Fights Like The Devil, Dressed As A Man

"Has anyone seen the bloody cannonballs?"

It was Grim who noticed the missing objects first, while he was doing inventory. They hadn't fired anything since they'd gotten here, so the amount of cannon balls had to be the same as it had been yesterday, and the day before, and yet it wasn't.

"Are you drunk, mate?" Edward called back, though his worried feet did take him down below decks, past the corner where three of his men were happily munching on pizza.

Grim shook his head and pointed. "There's three left," he said.

Edward tilted his head. "You mean two," he said.

Grim frowned and turned around, just in time to watch all of the rest of it go falling down a hole. And then the cannon. "What the--"

A hole appeared below Grim's feet and swallowed him up, and Edward leaped backwards with a shout. "Men!" he called. "We're under attack by a bloody hole! Get your cutlasses out, or-- something. Actually, GET THE GUNPOWDER--"

The men didn't startle into action until the hole had swallowed up an entire barrel of rum. Edward drew his pistols and fired off several shots, but it did nothing. "Bloody h--"

And suddenly, he was falling.

A good portion of his crew had the sense to go running, leaping off the Jackdaw. Others found themselves in the grasp of the hole, and much of their rum stores to go with it. Even the Jackdaw itself wobbled, pitching over...

...and found itself adrift on a hole full of water.

The hole winked out quickly after that.

"Shouldn't we be makin' haste leaving this place?"

Edward draped himself back in his seat on the deck of the Jackdaw with a rakish grin. "We could," he said, "Or we could enjoy ourselves a few days of respite before getting back to the muck and the salt, aye? We've plenty of supplies in the hold."

Adé sighed and shook his head.

"Besides," Edward said, picking his mug of ale off the table, "We've earned some making merry, haven't we, boys?"

That got a hearty 'aye'. Thusly enabled, Edward took a large swig of his drink, grinned, and hopped up onto that table with the keen sense of grace he'd picked up from years of climbing around the rigging. "Then let's make something of it!"

The men - bar Adé, who was returning to the hold to shake his head, no doubt - cheered loudly.

Edward scraped his throat. "Now you're ready to sail for the Horn! Weigh hey--"" He waved his arms, and the men joined him for a loud "Roll and go!" before he continued alone, "Our boots and our clothes, boys, are all in the pawn to be rollicking Randy Dandy-O!"

Hope you liked rowdy pirates singing shanties, island, because you could hear them from a mile away.

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