Coin O' The Realm

Day 341: In her cabin, Morgan Corbye had spread on a coarse cloth what few coins remained from her last raid. If her quartermaster bought cheap, at most it would provide the crew of the Winged Adventure with a hard loaf or two and a scant handful of citrus fruits to stave off the scurvy. The sailors were no strangers to rough seas, metaphorical or literal, nor to short commons, but nonetheless, tempers were taut as rigging in a gale and as likely to snap when frayed by hunger. Weighed in the balance of her hand, the metal tipped the scales toward going ashore at Port Ryffe to risk a daylight raid smack beneath the pointed nose of Harbourmaster Beale, one of Capt. Corbye's principle adversaries. The ship put in to land some miles from the village in a tight cove closely guarded by forest. Morgan and two men set off on foot and in a few hours, were at the eastern edge of town. From her vantage point atop a bluff, she could see Beale on the docks, his cocked hat and swagger unmistakable even in the distance. Although the summer seas had not been kind to the pirate band, here Dame Fortune made up the shortfall for, as Capt. Corbye and her men left the concealment of the woodland, they came first upon a chicken yard behind a home rather larger than the others in the village. "By th' Lord 'arry," said Capt. Corbye, "a pot o' chicken stew would fill empty stummicks quite well, an' a spud or three if there's some about." A garden stood to one side of the poultry house, withered vines signalling that potatoes were ready for jigging, as indeed it seemed the absent gardener also had considered, for he had leaned a shovel against the garden gate in preparation for the work. Yet the hungry looters were to have a feast for their spirits as well as full bellies from this raid, as above the arched entrance to the garden hung a carven wood sign proclaiming it to be "Beale's Pleasance." Given this fortuitous discovery, the pirates felt compelled to have a much wider look at the homestead's inventory, and it was a full two weeks before Mr. Beale had identified everything which had gone missing.