Art:AADM/Second round/(Almost) Any Pirate Captain

The Short
= The Entry = As the Dread Pirate Captain Bartholemew le Blood stumped on his pegleg across the battered and bloody wooden deck of his sloop "Dead Men's Fortune's," casually stepping over the moaning piles of wounded sailors, nodding in approval at the burning hulk of the plundered Spanish plate galleon sinking behind them in their wake, watching the sweaty, unwashed pirates still alive and able after the battle wrestling the heavy chests of Spanish gold and jewels down into the hold (stopping occasionally to say "Arrr!" or pay their respects to the Captain and his green parrot, Polly Want Gold), and inspecting the rows of iron cannon that not an hour ago had battered their prey into submission, the Captain finally decided what the source of his irritation and lack of satisfaction was: he was a stereotype.

Le Blood did not immediately act upon this revelation.

He couldn't, really, despite the parts of him which wanted to: packaged with the Dread Pirate Captain stereotype came a predisposition for lost limbs, but, more relevantly, it came with an almost inhuman patience. The stereotype also came with cool cunning, a disregard for grammar, and a thin edge of ruthlessness. In many aspects, le Blood had more in common with a crafty octopus or the legendary sea-kraken than he did with his own crew, in that le Blood could wait for hours on end just for the perfect moment to strike. (He was, for obvious reasons, also feared at the poker table.)

Deliberately, le Blood paused in his walk, nearly dislodging his parrot in the process. His hawk-like gaze (in that whatever le Blood was looking at had the sensation that the Dread Pirate Captain was weighing if it was prey or not prey, and it's edibleness level to boot) scoured the deck of the sloop, sending unfortunate pirates into frenzies of activity as he glanced at them in search of his first mate. Once le Blood spotted him, he sighed inwardly in relief, brightened slightly. "Tom!" le Blood bellowed, resuming his slow deliberate slump across the deck towards him. Polly Want Gold echoed the name.

Tom Rackham, who had been busy teaching the latest cabin how to swab decks and was properly buckling his swash (crew slang for the hazing ritual: le Blood wasn't exactly sure how it started) stood, visibly surprised and not a little bit alarmed, though Tom was valiantly trying to hide it. "Aye, sir?" Tom smartly snapped out before clouting the cabin boy on generic principle. "Your captain is here! Show some respect, boy!"

"Sir," the boy mumbled.

This did nothing for le Blood's pensive mood.

"Enough, I have better things to concern myself with." Le Blood ignored the cabin boy's startled surprise, presumably at not being hit on generic pirate principle. It was harder to ignore Tom's alarm, which transcended any attempts he made at hiding it and emerged, as startled as the sun suddenly shining above a cloudbank, painfully visible to those who knew him. Fortunately for le Blood, the cabin boy wasn't included in that number. "Now be gone, lad."

"Off with you before I have your head for disgracing the captain!" roared Tom, mostly on the same generic pirate principle which dictated clouting cabin boys. In general, the worst fate the crew of Dead Men's Fortune's suffered was shortened rum rations with the occasional keelhauling. (Aside from Richard the Black, who had been beheaded, then keelhauled, after he questioned the presence of the extra apostrophe in the ship's name. If there was one thing that pirates disliked, it was grammar.)

The boy left with a gulp, hoisting his deck-swapping implements, with the slightest of wide-eyed backward glances.

This left Tom Rackham and Bartholemew le Blood alone, relatively speaking, the crew leaving a wide berth around the two. The silence elongated, broken by the soft squawking of Polly Want Gold and the occasional chorus of arrs echoing from the pirate crew.

"Captain?" Tom asked eventually.

"It was a fine battle," le Blood declared.

"Aye, that it was."

"Mighty ship."

"Aye."

There was a long awkward pause, the silence created by a group of people (or in this case, two) who are desperately searching for some reason to dissipate the silence, all the while flailing miserably in a cloud of awkward small talk.

"Tis a pity they hadn't better booty, eh, Tom? Most ships know better than to sail in these waters with a heavy load, and I've been starving for gold for ages."

"Right you are, captain. The crew could use proper treasure, it would do wonders for morale."

The silence elongated. Le Blood had never developed manly heart-to-heart conversation skills and felt himself floundering in the alien waters. He found himself dimly hoping that the Spanish fleet would attack or a band of marauders would sail on by, something to distract from the awkwardness of the situation.

"I find that I'm fond of their rum, though, captain," Tom remarked.

"Aye. Swill works, but fine rum is much better."

"Much better!" echoed Polly Want Gold.

"Better indeed," Tom said with all the force of a papal edict.

"Aye," le Blood solemnly said.

