Whoreson Jack

Bones has a
Hook for a
Heart
by John MacBeath Watkins
The ladies, the maids and the waterfront tarts

say whoreson Jack Bones has a hook for a heart.

The men of the sea have their own view:

Try to see him before he sees you.

That's a rhyme you'll hear from Port Royal to the Red Sea. So you might think I

am a man with few friends, and had you seen me at the beginning of this adventure the

view of my distress would seem to confirm it.

I blame Howard Pyle. There is only one historical instance of pirates forcing

someone to walk the plank before Pyle made his infamous illustration of pirates doing

just that. Now here I was, blindfolded, ropes binding my arms to my sides, inching my

way out to keep the Whiffy Henry's cutlass from digging into my flesh.

1
 "If ye won't tell us where the treasure be, ye can think about it as ye sink under

the sea," Three-fingered Tim yelled.

"If I knew where it was, you'd know by now," I told them. "Gold can't be spent

on the bottom of the sea. Let's join together and search for it."

"If ye don't know where it is, yer no use to us," Hook-hand Herman said. "Get

him with the cutlass again, Whiffy."

I heard Peg-leg Percy's high-pitched laugh, and the shriek of his parrot, Prudence,

who was no doubt letting go a streak of white down the back of his left shoulder.

The ship was rolling in the long swell of a distant storm, sails filling well on a

broad reach. Eventually I'd lose my balance and fall into the sea, and it was pointless to

fight it. Pointless is a way of life for me, or would be for a few more minutes. I

clenched my fists and tried to stay calm, tried to keep my legs loose enough to match the

ship's roll. I reflected how much easier it would be for me if they had followed real

pirate traditions. Real pirates didn't set up planks overboard and nudge someone out

there with a badly-sharpened, notch-bladed cutlass. If they needed to send someone to

Davy Jones' locker, they found it more efficient to simply throw them overboard without

ceremony.

The ship lurched and I lost my balance, my train of thought, and all else as I

sailed though the air and into the warm waters of the Spanish Main.

As I entered the sea, water pressure ripped the blindfold from my head, letting me

see that the bottom was not far down. I let the air out of my lungs and let myself sink to

the sea floor. I breathed in sea water, which is really too thick for breathing, and mighty

hard on the lungs. The bottom was sandy at that spot, and I nearly landed on a ray. It

startled me as it broke from its cover under the sand and flew, more than swam, through

2
the light-green water and the cathedral of sunbeams penetrating the waves above. It was

beautiful down there, and my lungs were adjusting. All I had to do was get my bearings

and walk or swim to the treasure. And find a way to get rid of the ropes that bound my

arms.

Being able to live forever seems a dream when you're young. when you're old,

and haven't changed from when the dream started, being unable to die is the problem. I

now think the ultimate freedom is to be able to decide whether to live or die. Most

finally have that freedom taken from them by death. I have been robbed of it by life.

When I was young, I lived more in books than in life. My playmates were

Cyrano De Bergerac, Scaramouch, even Calico Jack Rackham (the imagined one, not the

loser Anne Bonny developed such contempt for.) Fine, high summer days in the library,

lost in the stacks with musty volumes, that was my childhood. When I finally fell though

into the books, I thought I would be the hero of those books. Instead I found myself

living off-scene, meeting the characters mainly when they were not in their plots.

There were others like me. One of those inept pirates who made me walk the

plank was one of them. Like me, he could survive without eating, but hunger would

make that miserable. We could live without breathing, but could never get used to it.

Books have meaning, plots that are crafted without the randomness of real lives. We

were seldom a part of that. If ever we make it into the pages of books, we do so as

passers-by on sidewalks, crews on distant ships, the undescribed characters whose

existence was enough, who did not need to have a more fleshed-out personality or even

appearance.

