Art:AADM/Second round/Captain Papa

The Short
= The Entry = "To the crew on deck, the thick fog drifting in was tranquil and serene, but to Captain Abaco it was the misty head of a monster whose eyes flashed danger, whose breath bore the acrid stench of death, and whose voice whispered, 'You're next!'"

"Papaaaa... you already tol' us this one!" a small voice piped up.

I looked down at the three pairs of hopeful eyes gazing up at me and sighed, "What have I told ye about my name, Janie?"

My youngest looked down and recited dutifully and only somewhat sulkily, "There are no Papas on pirate ships, only captains an' mates an' monkeys an' scurvy dogs an' Roger tol' me something about ladies with fake faces..."

"Aye, aye, that's enough," I hastily interrupted, sending a glare at the floppy-haired boy sitting in the corner, "Right, Janie, and who am I?"

"You're Captain Garf Gehaessig an' you're the meanest cap'n on the six seas!"

"Right again, lass. Now, do ye want te hear this story or not?  Yer not getting any other!" I exclaimed.

At their mute nods, I settled back into the chair I had chosen to drag into the tiny cabin that I had cleared out two days ago. Before the arrival of my three little bundles of treasure, the cabin had been used as a storage room for bananas, and the scent lingered on to remind me of the cringe I had made each time a crate of bananas had hit the ocean's waves, my wealth dropping with every "Splash!".

"A'right. To the crew on deck, the thick fog drifting in was tranquil and serene, but to Captain Abaco it was the misty head of a monster whose eyes flashed danger, whose breath bore the acrid stench of death, and whose voice whispered, 'You're next!'"   I narrated quickly and with a tone that would've told any reasonable person that it would be dangerous to interrupt again.

"I already know the end to this," interrupted Rachel, oblivious to the way my hair was starting to fly wildly about my head in my agitation, "Captain Abaco and the crew run from the monster until they get lost and stranded and then Abaco realizes the strength he has inside and turns to face the monster, which turns out to just be a manifestation of an event from his past. It's not even original.  I mean, sure, it's great the first ten times or so, but really, Captain, it's just predictable.  Couldn't the monster eat him, maybe just once?  He seems to be a cowardly incompetent, anyways."

I stood up and stared at my ten-year-old daughter with complete surrender. "Ye've spent too much time wit' yer mother, lass. Ye've got that impertinent tone of know-it-all command.  Fine, ye want it the way you want it, why don't ye just tell it!  I'm not meant to be telling ghost stories in the night!  I've got a ship to command.  Go to bed!  And don't come out of this room until I say you can!"

As I stormed to the door, I heard Janie's small voice pipe up again, "But Papa... what if there are spiders in here?"

"Feed them to the rats!" I yelled and stalked out of the cabin, slamming the door behind me.

Since Miranda had dropped them on me at the small port of Islay of Luthien two days before, my life had been turned upside down. Even now, climbing up the ladder to the main deck, I could feel the grey creeping into my prized beard, normally as red as the warning streaks in poison ivy. What in the six seas was I supposed to do with three children on a pirate ship? I'd been lucky so far, with no engagements at sea and only losing the bananas as cargo. But sooner or later something would happen. The trip from Islay to Jorvik wasn't long, but it was treacherous. At least I had an experienced crew.

Even as the thought passed my mind, I realized that the deck was completely empty. The moon's light was the only thing to grace her weathered planks. I moved quickly up to the navigation wheel, which I found tied in place with a sail rope. Except that the rope had loosened, and the wheel was turning freely. I compared the chart with the clear night sky and groaned as I saw that, indeed, we were off-course. How many hours had the wheel been left this way? And where, oh where, was my crew of hardened veterans?

"I'm going to keelhaul the lot o' them," I muttered as I headed towards the only light I could see on board - unsurprisingly beneath the door of the ship's galley. A raucous burst of laughter stopped me in my tracks two seconds before I burst through the door, and I paused to listen for a moment.

"And then the little brat says, 'Excuse me, captain, but I just thought you should know that the knot you tied on that line is wrong and you're about to lose that sail!' You should've seen the color of the cap'ns face!  It right near matched his beard!" Another round of loud laughter filtered through the door, and I recognized the voice of my first mate, Stan Nearly, as the storyteller. As the laughter died down, he continued on, "Ever since those kids have gotten on the Startled Mako, the captain has seemed sort of ... wait! Do you blokes hear something?" The room grew silent.

I realized that for the last thirty seconds a low snarl had started in my throat and the crew realized as well, just moments too late, that the source of the growl emanating from the doorway was none other than the red-faced captain himself. I stepped into the room and the crew scrambled to hide the rum and the cards, but the red and blue poker chips were just too many and too colorful to ignore.

