Four Shipless Pirates: Digging Graves

“Get yer arse over here and help me dig these graves, Nate.”

Nate didn’t move from where he lay enjoying the shade of three close-set palm trees. He raised his right leg so he could see the thickly wrapped bandage that kept him from bleeding out. A shiver ran through his body and he dropped his leg; his muscles suddenly too weak to support it any longer.

“If I’m picking up a shovel, it’ll be my own grave I’m digging. Is that what ya’re wanting, Robbie? For me to be dying of the work ya were ordering me to do?”

A shadow larger than those of the three trees combined completely blocked out the light. Nate found himself lifted high off the ground to be toted in Wee Robbie’s arms like a helpless babe. Robbie’s beard tickled his cheek when that man stood him up before a marked out rectangle of ground. He thrust a shovel into Nate’s hands. “There ye go. Now dig or I’ll kill ye myself. And then I’ll put yer lifeless hands tae the shovel and make ye dig yer own grave.”

“Ya’ve no decency, making a dying man work,” Nate complained, leaning on the shovel for support while holding up a hand to protect his eyes from the sun’s glare. His leg burned where the pirate’s sabre had pierced his calf. He’d been going for another one of the island’s invaders when the bloody coward had gotten him from behind.

“Ye’re nae dying,” Robbie replied, throwing another shovel load of dirt on the growing pile between the graves. “My mam was suffering worse stabs tae her finger by her sewing needle than that wee prick ye’ve got in yer leg.”

A rustling off to Nate’s left preceded the appearance of the two men from the Prometheus besides Robbie and Nate who still lived. Each man walked stooped over, dragging behind him a fallen crewmate at the end of rope he held over his shoulder for leverage. 

“Why ain’t Nate shoveling?” Pete demanded, angrily twitching his head. Masses of wrinkles jiggled from his brow to his neck. There were even creases across the bridge of his nose. But at least he’s got a nose, Nate thought, fingering the place where his own had once been.

Robbie snorted and scooped up another load of dirt. “He’s near death.”

“Near death? You mean the wound in his leg that healed two months past?”

“Has he done aught tae sustain another?”

“Perhaps we might toss him in with Billy here and save ourselves more digging,” Charlie suggested. He left his burden next to Robbie’s nearly complete grave and headed back the way he’d come.

“But I’m not dead yet,” Nate reminded him. Charlie kept walking.

“Fear not, Nate. You will be soon after we have you covered in dirt.”

Nate glanced at Pete and Robbie for reassurance, but neither of them looked very comforting. “Bloody hell.” Nate stuck the tip of his shovel into the weedy ground, covering the metal base in a thin layer of silt. He limped over to Robbie’s pile to add his own meager offering, then went back to repeat the process.

Pete grabbed the shovel from his hands. “Damn you, Nate. They’ll be skeletons ere you’re done. Go help Charlie bring Louis.”

“Louis? Am I not too weak now? My leg’s nigh to falling off and my body’s sorely plagued by the shivers of death.” Nate purposely sent trembles through his neck, shoulders and torso, telling himself he wasn’t really lying. It was only that the others never seemed to be around to see when it happened in truth.

Robbie untied the rope from beneath the arms of the corpse nearest him and threw it at Nate. “Yer shivers will cease once yer working.”

Nate looped the rope into a neat circle for carrying and limped off after Charlie. “My shivers will be stopping, for dead men aren’t shivering,” he grumbled. A large, prickle-edged leaf brushed his ear. He yanked it off its stem and waved it in the air. “Ya’re probably poisonous, aren’t ya now? Ya’ll see me waking in the morn with a rash from my cheeks above to my cheeks below.”

“Have hope, Nate,” Charlie chided, dragging Louis along behind him. The man’s abdomen was wrapped with a bloody bandage. “Perhaps the poison will kill you ere the rash has time to spread. Now, would you prefer to take Louis’s feet or head?”

“The poison’s spreading. My cheek’s numb and my eyes are blurry now. It’s moving down to my throat, ” Nate croaked, his fingers dropping the rope to clutch his neck. “I… I cannot be… finding breath.” He fell to his knees in a rotting pile of leaves. This was it. This was how he died. His eyes saw two of everything and the world spun about him.

