Spider Island

Day 341: Very little inspires Captain Morgan Corbye to loathing or disgust, those sentiments reserved for government representatives the likes of Franklin Beale, her arch foe. However, on the occasion of putting the Winged Adventure into a small island cove for careening, it was soon to be discovered that spiders rank close alongside the officious Harbourmaster.

Whilst ship's bursar Robin Penn watched over the sailors hard at work scraping the ship's barnacled hull lest in their enthusiasm for the task they might damage the wood, the Captain took it upon herself to head up a provisions party. Hoping at the very least for a few rabbits to relieve the diet of salt beef and dried fish the crew had taken aboard following their last raid, Capt. Corbye brought with her the ship's best archer, Padraic Alane. Though as a Scot, she damned him for an Irishman whenever his shots went wide of the mark, Paddy had bagged two brace, almost enough for a good stew, and was bending his bow in the hopes of a fifth when a shout of profoundly profane invective caused him to flinch and release the arrow prematurely. "'Tis a great bloody bastard o' a hairy bleedin' spider is gone down me shirt! O, 'elp me! Come get it orf me, ye cowards! It's atween me bloody damned boosums an' I canna get holt o' th' bastard!"

To a man, the crew froze in place, uncertain whether it was best to leave our Captain to the spider or risk losing a limb to her sword for a misplaced hand. It was Paddy Alane who came to her ultimate rescue, nocking an arrow, the tip of which he had blunted by inserting it into the first soft thing he could find before letting it fly as gently as possible to its target. With a shocked expression upon her sun-browned face, the ,Captain gave one brief look at the mushy remains of a mangled banana slug upon her chest, then peered into her linens and said, "Paddy, ye're a guid lad an' me saviour. I make o' ye now a 'onorary Scotsman, an' nevermore wi' damn ye fer Irish." Thus did Spider Island come to be so named.