Arg, me matey's!

For a six-pence, Charlie “The Pin” Gunter, would beat up anyone you wanted along the wharfs of Kingstown Bay in the Grenadines. He would peg-leg himself up to the unsuspecting, looking as though he was begging for alms and when the victim was distracted by The Pin’s odor, Charlie would drop his mahogany leg, and club them with it, turning them into a senseless ball of goo on the rolling docks.

He then would collect his pay, and wander the pubs telling stories of the days when he was young and sailed as an ensign with His Majesty’s Fleet with the “good Admiral Sir Eland Barrington.” He would flop on a chair and gather the crowd while pinting the ale and slapping backs. No one believed the Pin, called that for the pin, Charlie said, was shot through his neck during a little skirmish the fleet had while on patrol with the rough and tumble pirate, “Long Slim Jim.” The story went that as he was a young ensign assigned to the forward gun batteries on His Majesty’s Balfour, a thin and nimble frigate, when an incoming round from one of Long Jim’s deck guns filled with chain, nails, and dowel pins, one of which stuck in Charlie’s neck. Not wanting to get blood all over his uniform, Charlie stuck his finger in the small hole and continued to call correction to his gunners.

So, at the tables or at the bar, the aged man with the wooden leg led the pub in story after story of sea fare and glory, all the while, his victims-almost all, woke up some hours later with a cleaved skull and empty wallets.

For a six-pence, you too, can come down to the docks tomorrow morning and have a pint or two. Some fine Ethiopian or Colombian black, imported just for you on the tramp steamer, Valhalla, will make port at dawn. Give the swabs time to unload its gullet and prepare a sampling of exotic foods and spices for you heartless wretches.

Don’t forget to fly your ship’s colors on your doors tomorrow, colored with crayons, each have to have a name. The attire tomorrow? Piratey.