Strawbeard's Sailors

                White, foamy wash clung to the side of the hull, giving the barnacles something to which to compare the hue of their own shells. Some of them were quite contented with how they appeared next to the pure whiteness, and others had no opinion at all. It was yet to be determined whether any of them had the power of sight in any capacity, let alone the ability to distinguish colour, and as a consequence the barnacle-shell fashion industry was still very much in its infancy.
                Above both waterline and hull there were matters other than shell comparisons to occupy the crew of the ship, as they stood laughing and cheering against the railings. A sky lit red by flame stretched ominously overhead, staining the water orange with reflections. That is, it stained the parts of the water that weren’t covered by chunks of burning flotsam; these chunks spanned the full range of sizes from modest splinter to captain’s cabin, so they achieved a relatively high coverage. It was also possible that there was some assorted jetsam in the mix as well, but without a qualified nautical auditor on the scene such assertions would need to remain purely speculative.
                One such piece of unconfirmed jetsam, which was mercifully not ablaze, carried a passenger. It hadn’t done so in its previous occupation as a part of the keel, of course; it left those sorts of duties to the deck, or the crow’s nest, or even the lifeboats when push came to shove. Now, however, it had set out with a new vocation of transporting the recently de-shipped away from the sinking remains of a vessel, and towards nothing in particular at all. It was a stark change from the definite and deliberate itinerary to which the vessel had previously been adhering, and an enormous departure from the evasive manoeuvres it had tried to make to get away from the attacking vessel. It was, perhaps, a demonstration of the fickle nature of debris once separated from the whole.
                “Survivor, captain!” Cried one of the more observant crew members. “Floatin’ on that piece o’ jetsam.” His total lack of respect for trailing f’s and g’s filled the floating survivor with dread.
                “Are ye sure it’s not flotsam?” Queried another. “It be lookin’ more like flotsam to me.”
                “Nay, it be jetsam. Ye can tell by the way it’s floatin’ there all jetsam-like, and not at all flotsam-like.” The original crew member asserted boldly, despite being a layperson at best in the art of nautical audit.
                “We’ll be seeing when it gets closer, I’d wager.” Replied another.
                If the f’s and g’s weren’t enough, then the liberal usage of ye’s, be’s and wagers confirmed the survivor’s worst suspicions; they were pirates. The more he thought about it, the more it should have been obvious already from the way they’d loosed cannonballs at the now defunct HMS Victim, and the way their ship had sailed under a black flag emblazoned with a white scythe. Floating around in the water had given him time to connect the dots.
                “Good work, Mr Crabhands!” Boomed a commanding voice. “Throw out a line and reel him in; we’ll not be drowning a survivor today.”
                “Are ye sure I be the best person to be haulin’ on a rope, captain? I only ask because I have these enormous crab claws for hands.” He gave them a clack and a snip to illustrate what he meant.
                “They hadn’t escaped me notice, Mr Crabhands. If ye’ be willin’ to note that I call ye Mr Crabhands instead of your given name of Basil.” Replied the captain.
                “Granted, captain, granted. It just be that, well, I think I’d end up cutting the rope in twain or at least be frayin’ it beyond reasonable use if I try to help. I often cut through things with great ease, on account of the enormous, sharp, crab claws that I have in place of forearms and hands.” Clarified Mr Crabhands, just in case the captain had missed any of the subtleties of what he was seeing and hearing.
                “True enough, Mr Crabhands, true enough.” The captain accepted with humility and grace. “Mysterious Sarah, would ye please take care of me orders?”
                “It will be done before you know it. But how? Well, that’s one of life’s mysteries…” Replied Mysterious Sarah, pulling her long, dark velvet cloak around herself, leaving only her eyes and flowing black hair exposed. A puff of smoke burst from somewhere nondescript in front of her, and suddenly there was a rope in her hand. The surrounding crew gave a smattering of applause. With a wave of the empty hand and a stern, focused look out to sea, the rope was propelled mightily towards the floating survivor, who looked up at it with mixed emotions before it looped cleanly around his waist. It was confusing to him, since the rope’s loop should never have fit around the piece of unconfirmed floatsam or jetsam material to which he was clinging.
                “How did ye do that?” Asked a voice from the railing.
                “Who knows?” Mysterious Sarah replied cryptically, before hauling on the rope in a rather underwhelming and mundane manner. There were small plumes of purple smoke emanating from it as she pulled, but they weren’t enough to hold the crew’s attention any longer. The survivor, on the other hand, was committing all of his attention to the situation. Under the blazing Caribbean sun he was being dragged through the waves by this Mysterious Sarah character, towards the very pirate vessel which had sunk the poor HMS Victim and left him floating in the unforgiving waters. He paused his thoughts for a moment. Perhaps the sea wasn’t unforgiving, because they’d never really apologised to it for dragging ships across its face so much, and sending other vessels or cargo down into is depths. He decided instead that he had been left floating in its rightfully aggrieved waters. Being captured by pirates wasn’t what he’d call a desirable outcome for a typical trading run, but nor was drowning among the wreckage of the ship. Among two poor choices, at least this one didn’t involve getting salt water into his lungs, he reconciled.
                With a gentle thump the survivor bumped into the hull, and saw a collection of barnacles just below the waterline. Something in the back of his mind told him that there was a greater than usual variety of shell colours on display, within the accepted vogue of whites and beiges, but those thoughts were quickly set aside when he began to slide up the side of the ship. As much to relieve the pressure on his waist from the rope as anything else, he grabbed onto a few slight protrusions as handholds, and did his best to climb with the rope’s assistance. When he was a few feet from the deck he looked up to see a bale of straw emerge over the railing. The survivor considered flinching away and trying to dodge the straw, which was presumably being dropped on him as some kind of cruel joke, but instead it hovered there in mid-air. A second or so later, the top half of a face appeared above it.
                “Welcome aboard!” Said the captain. As he spoke, the bale of straw moved in a surprisingly organic manner.
                “Erm, thank you.” Replied the survivor, still climbing but now doing it nervously.
                “Is he really aboard yet captain?” Asked another crewmember, still out of sight. “It’s just that he’s not on the deck, just dangling from the side.”
                “Hm. Welcome a-dangle!” The captain corrected himself, with an appreciative nod. “Although soon ye’ll be aboard, and that will likely be more welcome to ye.”
                The survivor nodded as he reached the top of the railing. A mass of hands, thankfully none of them crab-like, grabbed at his arms and shoulders and pulled him onto the deck. With a little staggering the survivor found his feet, which were still at the end of his legs and dripping from all the sea water. He was surrounded by the pirates who had sunk him, and they all wore avaricious grins.
                “OK, once again, welcome aboard. Ye be standing in front of the infamous Captain Strawbeard, aboard the Ocean’s Harvest.” Greeted Captain Strawbeard. He stood at an easy six feet tall, and what the survivor had thought to be a bale of maliciously dangled straw was in fact an unfeasibly vast beard of high-quality baling straw, that reached down to the bottom of his ribcage and spread as broad as his chest. It shook and rustled drily as he spoke. “What be yer name, friend?”
                “I’m, um, I’m Benjamin Pine, captain.” Replied the survivor. Captain Strawbeard was a name he’d heard from time to time in the seedier bars around the port towns of the Caribbean, and the Ocean’s Harvest was a ship feared by every merchant who traded in the area. It was no small wonder that the HMS Victim hadn’t fallen foul of them sooner.
                “Benjamin!” He boomed.
                A discordant chorus of voices came to life around him with various Hello-Benjamin’s, nice-to-meet-you’s and sorry-if-you-got-barnacle-burns’. A little confused he turned from face to face as they spoke and started to reconsider his previous notions. The grins might not have been avaricious at all, as much as excitedly friendly. Then again, they were pirates who’d just sunk his ship. It was a difficult conclusion to draw definitively.
                “Now I be suspectin’ that ye’ll be concerned right now. We just sank that ship ye were sailin’ on, and yer now in our grasp. Not Mr Crabhands’ distinctly firm grasp, but our metaphorical possession.” Captain Strawbeard continued, with a series of expansive gesticulations of the arms. “And ye’ll be wondering if we’ll be makin’ ye walk the plank, or if we’ll be ransoming ye, or maybe tie ye to a cannonball and send ye overboard for the fish.”
                Benjamin’s heart started to pound ever harder.
                “Well not in that much detail, but now I am!” He admitted. Fear was presumably the response for which they were looking, and he was able to provide it amply. The response was surprisingly muted from the crew.
                “Oh, oh dear! Then I fear that rumours of me practices have been drastically overstated.” The captain replied, apologetically. “Don’t be worryin’ about any of that. What good would it do us?”
                “None at all.” Mr Crabhands said. Mysterious Sarah nodded.
                “Exactly right, Mr Crabhands. None at all. We’ve already sunk yer ship, and ye won’t be able to fight all o’ us. So why worry about being mean?”
                Benjamin frowned. It felt like a trap, as if they were expecting to strong-arm him into feeling safe before then pulling the rug out from underneath him. He’d start getting comfortable and then, without warning, it was cannonballs shackled to the ankles and have a nice trip to the bottom.
                “I don’ t know…” He cagily said.
                “Nor do we! So we don’t do it.”