"POKER!" I yelled, advancing upon the shrinking men, "POKER! There's no stinkin' POKER on my ship, do you hear?  The sea is no place for parlour games!  Especially when there's no one at the SCUPPERIN' HELM!  Now get out, you scurvy dogs, get out before I tie every one o' you to the hull and drag you wherever we're going, which could be ANYWHERE, thanks to you idiots!  Get out, get out, GET OUT!"

They scurried past me, heads low, not meeting my eyes and mumbling, "Yes, sir, sorry, sir," as they went. I stomped to the table and dashed the chips off onto the floor, spilling rum along the way. In a rage, I turned around, ready to go kick them further into shape and stopped dead at the sight of Janie in the doorway, her thumb in her mouth and her eyes very wide. I took a deep breath, calming myself.

"Janie, what are ye doing out here?" I asked in a controlled voice, feeling my hands clench and unclench.

"Pap... I mean... cap'n... Roger keeps trying to scare me by making shadows on the walls. And I heard yelling an' I was 'fraid, an' I wanted you, even though you look awful scary right now," she finished all in a rush. She then reached up and picked a huge knot of red hair off of my swashbuckler's jacket. "You lost some hair, Papa," she stated sweetly, "Maybe you should take a bath more of'en. Rachel says you stink!  Ok, well, I'm not 'fraid anymore.  Nighty, nighty, Captain Papa!"

She then got on her tiptoes and pulled my face down to kiss my cheek, with only a slight wrinkle to her nose at the smell, and turned and disappeared into the corridor again. I drew a hand over my face tiredly and followed her out onto deck. My crew was at work, getting the sails tight again and debating our position.

"Any idea where we are, Stan?" I asked my first mate.

"No clue, cap'n," he responded resignedly, "and this blasted fog isn't helping us any!"

I looked around with my eyes really open for the first time and realized that the clear night sky had disappeared behind a bank of thick grey fog. It was eerily quiet; the only noise the sea was making was the tranquil lap of ripples against the bow.

"Well, we might as well drop anchor for now and wait out the calm," I decided, "daylight will surely bring us a sign of our location."

"Aye, aye, sir," answered Stan.

I went to my own cabin and fell asleep to the sound of the anchor splashing down, and the gentle rocking of the sea below me.

The next morning found me back on deck as the sun rose and burned off the thick fog. It seemed to be a peaceful morning, which immediately made me suspicious. I crept down to the door of the children's cabin and listened at the door. For a minute I heard nothing, then muffled giggles and whispers. I leaned closer.

"BOOM!" I heard Roger's shout, "You're drownded, Rachel!"

"I am NOT," the reply screech came, "You cheated! The rules were that you couldn't attack from more than one shoe away!  And it's DROWNED, Roger, not drownded!  Say it right, or I'm telling Papa!"

Following that exclamation there were the sounds of scuffling and screeching and thumps and I pictured them rolling around the cabin. I decided play-time was now over.

"Enough!" I said as I stepped in, "Now what in Artemis' name is going..." I trailed off as I viewed the scene of destruction within. My children were creative, it had to be said. They had set up an entire sea battle on the floor of their cabin, complete with rocks made from lumped socks, and ships of all sizes made from a deck of cards that Janie must've picked up the night before, cut and folded into various shapes. My nose picked up a strange scent, like burning bananas, and I realized that a small charred lump in the midst of the epic battle had a trail of smoke snaking up from it. Upon closer examination of the ships and the guilty looks on Roger's and Rachel's faces, I saw that there were small piles of grey powder on the decks of each of the card-ships.

"Is that... gunpowder?" I asked, very dangerously quiet. "Do you children have... gunpowder... on paper ships... and are you... setting fire to gunpowder inside of a wooden ship in the middle of the ocean?!" I was yelling by the time I was done. The thought passed through my head that I was probably going to lose my voice from all of the yelling that had occurred in the last twelve hours.

"It was Rachel's idea," came the whiny reply from my son.

"I don't care WHOSE idea it was. You all will be the death of me and this ship!  Go on, get out of here.  Spend some time on deck, you obviously need it!" I herded them out, carefully dumping the gunpowder into my hand from each ship. Where did they even get the gunpowder from? Had they been in the hold? I shook my head as I climbed into the bright daylight. No sooner did I step on deck than Roger was at my side again.

"Captain?" he asked excitedly, "Can we go to that island? Please?  Pretty please?  Maybe there's treasure!"

Island? I looked where he was pointing as he jumped, and sure enough, there was a line of gray on the horizon. I went to find Stan.

