AGAIN?!

As is the fate of anyone who can't afford high quality electronics I am having technical difficulties again, which is why this hasn't been updated for a time. I am sorry but I will be up again in a couple of days with any luck.

The Pirates' Cooper VI

“You are the only man who has any wood working skill on this ship? Your carpenter is dead?” The gun was now trained on me and I felt like I could already feel the bullet enter my skin and smell the gunpowder.

“Yes sir, that’s right.” At this moment Jack came out of the cabin, still shaking and pale. He didn’t speak a word to us but went to the pirate side of the ship and sat down without looking anywhere but the deck. The pirates guffawed and cracked jokes and I could only think that I was next. I was not mistaken.

“Your turn,” announced the quarter master motioning to the door to the captain’s quarters. I didn’t even bother to look to see if there was still a gun pointed at me, I knew that there would be. I turned and faced the gate of hell and slowly I walked to the door, feeling like my feet had turned into lead.

The captain of the pirates was seated behind the desk of Captain Johansson which had been cleared of all its usual clutter. The only things on it were a lamp, a document with a quill and a pistol.

“You are the cooper?” asked the captain. I nodded, I had become mute in this mans presence.

“Do you have a wife, or children?” he demanded. I shook my head.

“Do you have a tongue?”

“Yes sir,” I spoke in a whisper.

“Then you will speak. Are you a married man?”

“No sir.”

“Then you have nothing to tie you to shore and you will join us,” declared the captain.

“No sir. I have a father to take care of; please don’t deprive him of my income. Would you see my father starve?”

“If he is your father then he must be old and then due to die. Why live to miserable old age when you can live a short, glorious life? No, you shall not be spared for the life of your parent for we have use of a cooper. You see,” the captain gave a dry smile, “we do lots of trade and a cooper is a person we do not yet have on our ship. If your carpenter was still alive we might have passed over you but now it cannot be.” I actually fell to my knees.

“Please, I could not live knowing that my father was slowly fading away with no one to provide for him. Do you have no compassion?”

“So you wish to die?” asked the captain coldly. “Do you understand the meaning of the pistol on this desk?” I shook my head though I could form a fairly good idea.

“It means that you either sign our articles or I shoot you, choose as you like.”

Slowly I stood and picked up the quill. I was just about to sign when the captain yanked the paper from me.

“Now, now, we wouldn’t want you to sign a contract you didn’t understand. It would be horrible to think that you might be forced into agreeing to something you didn’t like.” His smile told me that he was going to milk this for all it was worth.

“Article one: Every man shall keep his arms in condition for engagement at all times and neglecting in this shall result in losing his share in the next prize.

Article two: On meeting a virtuous woman any man who should meddle with her shall suffer death.

To be continued...

The Pirates' Cooper V

Now the Captain of the pirates stood in front of us again. He had taken on an almost god like air to most of us. He was the man who had taken on the unbeatable and won. He had freed us, if only for a moment, from tyranny.

“The life of a pirate frees you from men such as him. No man gets more food then another, no man gets special privileges, every man gets a say in what happens on the ship. No man can treat you like that. Who will join us?”

I watched as my crewmates mulled over this proposition. There were a few feet of deck between our crew and the pirate crew but it seemed to me to be the line between life and death. Slowly the cabin boy shuffled forward in total silence. I was a little surprised, he was only a boy after all, nearly fifteen, and he had never struck me as a vicious or bloody minded person. Emboldened by the boy’s action three more men walked forward, they were bolder acting then the boy. They sauntered over to stand with the pirates and one of them even spit in the direction of the captain but not a one of them looked our crew in the face. The captain of the pirates nodded his approval and strode into Captain Johansson’s cabin. A few minuets later the men who had agreed to join the pirates were ushered one by one into the cabin.