                “Right. Yes of course. So… what did you gain by sinking the HMS Victim?” Benjamin asked. Captain Strawbeard looked at him curiously.
                “What be ye meanin’ by that?”
                “I be me- I mean, I thought pirates typically wanted to plunder the valuable goods from merchant holds, or ransom the crew, or loot equipment. You’ve just sunk the ship in quite a spectacular fashion and taken nothing.”
                “First of all, let me thank ye for yer interest in our way of life. Second, thank ye for noticing the grand work we did in sinking yer vessel; that’s courtesy of Bombardier O’Hara here.” Said Captain Strawbeard, directing an open hand towards a short woman with pockets stuffed to spilling point with fuses .
                “Thank ye.” She said with a shallow bow. A small trickle of gunpowder poured from her top pocket as she did so. “A pleasure to have made yer acquaintance, and glad ye appreciate me work.”
                “Thirdly, it were sailing in our waters and we have a code; ye have access rights, or ye don’t.”
                “And how does one procure access rights?”
                “Ye don’t. It makes the access rights easier to enforce if we know that only we have it.”
                “I’m not clear on how that makes any money for you. All the goods end up on the bottom of the sea, and no-one buys access rights from you.” Benjamin thought out loud. “So does that mean you are going to ransom me?”
                “That wouldn’t be terribly kind of us now would it? Rescue ye from floating in the waters and then use ye as bait for ransom!” Protested another of the pirates.
                “Altruistic Peter has the right idea of it.” Praised Captain Strawbeard. “Just because we be pirates, and just because we sank yer ship for its transgressions in our waters, doesn’t mean that we be profiteering from your misfortunes. Savin’ a person be everyone’s duty out at sea.”
                Maths had never been a strong suit of Benjamin Pine’s. He knew that numbers existed and that they liked to socialise with one another according to various rules, but they never seemed terribly willing to invite him along. Both he and the numbers preferred it if they stuck to their own affairs, and only crossed paths when absolutely necessary. Despite this aversion to all things arithmetic (and all things arthritic, because it was suspiciously similar), even Benjamin knew that something didn’t quite add up with Strawbeard’s story. Unfortunately, he wasn’t much in possession of survival instincts either, and chose to question this apparent contradiction.
                “That doesn’t make sense.” He declared. “You sank the HMS Victim and sent me into the waters, so you can’t claim to be worried about rescuing people stuck in the sea. Logically, you mean to do me harm or profit from me.”
                The pirates all looked to one another with quizzical expressions. Mr Crabhands tried to add something up using his fingers, but since his fingers were in fact enormous crab claws he was forced to give up at ‘four’. Despite their multiple digits, none of the others seemed to get on any better.
                “Is that right captain?” Asked Bombardier O’Hara. “I don’t much go in for logic, or ethics, or moral relativism,”
                “or bathing.” Interjected Mr Crabhands.
                “Or bathing.” Agreed O’Hara, gratefully. “Ballistics is more me sort of thing.”
                “Duly noted and well understood.” The captain replied. “Mr Pine, Benjamin as we all know him, does make a good point that it would seem to be more sensible for us to subject him to some form of torture, or perhaps sell him on to the highest bidder.”
                Suddenly, Benjamin remembered what the consequences of bad gambles were, and he didn’t much like it. Yet once more in his life he promised himself to never say something reckless or careless again.
                “But that’s because he’s overlooked our own Gilly Gillian.” Finished Captain Strawbeard, who seemed to make it his purpose to structure his proclamations such that they misled people.
                “That he has!” Laughed the presumed Gillian, of allegedly Gilly persuasions. She stepped out from the mass of pirates that surrounded Benjamin and executed a perfect backflip onto the railings of the ship. “I, Gilly Gillian, fear not the waves! Neither depths nor shallows shall be my gallows for I am the daughter who breathes in the water!”
                Cheers and applause erupted from the crew. Benjamin joined in politely as Gillian pulled away the collar of her linen shirt to reveal a set of pink-blue gills, and he realised that he should really have been expecting that to happen. Another cheer roared up, and Gillian rolled up her trouser legs to reveal ankle-gills, for which Benjamin forgave his own surprise. In all his time at sea he’d never seen anyone who breathed through their ankles. On the other hand he’d known a few potted plants and they drank through their feet, so it wasn’t such a stretch he supposed. Certainly no more contrived than a man with enormous crab claws for hands.
                “Our very own shark in the deeps, is Gilly Gillian here. While ye be fleeing the scene of a wreck, she be swimming ‘neath the waves and plundering it all for Strawbeard’s haul.” Captain Strawbeard told Benjamin, beaming with pride. “So what do ye think of that as a logical counterpoint as to why we feel free to sink vessels, save stragglers, decline access rights and feel no need for ransom?”
                “I mean… it still seems like you could be making more money but… I guess it at least makes a little sense.” Was the best Benjamin could offer. Judging by the uproarious cheering that followed he supposed that a little sense was quite enough to go around the whole crew.
                “Glad to have ye on board, in both senses o’ the term, Mr Pine!” A meaty, plunder-calloused hand slapped Benjamin on the back, almost hard enough to push his ribcage out of the front. “But speaking o’ stragglers, we normally expect to have more than one after a sinking of this magnitude.”
                “Sorry to interrupt, but did ye want me to swim down now, captain?” Gilly Gillian asked, still stood acrobatically on the rails. “Only, I’ve gone to the hassle of leaping up here like so, and I either need to finish up the show as it were or climb down again. Wouldn’t want to be taking a topple.”
                “Hm? Oh, well aye, I suppose ye might as well.” The captain decided.
                “I wouldn’t bother.” Benjamin contradicted. A crew’s worth of questioning eyes pivoted towards him, and mercifully they were distributed approximately evenly among the assembled crew, notwithstanding the hitherto unnoticed Teddy Twelve-Eyes. “I… all I mean is that we’d already unloaded the cargo. We were just travelling to another port to load up.”
                “Nar, a merchant vessel never sails empty. There’s always something worth lootin’ in the hold.” Argued Bombardier O’Hara. “I tend to see it when I blast a hole in the hull. Boxes and chests of lucre!”
                The mere mention of lucre sent Strawbeard’s crew into a frenzy; Gilly Gillian leapt immediately from the railings, swan-diving into the waters while Mr Crabhands clacked his claws manically overhead. Mysterious Sarah billowed around the deck, leaving trails of smoke to trace her strange movements around the roiling mass of excited sea-thieves not as yet introduced to Mr Pine. Altruistic Peter whooped and cheered while Teddy Twelve-Eyes watched everyone simultaneously, in a manner that Benjamin found deeply unsettling. Bombardier O’Hara, the instigator of the carnage, jigged on the spot, apparently quite pleased with the entirely appropriate reactions of her fellow pirates.
                “Oh… she’s gone anyway. It really will be a wasted trip; we weren’t carrying much of anything.”
                “Gilly Gillian always find some treasure for us, Mr Pine.” Captain Strawbeard guffawed, caught up in the high spirits of his crew. “Large or small, the wreck always holds something o’ value.”
                “Value!” Cried someone Benjamin couldn’t name, setting off a second wave of frenzied cheers and dancing.
                “We’d best be cautious o’ using words that pertain to economic measures of the worth of an exchange.” Strawbeard said to Benjamin softly. “The crew does have work to do, and I can’t be havin’ them caught up in the rapturous joy o’ dancin’ all day.”
                “Noted, captain.” Mr Pine replied. Although the captain had been a disquietingly reasonable person so far, he didn’t want to experience what might lie on the wrong side of him.
                “Come along, ye’ll be wanting a change o’ clothes and something to  fill yer belly I’d wa-“ the captain raised a finger and stopped himself. “-I would imagine.”
                “Er, yes. Please and thank you.”
                “Well yer in luck that grub’s almost up. Come this way and we’ll find ye something dry to wear from our scoredrobe.” He grinned, toothily. Surprisingly enough, the set of teeth looked pretty complete, and very few of them had yellowed. “That’s what we call our wardrobe of looted goods from the clothier’s domain.”
                “Wonderful.” Was all Benjamin could muster in reply.
                Striding away, Captain Strawbeard led Benjamin towards a door set into the wall of the quarterdeck. It opened with a gentle creak of wood, and as the captain passed through there was a dry, crackling brushing sound as his beard swept the sides of the doorway. Sparing it a glance as he followed, Mr Pine saw a pair of worn-smooth patches on either side of the frame.
                The room into which they emerged was one of grandeur and decadence, quite befitting a notorious pirate of Captain Strawbeard’s reputation. Several empty parrot-perches stood clustered next to a four-poster bed with an ‘I love lucre’ duvet cover, just visible beneath a mountain of mis-matched pillows. A large dresser stood between the bed and the window, its surface covered with jewellery stands and straw-wax, and facing it on the opposite wall was a writing desk. Various rolled-up parchments, presumably either sea-charts or anatomical notes on his eclectic collection of sailors were set into small cubbies in a set of pigeon-hole shelves. In the back corner of the room was the true purpose of their visit to the grand quarters; a tall, and robust wardrobe. It had a smoothly curved headpiece inlaid with floral patterns, above a set of double doors which looked to have been over-painted with an enormous portrait of Captain Strawbeard’s unmistakably hirsute face. The drawers below had been left original, possibly to maximise potential re-sale value.