"So, Stan," I said, "any idea what shore we may be near? It's not possible that that's Jorvik, unless the skies have somehow moved."

"No, captain, I really don't," Stan replied, "As far as I know, there's only Jorvik, Islay, Eta, Cranberry and Midsummer in this archipelago, and I don't see how it can be any of those, judging by how long we've sailed and what the stars told us before the fog moved in."

"Well then," I said, "let's go check it out, shall we?"

An hour later, we sailed into a quiet bay, and our skiff was pulled up onto the beach. I had debated long and hard on bringing Roger, Rachel and Janie with us, but decided they would get in more trouble on the ship. At least if they blew something up here, we wouldn't be stranded.

"Don't touch anything!" I said, shaking a finger at them. "We're just going to check it out for an hour or two, and then we'll head back to the ship. Make a sandcastle or something."

"But Captain," Rachel complained, "there isn't any sand here!"

Looking around, I saw that she was right. The entire island seemed to be made of stone, with no sand or vegetation in sight at all.

"Just... do something then," I grumbled. "We'll be back shortly."

I left them skipping flat stones across the water's surface and went inland a bit with Stan and few other mates.

"What do ye think, Stan?" I asked, after we had walked for fifteen minutes.

"No sign of civilization, or any life at all, cap'n," he responded. Just then a yell came from our right and we turned in time to see one of the mates, Edward Upnose, come running up to us.

"Captain!" he gasped, catching his breath, "we found papagoite! A whole cache of it!  And chalcocite too, right alongside."

"Excellent!" I cried, my mood lifting immediately. "Good work, mate! Let's get the entire crew working on getting as much of it as possible onto the ship.  Throw whatever you can overboard to make room.  Either of those minerals will fetch a pretty price back at Luthien!"

"Captain!" Stan suddenly cried, "I think I know where we are! We've gone in completely the wrong direction from Jorvik after all.  A stone island, with deposits of chalcocite and papagoite... this can only be Lynx Island.  I'd completely forgotten that this island was even here.  No one ever comes here anymore!  I can't even remember why!"

"Lynx," I breathed in dawning realization. "Of course. The last pirate to set foot on this shore was Captain Abaco himself, lost at sea in a dense bank of fog.  Legend says that he spent weeks on this rock with his crew before setting back out to face the 'monster' of his past.  The story goes on to say that he defeats the monster and comes back to civilization, but the truth is that he didn't win at all.  Only a single swabbie made it back to land, half crazy with fear and dehydration.  We don't really know what he encountered out there."

"That's a bit creepy, isn't it, cap'n?" Stan said, with a slight tremor to his voice.

"Aye, Stan, it is. Let's get to work moving that papagoite and chalcocite and then we'll set sail before dark.  Do ye think ye can get us back to Luthien?" I asked, laying a hand on his shoulder, "I'm counting on ye here!"

"Aye, aye, cap'n, no problem at all, now that I know where we are!" he replied.

I had almost forgotten about the children until Janie came running up to me as I reached the shoreline.

"Captain Papa! Captain Papa!  Roger broke my fossil!" she cried, her face all red and puffy.

"I did not," said Roger as he came running after her. "She was pulling and pulling on it, and it just slipped out and broke!"

"Fossil?" I asked in confusion, "What fossil is this?"

"Oh, it's nothing special," explained Rachel as she calmly walked up, tossing her hair back. "Just a little fossil of a fish that Janie found. Here, Janie, it broke in three places.  Why don't you take the biggest one, and Roger and I can take the other two, okay?  Is that okay with you?"

Janie sniffled and nodded and took her piece of the stone and tucked it under her arm carefully. I caught a glimpse of it and recoiled at the slimy barnacled thing that they were fighting over. They weren't even interested in the shiny papagoite going by. The sea, I understood. Mates and swabbies, I understood. But children? Incomprehensible.

"Right, that's been settled. Back to the ship now, children," I commanded.

"Aye, aye captain," came the chorus back at me.

Back on board, I looked to the sea with some trepidation. No one could really know what happened to Captain Abaco and his crew, but I truly didn't believe it was some monster in the fog. Still, I would be happy to get back to Luthien and have this little adventure quite over with. My heart lifted at the thought that perhaps Miranda would still be there, and that she hadn't yet headed back to Jorvik herself.

"Captain?" Stan interrupted my musings, "The last papagoite was loaded, and I've got a course charted for home. Can we lift anchor and head out?"

At my nod, he headed back to the helm and started yelling orders. In just a few minutes I felt the sails lift with the wind and we sailed away from Lynx.

