Chapter 5

In Which the Lady Esme Winterblossom, By This Time Most Firmly Resolved To a Life of Sapphic Piratehood and Utter Unladylike Dissolution Aboard the Vessel of Miranda, Makes a New Friend Among Miranda's Captives, Endures Battle at Sea and The Loss of One Most Dear To Her, and Receives a Surprising Honor From the Infamous Miranda Herself

September 8, 17--

Dear Diarie,

My most sincere apologies for not writing to you these last weeks, but my adventures aboard the ship of Miranda and her crew of Brazen Buccaneer Wenches have taken a most extraordinary turn. It is only now, as we float here in the Sargasso Sea, knowing not what fate awaits us, that I can turn to your pages for Solace.

When last I wrote in you I was planning my escape, with dear, unfortunate Amelia, from the island of St. Roger, which we had infiltrated for the purposes of aiding our Captain in her raid upon its stores. We made our way the next day to the north of the island, and joined our Sapphic sisters that night in loading and making away with a vast quantity of gold, powder, hogs and ale.

We set the magazines a-blaze and then sailed away, thoughts of a delicious celebration in our minds. We had in fact taken two of the local servant-girls prisoner, in one case most willingly as it was clear she had little enough love for the life she was leaving behind; and I looked forward most eagerly to helping introduce the pair of them to the delights of Sapphic love.

In fact, with Miranda's approval ("Ay, I should have guessed ye'd be the first to want to wet her whistle"), once we were safely at sea (or so it seemed) I went down to the brig where they were imprisoned and had myself let into the one's cabin. Hippolyte was a lovely Mulatto girl of perhaps 19 years, shapely and pleasingly rounded in the Breasts and with, as they say, "some belongings in the Portmanteau" behind.

"What is to become of us?" she asked me frankly, and without fear.

I sat down on the beddings next to her and took her hands in mine. "Dear girl," I said, "I trust you know who we are."

"Wicked lady pirates who take to one another's beds rather than any man's," she said.

"Fair enough," said I. "Have you been to a man's bed before?" I asked, stroking her hair.

"Only my master's," she said, and I could see the hatred for what she'd been forced to do. Well, none would force her here. It didn't look likely to be necessary.

"Men are such brutes," I said, my hand resting lightly upon her thigh. "Would it not be better if the delicate sex were to have... well, another sex just as delicate as itself?"

"It would be better to be free of either if one did not wish it," she said, shrinking away from me.

"You are free," I said, moving away from her as well. "You may leave this ship at any place where we find land. But as I learned myself not three months ago when I was new to her, your food and lodging on this ship are not free. Each of us must work to keep her shipshape and provisioned. The question is," and now I moved in again, pressing my lips against the nape of her neck and gently kissing the back of her ear, "will that labor be scullery work, or will it be something more like pleasure than work at all?"

She turned toward me and then grabbed my head with her hands and pressed her lips to mine, furiously and passionately. I felt her large, dangling breast under her garments and her tongue thrust itself into my mouth. She pulled my shirt open, popping one or two of the buttons in her eagerness to get to my breasts, sucking one of my nipples into her mouth and then nuzzling my belly. She sank to her knees between my legs and began to unbelt my pants (for we had stolen a number of the garrison's uniforms and many of us had begun to affect masculine dress). Her eyes widened at the sight of my blonde muff, and hungrily she moved toward my pussy to lap at it--

Suddenly above us there was a great crash which shook the ship's old timbers as if she were tumbling down-stairs. There was screaming from above decks and I pushed Hippolyte away (most reluctantly on both our parts) from my dampened honey-slit, pulling my pantaloons quickly over my bottom. "Come with me to the deck," I said. "If we are sunk I do not wish you trapped in this vessel, whatever fate may await us."

She took my hand and we raced up the stairs, rising through smoke as we did so. The shouts and screams from the deck had a most baleful quality, and as I reached the deck I saw one reason why-- the main mast had been struck by a cannon ball and splintered, the mainsail rocking dangerously in place, likely to snap at any moment. Near it a couple of the pirates-- but no one dear to me-- lay dead, killed in an instant by the impact of the cannon.

I swung round to see what ship had inflicted this damage upon us and could make out, in the distance, a British vessel, likely one of the ones harbored at St. Roger when we made our escape. Then I saw the true cause of the lamentations issuing from members of the crew in a state of most untypical Pandemonium. For there, on the quarter deck, her face and exposed breasts and vast belly covered in crimson, lay our captain Miranda, gasping with what one had to take to be her last breaths in this world.

