The sombre waves delicately rocked the sides of the ship like a comforting mother’s hand on a cradle. The tears and laments from within needing the comfort of a maternal bosom; and what greater mother is there than the sea? It is She from whom we were born – the very womb of evolution and life – and she to whom so many return via tragedy.
“Captain, we’re starting in a few minutes.” whispered a voice so delicate it seemed the gentle draught coming into the cabin would shatter it into sharp shards.
The captain glanced at his watch - a simple, yet elegant time piece. He stared at it longer than usual, contemplating its every tick and tock. Considering how cruel was the passage of time, and the events that come with it and how he would very much like to stop it – just for a moment – and know true peace. He coughed as if to defy his emotions, and rubbed his eyes, before straightening up his dark coat.
***
“We are mere merchants! Not pirates!” screamed the captain at the privateers, their flintlocks drawn and ready to unleash a hail of shot at the first opportunity. “You have no business coming aboard. We mean no harm and have all the necessary papers. We have right to travel these seas.” The captain waved his hands with gestures to some of his crew, and they nodded back in affirmation.
“These seas? These seas!?” came a cocky voice from behind a crowd of armed men. “These seas are my seas.” A very well dressed man stepped forward. His brushed velvet coat was a dazzling black, but his shirt hung loosely around his torso. His boots gave an authoritative clop on the wooden boards of the deck – as if punctuating his importance with the percussion of his heels. The gentleman adjusted his hat, and gazed beyond its brim at the captain.
The captain rolled his eyes and gritted his teeth. “Admiral Long. There was me thinking you men had made some error coming aboard. Privateers are usually bad enough – nothing but pirates with a licence from a bloodthirsty, greedy monarch. But with Long in charge...You’re nothing but devils of destruction. Typhoon winds that carry everything with you but destroy it all in the process.”
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it captain.” replied Admiral Long, confidence in his voice. “I must admit I thought you’d be out of the picture when we sank the Helena. Or did the captain not go down with his ship?”
“This captain never goes down with his ship – his men neither. If we’re to die, we’re to die trying to live another day. We’ll not die as drowning dogs for tradition, for pomp or for ceremony. We are a life and sailor to a man and the sea is ours to command, not to submit to!”
“Ever the idealist, eh captain?”
The two looked at each other. The captain’s crew were helpless. With arms in the air they had no way to fight back against the swords and pistols of Her Majesty’s well armed, cut-throat privateers. “Weren’t always quite such a pacifist, were you? Haha! Remember that time on San. Jorge Island? HA! You gutted that chap like a pig in a butcher shop! MERCILESS! Merciless you were - you could have been the greatest. You could have had the biggest pirate fleet in these waters – but you gave it up. You gave it all up. And your crew with it...”
The captain’s pirate past had never been something he had hidden. Nor did he wear it as a badge of honour. He wore it as a badge of shame, and disgust. He wore it to show repentance. To show his crew how things should be done. There are riches enough for all who sail the seas such that they need not compete if only they’d level their greed. Instead, the greed grows, exponentially. The more there is the more is lusted for. Locals, governments, monarchs, pirates, they all want their share. Most would kill to get it. Yet the greatest tragedy is there is enough for all. None need die for riches – yet in his past, the captain had exacted just such murder in pursuit of wealth. He had shot, cut, choked, beat, robbed, raped and plundered and he knew he was a despicable human being. He knew he was utterly detestable. His only path to penance was to try to teach others that there was another way to do things. That there need be no violence and that service for service, riches for riches there was enough such that no mother need find out her son has been butchered by a pirate. So that no wife needs hear that her merchant sailor husband has been killed resisting privateers who falsely believe they have some right of ‘repossession’ of ships and goods on the seas.
***
Bagpipes cut the shushing sound of wind on wave as the captain left his cabin. The air felt dense, thick with the stench of misery, anger and regret - of rueful words said, and words ruefully unspoken. The weather, too, conspired in the mood. Whipping up biting winds, and painting the sky a foreboding shade of grey.