I was a dreamer, always a dreamer. I could be anyone when I was reading, even

if the character wasn't well written, even if the plot was a colander of holes. It was my

3
joy and my downfall. I remember finding my persona at the age of 12. I found it in an

old pulp from the '20s, back when the academics had not yet completely taken over the

field of poetry. The author called himself "MacBeath," though I imagine he was

probably some bespectacled, ink-stained writer living on dreams and canned beans. I

turned a page, and there it was, in a '20s imitation of piraty script with Pyle's illustration

of a man walking the plank:

The Pirate With a Hook for a Heart

MacBeath

There are pirates with a hook for a hand,

I'm a pirate with a hook for a heart.
A hook for a heart is hard, awkward and sharp
and it's shiny and cruel to caress.
It speaks of the cockpit, the blood and the sand,
the surgeon, the saw, the severed part.
A hook for a heart, a patch for an aye, a no for a yes,
a sigh, a sigh,
I see her look and I curse the hook
and the peg for a soul and the nay for an aye
a sigh, a sigh
for battles won at such a cost

4
for shattered hearts and souls we've lost,
a patch for an aye,
a sigh, a sigh.

I read it twice, closed my eyes, and felt the roll of a long, slow swell on the open sea.

The illusion was so real that I opened my eyes again, and the library steadied again

where I sat on the oiled softwood floor. I read the poem thrice, and closed my eyes with

holy dread, just as suggested in 'Kubla Khan.' The deck of the library rolled again, and

this time I heard the call of a seagull demanding offal from the cook, who was cleaning

fish at the lee rail of what was clearly not a library at all when I opened my eyes again. I

got to my feet and found I was standing next to the scuttlebutt, a wooden barrel with the

top off and a wooden ladle for the entire crew to drink from, something my carefully-

scrubbed aunt June would never have allowed. Aunt June had raised me since my

mother had gone to the hospital for the treatment, June said, of shattered nerves. My

father was in no shape to raise me, since raising a son meant being sober enough to

recognize him most of the time. Aunt June was my curse and my salvation. She cared

enough about me to take me in, to keep me in her mind at all times, and to keep me from

sin. Sin's a terrible thing to be kept from, because it's more attractive at a distance.

Perhaps that's why I was reading about pirates, and dreaming of being free from the love

of a good woman. Aunt June cared a great deal about being a good mother to me, not

just because my mother could not, but because she wanted to rescue me, and mom, and

even my dad. She was a rescuer, no two ways about it. I was in need of rescue, and

resented it. I wanted to be strong, and independent, and never to need anyone.

Somehow I had some intimation of what that would cost. The pulp writer who depicted

5
the pirate whose humanity was chipped away by his wounds spoke to some part of me

that was wounded, and wanted to be strong enough to bear it.

And so I began my life in books. And there I was, drinking from the scuttlebutt

and looking at my big, scarred hands and long, tan, sinewy arms. I felt the scratchy

beard on my face, the mustache that drooped from the sides of my mouth, the gold hoop

in my right earlobe and my long, greasy black hair. This was who I wanted to be, and

there would be no going back for me.

"'Oreson!" a loud voice called nearby. I turned and looked because my name is

Orson, which means bear, but I was soon to realize that Long Tom Terwilleger was

English, and 'oreson was an insult.

"Get up that mast, ye 'oreson," Long Tom said. "Keep a sharp lookout. The

British Navy is in these waters, and if ye don't want to swing for the things ye've done,

best ye see them before they see you."

I stood gawping for a moment too long, and Long Tom backhanded me, setting

my nose bleeding.

"Wake up, ye bloody fool! Ye damn baboons elected me captain, so now it's my

job to keep ye alive and help ye win some booty. Up the mast, I say!"

Climbing trees was more my speed, but at least I didn't go to the mast and try to

climb it there. I headed for the weather rail instead, grabbed a black-tarred shroud above

the deadeyes and swung myself around to the ratlines. I scampered up to the crosstrees

and set myself down cross-legged to scan the horizon. My powerful, athletic frame had

felt good climbing. I was at least 60 feet above the deck, in a part of the rigging that

described a wide arc above the hurrying hull of the ship, and I felt at home for the first

time in my life. I had started my real life in fiction. I'd no longer be Orson James

6
Bonner. By answering to 'oreson, I had unintentionally gained a new identity. Long

Tom was a reader sucked into books, like me, and taught me to travel though the covers

and into other books.

