A Leg Up

"She'll be readin' th' weather." Robin Penn's remark was spoken softly despite the fact that his approach was clearly announced by the sound of his wooden leg punctuating every other step along the dock's planking. "An' I be thinkin' she's not a bit 'appy wi' it. Wants 'eavy fog, she does."

Robin served as our ship's bursar, cabin boy despite his age, and more importantly, ship's carpenter though his duties in that regard were limited by his infirmity. I had wondered at his service in the crew and made bold to ask him directly how he came not to be pensioned off under the Articles which provided more generously than most for loss of a limb. I found him willing to discuss the matter openly without taking offense at my curiosity; thus I learned that the very thing he warned so often against became his own undoing, but as a matter of choice, not chance.

"'Twas th' foggy season, like now," he told me. "We'd boarded bloody parish-rigged brig, see, carryin' a load o' victuals wot we sorely wanted, an' I were layin' about wi' me cutlass amongst 'er crew when I spied our powder monkey, young chap an' green, lookin' t' 'ave 'is 'ead split by a rogue wi' a belayin' pin. Oh, them were th' days! Well, th' anchor chain, it were a'tween me an' th' blighter wi' the belayin' pin. I made a leap t'save th' laddie...took that bleeder's arm off, I did...but somewheres one o' th' mates fired a keg o' powder an' th' brig, she 'eeled over fast. Got me leg in th' blasted chain, an' off she come in th' backlash. Carpenter...'im wot was our surgeon, too...tol' me, 'We'll 'ave ye right as rain, lad,' an' pared off th' tatty bits an' set me up wi' this 'ere peg." Penn paused for a noisy drencher from a flask of rum, his voice gone raspy with the telling of the tale while I stood speechless at how casually he could relate it, as if it were all in a day's work in the trade of piracy.

"Now Cap'n," he continued, "she seen wot I done fer th' young feller, an' she come by to see me in me bunk. 'Ye're a guid man, Robin, me lad, but tell me this: did ye no' consider wot might 'appen when ye went over th' chain?' I told 'er straight, 'That I did, but Jack Tar were about t' 'ave 'is brains spilt, an' I were thinkin' 'e's far too young t' die just yet. I took me chance an' lost th' roll.' Then she looks me str'ight in th' eye an' says, 'Then I gives ye a choice, fer that's wot I suspected. Ye can do one o' eether. Fer savin' a man's life, I'll gi'e ye double wot's laid out in Articles an' pension ye off, or ye can stay aboard an' be 'prenticed t' carpenter. But I'll no' be 'avin' ye monkeyin' about in th' riggin', mind. Ye're a deck 'and an' at lower pay if ye wants t' stay on.'" Penn took another pull at his flask, but it had gone dry. I offered my own, for my taste for rum is limited. He accepted it with but a nod in thanks, draining half the contents before lowering it to his knee.

"She give me two days t' think it over, an' I mean t' tell ye, it weren't a easy choice. But 'ere I be. 'Tis in me blood, piratin', an' wi' a Cap'n like Morgan Corbye, well, she ain't so mean as some. Wi' bein' full carpenter now an' bursar besides, me pay's almost as good as ever it were as bo'sun."

There was one more question I wanted to ask, and Robin anticipated it. "Young Jackie Tar, wot become o' 'im, ye wonder? Next time we put into port, 'e drew 'is pay an' married th' parson's daughter. I 'ear 'e's a clark at th' clothier's. 'ad all 'e wanted o' piratin', that one, an' Cap'n let 'im go wi' her blessin'."

Perhaps the sound of her name fell upon the Captain's ear, for at that moment she rounded on us sharply and said, "Ready th' lads an' get 'em aboard. We're sailin' on th' mornin' tide. Shift it, ye bloodless curs! We've piratin' t' do."

*****

Footnote: A little less than a year ago, a friend lost his leg in an industrial accident. He asked me to consider writing him into Morgan Corbye's saga. Given the circumstances, I have done so. This one's for you, Rob.

Waiting On The Tide

The fair weather of summer brought a surprising change in the demeanor and appearance of the Winged Adventure's crew. If they did not become precisely what one might describe as "model citizens" when they went ashore to obtain supplies, they at least avoided any serious confrontations with members of the constabulary. They cleaned up their salty language as much as any sailor could be expected to do, and their bodies likewise; then they emerged one by one from below decks into the sunlight in spanking-clean sailcloth and colorful silks to walk among the populace with the romance of distant ports surrounding them as much as did the scent of exotic spices. Piracy, for the moment, seemed but a pale penumbral shadow at their backs.

