Hello, Lads!

Day 127: "Hello, lads!" Thus it was that Morgan Corbye addressed the captain and first mate, having obtained with all due stealth the interior of the captain's own cabin where, with the crew taking leave ashore, the two men sat in private council. She had boarded the vessel under cover of darkness, her approach to the ship made on a makeshift raft of barrel staves lashed together in such quantity as would bear only her slight weight. The Winged Adventure and her crew stood ready for her signal, hidden in a narrow estuary the larger ship could not navigate, tucked away amid a screen of verdure which masked the river mouth. The element of surprise was ever Captain Corbye's trump card and she played it well on this occasion, passing a small oil-filled bomb from hand to hand in the manner of a jongleur, casual in spite of the rapidly shortening fuse. "And where will ye be 'avin' this, now?"

Her reputation preceded her, but that did not stop the mate's foolish flinch toward his pistol. He found his sleeve pinioned with a black-bladed dagger before the motion could be completed and wisely took note that its counterpart had sprung to Capt. Corbye's free hand. The pirate relieved him of the pistol and applied it forcibly to his head and, in the very next instant, had her second knife in the small of his captain's back, urging him onto the deck as the fuse of the bomb sputtered dangerously close to ignition. Upon arriving topside, she threw the grenade overboard and watched it explode just before it touched the water. As always, her timing was impeccable. The watch of the Winged Adventure called all hands to stations at the signal and soon the barque hove to alongside. A score of men swarmed aboard to pry up hatches, removing to the graceful ship cases of tinned meat, fruit and flour, supplies sorely needed by those who spend their lives upon the sea.

Yet Morgan Corbye was not done with the captain and his mate who by that time had regained a semblance of consciousness. She ordered them to strip and bound them, naked, to the spars where indeed their crew found them on the following day, the Winged Adventure long since beyond the horizon. "'Tis not fer th' wealth I be a pirate," says she of her modest commerce. "'Tis fer th' freedom o' bein' me own self, an' that be th' truth o' it."