Page 2 - January 2017 Contest Winner

The Captain

by Irish Goat

The Captain looked out across the waves. Nothing.

It had been weeks since he’d seen another human. Days since he caught his
last meal. It wouldn’t be long now. He could feel his death approaching.

His anger rose again. He could taste the bile frothing in his gullet. Willie .
His first mate, and that mutinous crew of ungrateful swine. He’d made them all
rich. Him, the Captain, not that bastard son of a whore. And what did they do to
show their gratitude? They stole the loot, killed the loyal ones, and marooned him
out on this accursed island alone.

And why? Because they were yellow. Cowards, the lot. He’d been

commissioned to ply the waves for a new route to the Indies. Riches and wealth
were made along the way, but then… Then the storm in that Godless Triangle. The
crew begged to return home, but the gold had been taken. King Henry had
demanded a new trading lane. He had to go through the Triangle.

The skies went dark, and the men turned green. Few had suffered this kind
of tempest. A ‘huracan,’ those Taino natives called it. Some Carib god of wrath or
some such mummery. But the crew believed, and that was enough. They waited

until the storm passed, and then they struck.

Willie. He’d come to him as a deserter from the King’s Own. They made two
travels to the Canaries, seven raids off the coast of Africa, and led the Indigo to
two victorious sea battles.
For all his unsavory characteristics, Willie had always served him well.

It was the girl that poisoned his loyalties. The Captain laughed at the irony.
With all that King Neptune had thrown at him in his four decades at sea; his death
had been meted by the ivory breasts of a seaport slut.