12 - The Pirates Attacked

The Sound Is The Sailor’s Laughter

A Novel

For Andrew

e-book: “The Sound Is The Sailor’s Laughter”

The Sound Is The Sailor’s Laughter By Corinne Devin Sullivan

ISBN 979-8-9909558-0-6

© Corinne Devin Sullivan. 2024. All rights reserved.

Publication made by: CORINNE DEVIN SULLIVAN BOOKS

Published in the United States of America, in November of 2024.

Chapter 12: THE PIRATES ATTACKED

An email sent in June of 2005…

FLOYD:

Thanks for sending me an email this morning. You are scaring me how caring you can be because we leave in an hour. I need every word of friendship right now only to feel secure!

Yes, I think I love the girl inside me, too.

No one is bringing much of personal belongings. We will be going off the edge of the ship when we reach the final destination. I have to bring things that won’t be ruined if they fall into the ocean.

You can probably guess how i feel giddy. Truth be told, I feel scared as well. It’s been looking grim. At least twice my dad said, “don’t touch that!” on the ship and then, “or it will break in two.”

Our ship’s little jaunt on the pacific should cover my rent for about six months.

I am moving up to becoming a true merchant marine. Maybe it was my true calling the entire time. But I hope it doesn’t become permanent.

There is necessity everywhere, and I’m the one who lives it. I feel my pain, and it is very serious (for me alone).

Book me into your schedule 21 days from today if you like.

I won’t have any way to email or call you for the first two weeks. We are supposed to get fuel in Singapore. Nothing on-line until Singapore.

We could sink and no one would even know!

Take care of yourself while I’m at sea.

With my love, Fiona

What happened to be enclosed with the aforementioned email when it was later mailed in the post was this here print-out…

Dad, You can write any story you want about the ocean here… CLICK “SAVE” PLEASE!!!

…as well as this here documentations and such:

I keep writing this thing out. More for the movie here. I went on a roll. It’s a daily journal. Stop me any time. Hey, kiddo, write anything you want to add. I trust you. Love you. Meade.

Stories from my time at sea. Written for wonderful Fiona, my daughter. (header)

The Main Engine steadily bucked and turned. Black night was everywhere, now. The coastline had faded with the sun.

Only the safety and warmth of the ship meant anything. In moments it had become the single bearing to live by midst water surrounding everything in our sights. With every mile away from the coast, all our years inside our memories of the shore were wiping clean from the fabric of our minds.

In the middle of that first night on the ocean, I ended up cooking rations for everybody who was getting ready to start the next watch. It was spaghetti with hard-boiled eggs. I put out granola and leftover rice, on the side. Nobody complained (except for Fiona).

Fiona, you were jumping around. Every time you sat down to have some of the meal, you popped right back up. I didn’t notice until then that you were scared to be at sea.

Everybody was at work on four-hour watches. Each person handled three watches every day. If the cook was on the job, food would be set out in the last thirty minutes and first thirty minutes for every watch. That would mean every person could eat right before their watch, or right when they came off their watch. Also, three formal meals were served at 7:30am, 11:30am, and 7:30pm.

Two of the ABs entered the Galley. They were already awake as though it were the middle of the day. I put John Denver into the CD player. I turned it up. Everybody liked that.

All of the sailors who came from the Ukraine turned out to be singers. Each one could carry a tune whereas I couldn’t, even with a bucket in-hand. Every last one of them knew percussion. One of them had a guitar on-board. The rest all had a bell or a whistle or a tambourine. They liked to show off. It didn’t matter if it was seven at night or five in the morning.

I asked Erat, the leader, what the plan was when we all went over the side of the ship, in India.

“We will swim!” He said, laughing. Everyone there laughed, too. You laughed like it was the first time you heard a joke. I passed on making party friendships, at least on that first morning at sea. I needed to drink about a thermos and a half of coffee first.

On the third morning, I walked on the main deck. I carried my coffee in one hand and a schematic drawing of the engine in the other. Things were turning out to act up a little differently that we had predicted in there. I was tearing through everything, searching for a missing part I sensed needed to be found.

