Booty!

Booty. Pirates are making me walk the plank because I was after their booty.

 

"Go get your own booty!" they tell me. "You can't have ours. We stole this fair and square, using the sweat of our brow, using every muscle of our brains. This is hard-won, this booty is, and you can't have it."

 

This is the essence of pirating: every man for himself. No sharing of booty.

 

Having instructed me on the rules of piracy, they prick me with the points of their swords and force me off the end of the plank into the briny deep. Arms tied behind me, of course. Shark-infested waters, of course.

 

And as soon as I am in the water, the pirates hoist sail and take off, the ship skimming over the waves toward their next load of booty, Jolly Roger streaming from its flagpole at the bow.

 

And me? What happens to me? Well, you know the old stories: swallowed by a whale, perhaps. And then later a fleet of dolphins surrounds me and floats me to one of those New-Yorker-cartoon desert islands, a circle of land that is 25 feet in diameter and has one coconut palm for shelter.

 

I climb the palm tree. Spy a ship in the distance. Hail it by taking off and waving my white shirt. I'm saved!

 

I write a book about my adventures with the pirates and the deep blue sea. It's optioned by a famous movie director and I become richer than any of those original pirates.

 

And aren't THEY sorry when they see the movie of my adventures!!

 

 

Copyright 2011 Ann Tudor

www.anntudor.ca
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com