And her eyes as black as the Arabian sea at midnight. Or any sea, really, or, I suppose, pretty much any place at midnight that didn’t have a source of light.
Captain Nobeard, she was called. Under her coat she carried two pistols, a hook, and a stump, just in case. She’d never danced with the sharkies, not yet, our cap’n, but we knew she were eager to do so one day, arrr.
And me? Call me Larry.
“Where’s Filthy Tina?” The cap’n growled. F.T was the first mate.
Cookie and I both shrugged. Not knowing where F.T was meant she weren’t where you were which meant she weren’t laying into your back with the cat-oh-eleven tails. Cruel one, she was, adding two extra tails likes that.
“Did you try the hold, cap’n ma’am?” Cookie said. “Seems Little Davy were in need of a morale boost, I overheard.”
Nobeard just stared at the man. A snarl began to form on her lip.
Cookie gulped. “P’raps I’ll be the one checkin’ the hold, ma’am, cap’n ma’am.” He scuttled off. More popunders fer me.
Nobeard grabbed a mug and dipped it into the grog barrel, quaffed. She gave me a surly glare, and I found a new way to arrange the bones on the table ‘fore me.
“Larry,” she menaced.
“Aye cap’n.”
“It were you who found Dog’s left boot, the one he lost while chasing Rapeclaw for his midnight cuddles a fortnight ago, aye?”
I chanced a glance. She had one eyebrow raised, and her eyes glowed like they shouldn’t in all that inky dark. “Aye.” I said. “Crushed down ‘tween the mizzen and a tangle ‘o sheets down the orlop, arrr.”
“You’re good at lookin fer things, are ye?” she said, squintin’ at me.
“If it pleases ye, cap’n. Course there’s a difference ‘tween lookin for things, and findin ’em.”
She scowled. “You good at findin’ things too, ya scallywag?”
“Can find me own arse, usually, if ye let me use both me hands.”.
She chuckled at that, quaffed once more, then threw her mug into the deep sink. “May have a job fer ya, Larry, when we make port at Blood Island. Come see me in my quarters for yer off catchin yer next disease.” Then she left the way she’d come.
I popped another popunder over me teeth and gulped it down. Not the best ingredients in these salty rum abominations. That’s why me stomach was feelin’ queasy of a sudden, I thought to meself.
Cookie walked back in, sat down heavily in his seat. His skullcap was askew, his shirt was in tatters. He took up the last of the popunders, gobbled ’em.
“Ye find F.T.?” I asked.
“What do you think?” he curred, blood in his yes. Literal blood, maybe not even his own. So the answer was yes.