The air was dangerously calm. We continued along at about seven knots. I wanted to keep things going steady before we broke out the real gasoline expenditure and turned the thing up to do ten or twelve knots.

I needed to walk. I took a trip around the ship’s Main Deck. Baxter was off duty. I found him directly stern, at the end of the ship and dangled over the final bulwark of the vessel. I approached and spotted a fishing pole.

“Hey, there, Chief. How you doing?” He pulled himself back and stood when he saw me approaching him.

I rested my forearms on the bulwark. Took a sip of coffee. Looked at Baxter and asked him, “Had enough fishing for today?”

He had to laugh.

He said, “No. I’ve been out here about thirty minutes. Haven’t caught anything yet. Except for this one.”

There was a white bucket with a small fish at the bottom. It was already cut into little bits to use as bait. I looked at the cast line stretching backwards from Sassy. I told him, “Might be a tad too fast. Probably better at about five knots.”

“Oh. Well, I made it work this way before. On another ship. It was twice as big and fast as this.” He said.

We stood together for about thirty minutes. I didn’t have much to say. It was interesting watching the swells gather and pull apart. Before I strutted on my way, I told him, “Get some chicken from the crew stores. Chicken is more than highly effective.”

“Oh, thanks.” Baxter said.

A group of three Ukrainian men passed by me in the corridor. They were carrying their instruments. They held them high overhead with one arm and made like they were swimming through some water with the other.

Every time I put music on these guys were all having a good time. It didn’t matter if it was seven in the morning or seven in the evening. If they never had to ever work a day again, I imagine they would have been singing the entire time. They each told me that they love singing back in their country.

Pretty much any time one of them stopped to say anything to you, it turned out to be a big party. It was never just one person, on his own. They spoke Ukrainian all the time with each other, and they walked around the ship always in a group of two or more. It was nice having them with us. They were extremely efficient.

They let me know about plans to stay in the United States, “eventually.” Everything big, for them, was scheduled to happen at a later date. They all knew how to get themselves and their families permanently to the United States, but it wasn’t going to happen for a little while. They were going back home as soon as we made it to India, but there would be another job they would take before they departed. They were going to be a Ukrainian band eventually, but for now they were making money doing regular jobs just to help their families.

I caught up with you for lunch in the mess hall.

You spun around and asked, “What would it cost us to buy Sassy right now? We can turn this thing into a coffee shop, right? Just park it in the water and go all around Seattle. I could run everything for the twins and you.”

I finished getting my breakfast. We found a seat together. And then told you how the condition of the ship was terrible.

The ABs came into the mess area. They were singing. You looked directly at one of them. I still don’t know which one it turned out to be. I am guessing it might have been Erat, the shorter man. He seemed like a leader of the men.

“Dad, you should keep quiet with your evil comments about the height of men.” You told me that after I made some comment.

Captain White appeared in the mess during the live music show we were getting to watch for free. White made a motion to keep it down. Everyone was there, except for Baxter and Aoife who were sleeping and Kingston who was holding watch alone, for thirty minutes more, in the Engine Room.

White announced that Sassy had moved beyond the Pacific Coast Maritime Limit. He asked us to all gather together at the back of the vessel. Everybody there to eat followed the captain and headed outside into the sun.

He directed us stern, and I saw Baxter there again. He was wrapping up with his fishing apparatus. He was picking up the bucket. He had gotten no more fish at all. He was headed in to get some lunch but stood still when he noticed us all together walking his way.

White must have asked a few ABs to help him because suddenly three of the Ukrainian men appeared bearing a collection of firearms and ammunition. There were rifles, pistols and a semi-automatic. He brought them right out into the open. They had been stashed inside his private quarters.

White explained his theory. Our ship was no longer in US waters and therefore we were in danger. Turned out he was terrified of pirates.

Our captain was especially worried about us traveling through the Straits of Malacca. I had been through the Straits of Malacca a hundred times. Even today, there are pirates who like to attack ships. It’s true: it gets to you. However, I never encountered all that much to mention. On the other hand, I had not once ever traveled as light as we were that day.