Charlie’s four feet came into view. The man leaned down, picked up the discarded coil of rope, and grinned with both his mouths. “I am not a doctor, Nate, but I think you would get more air if you ceased choking yourself.”

Nate threw a feeble punch. “Bloody… bloody hell, Charlie. I… I’m not… not choking myself.” He surged upward and wrapped his arms about Charlie’s waist. They tumbled to the ground. Nate flipped Charlie onto his back, straddled him, and delivered a well-placed blow to his right eye. “Ya’re a bloody rat, taunting a man in his dying moments.” He swung his arm back for another blow, but Charlie bucked his body upward and Nate fell sideways into the brush.

“When you are done dying, kindly join us at the graves. Pete will want to say something in way of a funeral.”

Nate lay on his back and watched Charlie disappear in the direction of Robbie and the graves, Louis’s corpse sweeping a wide swath of dirt in his wake. A scrap of fur landed on his chest from the tree overhead. He swatted Squeaks off him, but the squirrel went no further than five feet before crouching on the path to stare at Nate.

“Go back to Robbie, ya feckin’ blighter.”

The squirrel calmly licked its paws. Nate growled and stumbled to his feet. “Ya’ll be blabbing to Robbie how I wasn’t helping Charlie and then I’ll have to be listening to him tell me all my faults. Well, ya won’t be getting away with it, because I’m going to help Charlie and then ya’ll be having naught to tell. Ya’re not liking that now, are ya?”

He ran after Charlie, catching up to the man just before he reached the clearing of graves. Picking up Louis’s feet, Nate carried them the final thirty feet. Squeaks keened loudly from his perch on Robbie’s shoulder. The Scot’s thick fingers gently rubbed the squirrel’s back. “Damn ye, Nate, what did ye do tae Squeaks?”

“Me?” Nate cried, glaring at the rodent. “I was doing naught but helping Charlie. Perhaps the blighter’s telling ya he’s finding the weather too hot here. Ya should’ve been leaving him in Scotland where he belongs. He’s not worth the trouble of feeding him.”

Robbie laughed. “A phrase yer mam was oft saying of ye, I think.”

“Damn ya!”

“Enough you two! Get to work or we’ll be here all night burying these fools. And what the bloody hell happened to your face, Charlie?”

Charlie prodded his swollen and purpled cheek. “Nate was dying of poisoning.”

“Of all the…”

Nate jumped back to avoid the swinging blade of Pete’s shovel. “Ya were nearly killing me, Pete,” he whined, rubbing his poor abdomen that was tingling from the threat of attack.

“Damn your head, Nate! It was a league away. You were in no danger.”

“Still, I dinnae see any need for violence, Pete. We were just chatting.”

“Robbie is correct. You know I like you prodigiously, Pete, but you do have a tendency to overreact.”

Nate nodded at the wisdom of his two crewmates even as Pete threw down his shovel and dragged Louis into his final resting place. His companions each took up a shovel and began refilling one of the graves. Nate limped over to Charlie, figuring he was the safest choice of the three at the moment, and used his good leg to nudge clumps of dirt into the hole.

“Will ye be saying a few words over them, Pete?”

Pete’s gaze scanned the long line of graves from the three newest ones to the oldest at the far end. Nate gulped when the boatswain’s eyes settled on him. “Yes. But I’ll do it right, starting with Grayson.”

“Grayson? We’ll be standing here all night.” Nate put a hand on his back and arched backward, easing the ache plaguing him from the long hours of work that day.

“I’ll be quick.”

Nate did not trust Pete’s grin, though he dutifully walked to the first grave. At least these were only the men who had died since they’d moved camp a few months back. The majority of their crew was buried on the other side of the island, a fair hike away. He hoped Pete didn’t insist on going back there as well. He’d probably not make it, weak as he was.

“Our dear quartermaster, Grayson. Always cheerful and willing to lend a hand. He died of fever during Nate’s near death by broken toenail.”

Nate instinctively wiggled his right big toe at the memory of how the nail had bent backward until the skin beneath was torn and bloody. The sore had swollen and festered within hours of him having caught the toe on the fallen log, and the pain had been so bad he couldn’t walk. Thankfully, it had healed before the date Robbie had set to cut it off. Men were always dying from severed limbs and Nate knew he’d have been no exception.

