"In an honest Service, there is thin Commons, low Wages, and hard Labour; in this, Plenty and Satiety, Pleasure and Ease, Liberty and Power; and who would not balance Creditor on this Side, when all the Hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sower Look or two at choaking. No, a merry Life and a short one shall be my Motto."

-Captain Bartholomew Roberts

XXX

But who wouldn't want that life?

But who would deny himself the decadence, the richness of taking, the satisfaction of glamorous thievery and the freedom of dancing on the waves in stolen shoes? Who would walk away and say, "I am moral and upright; I have great need for things, but none so great that I would hand over my conscience"?

Who, who. Everybody wishes to be a pirate, do they not? Everybody wishes for a constant ocean, for such a broad terrain to call home. Everybody wants to take, and feel just in taking. Everybody wants to be surrounded by thieves, by friends, who will take for you what you need.

Aye, but few will take what they want.

I know this, I know this well. I have watched men come and go, seen them toil away with their moral compasses pointing true North and the constant hum of their consciences thrumming away in their hearts. And these men, they find good French wives and have good French children and they spend their days making up their daughter's French braids and being served French toast by their lovely French wives behind their French doors.

I am not French. Neither was Red Beard.

See, the two of us, we have much in common. Both he and I were born in France, odd looking Frenchmen to say the least. I emerged from my mother clad in brown, and Red Beard popped out thoroughly scarlet.

Now, who ever saw a redheaded baby come from two respectable French brunettes? No one, except the Madame and Monsieur Dubois, and the Madame's midwife.

Moses, we called him, in the early days. Sent away from home, in a basket woven by French fingers, probably used at some point to hold French bread. Poor little baby, with his little French eyes and obscenely long feet and hooked nose. I was only a boy. Aye, I'll admit it. I was feeling a tad lonely, one twelve year old boy on a vessel chock full of brutish, smelly grown men. I grew up early, was shaving by that age. I washed my clothes daily and brushed my teeth up to thirty times a week. I shaved my armpits and trimmed my arm hair and wanted to be absolutely nothing like my father.

But this isn't about me, matey. This is about Little Moses, floating by as I studied my books from the dock.

I spoke English, like my father, and a smattering of Dutch. Father spoke French, but I spat on the idea of learning the language. Language of Love my aars. Among my smattering of Dutch were many swear words.

But when I lifted the baby from the water, I knew he would be like me. French, but decidedly not so.

Aye, it hurts to say, but Moses never liked me much. I tried to teach him my ways. I spoke Dutch to him and cut his wild, wispy red hair short monthly. I washed his clothes and read him books, mended the holes in his socks and taught him numbers and colors and shapes.

He grew up cupped in the palm of my hand, a tiny wad of clay, indented with my finger print.

My father treated him like a grandson. "Papi," Mose called him. "Papi, Papi, look what I made! Look!" Holding out a pudgy, five year old palm with his newest bottle-cork sculpture cupped carefully in it.

Moses spoke in full sentences, and each time he did, I felt a glow of pride in my stomach. My abandoned, redheaded, French baby spoke in full English sentences, and it was all my doing.

Father didn't approve. "Lad's a Pirate!" The man would exclaim. "Lad outta natter like ye 'n me."

Natter, as you can imagine, was not in my vocabulary. And I made damn sure it wasn't in Moses's either.

Oh, but the boy had a mind of his own. Still does, still does.

Maybe I was never the Pirate Son my father wanted, but Moses was. He took pleasure in being wild, in throwing caution to the wind. He wanted nothing to do with my books and haircuts. He wanted to be a pirate.

Don't get me wrong, matey. The pirate's life in alluring, this I know. But I'd hoped I could save little Moses from it, make a respectable (French) man out of him. But my father got there first.

He could grow a full beard by fifteen, and he did. Fiery red, it was, hanging down from his chin like some sort of bloodstained dead animal. I tried many times to sheer it in his sleep, but the boy grew instincts like a tiger. One floorboard creak and there would be a sword in his hand.

Aye, my father died young. No exciting murder, no heroic battle -- Scarlet Fever, of all things, though he was well into his forties by that time. He refused to leave the ship, to drink water, and eventually, to breathe.

Before he died, my father left his ship to his favorite grandson. And now, La Primevère sails on into sunsets of red blood, at the hand of the Pirate King.