                “Welcome to me quarter’s Mr Pine. That be the scoredrobe over there; help yerself to whatever ye think might fit. I’ll be waitin’ outside so as not to offend yer dignity.”
                Starting to shiver now that he was out of the light of the Sun, Benjamin suddenly felt extremely grateful for the prospect of some dry clothing.
                “Thank you very much.” He said sincerely.
                “Not at all, Mr Pine. Ye be a guest on the Ocean’s Harvest.” Bowed the captain, sweeping the immediate floor-space by doing so. Backing out of the room he closed the door, and left Benjamin in solitude to get changed.
                In his newfound isolation, Mr Pine sank a little and rubbed at his forehead. It had been an emotional and confusing few minutes between the pirate attack, the HMS Victim going down, floating around in the wreckage and then being adopted by the infamous Captain Strawbeard. Being given the choice of whatever looted garments they’d managed to accumulate over the years shouldn’t have felt like the most difficult part of that whole experience to deal with. But given that so much of what had happened had been entirely out of his hands the return of some form of agency and control was a little jarring. He took a few moments to breathe.
                Having mastered his ephemeral anxiety around clothes, Benjamin pulled the wardrobe doors open to see what might await him. Hanging on a rail, remarkably well-pressed and cared for, were a selection of dress-blouses, long trousers with frilled turn-ups, sharkskin jackets and various other garments of nobility. If these had really been salvaged from the bottom of the sea then there was no way of telling; unless he was going to find seaweed and a collection of limpets living a quiet, humble existence in the breast pocket of a thick doublet, perhaps having formed a co-dependent society based on bartering and mutual offers of help to paint the shed door, the clothes looked perfectly good.
                Being the spoils of many a naval conflict, the clothes on display took on a range of sizes and shapes. Not being a titan of a human being by any stretch of either the imagination or reality, Benjamin could easily have fit into any of the items, it would just be that only a handful might stand some chancing of fitting him back. There was one blouse in particular that, if stored in any other container, Benjamin would have immediately assumed to be a marquee. Making a quick assessment of his own frame in comparison to the spectrum of tailored goods Benjamin grabbed a pale blue blouse, a deep maroon squid-skin jacket and a pair of linen trousers without frills. A cursory search through the drawers yielded him some dry undergarments, whose heritage he chose not to question for his own sake.
                A few minutes later Benjamin stood in Captain Strawbeard’s quarters, freshly dressed as some kind of maritime dandy. Using a full-length mirror he tried to make whatever adjustments he could to appear more presentable, but there was only so much that he could do to fix the accumulation of arbitrary cloth with which he’d covered himself. In a pile next to him, slowly and secretly saturating and spoiling the varnish on the captain’s timber flooring, were his sea-water soaked clothes.
                Conscious that there was only so much time he could reasonably spend in there without being suspected of looting the captain’s things, Benjamin accepted the state of himself and emerged back onto the deck. It seemed that his changing time had been enough for the crew to calm themselves down. There was a general burble of activity with Bombardier O’Hara re-fusing and cleaning out cannons, Mysterious Sarah floating around and levitating ropes out of knots, and Mr Crabhands taking great care with whatever he touched, on account of his enormous crab claws. Teddy Twelve-Eyes was supervising a whole group of people bringing a long dining table out of a hatch that led into the belly of the ship.
                Unsure of where to put himself, Benjamin walked quietly over to the railings and folded his hands in front of himself. The dining table was expertly manipulated out of the sub-deck spaces by many other hands, which were not folded in front of anything but set to the task of grasping varnished oak. Some of the poor souls attached to those hands seemed to be exerting themselves rather a lot, as evidenced by their red faces, sweatiness and generally strained demeanour, but Teddy Twelve-Eyes, witnessing it at least a dozen times over, appeared unconcerned. Benjamin presumed it to be a normal matter of course when preparing for dinner.
                “Ye be lookin’ ravishin’ Mr Pine.” Said someone from along the railings, flattering him to the point of making him jump. Benjamin looked in the direction of the voice and saw a cheerful face peering back. Normally a cheerful face was an object of perfect mystery to Benjamin, because any name he was told would immediately be purged from his memory. This time, however,  it was framed between two enormous crab claws, one of which gripped the rail the deck firmly but carefully. “Ye have wonderful taste in clothin’ from the scoredrobe.”
                “Erm, thank you, Mr Crabhands.” He replied nervously. “May I call you Mr Crabhands, or would you prefer something else?”
                “If Mr Crabhands be what the captain wants to call me then Mr Crabhands ye shall call me too.” He answered, in a needlessly unclear and confusing sentence. “But I be proud that ye be dinin’ with us this eve.”
                “Aye, yer a welcome addition to the table.” Bombardier O’Hara agreed, her mouth full of spare fuses. Mr Pine hoped that they wouldn’t spoil her appetite.
                “That’s very kind, thank you.”
                A loud scraping of wood against wood drowned out any polite acceptance of Benjamin’s gratitude, and the deck was now dominated by the ludicrously long, incredibly heavy but undeniably pleasing dining table. All around it, various members of Captain Strawbeard’s rubbed at sore, tired arms, squatted down panting, or leaned against the rails for breath. Those with human faces were rather red, and those without still puffed through their respective respiratory orifices or semi-permeable membranes.
                “It’s a very impressive table. A lot fancier than I would have expected.” Benjamin said, feeling like he had to offer some kind of comment and deciding that a compliment would be the best way to go. Insulting the crew at this stage would have likely been counter-productive, even if he didn’t know what his productivity was really working towards in this context.
                “Only the finest aboard the Ocean’s Harvest.”
                “That be right, Mr Crabhands.” Captain Strawbeard‘s voice boomed from high above.  Looking up to the crow’s nest, Benjamin saw a familiar bale of stalks looming over the void. “The finest is what we have, and who we be, and what we do!”
                As seemed to be tradition following any factual declaration about the philosophy of Strawbeard’s mission, another cheer rippled through the crew.
                “Would ye be so kind as to descend me please, Albert?”
                A loud, hoarse squawking pierced the skies. It was the kind of noise that recognised the social norms surrounding volume and pitch, identified the boundaries of those norms, and then made the conscious decision to run hard and fast until those boundaries disappeared over the horizon. In short, Benjamin felt compelled to cover his ears and wince.
                “That be right in me ear!” Yelled Captain Strawbeard, who was no stranger to making loud noises in closed proximity of others’ aural equipment. No reply came. Instead, looming behind the already considerable frame of the captain there rose a huge yellow beak. It extended a clear two feet past the captain’s head and hooked down gently at the end; presumably, this hook could and would be used to open molluscs the size of coaches. A pair of thick, tattooed arms wrapped themselves around the captain’s chest, and then they were entirely dwarfed by a pair of black-tipped white wings that spread almost as broad as the sails themselves. With a single, powerful beat that sent gusts of air billowing down at the grateful table-movers, the captain and Albert were launched high above the masts.
                Another eye-watering shriek tore through the clouds, and Albert dropped into a tight dive, wrapping his wings around Captain Strawbeard and barrelling directly towards Benjamin. Mr Pine stood still in frozen disbelief, his survival instincts having already fled the scene to save themselves, as he watched the intimidating mass of sea captain and bird-man careening towards his general vicinity. Either reacting to his stasis or pulling off a pre-planned diversion, Albert’s wings were thrown open once more as vast feathery airbrakes and he pivoted upwards, stopping expertly in front of Benjamin and plopping the captain softly onto the deck.
                “Thank you, Mr Tross.” He said, rubbing at his ears.
                “Soaring is ever a pleasure.” Albert Tross replied, his voice a harsh screech through the vast beak that dominated his face. “Now away to the Albert Tross’ nest once more!”
                Another blast of air boomed outwards across the deck and Albert shot upwards towards the top of the mast again.
                “A very useful and enthusiastic member o’ the crew, is Albert.” Strawbeard said, reminding himself more than anyone else.
                “I don’t think the crows who lived up there would tend to agree captain.” Mysterious Sarah argued. “They much preferred it there to the secondary crow’s nest.”
                For Benjamin’s benefit she pointed towards a small wicker basket that sat atop the ship’s wheel. He wasn’t sure if he felt more confused by the choice of placement for a nest or the soft spotlight that had appeared to highlight it when Sarah had started pointing.
                “Don’t they fall out every time the wheel turns?”
                “Yes. Seems like an obvious design flaw.” Mysterious Sarah answered through gritted teeth. “Doesn’t it, captain?”
                “Yer crows only be sleepin’ on the nest during the night, Mysterious Sarah, when we also be sleepin’ and not sailin’. As well ye know. We discussed this when Ornithological Oliver was setting up the nesting arrangement and there’ve been no crow-fall incidents to date.”
                Sarah and Captain Strawbeard stared one another in the eye. Around them the crew continued working and tried to look like they weren’t paying attention, while Benjamin, standing right next to the captain, simply stared down at the floor.
                “Ha! True enough!” Mysterious Sarah suddenly laughed, floating across the deck towards them. “And they’re always ready when I need them for a feat of unfathomable power” she said, opening her eyes wide and raising her eyebrows unevenly “so that’s all we need to worry about.”
