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.