He marched slowly, through a crowd of crew all looking at him, to a man, with piercing gazes and seeing that beneath the dark coat and stoic appearance, there were tears within their captain - blood too. Yet he refused to shed both at this point. At times like these, people are only too aware that they are human. That for all the thought and idealism, that for whatever religious codes of conduct they carried themselves under, whatever philosophies they followed, whatever politics they believed, they were just human. Thus on this day was the lowliest cabin boy held in the same reverence as the captain himself. They all needed each other.
***
“There’s nothing for you on this ship.” said the captain defiantly. “So what do you want!?”
“Captain, captain, captain,” Long uttered with an enduring smug sneer. “Is it not obvious? Aye, you have in your hold goods – goods that I could seize under my orders, and could be worth a lot of money to me. You also have a crew of people that would make excellent prisoners. The ship, too, is well worth capture. She’d make a fine privateer.”
“Privateer. You’re nothing but thugs and pirates. Cease the self-indulgent rhetoric and tell me what you want!”
“I want you, dear captain.” Admiral Long gave the captain a cold stare. “Do you not remember? Once we were partners in our dealings. We were friends. We were comrades in arms. We were pirates together, friend!”
“Some time has passed since then, Long. Time enough for our grievances to be only so much current to have passed beneath the hulls of the ships we now run. If you still feel so slighted as to need to terrorise my ship with your gang of barbarians then so be it – but that is not a matter of things needing resolution. It is merely a fabrication of your own lack of clarity and consciousness – and a testament to your disgusting vanity.”
“My vanity? And what of your vanity ‘captain’? What about your transformation from renowned brute into a Christ-like martyr merchant?”
“You seek no penance from me for the past brutalities I committed against any innocent party, Long. You seek penance for the rightful punishment I dished out to you. Do not be so petty as to try to turn my atoning for my past mistakes into vanity – change is possible where one has humanity, something for which you are sadly lacking – through my foolishness...”
“Remember our skirmishes? The air alive with the crack of powder explosions as shot tore flesh in the name of plunder, the clang of swords as we ripped through false lawkeepers and hypocrites who all believed themselves to be bastions of peace when they were no less harbingers of chaos than we were? This was the Titans versus the Gods of classic mythology – and we, captain, we were the Gods! We were untouchable, unbeatable - invincible. We owned islands from horizon to horizon. We ruled these seas. The blood running in the streets was the symbol of our power – the wealth we held unimaginable – and the women, why eventually we did not even have to take them by force – they were throwing themselves at us for our reputations arrived at shore hours before we did.”
“And delight in this we did, perceiving it to be just, believing that this was the lawless land and we merely the rightful owners of it. But these lands, these seas, no one can possess. Are you proud of the men you’ve killed? The lives you’ve hurt, the orphaned children and the defiled women? Are you proud of these things? Power is nothing but rum – intoxicating and distracting but providing nothing of peace for a man’s soul. Every day I was drunk and numb to the screams of pain, to the suffering. I caused suffering and then – in one moment of clarity I changed it.”
Admiral Long gave a piercing look. “Clarity – is that what you call shooting a fellow sailor and abandoning one’s crew?”
“We were not mere sailors, Long, we were savages, wild animals with boats yet we dared feign codes of honour!?”
***
A few years previous, the captain, Long and the rest of his crew dropped anchor just off Port Victoria – a large town on an island previously left alone. Its relative safety made it a haven for families. A peaceful place in which men and women could thrive – a town of opportunity, equality, peace and values made such, not by heavy handed law and order, but by trade and diplomacy. Most pirates had friends or relatives living there – or knew of others who had friends and relatives there. They also knew that when such time came as they wanted a rest, Port Victoria welcomed them so long as they came unarmed and respected their laws and customs. All were accommodated, no matter their corruption. Port Victoria did not discriminate, and saw the good in all.
The captain gently moved his ship up to the Island. The waters were flat and calm, such as he had never experienced before nor would again. The air was warm, but the humidity perfect. There was no oppressive pressure in the air and an occasional gentle breeze cut the warmth and gave cooling, welcome kisses to the bronzed, leathery skin of him and his crew. The sun lit up the buildings of the nearby port, making them all look gilded and inviting. The captain and his crew accepted the invitation.
