The great escape (part 2)

Miss Basher awoke blinking, disoriented and still quite quite drunk. By 9 AM her breath could still concuss a whale, although this in itself was nothing remarkable. What *was* unusual was the choker round her neck, which she was quite sure she’d not seen prior. That a cast-iron chain was attached to this collar, she was even more certain, was out of the ordinary. And that she was attached by this chain to a brigand she knew not was undoubtedly a deviation from the norm.

Perfidious Pete introduced himself, explaining how he had won her in a bet; the news was ill received. But as he so reasonably conjectured, anyone sufficiently witless to wager their freedom on the turn of a card had only themself to blame – especially if they played with known cheats and liars. He gave her a handful of toenails to chew on and bade her to button it.

Evening came and night passed, and that was the last day of our incarceration - finally we were given leave to haul anchor. In desperate need of some bona fide shore leave, we thus made like any other band of drunks and philistines, and hit the West End.


Quartermaster
Perfidious Pete, The Norfolk Welsher
Likes: cruelty to choirboys
Dislikes: left-handed ticks

The great escape (part 1)

Ahoy my fellow rascals and curs!

Blessed be our stout hearts and obstinacy – the pestilence has been overcome! Praise be to Fate too, who, by her grace, has let the entire crew survive, albeit in a somewhat piecemeal manner, judging by the wholesale loss of limbs to gangrene and bad debts.

Still, the loss of legs has been offset by the growth in hands: despite the internment, our ranks have swollen nonetheless. Mostly we suspect a lackadaisical approach to quarantine, although one crewman has suggested binary fission; a little knowledge is truly a dangerous thing.

The first to violate our sanctuary was “Basher” Barrah. How she had breached the security was anyone’s guess – indeed, she certainly had no idea, having simply found herself onboard, slumped over a grog keg she’d sniffed out and drained the night prior.

Brutal yet dextrous, with beadwork as fine as her swordplay, she missed no opportunity to show off her jewellery made from the bones, teeth and toenails of those foolish enough to cross her. Yet her portfolio of skills extended beyond mere violence and craftwork - she was also adept in homicidal vegetarianism, shouting at foreigners, and, crucially, five ways to kill a man with pantyhose.

Refrigeration Engineer

“Basher” Barrah
Likes: American Idol
Dislikes: American quilts

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