Free Pirate Talk or Mermalade by Terese Svoboda Page B

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.

25
    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