Not used to hostile approaches, the people of Port Victoria saw the boats rowing to shore but thought nothing of it. They merely believed it was another crew of pirates seeking rest and recuperation. Children played, giggling, in the streets – their parents working, either within the home or within one of many of the small business that were numerous and thriving in Port Victoria. They prepared for the arrival of the pirates by straightening up their wares, dusting down the seats in their bars, and donning welcoming smiles - the airs and graces of society worn as a mask of pleasant ignorance in the face of awaiting savagery.
The rowboats pulled up to the shore to be met with the usual welcome of apathy and business as usual. Business as usual it was for the pirates too. Their amoral face contorted into bestial grins, a stark juxtaposition to those welcoming radiance on the faces of their victims. Where we would see people, lives lived, joys and loves – the pirates saw only fun and money. It did not take long for the cries of panic to ring out, as a scurvy ridden sailor placed his lecherous hands upon a passing young woman, others drew swords and pistols. A man arrived to defend the lady’s honour, and was their target. The crack of the black powder sounded like an earthquake that day, as a lead ball pierced a man’s chest – the chest of a righteous man.
More shots rang out and clapped like rapturous applause from some deity of mayhem, misery and murder. Swords rend flesh to rags and ribbons, shot cannoned through the streets with accompanying smoke – a hazy greeting to Elysium for many who lay prostrate and bleeding in those streets – men, women and children - all of fair nature and kind heart, slain. “All in good fun lads, all in good fun.” Screams pierced the sky, tearing it apocalyptically in two and in the middle of the tear – in objective clarity – stood the captain.
Had he just gone soft, or had he been soft all along to follow the tradition of such savagery and inhumanity? Was the stronger, harder thing to do not fight to stop these sorts of things, rather than engage in them or meet them on their own terms? The soldiers and officials who came to meet them, swords drawn, muskets ready, were just as guilty as they – for they all took life indiscriminately, they all profited from discord and death, and they all believed what they were doing was right. The captain watched a child, a young boy, cowering, beneath a gutting table on the jetty. The child had no idea which was fish blood and which was human – he merely gazed at his red stained hands, with mucous melting down his lips, tears cascading from his eyes as if rejecting the very horrors that they saw, and his mouth agape like the suffocating maw of a fish who may be seen atop the table, not beneath it. Frozen in this moment, the captain’s blank stares were interrupted as through the haze he caught glimpse of Long, his trousers around his ankles, his hands all over the young lady who had been the catalyst of this butchery. Her once fair, porcelain face turned red with screaming, anxiety and suffering - Long’s hands all over her thighs, tugging at her dress with a big grin on his face that matched the disgusting cleft on his bare buttocks - dirty, unclean, disgusting. One last act, the captain thought, one final show of savagery left in his broken mind. He drew his pistols. Unloading them in Long’s general direction the shots penetrated, one in his back, and one in his thigh. His once covetous lechery left with limpness as he slumped. The girl pushed him away and ran. The captain’s shots, to him, seemed to ring out above all others. Yet no other paid any attention. They were lost in the mists of gunshot, plunder and adrenaline. The captain ran. In a fit of panic, he ran. He climbed back into the rowboat, the tender to his old ship – a ship he had once proudly sailed in the name of destruction – and he rowed. He rowed until his arms burned and seized.
From there he drifted, literally and figuratively. A once bullishly proud pirate captain turned shell of a man – an aberration, an apparition. He could not have said precisely what, if anything, upon that day caused his sudden change. While he drifted at sea he pondered on it. He was no God-fearing man, and having known evil and how it can so invade goodness, he could not believe in a God or the cheap divine intervention such a deity could provide. He was a man of logic, of reason – and the only reasonable assumption he could make is that upon that day he was born, and became human. His life until that day had merely been a proxy. The fabrication of superficial constructs. The pursuit of wealth and power by any means, often prescribed as a notion so human by other flawed philosophers, he saw as but a lie to keep fools in the pursuit of such things where neither exists. In his travels, he had known natives who lived in peace, each with their place, each sharing their crafts with the rest. He had merely proclaimed them savages and ransacked them. They did not follow his Western philosophies and ideologies. They knew not of gold and government. They knew only life, yet they the savages?