White told everybody, “I plan to start daily training activities. They are scheduled for every afternoon, with today as the first experience. It’s for all our Able-Bodied Seamen to become capable of handling our fire power. Our resources are spare or nonexistent. We got to take care. We can be prepared for anything that could threaten us here, on open waterways. But we have to try. Never succumb.”

I was happy Aoife didn’t hear him say that. We all watched him load the guns, one by one.

You walked behind me, and stood close.

The First Mate didn’t say a word. His brow was folded over itself. His personality had changed the moment the guns were placed in the open. He watched the captain intently as he shared his plan. The First Mate’s eyeballs were following every movement. In the end, he didn’t complain. Neither did I.

Translations were needed. Ostop, one of the ABs, hustled down to all these men’s berth below. When he headed back stern, he carried a compact Ukrainian/English soft-backed dictionary. When they all understood, Erat relayed, in his mixed-up English, that they are always happy to do anything they are asked to do, so if the Captain needed them for anything, they would help him every time. Everyone he commanded nodded their assent.

I took your arm and we walked away.

“Don’t get it started with anyone, okay?” I said to you.

How I appreciated that you nodded. We walked towards the stairs. We were headed back to the Engine Room.

I said, “One argument says we needed this from the get-go. The other side would argue there are only a dozen people on board. There will be as many foreigners armed with guns as there are Americans. I admit I don’t know which one wins this.”

Old movies I had watched as a little kid came to mind. Pirates take no prisoners, and throw the extras overboard, then make off with the booty after spending time with any women there.

In reality, Captain White had spent his years as a fishing boat captain in Alaska. He had only heard rumors about real pirates who work the waters we were scheduled to be traveling through. It would be three weeks, rather than two, due to our slowish sort of speed.

A shot fired from the bridge. There they were: White was loading and firing away, and three of the Ukrainians were learning how to shoot.

Man, it must have been totally, ridiculously illegal.

Perhaps they could get at us for a violation of maritime courtesies. Then again, perhaps this was the way to go when we had launched ourselves across the blue without any true protection on-board. If we were suddenly ambushed, the guns were fair protection. Out-running an opposing craft seemed like a mistake.

I was doing the math in my head. We were traveling somewhere around ten knots now just to keep the engine from exploding. Now that I was watching her work day after day, I was taking every precaution in the book. As a result, this trip was going to take us about three months rather than three weeks, it seemed. I continued going over the numbers in my mind. If we made it to Alang Bay in a month and a half we would be doing great. I decided to go for that.

Within a few minutes, Aoife was up. She ambushed me in the Engine Room, and she publicly came down pretty hard on me for White’s doings upstairs with those guns. Albeit in private, she also strongly expressed concern. She had a lot to tell me. She had heard about every painful deal of White’s plan from Baxter after she distrusted “Meade’s wishy-washy” concerns.

Aoife wanted me to get the Captain to turn over his rifles and, “Lock them in a storage compartment.”

Next afternoon, I made a point of eating my chow with him. I pointed out the facts of how the ship wasn’t owned by an American anymore, and operation outside of U.S. territory left us without American resources. He informed me how anything could happen, and that he understood he must take it easy. We both concurred there was something so gigantic about sailing across the Pacific.

“It’s bound to make some people in the South Pacific antsy when they see us there,” I said. “Might want to alert every port official that we’re heading their way.”

“Meade, safety is everyone’s concern. My plan keeps me safe from everything out there, in the water. We can’t be left off-guard.”

I thought about a quick replay to Aoife’s complaints. Nothing came to mind.

Captain White looked straight at me.

With a wink he said, “Confounded Coast Guard! We could more likely sink in this heap of trouble than get attacked by anyone out there, and I know that.”

I looked away from him, then at the ground. I wouldn’t participate. King Triton was always listening for fools and crews whom he could prove right about their disdain for their own vessels.

I asked, “How about I sneak over to the Bridge and recommend to Hussein that he notify anyone and everyone how we are coming through their zone?”

Captain White nodded because of course that would help. So, that’s what I did next.

