Pirate Talk or Mermalade by Terese Svoboda Read Free Book Online

flies.
    I’ll clean the foredeck with this fork. You get the others up out of their coffins belowdecks—let them fight to their ends and not ours.

12
    Hours Later
    Get up now and quit your moaning. Best we mop the deck with the blood of the others.
    My leg.
    Get up, I say. I think we’re the last. No one else is looking alive.
    Leg.
    You can move that leg. You can, I saw you move it when that Moor went after you.
    See his cutlass, how it shines—it shines like a jewel in a jar.
    Move your leg.
    Tomorrow. See the light on the edge of it?
    I’ll move your leg myself then.
    My leg!
    Don’t scream. Give me your kerchief to stop the blood. And your cutlass.
    Not the one I wrested from three brigands and a captain with just your pigknife held between my teeth?
    Magnificent, you were. So fierce their eyes didn’t blink but you had them shaking. You slashed and slashed. I wondered where you found your piracy so quick, it must be in
the family. Now, give me the cutlass.
    You’ll have my own knife at your throat, you will, just like I had the captain with it.
    Want me to pull out the bits from your leg with just this pig knife and my fingers? There be holes in the sail and gulls in the rigging and dead men rolling the deck in their blood, and you won’t loan me the use of your cutlass to save yourself, however it was obtained?
    So long as I can see it.
    You’ll feel it.
    Wait, wait—where is it going?
    There’s coals left from the cannonwork—I must burn you to stop the blood.
    No, no, not that.
    I can slip the cutlass from your fingers after all your insides have rotted. A fine cutlass it is too, with those rubies in the hilt, or is it all my brother’s blood?
    It’s my foot I can’t move, nothing’s wrong with my leg. This foot is stone.
    Watch the flame, watch the flame.
    Why can’t I faint like a girl?
    Just breathe steady instead of making all that noise. Bite the rope like it was Ma’s, served up in the soup, and breathe.
    I’m bimmm-fff-iiii-ttt-ing.
    Leave off me with your bloody chops, you cur. Bite the rope, not me. Already so much blood slicks up the wound I can hardly get a grip on it and I’ve still got the sawing to do.

    I’m fainting, I’m going to faint.
    Then faint, in Christ’s blood, faint.
    I can’t.
    Stop that screaming, someone will hear.
    They’re all dead.
    Are you sure? They could be like us, they could be resurrecting and fit to kill, or a half-dead cook with his knives.
    What—you go wiping the blade on your sleeve like I’m a bloody joint of lamb?
    The lice won’t stick if I drag it across me clean. If I douse it with water, the sharks swarming will come. Breathe when I do. Breathe.
    Breathe, breathe—where did you get a knack for this breathing and butchering?
    Bother. The shot is too far in.
    You’ll cry if I die.
    From joy to be rid of you! Sing out or talk, your shrieks make the cutting hard.
    O, the merry old man of Bis-do-bee!
    Better.
    I dreamt of a mermaid the size of a whale with a place to move around inside her, a pleasure place.
    Really? Maybe I dreamt it too and didn’t tell you. There’s the shot. Now, hold still. This blood is so bloody slippery.
    Give me that cutlass! Give it to me! You’ll do me no more harm.

    I’ll knock you in the head with it, I will.
    The cutl—
    Egad, I will have to chop the whole of the leg, to the joint and around. You’ll not be thanking me for this. Use the courage you swore to when Luggams made you the pirate you didn’t want to be.
    My head. You didn’t have to crush my brains out!
    Now to the coals again.
    Coals!
    Just a quick burn.
    My leg.
    As soon as I have you trussed, I’ll toss the leg over and goodbye, just like that. Goodbye in the dark and good riddance. Then I’ll steal the bo’sun’s false leg if he hasn’t rolled off, and make you a new one, bye-the-bye, to fit. A leg you can jew up a dance on the spot for the ladies—but hold still now and stay quiet and quit that bleeding.
    Four hundred gold pieces?
    If