After days spent at sea, without food and his small flask of water drained and dry, he begged for mercy. He begged a God he had no belief in for release - for a starved, dehydrated, sorry death befitting a merciless cur such as he. Yet, with no God to hear his prayers, they were not granted. His boat rocked in the arms of the only mother he had ever known, the ocean, upon the shores of a small town. There, in the arms of another powerful woman, he found his healing and salvation. Not through God, but through humanity, he was nursed back to health by a kind heart he scarce deserved. There the captain resigned himself to a life of guilt, penance and peace – not in himself, for he would never know peace, but in encouraging peace in others.
***
“This is not about responsibilities, captain. Ha! Do you think I care that, like a coward, you betrayed your men? Do you think I care that our boat was left without our inspirational captain? Do you think we wept over you?” Long spoke sarcastically. “No, no, no. Captain this is not about responsibilities. This is about revenge! This is about me finally paying you back for sticking two shots in me and leaving me to die in the heat of battle while you slunk away like a worm running from the sun.”
“We...Long...We were monsters. Seems you still are, but I merely stopped you from being more of one. It is of no consolation to you, but I am sorry. I am sorry to have had you on my crew, I am sorry I taught you the wrong lessons, and I am sorry I had to shoot you for my mistakes...I’m...I...” The captain was interrupted by a sight from the corner of his eye - a slight crack in the opening of the door to the hold. He glanced at one of his mates, and then back at the crack and then at Long – who had noticed his wandering eyes. Long clasped at the butt of his pistol, and aimed it at the captain’s head with suspicion.
Time stood still, yet events occurred all the same. It seemed nothing can stop the endless passing of one moment to the next, not even time itself. A scream of “Daddy!” came from so young, fair and enrapturing a voice as it may have been a siren, as the captain’s young daughter wrestled her way free from the desperate clutches of her mother. Both put in the hold for their protection upon first sight of the potentially hostile ship in the distance. As the small child, the captain’s only true salvation, the only good he could say he had ever produced, the only thing that could stem the hate and loathing for himself and his past, careered towards him – too young, too naive, too ignorant of the danger – so did a musket-ball career towards her. From the hair trigger, and flintlock, of some eager crewmember of the respectable Admiral Long of Her Majesty’s sanctioned privateers. Shots rang out, and memories with them for the captain. Thoughts back to his days as a pirate, of the skirmishes, the raids, the plunder, the suffering and false glory. His child lay bleeding. His wife burst through the door, lost in her own haze of powder smoke and maternity, to clutch at her prone baby. Her shrill cry seeming to attract more fire, she slumped as she embraced her infant – warm tears falling from her blank, piercing eyes – as if gazing into heaven itself – transfixed.
As the captain had fled, all those years ago, from Port Victoria, so did Admiral Long and his crew. Only he did so with none of the remorse, none of the insight, none of the guilt that the captain had done so with. He admired his work – he had killed hope. Love and salvation lay breathing shallow, slow and for the final few times on the deck of that ship and he delighted in it.
***
The captain stepped out into the bitter cold air, his long coat providing an embrace, yet it provided little comfort. Pats on the back caused a skip in his composure as his lips trembled and his eyes, once so steely to the fixed gaze of death were now glassy with tears – human. The pipes still droned dirges, rumbling the air with sorrow. There, upon the deck, being doused in rain, were the captain’s wife – the love to whom he owed all – and his daughter, the love to whom he gave all. Peacefully resting, as the captain was cursed never to be, in their caskets.