I've no notion how long ago that was. You cannot count the days, the months, the

years or the lifetimes that pass in books. You grow weary, but you don't grow old, you're

just a nameless character in the background of the novels you travel though. We are the

readers. Those of us who live that way try to make our own tales, to bring some

narrative to an otherwise aimless existence.

My narrative after walking the plank was to walk toward my treasure. I'd seen no

reason to share it with the lads, when walking the plank would free me of their company.

Anyway, the treasure was on the bottom, and now I was on the bottom.

It was mid-afternoon when I walked the plank. The sun would be in the west, so

I started swimming with the rays slanting from behind me. My kicking legs didn't

provide enough power to get me to the surface. I would launch myself upward from the

bottom, only to take a downward trajectory after a few feet. I kept bumping my face into

the sand, so I decided to wait until my arms were free to try swimming. Instead I

walked, though walking through something as viscous as water is remarkably inefficient.

I was looking for a sharp rock or something that I could use to saw through my bonds.

I'd prefer to not use a coral head; did that once and ruined the best coat I ever had. And

took the skin off my arms, which took weeks to heal.

Walking on land, it's easy to make three miles an hour. Under water, it takes far

more effort to walk even one mile an hour. I hoped there was land less than a hundred

miles away. I'd been walking for three hours or more when a shadow passed over me.

7
For a moment I thought I might still be bleeding from the nicks Whiffy had given me,

and the scent might have attracted a shark. It would be inconvenient to be bitten in half

by a shark, more so to be eaten by one. Readers can recover from such a thing, but it's

not an experience anyone courts. I've been bit a few times, but the sharks spit me out.

Sharks don't like the taste of long pig.

I turned to look, catching sight of a fin in the corner of my eye. I kept turning,

but it was close, and fast, and balancing with your arms tied isn't the easiest thing.

Suddenly I felt something sharp at my back, and a tug on the ropes. Adrenaline coursed

through me as the reptile brain sent the message SHARK! through my system. Then my

bonds were falling to the sea floor and soft hands covered my eyes, soft breasts rested on

my back, and I knew my life was saved. Maybe.

"Guess who?" the mermaid squeaked.

Each of them wishes to believe she's the only mermaid in my life, and they all

carry obsidian knives.

Mer people can do a kind of circular breathing under water that allows them to

talk. An extra air passage makes it possible. It does sound funny and squeaky, though.

Fortunately mammalian vocal chords are not intended to make sound with water. I

exhaled completely to show her that I had no air in my lungs. She put her arms around

me and started pulling me to the surface. I managed to twist around and get a view of

her face. For a moment of panic I blanked on the name, then it came to me. Thetis. Of

course, she'd have a mername, but if you couldn't do circular breathing underwater, it

was best not to attempt it.

8
 We got to the surface and I began shoving the water out of my lungs, then

coughing to get some lung capacity back. Meanwhile I was trying to remember all I

could about Thetis.

She lay back on the surface, gently stirring her fins to keep us comfortably

moving on the surface. I lay back, relaxing in her arms. At last, when I could speak, I

said, "Thetis, thank God." Then I let the blackness that had been chasing me for days

seep into the back of my eyes, and I slept in the mermaid's arms.

There are a lot of myths about mer people, the main one being that they are

related to fish. Another is that they have one tail fin. Try to imagine how a horny-

handed sailor, months at sea with only the memory of women to help him form a pup

tent over his hips at night, would react to someone who was cold and scaly from the

waist down. He could do better at the worst bordello in the most horrible town in New

Spain. If mermaids were half fish, sailors would think they were just a tease.

You might think they would be just as described in books, but the world behind

the text is different. It forms a sort of vast unconscious world of the literary mind, and

the unconscious is not just another country, but another kind of country than the

conscious text. Not to get too deeply into the matter, let's just say there is a reason both

fairy tales and massage parlors offer happy endings. That's the basic law behind the

physiology of mermaids.

