The Judas Goat Episode 2: Booze, Porn, and Eggs

Episode 2: Booze, Porn, and Eggs

First Mate Cole, standing beside Captain Wright on the quarterdeck, regained his composure quickly after storming into the gun deck. A spectacular negligent discarge hadn’t been part of his plan, but he wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Making certain the Captain was listening, he addressed the three-man boarding party as they came out on deck.

“Alright boys, Bosun’s boarding party is down hard—something in last night’s stew has them heaving over the fo’c’s’le—so this is your chance. Get under cover amidships and stand by for my orders. We’ll take her on the port side—and remember, no pilfering. Everything on that ship belongs to Valiant. Anyone caught thieving will answer to me,” Cole instructed, then gave a quick wink only Dave, Trevor, and Noah could see. 

The Captain’s “no pilfering” policy was indeed strict, but he didn’t inspect the boarding party coming back onboard. The First Mate did. 

Trevor and Noah shared a grin and stepped off. Dave turned to join them but the first mate motioned him to come closer. Leaning in, he reached out and clasped Dave’s shoulder with a weathered hand.

“Whatever happens, just imagine your old man is watching you,” he pointed toward the heavens. “Make him proud.”

The mention of his father sent a burst of adrenaline coursing through Dave. He gave a quick smile and raced to his position as the Captain congratulated his first mate.

“Top notch pep talk, Mr. Cole. A good captain always sends his men into harm’s way with smiles on their face and fire in their hearts.”

“I learned from the best, Captain,” the first mate responded, actually managing to sound sincere.

 Dave squeezed in between Trevor and Noah. Crushing his cutlass handle with excitement, he eyed their prey through a gap in the ship’s railing and waited for his chance to fix all his bad decisions in one fell swoop. 

Fame, fortune, forgiveness—it’s all inside that hull, Dave thought, grinning as he eyed the slowly rolling merchant ship. His pathway to fixing the past, as well as happily ever after, lay behind those wooden planks. All he had to do was follow his father’s audacious example and he had it made. Not for the first time, Dave thanked his lucky stars for First Mate Cole.

Tom Cole had sailed with Harry Gillespie, Dave’s late father, and vouched for Dave and his friends when they’d come begging to join Valiant’s crew. Spots on Captain Wright’s crew were hard to come by because, the contentious nature of privateering notwithstanding, the good captain considered violence bad for business and took pride in avoiding it. Sailors more interested in not getting blown to smithereens than in striking it rich, found their way to his crew and burrowed in like ticks until old age claimed them. But First Mate Cole convinced the Captain to hire a few lads as insurance in case Bosun Livingston, Ollie, and Sullie—themselves nearing forty but still relatively spry compared to the rest of the crew—needed some help, and Dave, Trevor, and Noah became Valiant’s youngest crewmen.

Please be carrying gold, Dave prayed, squeezing his sword’s rough handle hard enough to cut into his deck-monkey callouses. A handful of gold coins would go a long way toward winning Chastity’s forgiveness. 

Lots of gold, he corrected, remembering the look in her eyes when he’d answered her news that she was carrying his child by running off to sea.

“Careful,” Noah whispered beside him.

Dave glanced to his left, pleased that Noah seemed to be taking things seriously for once. Then his friend pointed at the straining muscles and tendons in Dave’s sword arm.

“You’ll ruin your love life.”

“Oooh, Chastity, just like that, ohh yeah, ohh yeah,” Trevor chimed in from Dave’s right.

Noah snorted.

“It was just a dream, I told you,” Dave protested.

They both rolled their eyes.

“Fuck you guys,” Dave grumped, resuming his scan of the Spaniard’s deck.

Behind him Stubby and Bubby, two doddering Valiant crewmen, argued over the best technique to spin their grappling hooks. Eventually, they settled on three full spins before release and the grappling hooks sailed across the gap to latch onto the Spaniard’s railing. As they hauled the ships together in the gentle swells, Dave counted twelve Spaniards on deck and smiled. A ship that size should have more.

I hope they’re below decks hiding valuables! Dave prayed, then couldn’t contain his excitement any longer.

“On me!” Dave called, and lept to the top of the railing with feline grace. 

“Aren’t we supposed to wait until—“ Noah started, but Dave didn’t hear him.

Make Dad proud.

“On me, boys!” Dave repeated, brandishing his cutlass heroically in a move he’d long practiced in private. 

Trevor and Noah rolled their eyes, sighed, and grabbed the rigging to hoist themselves up beside their fearless leader.

Dave, what little concerns he felt for his own life erased by the fear his appearance sparked in the eyes of the spanish crew, didn’t notice his compatriots’ lack of enthusiasm. 