The man who I took to be the quarter master of the pirates continued to stand in front of us, watching us carefully. He had been the first to board our ship and he was by far the one most on guard in the pirates. While the pirates gloated over the wealth they had discovered and talked about which port they should sell the fabric in for the best price. The quarter master seemed to be the only man unaffected by the loot. Eventually one of the men who had just left our crew brought him the ships book and the quarter master opened it. He ran his finger down the list of names I knew to be at the front of the book. I had seen the captain enter my name on that very list when I had signed aboard.

His finger paused halfway down the list. “Jack Thatcher, you play the fiddle?”

I thought Jack was going to die right there and he nearly did. When he didn’t respond at first a man from the pirate crew drew his pistol and pointed it at him. It was obvious enough who was Jack, he was the one who had turned pale and was shaking.

“Answer the question,” demanded the pirate with the gun.

“I do,” Jack looked around at the rest of us, looking for a rescue but human nature is not so kind. We all stood, looking straight ahead and hoping against hope that we were not the next people to attract the man’s attention.

“Go into the cabin, the captain would like to ask you some questions.” Jack looked for a second at the pistol’s barrel and then walked into the captain’s quarters like a man walking to the scaffold. That was a bad thought; he might be doing just that. I would have prayed for his safety but at that moment I was to busy with concerns of my own safety. I watched with bated breath as the quartermaster’s finger ran down the list again, and then stop.

“Mark Stutter, the cooper, step forward.” I froze, I swear I couldn’t have moved from that spot had God himself commanded me to. “Mark Stutter will step forward or by the Devil I will start shooting you one by one until he does,” bellowed the quarter master and he looked as if he meant it. My neighbors, in an act of self preservation, pushed me forward.

To be continued...

The Pirates' Cooper IV

After a time the Captain of the pirates boarded our ship as well but our own Captain didn’t return. The Captain of the pirates paced in front of us while two of his crew trained their pistols at us. Suddenly he rounded on us.

“How does your captain treat you,” he demanded. We blinked, this was an unexpected question and it was met with some hesitation.

“Come on, speak up, and if I find that you have been lying to me I will shoot you. There is nothing I hate more then being lied to.” He pulled out his pistol and one bold man stepped forward.

“He treats us rather poorly sir.” The man flinched as if he expected the Captain to shoot him but the Captain surprised him by suddenly going friendly.

“Really, how does he treat you badly,” he purred.

“He beats us for no reason at all sometime except that he is in a bad mood,” spoke up the man standing before him.

“And he eats well but put us on half rations, claming there isn’t enough food,” spoke up another man clearly made brave by the fact that our companion had not yet been killed. The list of complaints from the round robin soon surfaced.

“He nearly killed Thomas.”

“He swore he would put me onto a navy ship before he paid me my wages.”

The Captain listened to all of this with a grim smile on his lips and then beckoned over the man who had been in charge of the men when they first came over.

“I think it’s time to bring this Captain Johansson back to his ship, what do you think?”

“Yes sir,” replied the man and he took a couple of men and returned to the pirate ship. Now that it was closer I could see the words The Ranger inscribed on its bow. They soon returned with Captain Johansson with them. He looked pale and he could barely climb up the side of the ship to the deck which made him the item of much hilarity amongst the pirates. I wished the Captain would show a little more courage in front of the savages or they would think the whole crew weak for letting such a man lord over them. No sooner did Captain Johansson stand on deck but the Pirate captain floored him with one powerful blow to the face.

“Do you know why men like me become pirates?” Demanded the pirate captain, standing over Captain Johansson like an avenging angel, “it’s captains like you. You think that you can do what ever you want because the law won’t punish you but I’ll be damned if I don’t make you rue the day that you were born.” He turned to his crew. “Do what you want to him.”

The pirates fell onto Captain Johansson and striped him to the waist and tied him up. They then set candles up around the mast and lit them. They placed the captain next to the mast and surrounded him and then lit all of the candles. We watched in fascination and some horror as they made the Captain run around the mast inside the circle of lit candles and pricked him with the tips of their swords. The Captain was soon sobbing with exhaustion and pain but they kept at him as blood and sweat splattered the deck as he ran. Finally he fell, unable to move another step; they dragged him up, tied him to the mast and turned their attention to us. I don’t think there was one among us who didn’t feel a little pity for the captain but I also don’t think there was one among us who didn’t feel a little triumph. The source of our misery was now reduced to a half-conscious, sobbing mess.