                “Quite so. Now I believe we were preparing to eat! Is there any sign of Gilly Gillian? We’d not like to be startin’ without her presence.”
                “Or her presents!” Called Kraken Jack, waving the masses of tentacles that protruded from all sides of his body.
                “Well said, Mr Jack.”
                “But no, captain. There be no return from Gilly Gillian yet. She must be laden with delicious lucre for us all!” Bombardier O’Hara speculated irresponsibly, a glint of mischief in her eye twinkling as the crew’s excitement boiled over yet again.
                “Just another reminder that there’s no lucre. We were travelling to load up.” Benjamin shouted, but no-one really paid any attention. Excitement was far more enjoyable than disappointment.
                “However much lucre she does or doesn’t have, we’ll be waitin’ for her before anyone gets to eat. We should have the table ready though; where be the chairs? Why isn’t it up on the quarterdeck?”
                A series of panicked, dread-infused looks spread across the faces of the exhausted crewmates who’d dragged the table out of the hold, as they looked towards the steep, narrow stairs to the quarterdeck. Thoughts of mutiny began to drift to the fore.
                “Oh, I can fix that.” Mysterious Sarah said. Gradually she floated back down until her feet were on the deck, then she dropped theatrically into a slight squat. With one arm she swept her cloak backwards and forwards across herself, and she lifted the other high in front of her face. With all eyes on her she smirked, threw the cloak away from herself and snapped both fingers; the table disappeared in a puff of purple smoke, and then reappeared in the same instant on the quarterdeck, complete with chairs, crockery, cutlery, and a tastefully arranged floral centrepiece.
                There was a smattering of polite applause from across the ship, and a mixture of relief and betrayed frenzy from the table’s previous carriers. They very much felt that Mysterious Sarah could have offered to do the whole job a little earlier, but didn’t want to talk themselves into having the table back down again by protesting. Instead they settled for the mature approach of quietly seething and refusing to communicate their feelings.
                “Thank ye kindly, Mysterious Sarah.” Captain Strawbeard said. “But we’ll be needing a score for our guest! Musoes!” He cried towards the quarterdeck. Benjamin’s attention snapped curiously up to see a classical string quartet sitting on one corner, now slightly hidden by a table and chairs. Surprisingly polished instruments sat in front of astonishingly smartly dressed and well-groomed musicians; it was almost impossible for Benjamin to reconcile how the musicians, their clothing or their instruments could be kept so pristine during long stints at sea, especially when those stints included heavy plundering or naval conflict, but the evidence was right there in front of him. Nor could he really account for how such well-trained performers came to be part of a pirate crew.  All notions of confusion and concern melted away, however, as soothing refrains and gentle motives began to play out across the ship.
                “Oh… this is lovely.” Benjamin couldn’t help but say. It was the sort of thing that he imagined his employer’s rich clients would have listened to at the theatre whilst sipping on melted gold or whatever it was they drank.
                “Aye, they be the finest I’ve found at sea.” Captain Strawbeard agreed. Benjamin looked at him suspiciously. “When I want something I take it, and when I want to keep something I make sure it doesn’t leave.”
                “Is that what’s going to happen to me? Am I to be your prisoner here?”
                “What? Prisoner? Lord no. They don’t be prisoners here, for prisoners will try to escape. I keep them in place not with shackles o’ iron or fear but with a fair salary and workplace benefits.” He declared with a broad, devious smile. “They don’t even want to go.”
                Benjamin didn’t have the words to express his surprise. The fear and shackles approach was what he was far more accustomed to from the “Davy Jones’ Locker-Stuffers” trading company. Of course their tagline was “We take the ‘able’ out of ‘expendable’”, so Benjamin couldn’t really bring himself to be surprised at their attitudes toward anything, let alone employee wellbeing.
                “But enough about the methods I be usin’ to recruit artists to me cause. Please, Mr Pine, after you.” From below the modest farm’s worth of straw a hand the size of a very large hand indicated the staircase and ceded right of way. “Oh, and Mr Crabhands be quite right; ye do be lookin’ ravishin’. Glad ye found something to yer likin’ in the scoredrobe.”
                “Thank you.” Benjamin said uncertainly as he climbed the staircase, his newly acquired moccasins making gentle drumming impacts on the wooden steps. “It seems that all I’m really doing here is saying thank you to people and being bewildered.” He added in a sudden wave of self-consciousness.
                “It’s to be expected of those in your position.” Mysterious Sarah said softly in his ear, despite having quite clearly just teleported into a seat at the table and never been near him in the process. “It’s all a lot to take in and you’re bound to feel a little bit grateful for simply not being murdered; everything else is an absolutely wonderful boon, I would suppose.”
                “That… about covers it, yes.” Benjamin accepted.
                “Wise words there, Mysterious Sarah. But rest ye assured, Mr Pine; there be nothin’ by way o’ murder for ye to worry over. I’d be honoured if ye’d take the foot o’ the table as our guest.”
                A chair slide out from the table on tiny clouds of purple smoke and Mysterious Sarah winked in Benjamin’s direction.
                “Oh right. Yes, thank you.”
                The chair slid itself back into place as he sat down, just in time to hear the splash of something breaking the water’s surface.
                “I return from the depths again!” Yelled Gilly Gillian’s unmistakable voice, before a series of wet impacts told tales of her climb up the ship’s netting. With a triumphant somersault she vaulted over the railings and landed directly on top of a towel that had been sensibly laid out ahead of time. Glistening in the midday sun, a collection of looted items were clutched in Gillian’s arms, and gave Benjamin pause to wonder how exactly she’d managed to climb the ship without dropping them all.
                “Our Mr Pine here was too modest about the bounty beneath the waters, captain. Feast yer eyes on these treasures!” She announced, dropping her salvage onto a placemat at the table. The majority of the objects were small pieces of navigational equipment or tooling, but Benjamin recognised his pocket watch immediately among the pile.
                “Excellent work, Gilly Gillian. Once again yer ability not to drown puts the rest of us to shame when it comes to plundering a wreck.”
                With a broad grin Gilian gave a deep, soggy bow.
                “Erm, Captain Strawbeard?” Benjamin said. “That pocket watch is mine. Would you mind if I were to have it back, please?”
                “This pocket watch?” The captain asked, sweeping what was very clearly the only pocket watch in the pile up into his gargantuan, meaty paw. “Looks a fine piece, Mr Pine.”
                “Yes, that one.  I bought it a few years ago and it’s served me well since. It’s far from the most expensive but I feel rather attached to it. Seeing as everything else I owned is at the bottom of the sea now…”
                “The lucre gets divvied among the crew, Mr Pine.” Kraken Jack said, crawling his way up to the quarterdeck on his many tentacles.
                “Can’t be going claiming things like that.” Bombardier O’Hara agreed.
                “But it’s already mine!”
                “Then it were awful careless of you to leave it on the ship when it were sinking.”
                “I didn’t have much of a choice. The crew quarters were already taking on water before I knew what was happening.” He protested.
                “I am very good at that.” Bombardier O’Hara accepted. “But once it hits the water it’s lucre. Ye’d never have seen it again if not for Gilly Gillian, so as far as you’d be able to do anything about it it was lost. Better that someone gets to use it than it decays among the crabs.”
                “Better that I didn’t get sunk in the first place, really.”
                “Then ye’d have needed permission to sail in our waters.” Said Mr Crabhands with an enormous chitinous shrug.
                “Now hold yerselves there, everyone. We might be thieves but we don’t steal things. Mr Pine’s pocket watch is his own, and the rest is lucre.”  Captain Strawbeard decided. Carefully he handed the watch over to Benjamin, and no-one dared to question him.
                “Thank you.” He muttered, losing count of how many times those words had passed his lips since the sinking. A small dribble of water flowed from the mechanism. “Oh… yeah…”
                “What’s wrong, Mr Pine?”
                “I… just forgot that it’ll be full of water, having been at the bottom of the sea for a bit. I hope it still works.”
                “Ha! Yes the sea does like to get her visitors on the damp side. But fret ye not; we’ve exactly the person to take care o’ yer watch and get it tickin’ along right. Mysterious Sarah; would ye please bring the tinker up here?”
                “Of course, captain.” She replied.  A few lazy waves of her hand and some billowing purple smoke later there was a new body on the quarterdeck. By the looks of it, he was in the middle of shaving.
                “Oh for goodness sakes Sarah can’t you just come and find me like normal!” He snapped, still holding his razor blade while the foam on half of his face starting to slide down his cheek.
                “Captain’s orders.” Mysterious Sarah shrugged. Something in her smirk told Benjamin that she’d known exactly what was going on.
                “Mechael, please meet our newest guest, Mr Pine.” Captain Strawbeard said, holding one hand out to each of them. Benjamin stood with a scrape of wood on wood and held out one hand as Mechael turned to face him.
                “You’d best not try to shake my hand.” Mechael replied irritably. A little affronted, Benjamin looked down at the tinker’s hand and saw that he wasn’t so much holding a razor blade as fitted with one. From the bicep down his arm was a work of metal and clockwork, and unfolded from a series of complicated spokes and levers at one end was his shaving apparatus; blade, brush and small mirror. “But yes, hello. Was this just a meet and greet, captain?”
