The Mariner's Valour

• Madeline Francis, Grade 8, Tamborine Mountain State High School
• Short Story
• 2015

Excellence Award in the 'Read Write Repeat 2015' competition

‘Sploosh, Splash’, I gazed down and saw at my feet, brackish, jagged waves of the greyish ocean striking the flanks of my floating wooden kingdom. The hiss and spit of the torrents that thrust my boat forward reminded me of this very day, merely a year ago.
The siege was sprung as I, and the rest of the ship’s crew sat upon benches surrounding an old rickety breakfast table. I was treating myself to only the finest sardines and a mug of creamy milk, my sips frequently interrupted by the lurching of the ocean’s belly.
At first, it was no more than a silhouette dancing upon the horizon through a worn porthole, but as it grew close, the long stem of a flagpole materialised. It was the Dragoon. A notorious ship brimming with only disreputable men of the sea. They were the pirates of this cove and every cove North, South, East and West. Even the most experienced, assured mariner bared little buoyancy before their flag. There was no question, they had come to raid us. Though we possessed little loot. The core cargo that filled our cellars was the fish that would soon be sold at the little fisheries that lined the cobblestone streets behind the beach shore.
By nine bells, Dragoon was by our side, only three yards from starboard. They lowered a gnarled plank, and I watched it thump intrudingly onto our deck. The captain ordered us below into cramped conditions where we craned our necks to view above. I slunk my way in between my ship mates and reached the top stair. My Captain, and Branock, infamous Captain of the Dragoon, stood face to face. They were arguing, and sailor’s vocabulary was sent flailing into salty morning air. Branock wore his face with the mask of an ogre, and towered above my captain, as he reached for the hilt of his sword.
“Well if you ain’t gonna give us no loot”, the ogre snarled, “We may as well take it ourselves.”
A roar uprose from the deck of Dragoon, and startled a squabble of lounging seagulls.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to protect my Captain. As Branock unsheathed his sword, I broke from the throng upon the steps, and sprinted with the sprightliness of a leopard in front of my master.
“Aye Oscar get back!”
It was too late. The last thing I saw in my right eye was the tip of a sharpened blade spiralling towards my pupil.
I woke, as my ship staggered in a sudden change in the slow pulse of the waves. I could feel it before I knew it. The crusty, black leather, slung across my eye by a forlorn shoelace. My eyeball was now nothing more than an olive on the end of Branock’s toothpick, but in its place, a medal of my valour, a symbol of captain’s appreciation, an eyepatch had appeared. And that is how I, Oscar the Seaman’s cat earnt my eyepatch.