Admittedly, we stayed no longer than a fortnight in any one port, and seldom that; there is only so much good behaviour a proper pirate can be expected to exhibit, and the coincidence of slit purses, missing pocket watches and a sleek barque in the harbour may register slowly in the minds of the official body, but it does inevitably signify. In any event, it was thought that the Winged Adventure was due for a good careening, so we sailed forth and put into a tight cove on a tiny uncharted island for the duration of the season where the graceful ship was brought out of her element and laid over on her side, an inelegant position for a lady of her standing. All hands turned to, the Captain included, for Morgan Corbye is not one to ask of a man that which she would not do herself.

It was of an evening whilst seated by a fire of driftwood enjoying a savoury stew of mussels and wild pork that the subject of the seasonal nature of professional piracy was brought into perspective for this biographer. I had risked giving affront by suggesting that we had been idling under sunny skies for almost three months of the year without so much as a minor raiding party being raised and wondered at the logic, hoping that the innocence and ignorance of my inquiry might temper the Captain's response. Indeed it did. With a laugh which crackled like a lightning strike, she spat a leathery bit of shellfish into the fire. As we watched it sizzle and bubble into greasy ash, she said, "Aye, ye're as green as a little gourd upon th' vine, an't ye? Think ye we'd be showin' o' ourse'fs t' th' 'ole wide 'orizon, sailin' there on calm sea flat as glass, bold as pimple on 'is Lordship's nose? Ye'd no' last long in th' trade wi' that strategy. 'Tis cunnin' wot keeps us alive, weather cunnin'."

My raised eyebrow encouraged her to continue the explanation. "D'ye no' feel it? There's a damp in th' air an' th' breeze 'as shifted direction. A week, ten days, fust rains come in, nought but pissin' rains at fust. We bides a bit then, an' when th' fog rises thick o' mornin's, then's when we puts out, an' no man's eye upon our sails. Slick as oil, we tucks away ag'in, an' when storm comes, why, then ye'd best 'ave yer sea-legs quick as Johnny, fer 'idin' a-hind swells is wot this ol' gal does best." A nod in the direction of her ship told me that Captain Corbye was not referring to herself, although she could have fallen within the compass of the statement with equal ease. "'Tis th' autumn wot's piratin' weather. Did ye no' know that?" As she dipped the ladle into the stew and refilled her bowl, I began to suspect then that the next few months of my life would be divided between boisterous, extravagant enterprises and the gut-wrenching despair of seasickness with our Captain driving the Winged Adventure into the heart of the storms. Morgan Corbye is waiting on the mists, waiting on the tide.

Tailored for a Pirate

As official biographer of pirate captain Morgan Corbye, my passage on the Winged Adventure is not without price. My duties are various and many, for every soul aboard the handsome barque must pull their share of the load. I cannot claim to be a seaman, although I have endured watches in the crow's nest on lookout, the pitching and rolling of the ship more than my stomach could reasonably abide, and I have gone down on my prayer-bones to holystone the decks with the meanest of the lads. I have sat out hours on a coil of rope, arms burning under the sun, fingers engaged in fraying a baggy-wrinkle, that peculiar device which keeps the rigging from chafing. It was my skill at the latter which brought the Captain to ask if I was adept at sewing. Thus it fell out that I became ship's tailor, and though mending of the sails is delegated to more expert hands, I have learned to use a sailmaker's palm to drive a needle through the canvas, repairing breeches and outerwear at need.

That said, among the booty garnered in a recent raid, the Captain discovered several bolts of white muslin, and one evening in her cabin, draped the fabric about her body as I looked on in astonishment. One does not equate Morgan Corbye with the dressmaker's salon. Her posturing was that of the bride-to-be as she brought the soft folds against her breast. "I be thinkin' I wants a smock o' this," she said, "wi' fancywork." Taking up the several yards she had reeled off, she wrapped them untidily around the remainder and threw it without warning into my arms. "Ye're off spud duty fer a fortnight. Get crackin'."

Having taken her measure that same night, the "fancywork" is nearing completion and my respite from potato peeling will be at its end when the garment is assembled. The Captain is keeping close watch on my progress to ensure that I do not prolong this pleasant duty unnecessarily.

