Buccaneer Dan Part 1: Chapter 1a

“Next!” shouted Buccaneer Dan. In came a soft looking man with long, curly blonde locks that shined like the sun. His face was smooth and his cheekbones high. He wore the clothes of a gentleman. He would have looked like a girl but his eyebrows had become thick and black when he reached puberty so at least his eyes looked unmistakably masculine.

Buccaneer Dan stared at him for a moment rubbing his fingers over his scruffy chin. Most of the hopeful buccaneers looked more like buccaneers than this man standing before him. But as the old saying goes, “when you are recruiting in France, you never know what you’re going to get.”

“Are ye har for to join me crew?” Buccaneer Dan asked. “Yar appearance it be most…interesting.”

“Yes, I want to be a buccaneer more than anything!” the man responded with a passionate but airy voice. “Ever since my most prized possession was stolen from me, I have always wanted to learn the art of plunder so I could steal it back. I believe that you, the most fierce and good-looking buccaneer of all time, will be able to help me with this goal.”

“And what be yar most prized possession? Does it be gold, silver, or other such precious treasure?”

“No, nothing like that. It is more valuable than any of those things.”

“Then what, boy? what be yar most prized possession?”

“Perhaps it is best if I tell you the whole story,” the man responded, “I lived in England when I was a child still with long, curly blonde hair. My mother sent me out to pick up our family bible from the booksmith who was securing it with a beautiful green leather bind. It was a day’s journey there and a day’s journey back. I retrieved the bible and upon my return I noticed a huge crowd had gathered in the street. I asked a man what was going on. He told me that Queen Elizabeth herself was coming through our town. Everyone was so excited that the street became a maze of people.

‘Not wanting to delay my return for want of rest and eager to open the bible from its package, I decided to take to the rooftops as I believed they would be less condensed with traffic. I was correct, but being quite clumsy and careless, I slipped and slid off one of the rooftops. I thought my life was to end right then and there but my shirt got caught on a small crane. It swung me around leaving me dangling above the street.

‘I looked down the street and saw a crowd beginning to gather. From the midst of the crowd came the Queen’s carriage heading directly towards me. She pulled up right underneath me as I was suspended helplessly. She said to me, ‘Hello, little girl. Is this a gift for me?’ She took my bible and opened it from the package. The crowd cheered for her and she said, ‘I will treasure and read this bible everyday!’ The crowd could not get enough.

‘The nerve of it all! I was not a little girl and that was not her Bible! Insulted, my family left England and we have been here in France ever since. My goal in life is to get my Bible back from that awful queen.”

Buccaneer Dan sat still for a moment with one eyebrow raised, frowning in deep thought, “Ye be wrong about one thing.”

“And what is that?

“It would have been best if ye had just sayed ‘a Bible.’ That story it was much in length and little in intrigue.” He paused for a moment of reflection, “How be ye with a sword?”

“I don’t really know. I’ve not handled one much. I don’t even have a sword.”

“Well, here be mine. Let me see yar best moves.” Buccaneer Dan unsheathed his sword and tossed it to him.

The man got really nervous about the sword flying at him even though it was tossed gently with the hilt forward. He tried to dodge it but as he turned around it somehow and quite unexplainably got caught on his large puffy sleeve. This frightened him as he thought that maybe it had stabbed him and he began to flail around.

Out the door he twirled. The momentum of the sword on his sleeve caused him to do cartwheels, flips, and spins. As he did so, he was slicing through the other buccaneer hopefuls lined up to for an interview. One large, muscly hopeful whipped out his sword to defend himself. The flailing man recklessly flipped over the hopeful slicing off his entire arm causing him to immediately bleed to death. He landed on his feet but all the blood that was collecting on the ground caused him to slip backwards. As his feet uncontrollably flung into the air in front of him he kicked off the head of a rather skinny necked hopeful before sticking a perfect landing, though quite accidentally. Looking around he noticed that he had killed all 27 hopefuls.

Buccaneer Dan saw the whole thing from his chair in the interview room and was awed by this man’s apparent swordsmanship. His mouth hung open, and his dark brown eyes were wide.