To be continued...

The Pirates' Cooper III

As the cruse continued the captain grew more and more paranoid, perhaps he was in the right as far as that was concerned. The crew couldn’t take much more of his abuse. He beat one man about the head until he was only half senseless and then sent him up the mast. Everyone agreed that it was a miracle the man didn’t fall. The carpenter had fallen overboard; supposedly, but he had been an experienced sailor and it seemed unlikely that he would do such a thing. It was generally agreed that falling overboard on a clear night without a cloud in sight was a mistake that only inexperienced sailors made. It was a well known fact that the carpenter had been very outspoken in his dislike for the captain. A round robin had started to be passed around though most of the crew hadn’t reached that point yet. More names were added to it by the day however and it looked as if there would be a confrontation in the near future if we didn’t reach a port soon. A port would solve all of our problems all we would have to do is leave ship and never return to her. It would mean that we wouldn’t get paid but it would be worth it to get away from the tyrant of a captain. We showed no sign of stopping at a harbor however.

The round robin had been going around for a week when another ship came into sight. Tension was pretty high on the ship at this point. The captain knew that something was up and was being, if anything more brutal and cruel then before. In response to this more and more people signed the round robin which was hid in a different man’s chest each night. I suppose that it was resentment against the captain that caused the man on watch to not report the other ships presence immediately. Instead he waited until he could see more then just the mast before he ran to the captain.

The captain instantly pulled out his glass and looked to see what flag the ship sported. No one was really concerned about what nation the country was from, England was at peace, but if it was a ship from England then we would hail each other and trade gossip which appealed to us all. We all crowded the rails and for once the Captain allowed us to without a shout or a cuff. This was the first time we had seen another ship since we had left the harbor. As the ship came closer to us however, the English flag was lowered and fear gripped us. In the place of the Union Jack a black flag was slowly raised and we could see men with swords and muskets waiting until we were in range of their weapons.

Captain Johansson surrendered without a fight. All it took was the Captain of the pirate ship to hail us across the water to stand down and Johansson ordered our flag to be lowered. My heart sank, most of the crew seemed satisfied with the Captain’s decision to fight but then they didn’t run much risk this way. Who among them would have a reason to fight and perhaps die for the owner’s money? They would get paid anyway and pirates were notoriously cruel to people who resisted. I however ran a great amount of danger from our capture. It was a well known fact that pirates were always looking for skilled crafts men to join their crews and they didn’t always ask nicely.

The captain of the pirate ship ordered that Captain Johansson come across to his ship so several of the crew lowered a boat and the Captain stepped in a was rowed in. As soon as he stepped on board the pirate ship some of them jumped into our ship’s boat and made our men row them over. The pirates boarded our ships with swords and guns in hand and they lined us up on the deck. I had considered hiding below deck until they went away and only fear that they would catch me stopped me from doing so. I was thankful I hadn’t. The first thing they did once they had us all lined up was to tare the insides of the ship apart to gather everything of value around the mast, they would have quickly found any man who was trying to escape their clutches in the hold. There wasn’t a place on the ship that escaped the scavengers.

There was a bit of commotion when they entered the Captain’s rooms. We watched as all of the money that had been allotted to trade as well as the Captain’s fine wine was added to the heap on the deck. Also added to the pile was a kettle, the medicine chest, three spare outfits of the Captain’s, a spare sail and rigging, one of the galleys pans, a large portion of the ships provisions, and our entire cargo of fabric. I was surprised to see the weapons were kept in a separate pile; it was also the only pile anyone took anything from. One man walked up and took the Captain’s dueling pistols from the stack and no one stopped him. Other then that however the piles were only added to and not once did I see anyone pocket so much as a copper.

To be continued...