That’s right! Twelve-pound Harry’s boy is coming for you! he thought, invoking his father’s nickname like a talisman. Nothing could hurt him behind the shield of his father’s memory.  

“For England!” Dave roared, repeating his dad’s heroic battle cry and leaping out into the empty space between the ships. 

Time seemed to stop as he left the railing. Dave’s regrets about the past, and concerns about the future, fell away as the imminent threat of death sharpened his vision and filled him with the intoxicatingly vibrant awareness of now. Whatever happened next, he was following Dad’s footsteps, and that fact alone would erase his shameful betrayal of his father’s memory so many years before.

But gravity doesn’t give a crap for theatrics or righting old wrongs, and Dave landed awkwardly atop a Spanish sailor’s back. Surprised shouts of “Calamtè!”,“Idiota!,”, and something that sounded a lot like “macaroni” but with the “i” in the wrong place, scorched Dave’s ears as he scrambled to disentangle himself from the groaning sailor. He made it to his feet just as Noah and Trevor landed more carefully behind him. 

Standing back to back in vague approximations of fighting stances, the three boarders brandished their swords outward toward the crew of the captured ship. 

Three against twelve, perfect! Dave thought with a grin, adrenaline keeping him from noticing his torqued knee.

For their part, the Spanish crewmen just made rude gestures and got back to work moving a gangway into position between the two ships. In a few moments, the walkway was firmly in place. 

Noah nudged Dave.

“Good job, dickhead,” Noah said under his breath.

Dave ignored him, focusing instead on a fancily dressed Spaniard who seemed to be watching the proceedings with some confusion. Even with his limited nautical experience, Dave knew those were sure signs of an officer. 

“Donde oro?” Dave barked, pointing his cutlass at the gentleman’s chest. 

The captain’s brow wrinkled as he tried to come up with an answer that wouldn’t be taken as an insult. Finally, he shrugged as if to say “ask a stupid question…” and pointed generally west. 

“Manila,” the captain answered in slightly accented English. “You know we just left Spain, right? The gold goes the other way.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Trevor muttered. 

Dave shushed him and turned quickly back to the captain.

“Come on—you got anything good onboard? Little stuff that’d fit in here?” Dave asked, lifting his shirt front to expose a smugglers pouch strapped around his waist. 

The captain shook his head.

“Barrels of olive oil, wine, some farming tools in the hold. You really should try and take ships going east, you know. We pretty much just carry boring stuff to the colonies heading west.”

“Tell me about it,” Dave quipped, his sword tip drooping in disappointment. 

Then Captain Wright’s voice came across from the Valiant.

“You there! What’s the Pope’s Dog saying?” 

Even the Spanish sailors who didn’t speak a lick of English cringed at the self-righteous tones of a devoutly religious man. Dave yanked his sword back up as if holding a dangerous attacker at bay. 

“He don’t speak nuttin’ but gibberish, Captain,” Dave yelled back. “I think some of his crew’s hiding below—best let us clean ‘em out before you come over.”

The Spanish captain raised an eyebrow, but Dave shook his head.

“Trust me,” Dave whispered. “If he knows you can understand he’ll lecture you on religion ‘till you run yourself through. Hates Catholics with a passion, that one.”

The captain paled at the thought and nodded his thanks. Then he spoke rapidly in Spanish to a sailor with a bulbous red nose. The man started to whine but a quick cuff to the back of the head changed his tune. Grudgingly, he gave his captain the right answer.

“Ortega has a flask of rum in the crew’s quarters, and Castillo drew some really good nudie pictures on some old sailcloth,” the captain said, inclining his head toward the forward hatch.

“He’s watching!” Dave hissed, narrowly preventing Noah and Trevor from tossing their swords aside in their rush to grab booze and porn.

“Right,” “Sorry Dave,” they chorused, bringing their sword tips up again to defend against imaginary threats. Resuming their positions behind Dave, the trio shuffled toward the hatch ready to do battle as Dave fought to contain his disappointment—the Spanish captain’s demeanor meant there would be no gold, silver, or jewels to fill his pouch. Passing the captain, Dave assumed a threatening scowl and made the best of it.

“Any fresh eggs?” Dave whispered. Might as well score a fresh omelet out of this fiasco.

“Livestock pens, second storeroom after the galley. Look out for Dulcinea, though. She bites,” the captain answered under his breath.

“Right, thanks. Oh, and sorry about the hole. Our gunner kind of fell asleep and shot you on accident,” Dave finished with a shrug.

Dave didn’t know what “Dios, sálvame de los tontos,” meant, but he got the gist.