I let out a scream of distress and raced to her, pushing aside her Nubian wench and others to embrace my beloved captain in her final moments. "Kiss me, Esme," she croaked, and I pressed my lips to hers in fond memories of the long hours we had spent in her cabin, exploring every Sapphic delight imaginable (and she, having seen so much of the world, could imagine quite a lot).

"Oh captain, my captain," I sobbed. "What will become of us now?"

"Listen to me, you scurvy harlots," Miranda rasped with her shortened breath. "If ye are to escape these British bastards, ye will need a cool, calculating head like my own. I know she is young and there is much of seafaring which ye will have to teach her, but this one-- Esme-- has a heart as black as a Zulu, and she is to be your new captain."

There were gasps all around. Only Amelia beamed at me with pride, the simple little thing. "Captain, should it not be someone with more experience at sea--" began one of the lieutenants, Sally Nottlewick.

Miranda's fury was potent even as life escaped her large and bulbous frame. "Ye heard me! If there's a sharp head that will get ye out of this, it's her'n!"

At that moment another cannon shot went off from the ship off our port bow, and we all ducked and braced for the impact-- which, however, went over our heads, hitting nothing. I turned back to Miranda, leaning in close to her, and said, "You really wish me to be their Captain Esme?"

"No, you little strumpet," she said fondly. "I wish ye to be Captain Miranda, and so never to let those cock-stroking bastards know that they got me. Let the legend of Miranda and her Sapphic seafarers live forever!" she cried, and then a kind of racking overtook her, and in a moment, she was gone.

I stood up, facing a doubtful if not indeed hostile crew, and knew that if I were not to take a knife in the back in the next few minutes, I must impress upon them that Miranda had been right in her choice.

"It is true that I am not experienced in the ways of the sea. But if I were capable of each of your jobs, there would be no need for you," I said. "Let us not think of months and years ahead, but of hours. If I can lead us to safety beyond the reach of British justice, then I believe I shall have earned the trust our beloved Miranda placed in me most unexpectedly." Several glares at that, but no outright dissent brooked. "If I cannot, well, in the last moment of freedom before our capture, any one of ye may send me to Hell first by the weapon nearest, and I shall not blame you for it. Now let us to work!" I cried, and almost against their wills, they began to move toward their stations to fight back.

September 9, 17--

Captain's Log,

We quickly lashed the splintered mast and managed to get full sails up before the British ship could draw within range. Then it was a tight race but they proved unable to close the distance and in impotent rage fired more cannon shots, the last of which tore through the main deck and, it grieves me to report, struck none other than my dear Amelia, gruesomely mangling her arms. I had but a moment to console her as the ship's surgeon took her away to saw off the injured part, and then was brought back to my duties by another of the lieutenants, a hugely fat Prussian named Magdalena von Schkwirtzen.

"Sooner or later zis British devil vill be upon us," Magdalena said.

"How many men do they carry aboard that sort of ship?" I inquired, as I heard Amelia's screams coming from below decks. Poor thing.

"Far too many for hand to hand combat," Sally said. "Yet what other choice have we? We're a week out from any safe port."

"We must convince them to give up the chase," I said.

"How would ye do that? Put up the quarantine flag?"

"Zey vould zink us anyway," Magdalena said.

"That's it," I said. "If the only way that they will stop is if we are sunk, we must make them think we have sunk." And I quickly outlined my plan.

We occupied ourselves, out of sight, in preparing the Detritus of a doomed vessel. By the time darkness fell we had the row boat loaded with most of the powder we had stolen, as well as a great variety of personal effects and stores, and, it grieves me to say, the bodies of our fallen comrades-- including our late captain. Yet I knew that she would have approved of any measure which would allow us to escape.

By the time night came I assembled the crew. "Once the plan is in effect, we must have absolute quiet, absolute darkness," I said. "We will fly only a minimum of sails, painted black-- a nice touch, that, actually, I think I'll keep it as part of my Brand Identity."

The time came. It was dark. We prepared a volley of cannons. Miranda's Nubian, a powerful thrower in our on-board games of topless volleyball, clasped another torch and an axe; the rowboat, loaded with its grisly cargo, floated several yards from the ship.