It was the constant shooting from the bridge, in the afternoon, that made our safety seem in question. No one would have paid attention if White hadn’t expressed that much concern. Aoife was getting hard to handle. She’d find me and give me a lot of pressure to stop the daily target practice.

White was always willing to listen to me, most of the time, if I played things cool. But no matter what I said, he wouldn’t even consider letting go of the daily shooting. It continued to aggravate Aoife who found me each day like clockwork.

Every day, I watched Captain White teach one, two or three men learn about shooting straight while at sea. Then, I would go into the kitchen and find Aoife there, a nervous wreck.

At that time, in shipping, only the Captain had internet. It was a standard thing, and an effort to protect the ship. Aoife demanded the Captain send out an email on her behalf, to clear things with the port officials in Seattle.

Aoife knew better than to attack anything rough from the front. Like any sailor, she knew to avoid a head-on attack that could take her down in one motion. Here’s what she did: Since Malcom and Ted were staying with her mother, she used this angle to allow her to type a single email home. In this, she had asked your grandmother about White’s strategy and his guns so that something would be done.

For Aoife, Captain White’s treason needed no new trial. She sent the email off and expected a helicopter airlift removal tactic to take place. She dreamed of the U.S. Marines bringing us a brand new captain to replace the failed one. Incidentally, this was something she had done to me, before, as well. It wasn’t guns, back then. Rather, it was a centralized discussion concerning toothpaste, the twins and leaving the toilet cover in an upright, standing position.

She didn’t think the Captain would dare interfere, but he sure did. When the response came in, she saw that he had deleted that part about the guns, as well as his high treason, from her email before he had allowed it out.

Until that happened, most of the pressure was on me. By the time the email was edited, word had gotten around.

“Your daughter agrees with me. She wrote a little script for me to use with Captain White.” Aoife said when we got to talking again about the trouble area.

Aoife openly protested his firing off of the guns which sounded to her “like loaded cannons going off in the middle of a symphony”.

White was kind of high-strung about the topic. This subject had become the mainstay of the first leg of our voyage.

The weather was so perfect I started to feel like I was on a movie set. Everyone should have stayed calm and read the books on-board, or watched some movies. The guns and Aoife’s troubles would have been the only thing going on whenever I emerged from the Engine Room if the boys from the Ukraine hadn’t been there with the instruments.

Four days in, Baxter caught me relaxing on Rigg’s sofa after. Baxter had just been relieved in the Engine Room by Riggs. Both of my engineers were doing a mighty fine job.

Baxter was antsy. He told me in detail trouble he saw coming to the Main Engine. We had both seen the same type of thing before. I told him to carry on. I had already alerted the First Mate.

“The ship rattles sometimes. We are so light.” Baxter said. He continued, “If we get hit by anything bad out here, we are going to die.”

I glared hard at the man.

I said, “Don’t ever tell me that this isn’t going to make it. That’s an order.”

Baxter was quiet. . It was blistering weather. He stood up. He was about to head over to his berth to get some sleep. He wanted something to cool him down from the cooler, but it was just a bunch of warm cans. He sat down. He eyed me. I was enjoying a good book.

“Chief, I can’t help but tell you. I’ve had a bad, bad dream every night. My wife and my boys need me. Help is getting further and further away. The more I hear about those islands we are going to pass through, the less I like this.”

I threw the book at him, hard. It knocked him the chest.

I took him by the arm and said, “I already gave the order. Now, get out of here.”

Baxter ran away. I continued to read the book. Then, an hour later, Baxter returned to the sofa. He was now in a light mood.

He said, “Oh, Chief, remember you had me carry in some boxes to the Captain’s Quarters back in Seattle. Captain White asked if they can go someplace else?”

I thought about it for a moment, trying to remember what he was talking about.

I said, “No. He had better keep them there. He’s probably never heard of it before, but there is a long tradition of giving drinks to port officials. Happens everywhere in these ports in the South Pacific and across Asia.”

I explained this overall theory to Baxter who seemed to understand. The next day, at the exact same time, I arrived to the sofa to relax. I found Baxter sleeping on the sofa. He started to stand up, to let me have the seat. When he moved, I began to get myself settled.