When the night hit, the fog rolled back in and the crew became tense and nervous.

"It's just a ghost story, lads! Keep on, we'll get through," I yelled in encouragement.

There was a sudden tug on the tail of my jacket and I turned to see all three of my children behind me.

"It's not that we're scared, Captain Papa," Rachel stated matter-of-factly, "It's just Janie really. We just want to make sure she's ok."

Roger nodded quickly in agreement, "It's ok that she's scared, since she's just a baby, right Captain? I think she wants to sleep in your bed with you tonight."

I coughed to hide a chuckle that startled even me. "Why don't all three of you sleep in my bed tonight, boy? There's plenty of room for you, and I'll be right out here," I suggested.

They headed in with a chorus of thanks and taunts of being scaredy-pirates at each other. I watched them go fondly for a moment before snapping out of it. "Yer gettin' soft in the head, old man," I mumbled to myself. "It's time to get these brats off of my ship."

Thus the night passed, with no sign of a monster built of fog, and the ship fairly flew on the relief of the crew for the next two days. Soon we were porting back at Islay of Luthien, and amidst jealous stares from other captains, I sold my booty of papagoite and chalcocite for 138,458 pieces of eight. I couldn't wait to tell the crew.

I was walking back up the gang-plank to the Mako, staring into the bag that held the gold and recounting it when a shrill screech interrupted my joy.

"Garfield Gehaessig! What HAVE you done with my children?" A tall, curvy woman was waiting for me at the railing of the Mako.

"Miranda," I scowled, to hide the joy I felt at seeing her. "They're fine! All safe and sound, back at Luthien, perhaps not at the time specified and maybe a little dirty, but none the worse for wear!  It's ME you should be worried about.  Those little devils almost burned down my ship, made me lose my sails and they were in my hair for the entire week!"

I checked the whining tone in my voice and continued on in a reasonable tone, "Listen, darlin', you know I love these yearly ventures and all, but next time it's 'Take Your Children to Work Week' ye need to wait until I'm in a safer port.  Ruby is just too dangerous for our little brats."

The brats peeked up around their mother's sides and grinned cheekily. I gave in for a moment and finished the walk up the gangplank and swept Miranda up into my arms to the sounds of the children's gags and giggles.

"When's it going to be 'Take Your Wife to Work Week' darlin'?" she fairly purred into my ear. I gulped hard and went tongue-tied.

Finally, I managed to spit out, "Soon, dear. I'll come for you soon."

"Good," she finished, "because I miss having an infant in my arms."

I groaned at the thought of four children in future years, but knew that in the end, any resistance from me would be futile. Images flitted through my head of my ship burning, cargo sinking, my crew mutinying... with a shudder I came back to the present and watched my wife gather up her chicks and march them down the plank. At the end, there was a brief discussion and then Janie came running back up to me.

"Here, Captain Papa," she said, holding her hand out, "I want you to keep my fossil safe so I can play with it again next year, ok? Love you, bye bye!"

With a parting smile full of promise, my wife turned and headed off, three red-headed runts in tow.

"Alright, boys, let's set sail!" I said, smiling in spite of myself. "Onward to Jorvik!"

Two Months Later
It was a quiet evening, and I was in my cabin missing the children, and Miranda even more. As I turned Janie's fossil halfway in my hand for the hundreth time that evening, I stared in contemplation at the etched lines. I focused down on the stone distractedly, then suddenly it came into view quite sharply.

"It can't be..." I breathed, then dashed up the ladder to deck.

"Stan!" I called, and my first mate rushed over.

"Look at this! This isn't a fossil of a fish!  It's an etching of Orca Island.  I've been there before, I recognize those bumps and ridges." I exclaimed excitedly.

"Yer right, Captain!" he said, peering at it intently. "And look, there seems to be some directions or lines etched in it as well! I think it's a map!"

"Damn straight, it's a map!" I said in the biggest rush of adrenaline I'd ever felt.

"But Captain," he said worriedly, "There's only part of it here. Where's the rest of it?"

I stared at him blankly for a moment, realization coming over me in a wave.

"Turn the ship around!" I yelled, turning to face the entire crew. "Turn her around!"

"What, Captain, back to Luthien?" came a yell from the rigging, as the ship leaned into the turn.

"Aye, mates, back to Luthien! And then," I said with great anticipation, "to Orca Island to find the treasure of Captain Abaco!"

I turned back to the spray and grinned to the great expanse of open ocean. I guess Miranda would see me much sooner than either of us had thought. After that, well... who truly knew? It was part of the glory and the suspense of being a pirate captain, famous throughout the six seas. I loved every minute. Captain Papa? Aye, that's me.