“Surely, Mate, this not be the first time ye used a sword,” Buccaneer Dan half stated and half asked in some weird statement-question type thing.

“Well, yes it is. But I have seen a lot of sword fights in plays; most recently in a stirring rendition of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.”

“Me thinks yar swordsmanship will be most welcome to us buccaneers. What be yar name, son?”

“Though there is a story about that, maybe it’s just best this time if I say it is Abigail.”

“Abigail?” Buccaneer Dan repeated. “Nay. This time me thinks its best to hear this story in its entirety.”

“Okay. My parents thought that Abigail was a name like Leslie, Jordan, or Adrian—one of those unisex names. They, however, were wrong.”

“Aye, they did be incorrect in that,” Buccaneer Dan agreed.

Abigail just stood there. Buccaneer Dan motioned for him to continue with the story. More silence.

Realizing the story had ended, Buccaneer Dan broke the silence, “Do ye like ale, Abigail?”

This was the night that Buccaneer Dan got Abigail so drunk that he was able to put three eyebrow rings in him and convince him that they had to stay in. Buccaneer Dan also felt that this would call more attention and focus to his masculine brows than to his less-masculine features. From that point on, Abigail was officially renamed Three-ringed Guy in the buccaneer logbook of official name changes. Three-ringed Guy also shaved his long, curly blonde hair and got a package of large temporary tattoos that he put on the top of his head. Buccaneer Dan preferred him to get a real tattoo, but Three-ringed Guy had a really hard time deciding which one he wanted for sure. The first tattoo he put on was of a mermaid holding two…

SPLASH!

Before Buccaneer Dan could finish reflecting on his experience with Three-ringed Guy, even though it was very close to being completed, he, Econ Bob, and Three-ringed Guy crashed into the ocean.

“I can’t swim, Mateys!” cried out Buccaneer Dan.

“Neither can I!” Econ Bob yelped as he wiggled his arms around like a runaway fire hose.

“I think I’m just going to sink to the bottom and then walk til I get to land,” Three-ringed Guy said rather calmly.

“Nay, ye can’t…” Buccaneer Dan’s head went under water and bobbed back up, “…sink to the bottom and walk! Ye’ll run out of blurrbb.” He was going to say “air” but his head sank back under the water before he could get to it.

It didn’t really matter though because when his head went under, Buccaneer Dan observed that Three-ringed Guy had already started on phase one of his master plan—the sinking part. He quickly reached down and hooked one of the rings on Three-ringed Guy’s eyebrows with his index finger.

Econ Bob was still up at the surface. He would have sunk down too but being an economist his head was of knowledge. And since knowledge is lighter than air, he wouldn’t sink below his eyes.

As he too began to sink, Buccaneer Dan looked up and saw Econ Bob’s boots. He reached out his free hand and grabbed one of them by the laces giving Econ Bob a substantial shoe wedgie.

So there they all were—Econ Bob’s head just barely bobbing up and down on the surface, Buccaneer Dan holding Econ Bob’s boot with one hand and Three-ringed Guy’s eyebrow ring with the other all-the-while Three-ringed Guy was still trying to get to the bottom to proceed with his plan.

Just then Buccaneer Dan looked in front of him and saw a giant shark heading his direction. He wasn’t entirely sure but it looked like a man-eating shark. He was right; it was a man-eating shark. The shark swam up, stopped just a few inches from Buccaneer Dan’s face, and looked him in the eye as if to say, “Thank you, ye most fierce and good-looking buccaneer of all time, for giving me and my friends so much delicious man meat over the past several years. And even though you usually use this man meat as bait to catch us and eat us, usually in the form of shark fin soup, I am willing to overlook that fault and let bygones be bygones. In addition, I’m a wild animal and do not need to apply human rationality to my actions.” With that, the shark gently bit down on the collar of Buccaneer Dan’s red overcoat, and started pulling him to safety. Along with Buccaneer Dan came Econ Bob, boot first, and Three-ringed Guy who did not see the shark and thought that he was executing his plan to great success.