                “Not quite, Mechael. Mr Pine here has a pocket watch that took on some water during the recent festivities. Could ye please work yer magic and make sure that it gets back to him in perfect working order?” The captain requested.
                “Sure am glad this couldn’t wait until I was done getting ready for dinner.” Muttered Mechael. “Yes, fine.” He said more audibly. From a flap in his ribcage there extended a thin metal arm with an open box at the end. It zipped towards Benjamin and waited expectantly there for him.
                “Sh- should I put it in the box?”
                “Evidently.”
                With a nervous look down at his briefly returned timepiece Benjamin placed it gingerly into the metal container. It snapped back into Mechael’s body.
                “It’ll be done by the morning.”
                “Thank you, Mechael.”
                The tinker ignored him.
                “Is that everything, captain?”
                “Aye. Ye may go back to yer business, but we be eatin’ imminently. Don’t be missing out on account of yer facial hair care regimes. Mysterious Sarah, would ye kindly?!
                “I can wal-“ was as far as Mechael got before a gleeful snap of the fingers and a puff of smoke whisked him away again.
                “Easy come, easy go when it comes to lucre, eh.” Albert Tross said, slapping Benjamin on the back with one wing. “That’s why I prefer the oysters; you know they’re not forever but it doesn’t stop you enjoying them.”
                “And both pocket watches and oysters open with a hinge. Great analogy. You’re a treasured member of the crew.” Altruistic Peter pointed out with a broad, earnest grin as he moved towards a seat of his own.
                “Quite so, ye speak the optimistic truth as ever.” Said the captain. He’d taken up a seat at the head of the table, quite some distance away from Benjamin but staring him straight in the eye nonetheless.
                Apparently spurred on by Gilly Gillian’s triumphant return from the waters the rest of the crew had made their way promptly towards the dining table. From back along the deck there was the sound of a door opening, and the smell of surprisingly enticing cooking drifted along the ship.
                “It always be grand when the whole crew gets together to celebrate a victory like this.” Said the captain, raising an empty tankard in lieu of being able to make a proper toast yet. Apparently the excitement was just too much and he couldn’t wait until something was served up. The rest of the crew made generally positive sounds, such as might be heard when someone asks whether it’s a good thing to not starve to death. “Speaking of which, where’s yer crew, Mr Pine?” He yelled along the table, unwilling to let distance get in the way of a close conversation. “Normally when we sink a vessel o’ the size of yers we get a whole boat load o’ guests. If only ye be runnin’ that ship then I’d be mightily surprised; it’d be the most fascinatin’ thing I’d have seen in a long while at sea.”
                “That would be the most fascinating thing? Not aa diver with ankle gills or someone who can levitate ropes or someone with a pair of enormous crab hands?”
                “Aye, that be a reasonable expansion o’ the sentiments I be expressing.” He replied, perfectly earnestly.
                “Right. Well I wasn’t running the ship by myself. The rest of the crew abandoned ship without me and told me to ‘Keep on the tiller and draw them away until we’re out of range of the cannons.’”
                “They abandoned ye!?”
                “I mean… it was an agreement…” Benjamin said weakly, as if trying to convince himself. Captain Strawbeard frowned over the top of his chin-bale. “They all agreed that standing in the line of cannon fire was very dangerous. And then they all agreed that I shouldn’t be wishing danger upon any of them. Finally they agreed that if I refused to stand in the line of perfectly safe cannon fire while they bravely sailed away to protect the company’s investment in crew then that would be very selfish indeed. By the time I had a chance to even try to agree to anything to the contrary they were already bailing out. I still don’t understand why it was perfectly safe for me to be in the line of cannon fire but I’m sure that Captain Targett had her reasons.”
                As Benjamin was talking a pair of gangling pirates in bright white aprons appeared with trays of food and bottles of various nautically favoured beverages. The empty spaces along the table started to fill up with a confusing and impressive array of dishes, many of which must have been cooking for hours.
                “Were you making all this whilst also opening fire on the HMS Victim?” He couldn’t help asking one of them as they bustled past.
                “O’ course! The crew needs a good meal after a scrap at sea.” They answered, looking at Benjamin as if he’d asked whether the sea was, occasionally, slightly damp.
                “It’s easier to cook without the ship rocking violently under cannon fire” the other conceded “but if you can’t perform precision knife-work while the ship bucks and rolls underneath you then you can’t make them when it’s still. That’s what I always say.” The other added.
                “She does always say that. Often without context. It’s weird.” The first agreed.
                “Maybe ye’ve got a robust skeleton like Cassie Steelbones?” Suggested Captain Strawbeard excitedly, swinging the conversation back to where he wanted.
                “Erm, sorry?” Benjamin replied.
                “That’s why they left you to the cannon fire. Your unbreakable bones.”
                “Oh. No, goodness no.”
                “Organs that can reform at will like Wee Jenny Slater the Regenerator?”
                “No.”
                “Ooh, a physical form that blurs and fades away from corporeal contact like David the Horrifying and Vengeful Spectral Guardian of the Salt Shaker?”
                “Goodness no. I’m just human with… normal human organs and bones and corporeality.”
                One of the captain’s gargantuan fists, calloused and muscled from years of lugging straw-bale chins and hauling on ropes. Plates, mugs and bottles rattled in their own fear as shockwaves travelled through the wooden table and even vibrated the deck.
                “Then they DID abandon ye!? And worse they abandoned ye to die while they fled like cowards! The captain goes down with the ship unless everyone else is already off, isn’t that right everyone?!”
                Strawbeard’s crew cheered with agreement, as was probably to be expected when someone guaranteed their priority for lifeboat places.
                “I don’t think I really be needing that kindness, captain.” Gilly Gillian pointed out. “Ye see, I can breathe just fine underwater, so perhaps I should be on the one to go down with the vessel in such a circumstance. I can quite easily just come back up from the ship afterwards with no real detriment to myself.”
                The captain thought about this suggestion for a few moments.
                “A noble offer and I see the logic, but there’s still no need to be getting’ ye wet on my account. You can go first and then come back for me if necessary.” He compromised. Gilly Gillian nodded, either satisfied with the answer or just willing to accept the captain’s authority on the matter.                “But the point is” He continued, flaring back into his righteous rage “that the HMS Victim and her crew left dear Benjamin here to perish under our fire. This cannot be allowed to stand; it goes against every code of the seas that I know! And probably several more that I don’t!”
                “It’s fine, captain.”
                “No it isn’t. It’s wrong and we’re going to bring them to justice. We have a new goal everyone! We find those yellow fiends who’d abandon our Benjamin and we make them account for their crimes! It’s a chase!” He bellowed with a hearty belly-laugh as the crew yet again erupted into ecstatic cheering and celebration. “But first we’re going to finish eating!” There was an even larger cheer.
                 Benjamin didn’t know what to think. He’d not really considered that Captain Targett’s actions had been wrong until now, nor had he ever met someone who decided to delay starting a desperate chase until a feast could be consumed. Then again, he’d never met anyone who’s facial hair was agricultural waste, nor anyone with enormous crab claws for hands, nor anyone who could teleport tables before that day; his time upon the Ocean’s Harvest had been something of an eye-opener on many counts.
                The state of the feasting pirates, on the other hand, did its utmost to become an eye-closer. Captain Strawbeard’s crew had table manners in much the same way that a hurricane has respect for the neat pile of leaves that one might have spent hours raking up from every inch of the garden, and the carnage wrought took on a similar facet. There was the normal and expected level of open-mouthed chewing, boisterous guffawing and general carousing, and Benjamin was appreciably acclimatised to that from his experiences on the HMS Victim over the years, but when tentacle-based food-rustling entered the fray events took a more extreme turn.
                It started off with Kraken Jack reaching the full length of the table with one long, sucker-ended appendage to snatch up the last of the thrice-fried tomato-infused potato cubes. The advantages afforded to him by these limbs apparently irked Bombardier O’Hara, whose reaching fork had fallen narrowly short of securing the potato cube for herself, because he lashed out with her knife and skewered the cube on its way back. Unwilling to let this crime go unanswered, a second tentacle looped around the back of the table and snatched away O’Hara’s boiled bread. Seeing this transgression, and the flagrancy with which it had been committed, the ever-subtle Albert Tross let out a mighty screech and pecked down hard on Kraken Jack’s modest collection of walnut and parsnip compote with red wine jus.
                Immediately there was anarchy. Fork stole from the fork of the neighbour, hand snatched from the mouth of the friend, and on more than one occasion ink was sprayed defensively over the tankard and plate of anyone in a three-seat radius. The table which had initially seemed to  be an oasis of calm and fine-dining became a fog of purloined food and intercepted dishes, with new skirmishes and scuffles breaking out over every dish. It was only Teddy Twelve-Eyes, who could keep a vigil over every angle of attack, and Captain Strawbeard himself who found themselves to be safe from the carnage. Benjamin hurriedly stuffed whatever food he could into his mouth, lest everything be stolen from beneath his watchful but helpless gaze. Through the melee he couldn’t help seeing Mysterious Sarah leaning casually back on her chair, her own shoulders resting on the railing of the quarterdeck as hands snatched food from her plate, and it then reappeared in a puff of purple smoke mere seconds later. Occasionally Benjamin saw further puffs of purple on other plates and suspected that another glint of mischief might be lurking in the eyes of the appropriately named ship’s magician.