He walked slowly, meticulously, rhythmically, to the heads of the caskets. He place his hands upon them, and gently caressed the wood as if it were their faces, and bit his lip so hard it drew blood, that dribbled down his chin as he let out a stifled sob, before clasping a hand to his face, he wiped the blood away. Leaning over the caskets, he kissed them - first his wife, and then his daughter. All the while, he tenderly felt the planed timber – the container for this cargo of precious souls, treasured memories and unconditional love for a man so undeserving of it.
“A priest...” the captain said quietly, and chokingly, before he cleared his throat and addressed the surrounding crew members who stood in solidarity not with their captain – but a fellow human being in the pain of grief. “A priest...” he said more affirmatively, “would say “God giveth, and God taketh away.” What a short- sighted lack of responsibility those cowards have - hiding the actions of men behind their sorry faith. If there is a God who gave me life, she lies peacefully in this casket.” He tapped upon his wife’s coffin, and stroked it lovingly. His head moved erratically, his eyes darted from place to place and his lips quivered like shivering pink slugs. “This woman...This true angel on Earth, she is my creator. She took a broken demon and made him human. She heard all my tales, she heard all my wrong doings, the suffering I doled out to others and seeing the misery I suffered from them...she...she took pity.” The captain bowed his head, as tears fell silently from his eyes and mixed in with the rain on the deck as the sky cried with him. “She took pity on a monster!” he sobbed as he fell to his knees. “And she,” he said stroking his daughter’s coffin, “she gave a man who knew only the hopeless finality of death - she gave him hope...Hope for life...” The crew stood intently and listened to their captain, their hearts rose in their sorry chests, and their eyes were reservoirs of misery. “I’ll hear nothing of Gods when man is responsible for giving, and man responsible for taking away. A priest may only speak in hollow rhetoric...Of what his God may provide by means of salvation, but these two...They gave me that salvation themselves - in their love, in their compassion and in the joy of their smiles.” The captain mopped his brow, and his mate offered a handkerchief, sodden with the grime of honest work, which the captain accepted with a warm linking of hands, and a meeting of eyes that was all too human. “Just as they gave so much to this man, so it was another through which they were taken. I see how no God could so desire two more angels for his greedy collection when too few dwell upon the Earth. No...If you seek the power of the divine, men, look for it within yourselves because I promise you it is there and when you find it – Oh, how you shall call its name - and its name is love.” The captain stood straight, and took in a salty oceanic breath, and casting his eyes over his men, continued. “Too long...Men...Too long has mankind lived within the walls of fear and insecurity. Competition and greed are the result and gaze now upon what that leads to.” He placed his hands gently upon the caskets once again. “Herein rests the product. Two smiles never again to light the darkness, two laughs never again to raise the joy in our sunken breasts, two hearts never again to light the fires of love in us all. How many more souls need leave us too soon for fear, for greed, for worthless ideas and philosophies, for meaningless flags and borders and for petty, cyclic vengeance? Look within yourselves for the power to stop it, for love conquers fear.” The captain paused. The rain beat his furrowed brow and the wind whipped his hair in chaotic flicks. He cried. “Today, men, we say goodbye. Today we consign the bodies of love and salvation back to the maternal confines of the depths of the sea – Back into that great womb. But we must give birth. We must give birth to love in our hearts and to compassion in our actions, for we are human, one and all. There are but two ranks on these great seas; babes and corpses. We are all born naked and crying, and one day we all return to that void from whence we came. Let no one convince you otherwise. Let no hierarchy mask your perceptions - let no artificially imposed authority tell you there is one more than your equal. This is the lesson these two divine beings taught me and so long as there is cursed blood pumped by my black heart in my weary veins, these two shall live on...They shall...They shall live on.” The captain fell to his knees once again. His words imparted, his speech done, he no longer had need for the composure of ceremony and he fell to the deck and clutched at each casket as best he could, his bawling rendered the very howling winds silent. Some crew stood in sombre respect, some wiped tears from their own faces and a couple went over to pick up their captain, their brother, their equal. The captain clutched at one and buried his head in his chest, and wept as the two coffins were carried to the side of the ship, and were gently lowered, cradled – as the captain watched in tears – into the welcoming arms of their mother, the sea.