He said, “Remember how you said Captain White is carrying all the booze inside the Captain’s Quarters? Well, I asked him, ‘Where is the liquor?’ because I wanted to be funny with the man! He said it was only for safe-keeping. I watch him come and go, and he’s been in there drinking for about an hour, so far.”

By then, I had positioned myself for a nap. I opened one eye and started to respond. Then I remembered all the trouble he and Aoife liked to cause together. I closed both of my eyes.

“I’m sure drinking something is Captain’s Privilege up in Alaska, where the man comes from. Forget about it. And don’t talk about it, kid. Get some self-worth under your belt, for a change.”

Baxter stood there. He might have been thinking about what I said.

Baxter said, “This captain, he doesn’t really care one way or the other. He is drinking it all. I’m serious, Chief. He started drinking right when he I told him it was alcohol for all the port officials. He ended up dead drunk by the end of the day. I stopped over today. He had opened up a case of whiskey, a case of scotch, and a case of vodka. Maybe, he also had a case of gin lying open, too.”

Baxter might have informed Aoife of his intel so that, now, with guns going off, and despite nothing but sky-blue water and endless horizons, Aoife was dead-set White would land Sassy, plus all of us, at the bottom of the ocean. The last thing anyone on-board needed was Baxter and Aoife making everyone on-board skirmish as well as quarrelsome.

I said, “Kid, you got to keep some sort of a standard in your life. Here’s one now: shut your mouth, mind your own business, but walk pretty and talk loud. Something like that is how my own story goes.”

Every day, I spoke with the captain about the areas of concern. He started telling me he would jump off the top deck, if we all really felt he was doing such a poor job. That’s where the conversation tended to end.

“It’s too many bullets, up there. Wasting ammunition is

not a good deal, not at sea,” said Kingston Riggs, with his eyes closed and his head bobbing back and forth against the sofa with each roll of a wave. But the shooting wavered not at all, with the blasts going off every few minutes or so, for a full hour, every afternoon.

I solved these things the way I normally did: I worked.

I knew as soon as I said a single thing it would be the wrong thing, and then I would be the bad guy. I worked, also, because I knew these things had a tendency to go away if you stopped feeding them or stirring the pot. I was content that we were moving, that the weather was okay, and that we were making progress. If we could get through another day, eventually all the days of travel would add up perfectly, and we would reach our destination.

Routine can hold things together.

Aoife never calmed herself down. Despite her rancor, we were still enjoying coffee together every morning.

Aoife’s berthing was in the superstructure and located close to the Captain’s as well as the First Mate’s. As the cook, it made sense she was above the galley. Even though she wasn’t living in an isolated location on the ship, and even though she had a decent place, at night it was kind of like traveling in a ghost ship no matter what room you had.

Aoife was often afraid in her own room, alone. She liked to visit whenever I was watching a movie. Often, I would find her sitting in my room, reading, after I finished up in the Engine Room. Then we would talk about business ideas and things that needed to be delved into concerning our children’s anxieties.

The captain and I kept fairly close conversation about the vessel. We ate lunch every day together. After forwarding any remonstrations to him about the guns going off every afternoon, from my ex-wife, our conversations quickly turned to his shower. It didn’t drain out very well.

Sassy has been laid up, essentially, for decades. We were taking her to the junkyard. The one thing I could predict would not get fixed was White’s plumbing. Asking the owners to install windows so that everybody’s view from their rooms wasn’t blocked by cardboard or wood had taken weeks of a sales pitch by yours truly to Ted Friday.

Captain White never came fully to terms with the reality that whatever was not working today in the ship’s housing should have been fixed before we departed Seattle. Still, I wanted the guy to be happy. His room was at the highest point so it should have done fine.

“I want to know what the hell you are going to do to fix it, Meade!” He said, one morning.

I had to admit he was going to smell pretty bad later on in the day.

He rolled on with, “I’m standing in an inch of dirty water! Trying to clean myself up. This morning, I had it. I said, ‘No way!’ Meade, fix it. I’m not standing in muck again.”