Sure, they have webbed feet, and are awkward on land, and have seal-like fur on

their legs. They are mammalian all the way, and I speak from experience here. Thus the

breasts, which would be unneeded if they spawned like a damn flounder. They look a lot

like a human above the waist, and we are related, though not as closely as it might

9
appear. We can't interbreed, which is why the mermaids like a dalliance with a sailor so

well. I find it's best to avoid the males, for reasons you can well imagine.

I remember all those years ago, taking my ease in the captain's cabin of my own

ship, the first that was my own, basking in the knowledge that my scurvy crew knew

only I could navigate us safely to port, when I heard the breakers and knew they'd steered

me near the rocks. I came rushing out onto the deck bellowing at the top of my lungs,

"Steer clear of the rocks, you moron monkeys!"

But over the sound of the breakers, I heard voices singing words I could not

comprehend, words that seemed to calm my fears of imminent death, that brought my

gaze to the women on the rocks, their bare breast rising as they inhaled for the next

verse, and I knew we were lost. My eyes locked with their leader's, and in those dark

brown eyes, I saw my own destruction. And I embraced it, just to look in her eyes.

Planks crashed into rocks a moment later, the deck lurching and throwing me over the

side even before the ship started to sink.

As the ship came apart and the crew were washed overboard, I saw Horrible

Harold De Pue pushed under by a coquettish mermaid as he reached his enormous hands

for her breasts with a look of beatific idiocy. She giggled as she drowned him, a sound

that for some reason penetrated the crashing of the waves, and if it hadn't been Harold

who was getting drowned, a chill would have gone though my soul at the sight of such

inhuman levity. As it was, I knew Harold pretty well, and mentally congratulated her on

her taste in men and her willingness to deal with Harold as so many had wished to.

I found myself being towed away by the raven-haired beauty I'd locked eyes with.

She would take me under until my lungs were bursting, then bring me up, so she thought,

just in time to keep me from drowning. She'd not heard of readers back then.

10
 She finally took me to a sandy cay with almost no vegetation, and left me to pass

out from exhaustion in the warm sun on the pale sand. She was back soon with a butt of

fairly fresh water, knowing that unlike her, men could not drink the sea. Thetis then set

about to seduce me, which, me being male and a sailor, was probably less difficult than

falling down.

After a few days of passion, I began to think of how I would get off the island.

"But you don't need to leave," Thetis said with a pout. "Do I not bring you all the

food and water you need to live?"

"Yes, and thank you," I said, fearing she would decide to withhold them for spite.

"Do you pine for other company than mine? Are there other women in your

life?" she needled.

"You're fine company for me, lass, and I'll show you how I like you," I said,

reaching for her. She giggled and rolled away into the water, then began splashing me.

"I will keep you for ever and ever, and play with you every day," she called.

Until you tire of me, or your pod decides it's time for you to wed and your new

husband decides I'm an impediment to marital bliss, I thought.

"I'm made for command," I told her. "It's not women I miss here, it's command

of my own ship. Someday I'll go back to sea, you know I will."

"Keep talking like that and you certainly will," she taunted, gripping her nose

theatrically and sinking under the sea.

She was far from my first mermaid. I've learned that when mermaids tire of a

man, they leave him on the beach to die of either thirst or starvation, depending on how

much it rains. Or if he makes too much of a fuss, she'll get irritated and drown him.

There's few that survive the love of a mermaid, yet fools that they are, sailors dream of

11
such a dalliance. If you had a child who treated a pet the way a mermaid treats a sailor,

you'd consider yourself a failure as a parent.

I didn't wait for her to tire of me. I'd been shot, hanged, bit by poisonous snakes.

I'd suffered horribly from each of these things instead of dying, and I'd found drowning

not much worse. I swam away one day, and when I tired of swimming I let myself sink,

got used to the water in my lungs, and went to sleep on the sandy bottom. I went on for

days like that until the sea floor started to shelve, and I knew I was approaching an

island. In a little bay I found an anchor on the bottom that was attached to a ship above.

I climbed up the chain, found the anchor watch sleeping soundly on deck, and stole the

boat that hung from the stern davits to make the rest of my journey more comfortable. In

a matter of weeks I'd raised a new crew, stolen a ship, and gone on the account once

more.