The Captain's Regret

In the privacy of her cabin, Captain Morgan Corbye permitted the consternation she had masked from the crew to cloud her face as she dashed rum into a flagon and sat down to table to consider where her plans had gone awry. An outline which had seemed to point toward a simple and successful raid had turned into a narrow escape, leaving one deckhand seriously injured and others with various minor wounds. Although as pirates to whom danger to life and limb was something to be considered as a matter of course, the Winged Adventure's crew had suffered their share of personal injuries, it was the first time that Captain Corbye felt she had a traitor in their midst. There had been but one opportunity for a breach of ship's confidence, and that was when a small party of men had gone ashore for provisions, among them one apprentice to the trade. With a solitary unproven man in the midst of a crew of twenty who had ever stood by her, little space was left in the Captain's mind for judgment against any but Orum Longstreet. "Aye, an' I 'ad me suspicions when I brung that slick-tongued liar on board. Curse me for lettin' too much slack in th' lines o' me wits an' lettin' th' sod win me trust wi' a tale o' 'is grandfer 'avin' been a pirate. Press-ganged, more like."

Your historian had been ordered below that I should not witness with my own eyes the punishment of Mr. Longstreet, but it is to be remembered that for all her consideration to those unfortunates who suffer for one reason or another under government oppression, Morgan Corbye is first and foremost a pirate. Although she metes out her disciplines rarely, when the need is felt for firmness, she turns to the task with determination. After the bo'sun had extracted full confession under twenty of his best, the captain relieved him of the cat and laid a final three stripes on Longstreet's raddled back. Three days later, he was marooned with scant provisions and a pistol with a single shot, and by the Articles, his personal goods were distributed among the remaining crew, the lion's share afforded to the deckhand languishing in sick bay with a sword cut which would cost him the use of his left arm. Of Orum Longstreet, your chronicler knows nothing more.

A Feast Fit For A Pirate

 

Across the table from me, Captain Morgan Corbye impaled the steaming haggis with a skean dhu and allowed the scent of spice to fill the close confines of her cabin. Intensely proud of her Scottish heritage, Capt. Corbye had charged the ship's cook with delivering her St. Patrick's Day feast, and had poor John Peeke presented corned beef and cabbage, he would have been lashed severely. That your historian might have been asked to share in the meal was too distant a possibility to consider. I had already noted that there was but a single plate on the oaken boards. I only hoped that I could keep my stomach from growling while the Captain dined leisurely.

Between bites, the Captain gave into reminiscence and, in a moment of deep reverie, she spoke of her mother's love for the Isle of Skye. "'Twas frae there that me grandfer come," she said, and added under her breath, "Wrong side o' th' blanket, that one." When I assured her that most of us have bastards somewhere in our history, she gave a coarse laugh and intentionally misconstrued my meaning, saying, "Aye, an' there be a bloody lot o' them in th' Corbyes, 'tis no denyin'."

Peeke interrupted us then by placing a large bowl of neeps (turnips) in the center of the spread. Captain Corbye had gone so far a-woolgathering that she passed over the opportunity to reprimand him for the late serving. As if from the instinct of some half-remembered social convention, she pushed the vegetable across to me with the point of her knife. The moment gave me pause to wonder: who might Morgan Corbye have become had she not turned to piracy those years ago when she enlisted with Edgar Service?

The Harbourmaster's Error

The Harbourmaster gave Capt. Corbye a rude shove which sent her tumbling into the Winged Adventure's jollyboat and out of sight of the gathering crowd who had witnessed his escort of the saucy pirate from the pub. Their line of travel had been far from straight and between lurches port and starboard, the voice of authority could be heard informing the good captain that certain fees had not been paid, nor would her presence in the village be excused for any amount of gold and particularly not in her present state of inebriation. Coming partly to her knees, Corbye groped for her tricorn, not seeing where it had come to rest on the dock as it flew from her head during her fall. "I'll no' be departin' wi'out me bloody 'at!" she objected vehemently, only to have the Harbourmaster offer a kick toward her hand which missed and left a muddy imprint on the tricorn's upturned brim, noticeable when it came to rest on the thwart. Had he seen the spark kindle in her eye at that moment, the official would have found no comfort in his sudden disillusionment. Morgan Corbye was not drunk as he supposed, though to all events and purposes she seemed to be quite intoxicated as she fumbled to free the boat's painter from the cleat.

