This afternoon, I went down to the marina, and stood on one of the docks. Plodding along the dock came a tall, strong, heavy man with a tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, muttering under his breath and occasionally breaking out into song:<\/p>\n
Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest,
\n Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum…<\/p>\n
He sang in a high, old tottering voice that sounded like it had been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. As he came closer, I could see a scar across one cheek, an old sabre cut that now showed a dirty, livid white on his nut-brown face. <\/p>\n
And then from the other direction came a man with a wooden leg. At first the tall man with the scarred face made as if to walk past without speaking. But the one-legged man spoke to him: “Come now, you know me; you know an old shipmate, surely,” he said in a wheedling voice.<\/p>\n
“Black Dog, is it?” said the tall man with the scarred face, looking none too pleased. “Well, then, you’ve run me down; here I am, speak up; what is it?”<\/p>\n
“You won’t forget?” said the one-legged man. “You won’t forget what tomorrow is?”<\/p>\n
“Course I won’t forget,” said the other. “No more’n I’d forget to bring down the topsails in the face of a quickening north wind. No more’n I’d forget to order grog for all hands at six bells!” He finished scornfully, “Thunder, as if I don’t know they’d tip the Black Spot on me, if I forgot.”<\/p>\n
They paused for a moment, and stared out at sea in silence.<\/p>\n
“And what about you?” said the tall man. “What about you? If you have a drain o’ rum, you’ll be like an old hulk on a lee shore, you will. An’ more like you to have three goes o’ rum, or more. You — you’re sure to forget!”<\/p>\n
“I’m no precious old sea-calf,” said the one-legged man sullenly. “I won’t forget. I’ll put on my old cockerel hat, put the parrot on my shoulder, and — why, I’ll talk like a pirate. Shiver my timbers, I’ll talk like a pirate! Nor you won’t stop me, neither, for — dash my buttons! — I am a pirate!”<\/p>\n
“Shake up your timbers, then, and be off with you,” said the tall one. “One more word of your sauce, and I’ll call you down and fight you!”<\/p>\n
When the one-legged man had stumped off, the tall man spoke again. “Here, you, matey,” he said, turning and looking at me with his red-rimmed eyes. “Don’t you forget, neither — tomorrow’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day.”<\/p>\n
How could I possibly forget after a reminder like that?<\/p>\n
[Much of this dialogue and description stolen from that paradigmatic pirate book, Treasure Island.<\/em><\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This afternoon, I went down to the marina, and stood on one of the docks. Plodding along the dock came a tall, strong, heavy man with a tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, muttering under his breath and occasionally breaking out into song: Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest, … Continue reading “Down by the docks”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[299],"class_list":["post-3325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-talk-like-a-pirate-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3325"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3422,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3325\/revisions\/3422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}