But back to my more recent predicament. I awoke on wet sand, on a reef that

would disappear beneath the waves if a brisk wind came up. Thetis was cuddled up

against me pretending to sleep. I kissed her and her eyes fluttered open with mock

surprise.

"Oh! You!" She exclaimed. "I never thought I'd see you here again."

I looked around at the sand and the rocks. It wasn't the beach she'd taken me to

the first time we'd met, and what other place did we have in common? Then it dawned

on me.

"This is where you sank my ship."

"Well, isn't this where you were headed?" She waved her eyelashes at me

seductively. "Did you leave something behind here?"

12
 "Aside from the ship, you mean?" I gave her a sidelong look, wondering what she

was playing at.

"Aside from the ship and what's in it, I mean," she said.

"Well, there is the wee sea sprite that pulled me from the wreck," I suggested.

"Ah, but you left her behind on purpose," she replied, a little iron creeping into

her voice.

"I told you, I was made for command, not to be a toy for you. Anyway, you'd

have tired of me finally. Think of it this way, you had your way with me, and were left

with fond memories, not foul recriminations like an old and bitter unhappily married

couple. And weren't those memories fine, my lass?"

"You walked out on me," she said petulantly, curling herself up while turning

away from me. So ho, I thought, she's been missing me.

"Is it true they call you Whoreson Jack Bones?"

"My name is Orson. It means Bear," I told her. Pirates aren't polite when they

see a chance to make fun of your name, and mermaids aren't either.

"Bear?" She said dubiously. "I suppose that would depend on who the father

was."

I slapped her on the rump.

She was quiet for a time, then sat up and said, “Jack, you've never been with me

by choice. So I have to ask...well...if you were cast away on a desert island, and could

choose anyone, living or dead, as your companion, is there any chance you'd

choose...would choose...” her eyes teared up, and I pulled her to me. She put her head

under my chin.

“Someone recently dead, I think. That way I could eat them without a struggle.”

13
 She pulled away and started pummeling me about the head and shoulders, while I

protested, “It's an old custom of the sea!”

Then I grabbed her wrists to stop the hitting, and kissed her.

We slept after we slaked our passion. When we woke, I kissed her again and got

up.

"I'm going for a walk," I told her. I looked around the reef. It was perhaps 50

feet by ten. I walked into the sea at the southwest corner. The salt was already irritating

my lungs, which made me a bit testy.

At least the wreck was where I left her.

The naming of ships is a difficult art. I had thought of naming her 'Adventure

Galley,' but the skipper of that vessel swung. I thought of 'Golden Hind,' but the crew

were already making fun of my name, and I didn't want them making fun of the vessel's.

I thought of naming it after one of the fastest, most beautiful predators of the sea, but

there was something not quite right about the name 'Tuna.' And the crew was no help.

They agreed on 'Silver Fish.' I felt they lacked reverence for the vessel.

I walked around to the stern and looked up at the stern castle. The weeds and

barnacles had not yet obscured the name Compass Rose or the compass rose I'd had

painted above it as a visual aid to illiterate sailors. I'd done well with my first command.

Oh, nothing great and glorious like winning naval battles against a superior force,

nothing constructive like bringing the bricks and stonemasons to build a city. Just

terrible, bad things, done to mostly good people. Just robbery at sea, that's all piracy is,

and the people who do it are mostly scum. It wasn't much of a life, but I was good at it.

A shadow passed on the sand in front of me, and Thetis descended with the grace

of a porpoise. She gestured for me to follow her through a rent in the hull. It was dark

14
within, but I could see where a chest had broken open, and the dull gleam of gold and the

sharp glint of diamonds spilled forth.

Thetis found a gold tiara with large rubies and smaller diamonds set in it. She

played with it, looking at it shyly, and I resigned myself to loosing the bauble to her. It

was the most valuable thing on the ship.

But she swam toward me with it in her extended hands, and placed it on my head.

Then she swam back to the treasure and gathered coins, rings, even a few pearls, and

bowed before me with her hands full of more wealth than most men see in a lifetime.