I alerted him to the fact that I was the Chief Engineer. I didn’t have a lot for it, up my sleeve.

I asked, “What are you thinking of? Cut a hole in the hull, and find the pipe, and plunge it out? Spend three weeks working on something that is on its way to being thrown away?”

Captain White laughed at that.

As the days moved forward, the problems of the guns and the broken shower became a challenge to articulate. He was the Captain, and I was duty-bound to keep him smiling. I suggested he choose another room. He gave me a silent answer. Things were decent in his quarters so, regardless of his shower, he didn’t want to move out to another room. Everything else was so rusted and empty. I couldn’t blame him for staying put.

I suggested something simple: “You could move into the Second Mate’s cabin. The shower is working fine in there.”

It was on the same deck as my own, right off the Main Deck. There was nothing but nothing of dozens of rooms available everywhere. Technically, any member of the crew could leave their old room and move to another, if they didn’t like it. Things were relaxed in the ship’s steward programs and permitted that sort of transfer.

“I consider abandoning the Captain’s Quarters extreme bad luck,” White told me, firmly.

Me, I was spending more and more time in the Engine Room. As I kept things together, it was starting to feel like a constant gamble in Sassy being at sea. More than once, I decided to radio in for a rescue, and then I changed my mind. Things stayed together, hour by hour. The Engine Room gang continued to demonstrate accord without engaging in unlucky conversation.

I chose to keep most of my concerns to myself. I was determined to see land again.

All of the shower problems were forgotten two weeks into the voyage. That’s when things turned. You came screaming into my room with Baxter, and Dimitry. It was 2am. I turned on the lights. You all looked so scared.

“What the hell!” I shouted.

“Captain has all the ABs out on the Main Deck except for Erat who is inside the Bridge!” Baxter said.

“They have the guns out! And the captain is screaming! He sees a pirate ship! No one else does!” You told me.

No one there could tell a thing about what the real problem was. It sounded like the Captain was firing blindly from the vessel, in the middle of the night, at an approaching ship.

I launched out of that bed. I hurried into the clothing laid out and ready for emergencies. I emerged onto the Main Deck.

It was black outside. We were still many days away from any land sightings or Singapore. If we had been crossing into the Philippine Sea, other vessels would be predicted to go by, but not out in these waters where it was rare to see anything.

In fact, the last I had checked this afternoon, we were sort of lost at sea in the middle of the gigantic Pacific Ocean. I remember thinking then, “This is where Fate finally lets me go.”

I came to find that our vessel had come across a glorified fishing boat. It looked like a Japanese yacht with all its lights turned off.

“What the hell!” I said and tore off to find White.

At night, a fishing boat way out here could easily have shut everything down for the night. 
People go to bed, and there is nothing to worry about when that occurs.

The big issue, I slowly learned from the Ukrainians who were all either at the side of the ship or helping in the Bridge, was that no one on board the other vessel had responded to Sassy’s radio signals.

Fiona, you said, “The First made has been repeatedly asking if they needed assistance. Bad day for us all, I guess.”

“Quit that sort of talk. All of you!” I responded.

To me, they hadn’t responded because they were sleeping, or didn’t know what to do. Possibly they didn’t understand English.

Our Captain came from Alaska. He didn’t know what he was seeing out there, in the water. Maybe the guy on the other ship’s watch fell asleep. Maybe he had walked off to take a leak.

Captain White spotted me walking towards him. He hurried over and said, somewhat slyly, “We’ve caught a smuggler. Now we reel him this way.”

“We didn’t catch anything, White.” I said to him.

I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, and didn’t try to decipher it. He had all the Ukrainians out of bed. I stood with armed deckhands on one side and the nervous Captain on the other.

White pulled me away, like we were conspiring and didn’t want anybody to hear. He explained that the First Mate was in the wheelhouse, bringing us up upon the yacht. The First Mate was screwing with the other vessel’s radio signal, and the Captain had watched him do it.

“How am I going to turn your guy off?” I yelled to him.

Suddenly, every light on the yacht went on. We heard voices shouting across the water.