Charlie crouched before the second cross. “I shall forever regret betting Ainsworth he could not dance for an entire day and night without ceasing. Come the eve, his legs wobbled so badly, he slipped on the leafy deathbed Nate was building himself and hit his temple on a rock. Ainsworth never danced again.”

“Ye were at least winning the bet. I lost my favorite knife tae Jacob here when I told him he’d nae be fool enough tae swim with the sharks.”

“But were ya not getting it back when Jacob went about dying two days later of the shark bite to his backside?” Nate reminded Robbie. “And I was taking his wool blanket to save me dying from the deadly chill I suffered. It’s this bloody island now. It’s much warmer than what I was being used to back home.”

“Should we say aught of these two?”

“Speak of the fools who decided to prove Jacob died because he didn’t know how to make friends with the sharks?” Pete snorted. “It’d be a greater waste of time than searching Nate’s ear for the spiders Squeaks was hiding there while he slept.”

Nate jiggled a finger in his ear. Luckily, he’d discovered Squeaks’ activity before the tiny creatures were able to kill him with their poison. Now he made sure to keep his blanket tucked tightly over his head whenever sleeping.

Pete placed his hand on the sixth cross. “Poor Nate suffered a relapse of the stomachache he’d developed by swallowing too many apple seeds as a boy the day Benny choked on a biscuit. We were all distracted by Nate’s wails, none saw the lad’s face turn as blue as the northern seas.”

Nate rubbed his growling middle, wishing Pete had left that particular ailment unmentioned. He silently blessed Charlie for quickly moving on to the next eight. The four surviving pirates folded their hands and bowed their heads as the names were spoken. “Asher, Jordon, Sebastian, Matias, Drake, Jeremiah, Ian, Oliver. They gave their lives to drive off the mass of murderous invaders. The same invaders who stole our supplies and left Nate with a pea-sized scar on the back of his leg and a transient limp by which to remember the day he almost died himself.”

The burning on the back of Nate’s calf returned. He’d been fighting two opponents at once, the one stabbing him from behind while he faced the other. When did it happen that a man could no longer trust in the honor of thieves?

“McConnell.” The men exchanged helpless glances.

“Perhaps we might say…”

“What of the time he…”

Pete snapped his fingers. “Was it not McConnell who saved Nate from choking on air when he laughed too hard at Robbie’s jest?”

“The one about the wench as large as a ship and whose stomach ripples more than the ocean waves so that any man paying to ride her ends up seasick?”

Robbie grinned. “A lass above all others is my Peggy. Other men fear the ride, but when we get tae going, there’s naught so satisfying. I lose my biscuits each and every time.” His smile stayed firmly in place though he shook his head. “But it was Grayson, nae McConnell, who saved Nate then. McConnell hid Nate when the wee, green bird was chasing him, wanting tae eat his ears.”

“That was Billy. I remember him lying atop Nate, his red hair covering Nate’s face.”

Robbie frowned. “McConnell dinnae have red hair?”

“No. Brown.”

“I thought his hair was near white.”

Nate shook his head. “Only the captain was having white hair and was that not his age now?”

“Then who was McConnell?”

The men shrugged as one.

“Well, who was burying him?” There was nothing but shrugs. Pete growled. “Any of you know how he died?”

“I ken nae. The cross appeared one day and I thought naught of it.”

The men stared at McConnell’s grave. “Is he in there?”

Nate smiled. “Is the solution’s not simple now? We’ve needing to dig him up.” There was a general shuffling of feet and a few grunts.

“Heinrich, Billy, and Louis,” Pete continued, moving on to the last three crosses. “Heinrich climbed a tree to find bananas, but Nate sneezed loud enough to scare the man and he fell onto Billy and Louis below. Had those two diligent sailors not been sharping their daggers, they may yet have their innards inside as God intended.”

Nate sniffled. “I cannot seem to be shaking the chill. It’s one fit to be killing a man, I’m fearing.”

Pete put his hands on his hips and nodded. “That’s it then.” He grabbed a shovel and jabbed it into the ground next to Louis.

“What’re ya doing now?” Nate wondered.

“Digging your grave.”

The End… for now.

***I hope you enjoyed this first installment of “Four Shipless Pirates”. The men make a very brief appearance in Hard to Starboard at which time poor Nate injures his leg in a rather unconventional ménage à trois.***