T he Sweet Cutlass plied the waters off Hatteras, taking treasure and sending merchantmen to Davy Jones’ Locker in all seasons, and I was First Mate under the most successful, ruthless and daring pirate of all time. We had just relieved two French merchantmen of their gold and silver, their silk and lace, and their gunpowder and rum, not to mention their ensigns, so we decided to head inland to put our treasure into our secret treasury while our mates prepared for the next merchant that might pass our way. It was good that the Captain made that decision; as we slipped inland, we spied on the horizon a military ship whose mission might be to hunt us down and hang us all.
So we anchored in the sound just west of the spit that separated the bounding main to the east and the brackish, stagnant water of the sound to the west. There swarms of black flies and mosquitoes usually plagued us when the wind was down, but that day we had gusty wind and variable squalls of rain that cut the heat and drove the insects for cover.
The Captain, Rafe, a young recruit named Jamey and I stowed the chest with our treasure and two spades and boarded the whaleboat. We shoved off from the ship and rowed through the reedy area until the ship was out of sight, and then we took our bearings and steered an intentionally crooked course to our goal—a hummock with a willow tree on the far side of the sound where we pulled ashore.
The Captain said, “I don’t need a treasure map to discover what I’m looking for.” He stood back to the willow with his foot on a gnarled main root of that old tree, and he counted off seven paces due north, then three paces to the west.
“Rafe and Jamey, dig in this place a five-foot-deep hole large enough for a small man’s body and a casket.”
While the two hearties swung their elbows in the driving rain and the black earth swelled into a growing pile, the Captain drew out a bottle of rum and took a swig, then handed the bottle to me. We exchanged the bottle until the rum was gone, and by then the rain had stopped for a while and the pit had been excavated.
The Captain then drew out a second bottle of rum, and when he had taken a long pull, he offered the bottle to Rafe, who did the same and handed it to Jamey. While the young man drank, the Captain drew his pistol and expertly shot Jamey through the heart. Jamey had no idea this was going to happen. Of course, the rest of the crew knew this would be the result of his accompanying us. I had no remorse about betraying Jamey at the time. Indeed, I no longer think much of it. The pirate’s life is hard. The Captain gestured for Rafe and me to place the chest in the hole and to fold Jamey’s body around the chest as we always did.
As Rafe and I filled in the hole with the same dirt that had been taken from it, the Captain drank the remainder of the rum while he sang the pirate’s song ending in, “Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.” At his urging we joined the Captain in singing the refrain.
When our shoveling work was done, we cut rushes and other greenery and covered the grave so that when we had finished, you could not tell a grave had been placed there. We made sure that we picked up our empty rum bottles and washed our spades in the water around the whaleboat. As we climbed aboard and shoved off, another squall hit us.
In torrential rain we retraced our maze-like path back through the reeds to the Sweet Cutlass, where we discovered that a mutiny was afoot. As we approached, I saw that all the men seemed to be clustered around one side of the ship. Roscoe and some of the others were yelling and cat-calling indistinctly.
Roscoe the Third Mate called out to us through the pouring rain, “I’ve now taken charge of the ship. All the hearties are with me in my mutiny.”
The Captain made a sign to Rafe and me, so we set daggers in our teeth and slipped out of the whaleboat into the water on either side, leaving the Captain to row the rest of the way alone to the ship.
While the Captain exchanged words with the Third Mate, Rafe and I swam separately to the focsle and fantail where we climbed aboard by ropes that hung over the sides. As we figured, Roscoe and the crew were all huddled on the port side watching and listening to the dialog between the Captain in the whaleboat and Roscoe the Third Mate by the gangway ladder strung over the side amidships.
The Captain was pretending to be drunk, and he continued to sing pirate songs until he was within five yards of Roscoe, who was suddenly confused by seeing that the Captain was alone. His plan counted on the Captain, me the First Mate and the Second Mate to be killed together.
“Aye, Third Mate, you’re wondering where the First Mate, the Second Mate and young Jamey have gone. Well, treasure requires souls of dead men to guard it, and they volunteered to provide the souls. If you find them—which I sincerely doubt you will, you’ll find them all with their arms around the treasure back where I came from. And I confess I drank all the rum we took along to ease our labors, so I’ll thank you for fetching me a fresh bottle now to slake my thirst while we discuss this mutiny of yours.”
Roscoe was used to obeying orders, so he fetched a bottle and threw it down gently. The Captain caught it in his hand, pulled the cork plug with his teeth and spat the cork out. With a single motion he raised the bottle to his lips and drew and fired his pistol. Roscoe fell dead into the water between the ship and the whaleboat.
The Captain wiped his mouth with his sleeve, “Who’s now in charge of this mutiny?”
Meanwhile, Rafe and I had snuck up behind the crew so that when a burly lout named Daniel stepped forward to take Roscoe’s place and a strongman named Whiskers stepped forward and took issue with Daniel’s attempt to assume leadership, we grabbed those men from behind. Without pausing, we neatly slit their throats and pushed their gurgling bodies into the waters of the sound.
“I cannot hear who is to be your leader!” the Captain said, holding one hand to his good ear, the one with the gold earring.
I answered for all, “Captain, come aboard, for you’re the only rightful leader of this pirate crew. If anyone objects, he’ll have to answer to Rafe and me. Hearties, do I hear any objections? No? So everyone forget about this mutiny and get back to preparing this pirate ship for battle. With all these newly dead souls, your share of treasure has become fit for a king, but I dare say the share of the dead goes to the Captain to distribute or not as he sees fit.”
“Well spoken, Abe,” the Captain said. “Mates and all hearties, prepare to sail and stand by to weigh anchor in ten minutes.”
The mates flew to their tasks with alacrity while the Captain climbed aboard to share his rum with Rafe and me. He mounted to the bridge in a pensive mood that boded no good and watched his men with dour regard.