The uneasiness between captain and first mate increased until it was a variable aura, the center the duo, which spread out in a several foot radius engulfing anything which walked into it (generally generic crewmembers, the occasional rat or fish) who found themselves pausing, half-wondering at the sudden uncomfortable feeling assaulting their senses, emitting quivering ‘Arr's which trembled in the air.

"I."

"Sir?"

Le Blood sighed, defeated. "Set a course for Hispaniola, Tom. I'll be in my cabin."

"Aye, sir! I'll have the customary mug of rum delivered."

"Make that a keg."

"…aye, sir," Tom said with a slight tremor in his voice. Without waiting for another word from le Blood, he turned and started barking out order which involved sails and pump, hoisting and keels, all of which roughly translated to ‘get sailing, the captain's pissy.'

Le Blood inwardly sighed and slumped his way back to his cabin, all the while cursing himself for being a filthy coward.

The rum aided in soothing le Blood's mood, when it finally arrived.

Le Blood was sitting dejectedly in his favorite red plush chair, lined with faded faux-gold gilding and adorned with fake carved skulls, when the keg arrived. It was hoisted into the room by by the ship's cook and the fresh-faced cabin boy whose swash Tom had been buckling. Le Blood glanced balefully at them before making a vague gesture. "Aye, put it over there," he mumbled as his crewmates placed the keg where le Blood indicated, within arm's reach of the chair and between Polly Want Gold's brass stand and the chest on the floor (it was a chest which was large and solid, rumored to be the place where le Blood stored gold and silver, or things more intangible like souls or beating hearts: it was actually where he kept his shoes, though le Blood felt no need to inform the curious public about that.) "Thanks to you two."

They shared mingled looks of alarm which le Blood decided didn't bother him.

"Now, off with you."

The cook gaped: the cabin boy's mouth opened. "Captain?"

"What is it?" le Blood growled, glaring at the boy who looked suddenly like he had the feeling that he was going to be slaughtered by the captain on the spot, and smelled like he fouled his pants in sheer terror.

The cook intervened with quick words and an even quicker hand which grabbed the boy around the forearm and seemed ready to drag it, and the rest of the body, out. "The boy was just stating that he was eager to get back to work! Aren't ye, lad?"

"Uh, yes?"

"Good on you! We'll just be leaving, captain."

The cook bolted through the thick oak door, dragging the hapless cabin boy with him. The door slammed shut with a solid thud: Polly Want Gold squawked in alarm.

Le Blood went to tap the keg.

His problem, he reflected as he sat down in his red plush chair with a tankard full of rum, was not so much the fact that he was a stereotype. Rather, it was that le Blood couldn't see any way of breaking out of the mold. It wasn't like he could speak with his crew on this issue, anyway. Even if he attempted to talk with them, the odds of him being able to force the words out were slim.

Furthermore, le Blood knew from experience that the last thing pirate crews generally desired was a man of the people. Epic battles were fine, but there was a difference between fighting side by side and being drinking buddies. Even if all they had on board in terms of liquids was rum.

"The problem," he grumbled to Polly Want Gold, "Is that I need something to change. I'm sick of…this."

"Sick of this," the parrot echoed.

"I could try to resume my poetic works. I was a bit of a poet in my deck-swabbing days, if you didn't know," mused le Blood as his finger traced patterns in the fabric of his chair. "I used to write rhymes while sopping up grime, most of which involved me hoping the first mate would find himself keelhauled. Gave up after not being able to rhyme orange with anything."

Polly Want Gold rocked from side to side, but seemed more interested in watching the far wall than it did in listening to le Blood muse. "Polly want gold," it whistled.

"But that isn't really branching out, breaking out of the stereotype, is it? After all, Captain Jack Black the Lashing Crack made his living out of writing poetry. It isn't like I'd be doing anything unique by being a rhyming pirate captain."

Polly Want Gold stated, "Hello! Hello!"

"And I'm not really solving anything by talking to you, am I?"

The parrot wasn't forthcoming with an answer.

With a snort of disgust le Blood stood: self pity wasn't his thing. He slumped to the door, taking one step, a second, and then flung the door open with a curse on his lips and an order to seek down and sink the first Spanish galleon they encountered. At least, that was what he intended.

He didn't expect to have knocked the new cabin boy on his rear with the force of the door. Le Blood even expected less to have the boy gulp, and with a slight tremor ask, "I don't suppose now's the time to admit that I'm your cousin from London, now is it? I sought you out for five long years: your mother's dead, and we need you back at the manor."

Le Blood suspected he'd be longing for his days of Dread Pirate Captain stereotypedness not before long.