Then she loaded my pockets with the stuff. She was buying me with my own treasure,

which was fair enough, she'd stolen it fair and square, and among pirates theft is

property.

If this was her notion of a bride price, I'd not escape her so easily as the last time.

I took her hand and let her swim me to the surface. By the time we reached the

beach I'd cleared my lungs enough to speak a little.

"I expected you to leave the coins. Your people don't have the craft of

metalworking, and only take things already shaped the way they want them. But that

tiara and the rings…"

"I saved them for you," she said softly.

I knew what that must have cost her among her own people. I put an arm around

her and she put her head beneath my chin.

"You couldn't know I would return," I said at last.

"I could hope," she replied.

"I'm in that deep, am I?"

"Deeper."

15
 "It's impossible, of course. I don't fit your world, you don't fit mine. We're fine

when it's just we two, but when your people or mine come along…"

She put a finger against my lips and said "shh."

Under the sea was a world I never could share with her. Oh, I could survive it,

but I could never be a part of it, just as she could survive on land, but never be a part of

that world.

The reef was our world, a world between the tides.

We had three days of domestic tranquility before a sail appeared on the horizon.

"Your people," Thetis said, despair creeping into her voice.

"Worse," I said, as I could just make out her standard. "My crew."

I'd know that standard anywhere. Whiffy Harry had only recently entered the

world of books. When I told him to make a flag, he asked what symbol it should bear.

"You come from the same world I do," I told him. "You know the symbol for

poison? Put it on a black flag."

The next day it was ready to raise. As it unfolded, I expected to see the skull and

crossbones. Imagine my dismay when a round, green face with its tongue out snapped in

the breeze.

It turned out that between my departure from the stacks in 1939 and Whiffy's

entry into books sixty years later, the symbol for poison had changed.

Thetis gave me a long, level look.

"They're your crew. When you give an order, won't they do as you say?

"Of course, of course. I was forgetting. I must have accidentally told them to

mutiny. Must have slipped my mind. They must be doing exactly what they should."

16
 She gave me a knowing smile and rolled into the sea, swimming away and

leaving me to await them alone. Well, she'd signed up for pleasure, not battle. I buried

the baubles I'd brought up from the wreck beneath the largest rocks I could lift.

The ship was hull-up already, and it would be only an hour or so before she

arrived. I decided to dive on the wreck again and try to find a rusty cutlass or at least a

boarding ax.

It was dark inside the Compass Rose, darker than it had been before. The angle

of the sun had shifted and less light came through the rent. I'd been so mesmerized by

the gold and by Thetis that I had no idea what else might be down there. I stumbled and

swam through the wreck, trying to remember her layout and where things were stored. I

entered again near the stern, where the rocks had holed her just forward of the deadwood.

I found myself in the light room, where a lantern had hung and shined through a window

for the magazine. I entered the magazine, strewn with what remained of useless bags of

sodden gunpowder, and found the stairway leading to the bread room above. One more

deck up to the armory, where racks of cutlasses and boarding axes were ranged across

from racks of muskets. Both were rusted almost to uselessness. I grabbed a couple

cutlasses and a couple boarding axes, and headed back to the reef.

I chose to stay beneath the surface to avoid attracting attention while I used sand

and stones to clean as much rust as possible off my pitiful arsenal. By this time my

erstwhile ship, the Bat, with her jolly Mr. Yuck flag must be getting closer.

A boarding ax is a pitiful thing when you're contemplating hacking through the

hull of a ship to sink her. They couldn't kill me of course, not a reader, but they could

make life damned unpleasant for me. If I could deprive them of the ship, we'd be about

even. Whiffy Henry was the only reader among them, and he was no match for me. For

17
one thing, he wasn't yet aware of a reader's resistance to death. I say resistance because I

suspect that something, somewhere, can kill us.

The wind was coming up. I could hear waves above me crashing on the reef. I

went to the lee side of it and began to empty the water from my lungs in case I had to

parley.

I poked my head above the reef. Bat was maneuvering to come into the lee of the

reef and anchor.

