Until the ides of March

All crew incapacitated due to scurvy and Norovirus. Port Authority has put us all in quarantine, expressly forbidding communication till Spring.

Next update: 15 March.

Better late than never

Madame Jo-Jo ran a tight ship. Certainly, few drill instructors could shout shriller or for that matter with any less patience, for she took great pride in suffering neither fools nor jessies gladly. The ceaseless threat of shame and woe ensured that no swab fell behind, for those who so much as considered lagging were cut to the quick by her vicious sarcasm, save when her mouth was full of grog, and her ornamental kedge anchor would impact them instead. To be sure, her tutelage left all but the most gifted cur black and blue in mind, body and spirit. Vis-à-vis our own crew, the vocal exercises alone resulted in numerous counts of bleeding gums, one crushed larynx, and at least a dozen broken toes.

Imagine then her lack of amusement when the door was blown from its hinges, and in blustered an excitable wench with smoking cannon who apologised for running “a tad late”, and asked whether any after-dinner mints remained uneaten. Her error soon apparent, she improvised instead, curtsying to Madame Jo-Jo and, blowing the trumpet of her own intellectual prowess, offered to conjugate any verbs that our teacher might have lying around, y’know, spare like.



Flag Lieutenant
“Salty” Meg Schifffarht
Likes: myths
Dislikes: legends

Perhaps tonight, Josephine

Slumping further into her chair, our host regressed into incoherent muttering, followed by incoherent dribbling, and eventually rather lucid snoring. Feeling short-changed by events, certain foolhardy swabs attempted to rouse her, prodding her in an increasingly firm manner, with increasingly sharp implements. If one were to assess the upshot of this tactic by the extent to which the slumbering Scot was stirred to action, then the stratagem certainly passed muster. For indeed, when she awoke to find a cutlass hanging out of her bicep, she leapt to her feet and let rip with such a flurry of steel that the aforementioned malefactors were in no time negotiating call-out charges with the local hook-and-peg prosthesis vendor.

Subsequently, with all pertinent extremities suitably hacked, she tossed back her locks, smiled for her audience, and slipped back unconscious with peerless elegance. The extinguished lights of our exalted host signalled an apposite end to the evening, and we bid adieu to avoid being co-opted into the dish-washing detail.

Before hauling anchor, however, it became clear that some of the greenhorns were still having problems rolling their ‘arrghs’. To address this development need, we made a quick diversion to Madame Jo-Jo’s College of Advanced Nefariation.


Personal Trainer
Madame Jo-Jo
Likes: pie charts
Dislikes: second-class mail

Flower of Scotland

Three desserts and no coffees later, the swabs dived as one for the rum and baccy. Their commander, however, remained aloof, preferring to attend to her postprandial oral hygiene by scraping her tongue free from the film of deep-fried sorbet, a claymore being her instrument of choice. This was, of course, “Sink ‘em all” Sinclair, a whimsically ruthless heathen from the darkest, most northern Highlands, where your average wee bairn is not allowed solid food until it can pluck out a man’s eye.

An unusually refined brigand (she liked *both* types of wine), she was also one of her country’s healthiest criminals, devoutly consuming five vegetable portions each day through a balanced diet of crisps and fermented grape juice.

Given her seniority and notoriety, we were surely in for a classic night of after-dinner speaking. A minute or two of her hawking and hem-hemming built up an air of anticipation so tense you could have cut it with an oar. With both tongue and throat cleared, she took a long tug on the bottle marked “RED”, wiped her chin on her sleeve and giggled coquettishly before collapsing back in her chair, whistling the dance of the sugar plum fairy.



Cheerleader
“Sink ‘em all” Sinclair
Likes: Bohemian rhapsody
Dislikes: the rhumba

Rich pickings

Now, I enjoy slaughter and pillaging as much as the next pirate, but I would still argue that one can have too much of a good thing. Of course, not everyone would agree. For example, Miss Ivy’s idea of respite was to charter a slow boat from China and idle away the months conducting wanton villainy with rancour aforethought. Bereft of compass – magnetic or moral – she wreaked havoc with such gay abandon that the respective brethren of the coast could suffer her mischief no longer and banned her from six of the seven seas.

Nonetheless, her life aquatic was presently academic: there was but one exit from the room, and it was presently occupied by Commodore Filthy, a silvery old tar with more chatter than a parrot’s union rep.

The other hearties were playing a waiting game, for as sure as night follows day, the first to pass within two yards of the old boy would be sucked into the vortex of his relentless monologue. Once hooked, resistance was futile, for this ancient mariner was supernaturally compelled to share his epic story, albeit juiced up with the odd giant squid, a well-oiled Amazon or two and an exceptionally large number of nymphs.

Voice of Reason

“Filthy” Rich Argenti
Likes: megamixes
Dislikes: radio edits

Meaner than a dockyard croc

Sated with tallow, the wretched professor crawled back into his coop, hoping that some fitful kip might encourage the calories to burn more slowly. His dreams perchance to sleep were sadly not to fruit, as the object of his disprized love was taking bets on how long the arrant knave could suffer their slings and arrows before emitting some feeble grunt or snarl of anger.

Chief among the abusers was “Poison” Ivy Harding, a vile streak of malice with a pedigree so cruel that even the most oblique reference to her would make hardened curs suck their teeth and change the subject.

As an apprentice with East India Company separatists, her probationary period had been prematurely curtailed when, on being taken off village-razing detail, she stowed aboard the company flagship, hogtied the Governor-General, and sunk said vessel with all hands.

Voyaging further towards the rising sun, she hungrily devoured the teachings of the Far East’s most seasoned sea-rats, learning everything the Orient had to offer vis-à-vis cruelty to man and beast. All good things must come to an end, however, and when she saw that her mentors could teach her no more, she thanked them all with arsenic and confiscated their assets.



Apothecary
“Poison” Ivy Harding
Likes: rap sheets
Dislikes: rap music

Achtung baby

Accompanying the wily she-devil was a wee lad she had picked up while despoiling the German hinterlands. More plaything than toy-boy, the fellow showed little evidence of wanderlust, largely due to the tight rein she kept on his choke collar (on the occasions he had leave from his cage).

That she had not previously discarded said shackled Saxon was surely due to her exceptional capacity for schadenfreude. Intellectual prowess being her pet hate, the matter of the young buck becoming a distinguished professor prior to the age of majority both got her goat and cooked her goose.

Seeing that he was wise of words but not of the world, that night she began her cruel seduction. And lo, by the time Dawn came with rosy fingers, the giant siren had the young academic, quite literally, in the palm of her hand.

Henceforth, via assorted vile schemes of insidious villainy she began crushing the stripling by slowly rotting his mind, body and soul. Within a week, the starry-eyed boy was a waif on a string.

Time had however mellowed her, and in her more tender moments, she would tease him with Teutonic coochie coos and let him suck the grease from her fingers.



Wiper
Professor Plum
Likes: in the ballroom
Dislikes: in the secret passage