Pirate Heritage

1⎈

"Scrub the deck, you dirty little rat!" he shouted at me. Sweet Poseidon, what did his mama feed him with?

That huge orangutan - a man with a long lash was standing right above our heads. He flogged an old man who was swabbing the decks five feet away from me. Suddenly I started to clean all around me like a maniac. "Holy shit" I mumbled.

"What did you say, lad?" his sight was burning a hole in my back. He whipped my left hand and smiled while I was internally screaming from pain.

"Back to work!" he had said before he went away.

I was staring at the wound on my hand for like twenty seconds before I cursed the huge guy in my mind. This was going to leave a scar. "Nice" I smiled. I returned to my deck-swabbing duties.

I became a part of that crew a couple of days ago. It was a smugglers ship. No idea of what were they smuggling and no need to know that. I got kicked out of one of the ships of the British Royal Navy. I was known there as Tar Wilson. They accused me of - how they wrote on that damn parchment - "Spying for stranger ships", "being too interested in pirates" and even for "practicing black magic on the patterns of pirate custom".

They ripped my sleeves as a mark of treason. Shame, it was really easy to hide the fact that I'm a woman in that jacket.

Now I hide my dark long hair under a piece of black material. I have to admit it. I have no problem hiding my boobs, cause they don't even exist. I'm almost an adult and still waiting for puberty. My girly face is dirty most of the time. For others, I'm a tiny boy.

⎈⎈⎈

"Wake up Tar! Crap! What's wrong with him?"

I opened one eye. One of the hearties was yanking my arm like a maniac. A second after I was on the floor instead of on my hammock.

"The heck do ye want?!" I shouted.

"Stop being so loud, ye'll end up wakin' up everyone" the guy put his dirty hand on my mouth.

It was dark under hatches. The sleeping quarters were illuminated just by a little dose of the moonlight, but I could recognize it was Grafl, my mate. He was bald and had just one ear, he lost the other one in a battle, just like his ability to walk without limping. He knew stories and gossips from lands and seas so he was useful to me.

"Come," he said being so close to my face, he barely killed me with his breath, " wanna take a swig, friend of mine? We got a barrel."

He gave me that idiot smile.

So all I could do was stand up and follow the limping man. I learned how to walk like a seaman, now I was stomping like a real pirate. We came lower under hatches, wherein a crawl space behind the stairs was hiding another man. Officer Barta has never said no to a night of drinking with his favorite lads.

"Couldn't it take any longer?" he said with an eastern accent while he was filling the tankards with liquor.

He dropped them on a small little box, so we could sit around it. The only thing that made possible seeing their faces was a small candle hanged above our heads. After some minutes Grafl started to stare at his own tongue. He was spitting at everything around. The Officer was babbling something. They were both drunk, thank god I had a strong head.

"So... where is the ship directed?" I asked, enjoying the fact that they were going to say anything now.

"Tortuga, my boy" Grafl answered.