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“Give it to me straight, Number Two: will I lose the leg?”
“The leg, Captain? It’s only a touch of fever, nothing to do with your leg.”
“Fever?” The Pirate Captain raised himself on shaky elbows, dislodging Polly, who had been plucking at his unusually luxuriant, now slightly bedraggled, beard in what was clearly meant to be a comforting way. “How fares the crew? Is it the cholera? The pox? Yellow fever? Or—“ he gulped, “the plague?”
The Pirate with a Scarf pushed him back onto the pillows with a firm hand. “I do not believe it is any of the contagious disorders. Seeing how you are the only one who is ill.”
“But could it be enteric fever? Relapsing fever? Malaria?”
“Well, since it has only happened the once, I have provisionally ruled out recurring calentures. If the illness returns, I will certainly reconsider my diagnosis.” In truth, The Pirate with a Scarf, who had served as ship’s doctor since their former surgeon, The Pirate with Excessive Hair, had been eaten by cannibals, was reasonably sure of his diagnosis. “More likely just an ague. A few days’ discomfort and you’ll be good as new.”
“Discomfort? Could it not be scurvy? Or beriberi? Or rickets?”
The fever, The Pirate with a Scarf realized, had made his captain fretful. He dipped a rag in the bowl of water next to the bed and ran it across the Pirate Captain’s brow, just as he had been doing through most of the night and morning.
“You have nothing to fear from scurvy,” he said. “Since you instituted Captain Cook’s findings about cabbage and oranges, there has been remarkably little of it among the crew.”
Strictly speaking, it had been The Pirate with a Scarf who had mandated their new nutritional regime in the Captain’s name, but the reminder seemed to calm the stricken leader’s mind, and he rested more easily against his pillows.
Until, that is, a heavy thud sounded on the port bow, and the noise of a dozen scurrying feet started overhead.
“Number Two?” The Pirate Captain came instantly alert. “Are we under attack?”
“No, no,” The Pirate with a Scarf assured him, even as the whistling sound of shells became more audible. “Only a school of porpoises, I’m sure. Or a weapons drill—you know how the men like those.”
“I must go to them, direct the defense.” The captain began to struggle to his feet, only to be waylaid by a fit of catarrh that left him flopping and gasping on the sheets.
“I’ll see to it,” the Pirate with a Scarf told him. “Polly—guard.”
With a heroic squawk, Polly deposited herself on her master’s chest and leveled as fierce a stare as the lone survivor of a species renowned for its stupidity could muster at the cabin door.
+++
Above decks, the action was well commenced. Grapeshot rained down upon them and a few attackers were already scaling the rigging. The pirate band was dangerously close to disarray.
The Pirate with the Scarf surveyed the scene with dismay. Then a surge of resistance fired in his belly. They were too gallant a crew to go down like this.
He leapt to the foredeck, unwound the scarf from his neck and waved it like a banner.
“My hearties,” he cried. “Your captain lies ill below. We must defend him with all the ferocity and courage he would give in defense of any one of us. Long live the Pirate Captain.”
“For the Pirate Captain,” he heard in response, and “Huzzah” and simply, “Arggh.”
It was short work after that.
+++
The Pirate with a Scarf left the tidying up to others and hurried back to the leader he had left in the care of a bird.
Only to find that Polly was no longer the Captain’s sole companion.
No. The Captain’s head was now pillowed on the lap of the Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate. The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate was combing his surprisingly small hands through the Captain’s luxuriant hair and singing, nay, crooning, to him in a surprisingly sweet voice. Polly clucked balefully from the corner into which she’d been banished.
The Pirate with a Scarf frowned.
“Oi,” he said. “What’re you doing down here? There’s swabbing to be done. Blood. On the decks. Very bad for the wood.”
The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate looked up, chagrined. His beard seemed somewhat askew. He tugged at it.
“Well? Get going.”
The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate scuttled off.
Satisfied, The Pirate with a Scarf settled himself on the edge of the bed and tried to reassure himself that the incursions, both external and internal, had not worsened his captain’s condition.
The captain did seem a bit lower than before, skin hotter to the touch, eyes clouded and half shut, but the Pirate with a Scarf suspected this was merely the illness reaching its crisis, and hoped the fever would break soon.
“Kiss me, Hardy,” said the Pirate Captain muzzily, rolling his head in the Pirate with a Scarf’s general direction.
“My name’s not Hardy, sir,” said the Pirate with a Scarf, resuming his ministrations with the damp rag. “And you’re not dying. If you think you’re Admiral Nelson you’re more ill than I thought.”
But he did, very gently and chastely, place his lips on the corner of his captain’s burning mouth.