The other vessel had gotten its engines going without missing a beat. They were maneuvering away. It was evident they were getting the hell out of there. Captain White started to yell to the Bridge and to everyone who could hear. He wanted Sassy to chase the yacht.

We were situated about six hundred yards away.

I crossed the bridge to talk to the First Mate. He was a good man, but he was brand-new, and fresh out of King’s Point. He looked scared. Scared people often will do foolish things under pressure.

I was ordering him with, “Stop pursuing the yacht,” but the First Mate only nodded. So, I sent Peter, one of our Able-Bodied Seamen, downstairs to tell Riggs to take the forward thrust out and reduce the vessel’s power down to the very minimum. Peter seemed to want to comply. Instead, he looked complacent with everything. Later, I was told it was you who relayed my order to the Engine Room.

The First Mate thought about complying to my wishes, but then he said, “No can do. Sorry, Meade. Captain’s orders only accepted through clear command channels first thing, tomorrow morning.”

The First Mate continued turning Sassy toward the other vessel. I hoped Riggs would listen to Peter’s relay of my command, but Peter wasn’t willing to do anything to help me.

Sassy might have appeared to come bearing down on the yacht from out of nowhere. They couldn’t possibly know what was going down. Probably appeared like we swam up from a ship graveyard with all the rust. The Captain wouldn’t stop shining this big spot-light on them.

“Man, I hope they don’t have guns! Can you tell if they have guns, Baxter? They better not be armed!” My only daughter said, loudly, so everyone could hear her terror. Later, I found out that was just when you returned from relaying my orders to Kingston Riggs in the Engine Room.

Baxter looked ready for the next football play but hadn’t a clue which way to run. He sped over to me.

He yelled, “Fiona tells me they probably have their own guns! What should I do, Chief? Should I radio something to Riggs downstairs?”

He offered his handheld radio to everyone. I took it.

“Riggs. Vessel to a complete stop. Over.”

Riggs voice responded seconds later, “Got that. Complete stop being executed now. Fiona relayed five minutes prior. Over.”

Inside the Bridge, the First Mate geared the ship up to pursue. But, in the end, no one in the Engine Room would listen, as Kingston Riggs was snoring but standing in place downstairs. When Dimitry was sent to get some reaction from him, Riggs didn’t mention much at all. Instead, he said he needed something standard, in writing, from the Chief Engineer before he could modify a delicate situation which, in fact, was taking place inside our Main Engine.

And so Sassy rested in place.

The other ship’s deckhands were really running. You could appreciate their agitation, across the distance. They hurried back and forth on their deck. In the black of the night, with only a strained spotlight shining on them in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, it looked like they had a ninety-million-dollar fishing yacht coming under fire by an old battleship renegade.

They didn’t have guns out. Most seafaring people do not. Most were terribly polite. This would be a terrific problem White was giving everyone on-board both ships. I easily foresaw both crafts pulling guns out and firing shots.

So, there we sat, barely floating along in the water: a relic from WW2, with decades of sea and tarnish upon the hull, just a three-hundred-and-thirty-eight-foot monster.

I tried again with White. I walked next to him. He was drunk, and I could smell it. He had been drinking who knows what case of whiskey—or what other liquor he had gotten into—but he was so far gone.

I stood really close and said, “Here’s what you got: Japanese in Philippine waters, Ukrainians on an American bottom, owned by India. You chase that guy, they’ll put us in jail somewhere, and we will never get out of it. Nobody deals with that anymore, here in the Pacific. Lock you up and they let it go away because they’re the politicians and who the hell are we?”

I was talking loudly so everyone around me listened. The Ukrainian men understood. At least, they seemed to resonate with the general sway of what I was getting at. Erat, their leader, smiled and patted the Captain on the forearm. In this way, he advised White to leave the yacht alone.

The First Mate, standing upon the bridge also finally agreed. Maybe it was you, Fiona, who got it through to him. I saw you up there, next to him.

You were yelling, “No, no, no! Hell no! We aren’t chasing them down!”

