Pirates from the sunken ship making it ashore on a dilapidated raft landed on the shoe of a reef that was home to a scurvy knave who’d once been master engineer to the Royal Navy until *** took over his thinking and he began to concoct schemes to overthrow the Crown.
Dismissed as an insane crackpot he’d been set adrift by his shipmates; coming upon the aerated cluster of marine life that was chock full of unusual and bizarre aquatic creatures and minerals; now dwelling this long among the coral creating living machines from the articulated pincers and shells of all but unknown gigantic crustaceans living on and around the reef.
Bringing liquor made them more than welcome as some of the pirates had survived clinging to a chestful of buoyant ***. The old Navy man running from his coral-thatched hut. Seeing the chest first of all he finessed the lock with a sharp fingernail tossing the chest open and guzzling down a bottle. “Ay man!” cried Captain Quick.
“I saw ‘em bring ya down,” the old mad man croaked.
“Was it a rocket?” asked the brawny woman coming up from the beach.
“Who the hell knows,” said the beachcomber.
The fierce and ***** Lizzie Quick had two gold teeth in front, one incisor on the right and one opposite front tooth outlined in gold. Her back teeth were ALL gold. So she was never without bandelier and pistols even when she slept, or ***** knaves would try to pry the gold right out of her head but now she carried a long knife at her side and a shorter rapier in her ruined kneehigh embroidered Spanish leather condorosa boots. Her red satin corset was embroidered with gold silk and her soaked hoop skirt were red and purple just because they could be. Normally light on her feet, soaked to the skin she felt as if she were wearing lead bloomers. Calling her serving ***** Esmeralda from the sand, the woman began arduously removing her mistress’ clothing layer by layer. The scavenging hermit helping himself to another bottle of ***.
“Ay man, I say, where we be?” tried Quick once again.
“You be on Wild Island, my island and ya best get off it. There’s no room for ya.”
“Ay man, you say you saw what happened out there did ya?”
“Sure did. That hole opened up and blew a **** I could smell from here. Couldn’t get away from it if I tried but it sent a blast of black **** through the air like a jet.”
“Like a what?” said the pirate.
“It’s a kind of rocket, short for ‘jettison’. I can do the same thing with a lobster. Launch it near into space.” Quick was convinced the isolated kook was completely out of his mind. The ruddy tattooed woman stripping completely naked with no inhibitions, her equally inked dark-skinned servant dutifully peeling the wet garments from the darkly freckled body.
Quick picking up a bottle drank it down and tossed it to the sand.
“Say, matey, this ain’t your home. Don’t be discardin’ your waste on me property.”
“Who be you old man?” said the stinking pirate even after a bath.
“They call me Savage but that’s just me name. I was somebody once, an engineer in the King’s Royal Navy. I put ships on the water. Built me own right here on this here island. But I ain’t got nowhere to go.”
“You say you have a ship?” said the Quicks together.
“Say old man, how would you like some choice *****?” broached Esmeralda.
The old man squinted, “What’s that matey? Pushups? I don’t do push-ups.”
“Cooch, me hardy. Me woman’s woman’s offering you some ******. Have at it eh?”
The old man sat down in the sand to think it over.
“I haven’t had a wooden leg on many a yarn. Are they still usin’ ‘em the same way?”
“Nothin’s changed a bit, my friend. That ship out there, it’s full of women, me hardy.”
The old man’s eyes finally widened brightly as he peered from beneath his shade hand. The Green Belle out at sea gliding smoothly across the waters her wake clear as crystal.
“There be women on that thar ship?” said the sailor. “I be needing a wife.”
“Then it’s settled. You help us take that ship and you’ll get the pick of the litter.”
“Deal!” said the lonely codger wagging the pirate’s hooked paw.
“Now how about that thar ship of yours?”
“It’s a mechanical ship. Does your band know anything about machinery? Moving parts and such?” queried the stranded relic.
“I can rig a mean mast, matey. Me whole crew’s expert at workin’ a ship no matter what size.”
“I don’t **** care about that, matey. My ship goes under the water.”
“It sinks?”
“No, *******. It moves under the water like a fish.”
Quick scrubbed his jaw and pondered, turning to his first mate.
“Mister Lance, can you make anything out of what he’s saying?”
“He seems to have a moving...er...no, sir. I haven’t a clue.”
“Okay, old man, you win!” shouted the pirate queen herself, dragging the man by the feet into the hut. He was fine with it because he was drunk and his limbs like rubber. She was done shortly, returning to the crew on the beach. “He’ll be needing a rest. In the meantime why don’t we think up a plan?”
excerpted from The Ridiculum (c) 2018 JN & AW