I thought he was looking for any sign of dissent or disgruntlement, but I was wrong. He was instead assessing who naturally filled the role of the now-deceased Roscoe, and he called one sturdy man named Samuel before the mast. Sam stood tall but humbly before his Captain, uncertain why he had been summoned. The Captain told Sam he had two choices. Either he could accept the office of Third Mate with the Third Mate’s share, or he could dive into the water and swim with the other bodies to the nearest shore of Hell and remain there marooned forever.
Sam made the wise choice and became our Third Mate. To celebrate, the Captain asked Sam to take a swig of rum. Then the Captain announced his decision to the crew and asked for a cheer and a song for the new Third Mate.
When the cheering, singing and general revelry were over, the Captain gave the orders to hoist the whaleboat on its davits, unfurl the Jolly Roger and get the ship underway. The Captain gave me the first watch. We then processed cheerily through the inlet to the sea, with a new following wind that seemed providential on a day that had claimed more than its share of pirate lives.
As our luck would have it, as we reached the bounding main the lookout immediately shouted, “Ship Ahoy!”
The Captain answered, “Where away?”
The lookout called out, “Two points abaft the port bow.”
There through our spyglasses the Captain and I sighted another French merchantman on the horizon, and when the Captain gave the order, we raced to intercept her, with constant bearing and decreasing range, all sails set and the crew ready to plunder as much for riches as for atonement for a mutiny that had run foul.
We overtook the French merchant after another squall drenched the ocean with rain and left our ship washed clean like a spring lamb. Sunlight streaked through the clouds as we came about to meet the merchant broadside. The ship had wisely raised the white flag of surrender. We eased right alongside and the crew flew with swords and knives drawn to the main deck of the merchant. There we met with no resistance.
A quick search of the prize ship yielded a hoard of treasure including gold and silver bars and coin. Below decks on the merchant ship the crew found four dozen tuns of rum and another four of wine, all of which were raised and high-lined to the Sweet Cutlass for stowage below in our hold. When the treasure and everything else worth taking had been removed from the French ship, the Captain made a magnanimous, eloquent and mercifully brief speech about mercy, fortune and Our Maker.
Then he laughed maliciously and called all pirates back to the Sweet Cutlass. When the hearties had all returned, the Captain, with a flourish of his tricorn, let the merchantman proceed wherever it pleased and ordered the Sweet Cutlass back to its duty patrolling the waters off Hatteras.
We took no more plunder that day, which continued to alternate between squalls and sunshine, until at evening the sea became becalmed as if it were a lake. Now as Rafe relieved me of the watch, the moonshine from a gibbous moon streamed its silver reflection over the unfathomable depths. The smoking lamp was lit, and as I smoked my pipe I reflected on chance and fate and my growing esteem for the Captain who had shown no fear in the face of mutiny and no squeamishness about the sacred pirate duty to offer a sacrifice to his treasure.
For the next four weeks, the Sweet Cutlass took its pleasure from the booty taken from ten merchantmen. We lost only one pirate soul during that interval, and the example lives with me as an omen today.
We had drawn alongside a German merchantman that had raised the white flag of surrender. Instead of docilely allowing us to take our pelf and withdraw unhindered, the perfidious Hun Captain cut down the first pirate aboard his ship with his cutlass.
The Captain, seeing what had happened in violation of every protocol and law of the sea, drew his pistol and shot the German Captain dead through the forehead. He then ordered all the crew of the prize ship to be assembled on the focsle of their vessel. At the Captain’s order, I took charge of the proceedings that followed.
I swung by line to the main deck of the German ship and said that the crew should strip themselves naked. Meanwhile, I ordered all stores of meat and fish to be brought topside and a plank to be erected to the windward side of the ship. As the meat and fish arrived topside, I had the pirate hearties chum with it off the leeward side until the blue waters boiled with ravenous sharks that tore into the chum and each other so that the water ran with blood, drawing even more sharks and other fish to the feast.
When the entire hoard of chum had been off-boarded, I ordered that the German crew be brought one naked man at a time to walk the plank. As the pink flesh hit the water body by body, the sharks flew into ecstasy and a feeding frenzy. The sea soup of limbs and waving heads and hands, the cries of agony and pain, and the cries of gulls and other sea birds created a sonorous and visual symphony, a lesson for all who watched.
When the last German crew member had walked the plank to meet his Maker, I asked, “Do any of you pirate crew want to join the Germans in the deep?” I knew more than one whom I would have liked to say, “Aye, me!”
No one volunteered.
I ordered the pirates to go below decks to the German hold and use whatever means they could find to breach the vessel so that it could join the numberless other vessels down in the locker at the bottom of the sea. With a common yell, the pirates did just that, and they came back to the main decks saying that the German ship was sinking fast. I ordered all pirates to return to the Sweet Cutlass, where we mended our kit and prepared for our next conquest while the German vessel sank below the waves, scattering flotsam all around our windward side.
That evening the Captain called a meeting of the Mates before the mast. There he said, “We have been fortunate during this season, but luck can run its course. We’ll take on stores, rest and prepare for further adventures.” He announced that the ship would break off from patrol off Hatteras and set sail at once for San Juan, where we would port in and get a little time ashore.
While the Third Mate took the watch, the Captain took Rafe and me aside and said, “Look alive in the meantime, hearties, and watch both the Third Mate and the crew.”
“Aye, Captain, but will watching be enough?” Rafe asked.
“The lesson of watching that German crew walk the plank should suffice to keep them in line, but only time will tell. Now let’s fetch some rum and carouse till midnight. It truly is a beautiful night.”
The Captain was, as always, right; I noticed how the phosphors glistened, all silver and purple in our wake.