Captain Soft-Beard had everything a great pirate needs. The hat. The parrot. The voice that makes seagulls tremble. He knew all one hundred and thirty-two sailor's knots by heart and could read the stars with his eyes almost shut.
He just had one tiny flaw, which nobody on board ever mentioned: Captain Soft-Beard got seasick.
The moment the ship moved a little, his face went from pink to white, then from white to pale green, like an unripe apple. So he clung to the railThe barrier running around the deck of a ship, which you hold on to. and stared very hard at the horizon, thinking about something else.
He had tried everything. Ginger. Dry biscuits. A bracelet bought at great expense from a merchant in Tangier who had promised miracles. The bracelet had ended up at the bottom of the sea, thrown overboard one stormy day, along with a great many words the parrot still repeats.
The crew pretended not to notice. “The captain is thinking,” the first mate would say, pushing the others towards the bow. “Don't disturb him, he is thinking very, very hard.”
One day of heavy swell, the captain was thinking so hard that he could not let go of the railThe barrier running around the deck of a ship, which you hold on to. at all. And that was exactly the day the lookoutThe person whose job is to watch the sea and warn the crew of what they see. shouted: “Reef dead ahead!”
They had to turn at once. The first mate ran to the wheel, but he did not know which way. Nobody knew. Everyone began shouting at the same time, which has never turned a single ship.
The parrot, incidentally, was called Peanut and was no help at all. Every time the captain turned green, Peanut came down to perch on his shoulder and shouted, very pleased with himself: “Land! Land!” when there was no land whatsoever.
“STARBOARD!” roared the captain without turning round, still bent double. “Then hard to port, count to six, and straighten up!”
The first mate obeyed. The ship heeled over, skimmed the reef by a hair, and sailed off straight into the wind. When calm returned, the crew turned towards the captain, who still had not moved.
“How did you know?” asked the first mate. “Because I watch the horizon all day long,” answered Soft-Beard. “For three hours I had been looking at exactly that spot. I saw it before anyone else.”
The first mate could hardly believe it. In three years of sailing with him, he had always assumed the captain gripped the railThe barrier running around the deck of a ship, which you hold on to. out of habit, the way other people bite their nails.
That evening the crew slung a hammock in the middle of the ship, at the precise point where it moves the least. Then they hung the compassThe small instrument whose needle always points north. right above it, at eye height.
“You are our lookoutThe person whose job is to watch the sea and warn the crew of what they see., captain,” said the first mate. “The best in all the oceans. You never take your eyes off the horizon.”
The hammock was slung with double bowlines, the knots that never give. Peanut was given strict orders never to shout “Land” again without land. He obeyed for almost two whole days.
Soft-Beard opened his mouth to protest, then shut it again. It was true that he never took his eyes off the horizon. He had spent twenty years hiding his flaw, and had just discovered that he had turned it, without knowing, into his finest talent.
The end, sweet dreams.
