The Captain’s Big Sulk

Tuesday. Talk Like a Pirate Day, and the captain has taken it badly. He has shut himself in his cabin with the parrot and is writing something furious in that log of his.

Meanwhile every prisoner on the ship and on the island turned up in costume. Both of the captain’s places sit on Lake Street these days, so I spent the evening going between them. Bandanas, striped shirts, a pair of twins as matching Anne Bonnys. One lad had drawn a scar on his face with his mum’s eyebrow pencil. Very convincing. I have never felt so seen.

I taught a family of six to growl properly, from the belly, not the nose. The captain saw me through a porthole and nodded, pleased. He thinks I was frightening them. I was coaching them. The difference is all in the eyebrows.

The crews in good voice did best tonight, as it happens. A crew that is playing pirates is a crew that is talking, and a crew that is talking is a crew that gets out.

The lad with the pencil scar asked how I got mine. I said a shark. Last week I said a kraken. Next week I think I will try a falling coconut.