                Once Captain Strawbeard had finished his last mouthful of rum cheesecake on toast he clapped his enormous hands together, sending up a billowing cloud of straw-dust and seedheads.
                “That be enough! Ye can all get along now wi’ what ye have. We’ve a chase to get to, and we’ve already lost precious time wi’ this eatin’ nonsense.” He declared, as if he hadn’t been the primary instigator of dinnertime. “Mysterious Sarah? I trust ye to take care o’ getting all this back down to the galley when everyone be done. I be needing the hands to work the rigging and get us going again. Albert? Up to yer nest with ye, and then to the skies! Find us the trail o’ Mr Pine’s heretofore absent crew. Everybody else? To your stations. They’ve some makin’ right o’ affairs to tend to.”
                There were no half measures when it came to Strawbeard’s crew. When they feasted, it was feral. When they celebrated lucre it was ecstasy. And when they followed orders it was without hesitation, consideration, or even looking where they were going. Several  of the pirates tried to dash to their stations without standing up from their chairs, instead slamming their knees into the table, while their quicker-thinking compatriots managed to disentangle themselves from the seating without incident. There was then plenty more incident to make up for it when they collided with one another , fell down the stairs, and variously failed to respect the corporeality of their surroundings. Benjamin suspected that it was with some considerable pleasure that Mysterious Sarah banished the dining table back to the galley while several of the other crewmates were relying on it for support; her raucous cackling was the biggest clue.
                “Mr Pine! I’d be most obliged if ye’d join me at the wheel.” Captain Starbeard called out, and Benjamin was all too glad to accept the offer; there was a very real danger he’d be crushed by Walter Whale, whose terrifyingly oversized head was in ever-present danger of collapsing to the deck at the best of times. Now that Mr Crabhands was on his knees and trying desperately to dislodge his enormous crab claws from the deck, it was a tripping incident waiting to happen.
                “Allow me, Mr Pine.” Came Mysterious Sarah’s voice. Before he knew what was going on Benjamin found himself standing at Strawbeard’s side, within sniffing distance of the bale itself. He tried to shoot a confused look at the magician, but she’d already whisked her way to something more important, or more hidden. Or both.
                The minutes that followed were a blur of barked orders involving vague nautical terms about sail trimming, bilge operation, aft-this and starboard-that. Even as a veteran of the seas Benjamin found it hard to keep up with what was being said and done, because a lot of it was utter nonsense. He was fairly sure that everyone aboard the ship was making up terms for what they were doing, or what they wanted others to do, and yet somehow managed to communicate perfectly regardless. It would have been offensive to his sensibilities as a sailor if it hadn’t proven to be so effective. All he could do was watch on in wonder as Altruistic Peter “de-bilged the stern’s mast”, Gilly Gillian “rudder-swaddled the port starboard auger” and Bombardier O’Hara somehow used a full broadside to unfurl all the sails.
                Benjamin only looked away to wince when Albert Tross unleashed a trademark shriek and swooped towards them.
                “I see a ship Captain! It’s due a-little-bit-North-of-North-East.”
                “Excellent work, Albert Tross.”
                “A ship? The rest of the crew took lifeboats away.”
                “These aren’t lifeboats; I’d bet my feathers on it.”
                “He wouldn’t do well without his feathers, Mr Pine. That means’ he be right serious about what it is he’s sayin’.” Captain Strawbeard clarified, redundantly.
                “Then… they were picked up by another vessel?” Benjamin deduced.
                “Or they might have sunk. Can’t rule that out.” Called Mr Crabhands, who was doing a remarkably good job of paying attention whilst still wrestling with his claw-to-wood predicament.
                “Aye, we must all consider, in graphic and frankly unnecessary detail, that the lifeboat might have been sunk by another crew.” The captain agreed.
                “I suppose so.”
                “Are ye considering it, Mr Pine?” Strawbeard pushed.
                “Yes.”
                “In graphic and unnecessary detail? The way they might have drowned or been torn asunder by cannon fire? The way the sharks and jellyfish and ravenous krill might’ve feasted on the bounty that their bodies represent?”
                “Uh… I have now. Yes.”
                “Well put those thoughts far from your mind! Don’t give them a second’s attention Mr Pine, because I’m sure they’ve been picked up.”
                As perplexed as ever by the captain, Benjamin tried to calm his mind and push away the images that had been thrust upon it.
                “I’ll learn what I can o’ the vessel, captain.” Albert said, flapping hard to gain altitude as the Ocean’s Harvest cut a path through the wreckage of the HMS Victim. Pulling a spyglass from his thick, decadent jacket, Captain Strawbeard looked dead ahead and scanned the seas.
                “I see the vessel that Albert be spyin’ upon. It be large for sure. Full speed ahead crew! Catch all the wind the ye can find and then catch some more!”
                "Would ye like to take a look at the scurvy dogs wi' yer own fine eyes, Mr Pine?" He asked, offering the spyglass out. Benjamin made the traditional check for boot polish around the eyepiece, an essential precaution from his days on the HMS Victim, and finding it to be free of sabotage he consented to look through.
                Although his view was unstable thanks to the motion of the ship, he could none the less make out the rear-facing windows of a large ship, not dissimilar from the Ocean’s Harvest. Even with the spyglass it was difficult to make out the details at this distance and Benjamin wondered how much he’d really gained from the experience of looking at it, other than just feeling like he was involved.
                “I see it.” He said. “Do you think we’ll be able to catch them up?”
                “It’ll be a tough chase by the looks o’ things. We’ll be putting all the sheets to the wind, cutting through the waters and beggin’ mighty Poseidon, if he be listenin’ to favour us.”
                Benjamin nodded. A ‘yes but it’ll be difficult’ would have sufficed, but the captain’s choice of words was, on the whole, more satisfying. The cogs turned a little.
                “Could Mysterious Sarah not just send us over there? Or bring the other ship to us? Is there a limit to her powers?”
                “Well where’d be the fun in doin’ somethin’ along those lines?” Laughed Captain Strawbeard, sending small seed-heads onto the deck from his beard. Some nearby gulls started to circle overhead, ready to pounce on the snack whenever a chance should present itself.
                “So she can, but you don’t want her to?”
                “It be hard to say where the limits of Mysterious Sarah’s powers lie. She is, after all, something of a mystery.” The captain said, evasively. “Half the joy o’ bein’ a pirate is the case o’ another vessel, fightin’ the sea and the weather while tryin’ to outwit and out-sail yer foe. There be honour in catchin’ ‘em, pride in taking their bounties, and immense satisfaction in hearin’ the stories they’ll be telling in taverns up and down the Caribbean for years afterwards.”
                “Right, I see.” Said Benjamin. He didn’t, really.
                “But if travelling quickly be what we want, then we have other means of achieving such spectacular feats.”
                Reflexively Benjamin grabbed for something solid against which to brace himself. This, it transpired, was a very good idea, and the kind of instinct that would save him from wounds ranging from mild bruises to mild grazes.
                “Windy William! Let the gales blow!”
                Down on the deck, a gentleman with the broadest, roundest, most barrel-adjacent chest that Benjamin had ever seen stepped into position behind the masts. Clean-shaven of both face and head, he looked like a child’s drawing of snowman that someone had made into flesh and stuffed into a set of dungarees. When he drew in a preparatory breath, sucking gallon after gallon of air into his seemingly limitless lungs, Benjamin felt a drop in the local air pressure and worried that it might summon a storm-front directly onto them. Everyone on the ship began to adopt braced positions similar to his own, except for Mr Crabhands who gave a panicked look at Windy William and ceased trying to pull his claw free. Instead, he plunged the other one into the deck alongside it and braced his legs. Still the air flowed into the human sphere, and a gentle breeze started to blow towards him from all directions. High above and far ahead of them now, Albert Tross was a speck in the distance and thankfully not caught up in the vortex of inhalation the William had wrought. Then, suddenly, it stopped.
                His face turned red as he held the pressure within himself. His own legs bent and braced as he lent forwards. And then the wind began to blow.
                Benjamin Pine had seen sea charts in his time. In the corner, next to the compass, there was often old man’s face exhaling an ever-blowing wind across the sea from puckered lips below frowning eyes. He’d always known, even in his most naïve moments, that it wasn’t supposed to represent a real person. But, like much of the knowledge he’d held before in his life, this was relegated to the realm of suspicion when confronted by the very real Windy William.
                The sails ballooned outwards, filled with a vast lungful of pressurised air. Every last scrap of canvas was pulled taut against its ropes, and those ropes strained against groaning masts. As if someone had put a solid boot into its rear end the Ocean’s Harvest lurched forwards through the water, accelerating at a rate unimaginable for any vessel on which Benjamin had ever sailed. Cheeks stronger than iron puffed outwards in perfect demi-spheres and air continued to rush more forcefully and more furiously outwards. Wooden joints and riveted plates creaked with the strain of holding together and the ship picked up yet more speed, until it was bouncing from wave-front to wave-front with disconcertingly heavy impacts.
                The ship definitely hadn’t been built for such punishment, and yet it held together. Air rushed past Benjamin’s face, stinging his eyes, while Captain Strawbeard chuckled triumphantly.