Now I want you to try to see the next part as my crew saw it. After forcing me

overboard, they gave each other a congratulatory drink, spending the rest of the day and

most of the night celebrating and telling each other what brave fellows they were. Then

the next day came, and they realized that none of them knew where they were or how to

navigate to anywhere else. They came close to putting Bat on the rocks that day. After

that, they were afraid to sail at night, because they had no idea where the reefs were.

And just as they were beginning to quarrel with each other, hung over and

looking for someone to blame, the voices came, voices that sapped their will and raised

their lust. They were no longer following where the compass pointed, they were

following more organic pointers.

The voices led them to my reef, but stopped before they wrecked the ship.

Thetis, knowing I would want my ship back, had told her mates to bring the Bat to me.

Giving me that which she would have liked to keep, such as that tiara, showed she was

giving me herself. Giving me my ship back was both a repair for the damage she had

done before, and showing that she knew my heart's desire and would give it to me.

When they had dropped the anchor and paid out less scope than I would have,

endangering the ship as usual, Thetis came back to me.

18
 "I've brought you your ship, my love," she said. "Shall I and my friends get rid of

the men on it now?"

"No, I have a use for them," I told her. "I can't sail a 70-ton brig alone."

The sun was slanting toward the horizon when four members of my bickering

crew rowed to the reef in the ship's pinnace. They had a small chest, little more than a

jewel box, containing all the gold we'd accumulated so far on a rather unrewarding

cruise.

They were a subdued lot as they came ashore.

"You sure about this, Herman?" Whiffy Henry asked. "It seems like we should

keep the gold next to us."

"With mermaids about? Why give them the temptation to steal our treasure?

We'll bury it while they're not about, and come back for it when we're sure they're gone,"

Herman said.

It sounded pretty obvious to me that Herman wanted to come back for it alone. I

think it sounded thin to the rest of them as well, because it struck me that they wouldn't

do his bidding if Herman weren't such a foreboding character. Six-foot-six, with a thick

black beard and a hook for a left hand, he was the very vision of a villainous pirate. His

plan was unsound, because he couldn't navigate well enough to find this reef again unless

he'd been concealing great depths of proficiency. But terrible things have been done in

this world by the incompetent and overconfident.

It was obvious even to them that they couldn't just bury the treasure in the sand,

because the first storm would uncover it again. So they set about looking for rocks to put

it under, and the ones they picked, of course, were the ones I'd put my stuff under.

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 It took Herman's strength to move the stone, but it was Whiffy who saw the

gleam of gold first.

"Look!" he yelled, "loot!"

This caused some confusion, because the pirate book whose background we were

operating in was set in the late 17th century, and the word loot didn't enter the language

until the Napoleonic wars. The rest were characters, which meant they didn't know

anything they shouldn't. Only readers make this kind of error.

"Lute?" asked Tim. "I see nothing that looks like a lute."

"Not the musical instrument," Percy intervened. "He means plunder."

Percy was from a different book. He'd had a good job as a background character,

dancing in country balls in Jane Austen novels until he'd become bored and crossed over,

first into a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, then into sterner stuff. When his leg was blown

off while he was visiting a history book on the sack of Panama, he realized he could

never go back to dancing at the country balls.

So now here he was, a peg for a leg, a parrot on his shoulder, down on his knees

in the sand on my reef scrabbling for rings and coins in the muck. Shows you don't

know who a man is until you see him in surroundings that entirely suit him.

"You know what this means," Tim said. "It means someone else will be coming

here for their own swag, and they'll likely get ours too, if we bury it here."

So they dug up all my hard-won plunder and put it in a sack, then got wood and

food and booze from the pinnace and started setting up a fire on the reef. The sun went

down while they were cooking up a fish stew, and they were soon in their cups, feasting

and talking about what grand fellows they were, and how the ladies would adore them

when they reached shore with all this plunder.

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 All the while I kept behind the rocks and followed all their actions. As night fell,

Thetis whispered in my ear, "Shall the lasses and I lure them to their deaths? They

should not take what I have given you."

"Not unless you can climb the rigging and shake out the courses when it's time to

sail my ship away," I replied.

