Arrrrrrrrrrr
30 Mar 2022Today’s prompt: “You are a pirate. Describe your perfect day.”
You’re midway through your breakfast of salt pork and ale when your first mate bursts in to tell you that the lad in the crow’s nest has just spotted a merchant ship.
You give orders to the crew of your ship, the Tipsy Mermaid, to pursue it. The wind is with you and you quickly catch up to the vessel. You can see the merchant ship’s cannons trained at you, and the members of the ship’s crew seem to be gathered around the cannons, but they aren’t firing any shots even though you’re in range. You suspect they’ve been unable to keep their powder dry.
You steer the Tipsy Mermaid along the starboard side of the merchant vessel and hand the wheel to your first mate. You’ve decided you’ll be part of the boarding party. You swing on a rope to the merchant vessel with your cutlass in your teeth and your free hand clutching your favorite pistol.
A man with a fancy jacket with fancy epaulettes is rushing towards you with a pistol. His shot goes wide, but you hit him in the shoulder, a few inches down from the epaulette. He screams and drops to his knees as blood soaks through his fancy jacket. Two other men are charging toward you. One of your boarding party members shoots one in the gut. You switch the pistol to your non-dominant hand, take the cutlass from your teeth, and slash the onrushing member of the merchant ship crew across the chest. You look for the next assailant, but other members of this ship’s crew seem to be rushing toward the fancy man. You reload your pistol and aim at him again.
“Please, no more,” he says, raising his hands. “We surrender.” One of his crew members is crouched next to him, attempting to stop the bleeding in his shoulder.
You and your crew members search the merchant ship and seize a cache of weapons, a sizable portion of its food supplies, several barrels of rum (hurrah!), and the goods the merchants were carrying – enough spices to pay for two more ships. You’ve never seen so much pepper in all your life.
The nearest friendly port is less than a day of sailing away, and even though you and your crew dip into the rum almost immediately, you arrive in the evening in time to sell most of the spices to some of the corrupt merchants in town.
It’s been a fantastic day. Your parrot didn’t even shit on your shoulder once.
You start the night in a tavern, and then make your way to a bordello, where you have a wonderful time catching a case of syphilis that ultimately proves fatal.