                “We’ll be on them in no time, Mr Pine. And when we are there shall be a reckoning!”
                Even above the cacophony of rushing winds it was painful to hear the cries of Albert Tross; attention was snatched greedily by every piercing note. He’d circled back round to the vessel and positioned himself to ride the current of William’s mighty puffs.
                “I… I think I recognise the ship, captain.” He shouted down. There was a quivering quality to his voice.
                “What be it, Mr Tross? One o’ the tradin’ companies? The royal navy?”
                “No, captain. It… er… well it be The Greenhouse.”
                “What?!” Roared Captain Strawbeard, fury erupting from him. Shocked and enraged gasps rang out all across the ship, and even Windy William spluttered in disbelief. The Ocean’s Harvest jerked and jackhammered in the turbulence.
                “Is that bad?” Benjamin asked, not placing much confidence in how he was reading the room.
                “Bad? It’s the ship o’ my most reviled rival. The lowest scoundrel ever to sail these here waters: Captain Fragaria Strawberrybeard!”
                A wave of boos rippled across the ship, half taken by the wind but present nonetheless.
                “Prepare fer the worst, crew. Today we tangle wi’ the Devil’s greatest work.”
                “What’s so bad about Strawberrybeard? Do you think the HMS Victim’s crew are in danger?”
                “Oh I should say so, Mr Pine; the gravest danger o’ being near a cloven-hooved, crag-faced, good-for-nothing husk o’ revulsion. Strawberrybeard’ll lure ‘em in with his sweetness like he does all the rest, and then, when it’s too late to be backin’ away, they’ll see the rotten core within.” He growled, revealing an underlying misunderstanding of the anatomy of the strawberry. “But worst o’ all he’s me sworn arch-nemesis and the bane o’ my piracy. That he’s taken aboard those bounders who left ye to the waters tells me all I need to know about the lot o’ ‘em.”
                Swooping down from above, Albert Tross landed cleanly in his nest atop the mast and started calling directions down to the rest of the crew, while Windy William strained to keep the gale going. It was clear from his reddening face and the slowing ship that his lungs were beginning to grow tired.
                “Are we going to battle them? You mean to catch up and attack?”
                “It be more than they deserve but aye, they’ll be feeling O’Hara’s wrath before the day be out. And maybe ol’ Strawberrybeard’ll left to the waters; see how well that big ol’ face fruit serves him when the turtles come a-snappin’.”
                “And the rest of the crew?”
                “They’ll be me guests like any other, Mr Pine. I’ve no quarrel wi’ them, even though they be throwin’ their lot in with Satan’s own light garden variety berry.”
                Benjamin looked across the ship; every one of the biologically unlikely crewmates was moving in a frenzy to load the cannons, clear the deck, and prepare a soft landing for when Windy William inevitably keeled over from breathless exhaustion. The string quarter had switched to a tense backing track of stabbing staccato notes with escalating tension, matching their tempo to the bouncing of the ship against the waves.
                “Sounds like a mission of revenge, captain. I’ve yet to hear about one of those going well at sea.”
                “Ha! This isn’t revenge, Mr Pine; this is about more than that. If he’d simply wronged me out here, on the waves, then that’d be a matter o’ grudgin’ respect. This be about reputation. This be about identity. Strawberrybeard stole me syllable!” He bellowed. Another wave of furious boos washed over the crew, and this time even Windy William joined in, vibrating the air itself with his baritone melancholy. “He rides on the Straw name and my accomplishments, draggin’ me reputation through the scum with his lacklustre machinations upon the waves while ridin’ high on me accomplishments. Do ye know how it feels, Mr Pine? To have yer achievements attributes to another because they’ve taken yer name in vain? Because the good people were tricked into thinkin’ that Strawbeard were simply an abbreviation o’ Strawberrybeard?”
                “Uh, no. That’s very specific.” He answered.
                “It IS very specific, Mr Pine. Very specific indeed, and very much un-corrected whene’er it be occurring in Strawberrybeard’s presence. And what be worse than that? Everyone loves a scurvy strawberry! They be believin’ it more that a popular, bright, sweet strawberry be the prince o’ the seas than common ol’ straw. Bein’ sunk, captured or otherwise de-shipped by the world’s favourite blasted fruit is a story to tell, but when it’s by a beard o’ agricultural usage only they don’t be feelin’ the glamour. Everyone wants a piece o’ him, but no-one wants to know ol’ Strawbeard except for the farmers.” He lamented, throwing a melodramatic look to the deck and resting the back of one hand across his forehead.
                “Well you could deal wi-“
                “But I don’t like the farmers!”
                “Wh-“
                “One!” He boomed, holding one thick index finger aloft. It shook with his internalised frustrations as the rushing wind billowed his long, messy hair in the wind and pulled out long yellow strands of beard. “There be no seas on a farm and there be no farms at sea. The worlds don’t be mixin’! And two,” he continued, raising a second finger “they’ll not be lining their pig sties with my glorious beard! That’s what they all be after, Mr Pine; my rugged, absorbent, low-dust beard for their stables and yards and otherwise sloppy places.”
                “We can’t be chasing someone down just because people like his beard more than yours, captain. It’s insanity.”
                “Insanity? Oh no, Mr Pine. This be life at sea! Ye defend yer honour or ye perish a pauper with nothin’ but a galleon and a crew of skilled, dedicated and loyal crew to yer name. The real insanity would be continuing on this chase when we know what lies at the other end. There be no time to waste; Mysterious Sarah!” He shouted. A column of purple smoke was swept away in the rushing air and Sarah appeared, gripping onto the rails for stability.
                “Aye, sir?”
                “Our ship be needin’ the express route to catchin’ ol Strawberrybeard. I’d be most obliged if ye’d work yer magics.”
                “Gladly, captain.”
                There was a thud from the deck as Windy William collapsed back onto his crash mat. Quickly the ship started to decelerate.
                Far larger than it had been mere minutes before was the rear of The Greenhouse, cutting an urgent path through the waters with its own sails completely unfurled. It was clear that they were trying to escape, and it didn’t give Benjamin a particularly warm feeling. Captain Strawbeard and the crew had shown him so much kindness, the sinking of his ship notwithstanding, but this pursuit felt nothing short of spitefully predatory. It was difficult to reconcile, and so he chose not to try for the moment; it had been a tough day.
                “Try to outrun this, Strawberrybeard.” Mysterious Sarah spat. The whole ship was engulfed in a cloud of purple, and then, in no time at all, they were racing head on towards The Greenhouse, mere seconds away from impact.
                “Harrrr! Yer work be inspired, Mysterious Sarah!” Cackled Strawbeard, a menacing glint in his eye.
                “We’re going to crash!” Panicked Benjamin, who didn’t much fancy being shipwrecked twice in one day. Similar sounds of panic were audible from the crew of The Greenhouse who, having been trying their hardest to outrun the Ocean’s Harvest, now found themselves heading straight towards it. It couldn’t have been a pleasant surprise.
                “Oh, not quite Mr Pine.” Sarah said with a wink. There was another flash of purple, and The Greenhouse was no longer ahead of them. It now raced towards the port side of Ocean’s Harvest, where a gleeful Bombardier O’Hara stood by a whole rack of cannons. “Where’d you like them, O’Hara? Shots across the bow?” There was another puff of smoke, and The Greenhouse was turned to sail away from them. “A few cannonballs up the stern?” More purple smoke, and then Strawberrybeard’s ship ran parallel with them. “Or a full broadside to broadside?”
                “This is cruel!” Benjamin shouted. Strawbeard nodded proudly.
                “That’ll do nicely!” Bombardier O’Hara declared excitedly. “Fire!”
                This time the smoke that engulfed the ship was black and grey, rising from the barrels of a whole array of guns. Up this close the sound of splintering wood was almost as loud as the cannon-fire, as masts were split in half, railings were torn from their fixtures, the deck was rent asunder and whole cabins collapsed. It was butchery of a ship in mere fractions of a second.
                “Prepare to board! Mr Pine, ye run with me!”  Captain Strawbeard ordered. Sensing the reluctance in Benjamin, the captain swept him up with one powerful arm as he made for the deck, his enormous bushy beard scratching at the back of Mr Pine’s head as he ran. Kraken Jack’s powerful tentacles lowered boarding ramps from the Ocean’s Harvest to The Greenhouse and immediately the crew were flooding across, through the gun smoke, in a peculiar boarding action of an already sinking ship.
                Every heavy bootstep the captain took shook its way through Benjamin’s torso and the smoke stung at his eyes. He’d never been one for the rough and tumble of naval combat, hence his employment on a merchant vessel and his utter failure to do anything about the Strawbeard’s attack that same day. In fairness to himself, however, he admitted that in the face of Mysterious Sarah’s abilities to manipulate the battlefield and the HMS Victim’s total lack of armaments there wasn’t much he would have been able to do.
                “Strawberrybeard! Get out here and face me!” The captain bellowed as they touched down on The Greenhouse. Ruined and splintered woodwork was strewn across what remained of the deck, and Strawberrybeard’s crew were scrambling to find their feet, let alone weapons with which to defend themselves. “We’ve got yer ship a-floundering, and yer crew’ll not be standing up to us this day. Do the honourable thing!”