I waited until their speech was slurred and their bravado was wearing thin. Then

I went around to the side they'd left their boat on, and quietly swam away with it,

mooring it behind the ship. I swam back as silent as a graveyard on a winter's night,

filled my lungs with air and dove down to get some rocks. These held me under water as

I marched out of the sea. I used a cutlass I had sharpened to slash my cheeks so that

blood flowed down them as I came from the sea. Behind me, Thetis gave an unearthly

screech as only a mermaid can, and even knowing it was coming I felt the hair rise on

my neck and back. The men looked out into the moonlit night to see their dead captain

marching noisily out of the sea with blood rolling down his cheeks and a bloody cutlass

in his hand.

"Know death when you see it before you, lads" I intoned in what I fancied was a

spook's voice. "Your own death, unless you are wise."

Herman brought his hands to his face, forgetting for a moment that one of them

had been replaced by a hook, and managed to blind himself in one eye. He howled in

pain and terror, while Tim and Whiffy tried to hide behind air molecules. Only Percy

showed some life, scrambling to where they'd left the boat and even walking into the

water a few steps in confusion when he found it wasn't there. Then he turned to me, his

face pale, and said, "I always loved you in life, Jack, I did. Don't harm me now."

Prudence screeched and sent a jet of white down his back.

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 "Your lives are all mine, to take, to keep, to use as I will," I told them. "You've

killed me and I've come back for you."

Just then Three-fingered Tim gathered his courage and ran at me with his cutlass.

I let him run me through, though it hurt like a thousand hells.

"Too late for that," I told him. Then I hit him with the guard of my cutlass and

laid him out.

"Put the plunder back under the stone," I ordered them. Before they maneuvered

the rock back in place, I had them each undress and I searched their clothing, finding all

they had stolen from each other. Whiffy had stolen nothing from his companions, which

showed a lack of enterprise, and had also used his trousers as a mobile latrine. As a

reader, he had the least to fear, but it was well to have proof that he didn't know that.

I'd left Tim's cutlass sticking out through my back while they did this, to give

them a better tale to tell of their demon captain.

"And now it's buried again," I said. "Herman, pull out this cutlass. I want you to

feel how truly I was pierced."

He did so, and examined the bloody blade in wonder.

"Let this be the proof to you, none of you can kill me, and any man that crosses

me I'll follow to the ends of the earth to make him pay. Sail with me as captain, be my

loyal crew, and there will be plenty of plunder and fine clothes and women too. Cross

me once and be damned forever."

They were all eager to pledge allegiance to me, and in their terror only a little

voice, all the way at the back of their minds, was telling them they could find a way to

get back at me and take it all away again.

22
 "And now you'll all witness a little ceremony," I told them. I took with me the

tiara, and a fine gold ring with diamonds and a large ruby, and walked into the sea.

When I was chest-high in salt water, the mermaids surrounded me and Thetis came to my

arms. They sang their unearthly chorus, mesmerizing my men, and I placed the tiara on

Thetis's head, and said, "with this ring I do wed," slipping the ring on her finger.

That is how I came to pledge myself to a princess among mermaids, knowing the

terms were surprisingly similar to the pledge my men had made to me.

Don't mistake me. I haven't been faithful always, only frequently. I've not stayed

around to comb her tresses and bring her oysters filled with pearls. I've been myself, and

never stropped my wild wandering. But we've often been a small convoy together,

keeping each other safe in this world of peril. That's the pledge we made to one another,

and to remind her who she was dealing with, I told her after I slipped the ring on her

finger:

There are pirates with a hook for a hand,

I'm a pirate with a hook for a heart.

A hook for a heart is hard, awkward and sharp

and it's shiny and cruel to caress.

It speaks of the cockpit, the blood and the sand,

the surgeon, the saw, the severed part.

A hook for a heart, a patch for an aye, a no for a yes,

a sigh, a sigh,

I see her look and I curse the hook

and the peg for a soul and the nay for an aye

a sigh, a sigh

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for battles won at such a cost

for shattered hearts and souls we've lost,

a patch for an aye,

a sigh, a sigh.

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