To say that Captain Corbye and Harbourmaster Beale were on less than friendly terms would be to put it mildly. Long had the captain known that the exorbitant tithes on incoming and outgoing goods were but in part governmental greed, and that only marginally more than half the docking levy ever reached the village coffers. Though Morgan Corbye was a pirate of the high seas, the worse villain was Beale, dry-shod landlubber he, with his permits and taxes and penalties slipped in substantial part into his own pockets. The very inn from which Captain Corbye had been ushered with such incivility was in fact foundering under Harbourmaster Beale's own avaricious and self-serving piracies.

A few days earlier, Captain Corbye had learned that a shipment of rum had been brought into port, a shipment on which Beale intended to capitalize. Initiating a surcharge of twenty percent above the official liquor tax, the government agent placed the goods marginally beyond the innkeeper's financial reach; thus the desperate proprietor, his cellar nearly empty, sought a loan from one of the village's more wealthy inhabitants. Harbourmaster Beale's wife's brother, no less mercenary than the Harbourmaster, set extortionate terms in regard to interest, terms which the innkeeper found so unreasonable that he was forced to turn down the contract and return to his place of business to make shift as best he could. When the pirate captain subsequently offered good gold for an evening's libations, the barman was compelled to inform her that no rum was to be had until Beale's greed was satisfied. Ever the champion of the downtrodden, Morgan Corbye listened raptly to his tale, her mind racing. In the next few hours, her plans to settle old scores with Harbourmaster Beale had been formed.

Thus it came about that upon the next evening while feigning insobriety, she allowed herself to be pushed and shoved and verbally abused as the bait she knew Beale could not resist. At the same time, her crew was hard at work to offload cases of liquor further down the docks, delivering them to the back door of the pub, untaxed save for an honorarium of bottles with which to supply the Winged Adventure's galley. Beale, however, had committed another insult against her in the kick he delivered to her hat, an offense which could not be let stand unavenged. Returning with her crew that same night, the pirate assisted the proprietor with relabelling his fresh stores as ale, and a crudely penned note was found upon the stoop of the local constabulary the following morning, informing representatives of civil law in the matter of the Harbourmaster's black-market trade in liquor. With an outbuilding on his property filled with empty rum cases, the evidence against Beale was singularly damning. Their tongues firmly in cheek, Captain Corbye and her crew pledged his good health in a toast of excellent rum as the Winged Adventure sailed out of port.

Hello, Lads!

 

"Hello, lads!" Thus it was that Morgan Corbye addressed the captain and first mate, having obtained with all due stealth the interior of the captain's own cabin where, with the crew taking leave ashore, the two men sat in private council. She had boarded the vessel under cover of darkness, her approach to the ship made on a makeshift raft of barrel staves lashed together in such quantity as would bear only her slight weight. The Winged Adventure and her crew stood ready for her signal, hidden in a narrow estuary the larger ship could not navigate, tucked away amid a screen of verdure which masked the river mouth. The element of surprise was ever Captain Corbye's trump card and she played it well on this occasion, passing a small oil-filled bomb from hand to hand in the manner of a jongleur, casual in spite of the rapidly shortening fuse. "And where will ye be 'avin' this, now?"

Her reputation preceded her, but that did not stop the mate's foolish flinch toward his pistol. He found his sleeve pinioned with a black-bladed dagger before the motion could be completed and wisely took note that its counterpart had sprung to Capt. Corbye's free hand. The pirate relieved him of the pistol and applied it forcibly to his head and, in the very next instant, had her second knife in the small of his captain's back, urging him onto the deck as the fuse of the bomb sputtered dangerously close to ignition. Upon arriving topside, she threw the grenade overboard and watched it explode just before it touched the water. As always, her timing was impeccable. The watch of the Winged Adventure called all hands to stations at the signal and soon the barque hove to alongside. A score of men swarmed aboard to pry up hatches, removing to the graceful ship cases of tinned meat, fruit and flour, supplies sorely needed by those who spend their lives upon the sea.

Yet Morgan Corbye was not done with the captain and his mate who by that time had regained a semblance of consciousness. She ordered them to strip and bound them, naked, to the spars where indeed their crew found them on the following day, the Winged Adventure long since beyond the horizon. "'Tis not fer th' wealth I be a pirate," says she of her modest commerce. "'Tis fer th' freedom o' bein' me own self, an' that be th' truth o' it."