                “It’s a bit rich to be talking about honour after what you and Mysterious Sarah just pulled, isn’t it?” Benjamin accused. Strawbeard looked down at him with a confused frown.
                “What be ye meanin’?”
                “You magicked them into the path of the guns. There was nothing they could do about it. Efficient warfare it might be, but it hardly seems honourable.”
                Captain Strawbeard put Benjamin down as his crew rounded up Strawberrybeard’s own sailors. In the face of enormous crab arms, sword-wielding tentacles and an apparently omnipotent magician, many of them didn’t even try to use their amateur fencing skills to resist capture.
                “I just be usin’ what’s at me disposal, Mr Pine. Same as anyone at sea would.”
                “Captain Strawbeard himself!” Called a soft, clean-cut voice from The Greenhouse’s rear. The unmistakable bright red of the largest strawberry Benjamin had ever seen emerged through a doorway to the captain’s cabin. So broad was this strawberry that it barely fit through the door, and so long was it that if the captain were to kneel it would surely touch the deck. It was a marvellous specimen; perfectly symmetrical and textbook in shape, with gloriously golden pips adorning its surface. It even had a soft leafy patch where it met the man’s face. “What a delight it is to see you again!”
                “I’ll bet  it is ye dog! Anglin’ to hear more stories o’ me success to take as yer own are ye?”
                “Oh Balen please! I thought we’d moved past this nonsense. I can’t help it if the people of the Caribbean won’t listen when I correct them, and who in their right mind says ‘Oh no, I’m far less impressive than you think I am so please do try to arrest me’? It’d be absurd.”
                “Absurd but honourable! There be nothing wrong with the absurd, don’t that be right, crew?”
                Cheers of agreement rang from the mismatched assortment of hybrids that crewed the Ocean’s Harvest.
                “Come along Balen; that wasn’t what I meant and we both know it. How are you doing? Get that twisted ankle looked it?”
                “I don’t be needin’ a medic to look at ankles.”
                “No, he hasn’t. Lovely to see you again by the way, Fragaria.” Said Mechael. “We’ve tried to get him to talk to someone in Haiti, but you know what the captain is like.”
                “Classic Balen.” Strawberrybeard agreed. “Well, luckily enough my ship’s medic is very good at these sorts of things. Ameliorating Amelia? Would you please?”
                A woman who was standing calmly at Mr Crabhands’ mercy waved kindly over to gain Strawbeard’s attention.
                “Hello, captain. I’ve heard lots about you, all very impressive.” She complimented.
                “Aye, he’s a very impressive captain.” Mr Crabhands agreed, lowering his claws.
                “With a very sore ankle by my reckoning. It can’t have helped carrying that poor helpless chap with you, either.” She assessed from afar. Her eyes glowed with a white light, and pale smoke wrapped around Strawbeard’s ankle.
                “What ye be doin’?!” He demanded, but then his face softened. “Oh. There be some improvement in the feelin’ o’ me ankle.”
                “See? Isn’t it better to get these things looked at?” Captain Strawberrybeard asked, with all the rhetoric he could find in his pockets.
                “Don’t ye be startin’ with me. Me point stands that ye be sailin’ by me reputation. I’m a dread pirate o’ the Caribbean and ye be sailin’ around healing people. How am I to be keeping my name a subject o’ fear when ye be doing this?”
                “Well for a start I’d once again encourage you to stop trying to be so fearful. I know that you enjoy the whole piracy lark but come along now, it’s not very kind is it?”
                “That be the point!”
                Captain Strawberrybeard shook his head.
                “So did you chase us just to ask me to stop letting people think I’m you again? Even though I have a gigantic strawberry on my face and yours is mostly straw?” He asked wearily. “Because I will do my best to set the record straight but people talk and they get their stories wrong. Their memories are lazy, Balen.”
                “No! We be chasin’ ye down for the crew ye picked up. On the lifeboats o’ the HMS Victim! Where be they?”
                “I suppose you sunk them as well? I’m surprised we didn’t run into each other while you were attacking them to be honest.”
                “We may have used more mystical means to catch them up.” Admitted Mysterious Sarah.
                “That sounds about right. Glad to see your powers are still going strong, by the way, Sarah. Anyway, they’re down in the brig. Turns out that they abandoned one of their own on the ship and I just can’t abide by that.”
                Captain Strawbeard tilted his head to one side.
                “That be exactly why we wanted a word. Mr Pine here be that abandoned man, and he be owed some retribution.”
                “Oh! Dreadfully sorry to hear that, Mr Pine. You’d be the fellow with the wooden legs they were talking about?”
                The whole of Strawbeard’s crew slowly turned their heads towards Benjamin, as if that was the strangest thing they’d ever heard.
                “They were talking about that, were they?” He asked sadly. “I thought at least if they left me to drown they’d find something else to remember me by.”
                “The world can be a very cruel place.” Sympathised Captain Strawberrybeard. “I too have had my share of troubles with fixation on my beard; I had terrible trouble around the Galapagos with finches harrying me day and night. Only certain types of them though…” He pondered, lost in thought for a moment. “Regardless, they’ll be facing justice when we get back to port. I can bring them up to apologise if you’d like?”
                “You know what? No thanks. I think I’ve seen enough of them. I wasn’t really all that interested in coming here after them, truth be told. Let Captain Targett think they killed me so that they might one day feel remorse, and let them be brought to justice on the mainland.” He decided.
                “Fair enough, friend. Fair enough. So what now, Balen? Can we please bury the hatchet? I’m working towards the same end as you on this one so I can’t be all that bad.”
                “Ye not being ‘all that bad’ is the whole point, Strawberrybeard!” He snapped. “But ye have done us, and Mr Pine here, a service in this instance. Ye are free to take those dogs below deck to the gaol.”
                “Wonderful.” Said Fragaria, clapping his hands together awkwardly in front of the enormous strawberry and looking around his ruined deck. “I’d best get this mess cleared up then. Repairbear?”
                From below deck there came a loud, rumbling growl in reply. Kracken Jack raised a handful of swords in defence as, prowling up from a hatch in the deck, came a towering grizzly bear bedecked thick leather trousers and a toolbelt. He roared welcomingly to the crew of the Ocean’s Harvest.
                “Could you please fix all this up? We’ve had our usual visit from Balen.”
                With a consenting growl, the repairbear rolled onto his back and tossed the hammer from paw to paw. Without seeing anything actually happen, Benjamin couldn’t help observing that every splinter of damage that the Ocean’s Harvest had inflicted upon The Greenhouse had been flawlessly repaired, and the woodwork had even been polished.
                “What just…” he mumbled, but Mysterious Sarah placed a soothing hand on his shoulder.
                “Don’t try to think about it.” She said softly.
                “It’s been a pleasure as always, Balen, and I really mean that. What do you say we get together in port soon, eh? Have a good old catch up and try to sort things out properly?”
                “Drink with a dog li-“
                “Captain, come now.” Interrupted Altruistic Peter, giving a meaningful look at Strawbeard. The captain sighed.
                “Fine. That’d be grand. Consider it a pact between captains. Crew! We’ve seas to scour!”
                A wave of goodbyes and see-you-soons filled The Greenhouse for a few minutes before Strawbeard’s crew made their way back to the Ocean’s Harvest. It appeared that Repairbear’s colossal power had also patched up and polished much of Strawbeard’s own deck.
                “Ah, it always be impressive to see that bear work.” He said, seeing his own reflection in the polished handrails.
                “See you soon, Balen! Keep well.” Captain Strawberrybeard called over as they began to sail.
                “Oh aye, I’ll be seein’ ye alright!” Strawbeard bellowed back with a shaken fist. Fragaria smiled and waved back.
                “Well, Mr Pine, it seems ye’ve decided to stay on with us?”
                It suddenly dawned on Benjamin that yes, he very much had. The opportunity had been there to sail with Strawberrybeard back to port, and the thought hadn’t even occurred to him.
                “Yes… I suppose I have. I don’t really know why.”
                “Because ye be one of us!” Mr Crabhands said, carefully snipping at the legs of Benjamin’s trousers as if that was even a half-way acceptable thing to do. The fabric fell away and revealed two legs of immaculate pine.
                “Aye! Ye’ll fit right in with us, but ye’ll be needing a name that suits yer particular piratical quirks, like Mr Crabhands here, or Teddy Twelve-Eyes, or Secret Stanley.”
                “Who’s Secret Stanley?”
                “Exactly, Mr Pine. Exactly. And I think we all know exactly what stunning crescendo of today’s events and revelations defines ye best.”
                Benjamin Pine braced for it. Once again his wooden legs would define who he was but, for the first time in his life, he felt at peace with it. It wouldn’t be mockery. It wouldn’t be an insult. It wouldn’t even be a conversation starter; it would be a celebration. He smiled.
                “Benjamin Revengamin! Stickin’ it to those traitors who abandoned ye and coming into this loyal crew!”
                There was an enormous roar of approval from the crew, with swords rattled together, feet stomped on the deck, and crab hands clacked enthusiastically.
                “But… but… why not just Mr Pine?” He pleaded exasperatedly.
                “Let it go, Revengamin. When the captain’s made up his mind he’ll not be changin’ it.” Said Mr Crabhands, very carefully patting Revengamin on the shoulder with one enormous crab claw. “Come with us, and let it go.”