Seemed like everyone understood now, except for the Captain. He was still hot to get them and shouted to everyone there, “They’ve got to be smugglers!”

I yelled in response to his shout, “They’re in the ocean so that makes them smugglers? How about a fishing boat?”

A little flag went up in his eyes. It was all I could ask for, and I thought to myself, “Well, damn.”

The Pacific Ocean is about twenty-seven zillion, million square-miles. There was going to be another ship bound to show up out here. Didn’t mean it was going to be smugglers or pirates.

Aoife was standing in the housing doorway when I headed back to my room. She followed me back to my bed. I could tell she was upset while she watched things play out on the deck though she would never admit it, and I didn’t say anything. She put her arm up around my waist.

I turned for one last look. Man, that fishing boat was moving out of there so fast. They were really hauling. I was grateful when it had disappeared.

White was standing upon the Main Deck. The First Mate told me he would get the Captain onto something else instead of staying up all night. I asked Baxter to hand me his radio one more time. I let Riggs know we had better go, and so we did.

“Dad, can you tell Baxter to clear his head, like you do me, sometimes?” You asked me with Baxter standing next to you.

“I’m fine, Fiona.” He said. Baxter was in no hurry to confess his sudden sadness that he had failed to act like a ready sailor during the last heated hour we all had endured.

You told him, “Well, at least let’s walk around the Main Deck. We can go up and down the Superstructure a few times. The exercise will help with our agitation.”

Fiona, I watched you put your arm around his waist and lead him away. It was a little misleading, my dear.

I invited Aoife to stay in my room, so she could get some sleep, and so she wouldn’t be scared. It was a good idea so she agreed. We talked about owning a ship like this, one day, and what it would take to keep ourselves safe. Some vessel like Sassy could have been our perfect dream job together.

When the morning came, as things got started, I noticed the entire crew suddenly had their heads on straight. Things had become calmer, it seemed.

I found Baxter leaning against the railing, once again, at the back of the vessel. This time, you were standing there, too. You looked surprised when I approached.

Three of the Ukrainian men had found a long-line fishing system inside a storage compartment. It was just a single line with hooks on it every two feet or so and a big buoy at the end. The line had to be a mile long. The buoy had been put to the side. Baxter suggested using chicken while I stood off to the side, complacently watching.

They might have gone through five chickens from crew stores baiting about half a mile of hooks on the line. They got tired of watching it smack itself on the sides of the vessel where they had it draped while little pieces of chicken fell off into the water. They threw the buoy overboard. It took about five minutes for the line to stretch out behind us.

I saw the First Mate. Then, I walked down to the Engine Room and asked Riggs to slow to five knots or thereabouts, for about an hour. It was the only time we needed to go slow for the fishermen in our crew because as soon as they figured out how to pull the longline back in, it was clear they were going to have about five hundred fish from it. It was all Mahimahi or small tuna.

Everyone wanted fresh fish. The men got busy with cleaning them. Fish was either cooked up on the spot or frozen by Aoife for the weeks to come. Aoife was more than a little distressed with the loss of chicken from her menu planning. But, in return, she was duly amazed by the catch of fresh fish.

That first day after the scare by Captain White chasing the fishing yacht, when the afternoon’s scheduled shooting class arrived, Captain White wasn’t around. Close to dinner, he appeared from his cabin. He watched men walking back and forth carrying fish off the long-line.

Captain White wanted something to do. He took the next fish off the line out of Baxter’s hands. He brought it to Aoife in the kitchen who prepared the thing to his tastes.

At the end of the day, everyone could tell that Gun School was now finished. Everyone had either walked off from it, or they had graduated already last night.

WRITTEN AND PUBLISHED BY CORINNE DEVIN SULLIVAN

ISBN 979-8-9909558-0-6 e-book: “The Sound Is The Sailor’s Laughter”

© Corinne Devin Sullivan. 2024. All rights reserved.

Publication made by: CORINNE DEVIN SULLIVAN BOOKS “The Sound Is The Sailor’s Laughter” Published in the United States of America 2024. First Final EBook. Design by C.D.S. Website: www.corinnedevinsullivan.com