A short, ridiculous tale of The Melody and her crew

'Oy! Go scrub 'em decks!' Peggie Bluebeard yelled at the cabin boy.1

'Scub 'em decks! Scrub 'em decks!' her parrot, Pinky echoed.2

Tom Trout the cabin boy wearily got out of his bed; which was in the llife-boat, and picked up the brush and bucket to swab the ever-filthy decks.3

'Up and about me hearties!' Peggie's voice was like a foghorn as it spread over the ship, waking all of the other pirates.4

'It's a bright and sunny mornin' and there's work to be done!' she hollered cheerfully.5

'Aye aye cap'n!' the sailors shouted enthusiastically. They were actually bored stiff and dead tired but the had to sound enthusiastic after what had happened to Blue Peter when he hadn't got up on time. Blue Peter had been thrown overboard.6

Peggie Bluebeard, as her name suggested, had a beard. She was captain of the ship 'The Melody'. The letters were painted on the side in curling pink print and when Peggie had inherited the ship from her great aunt she hadn't bothered to rename it.7

Pinky, the trained parrot, was left to keep and eye on Tom to cabin boy while Peggie went around the ship, ordering everybody around and not getting an awful lot accomplished herself.8

And so the days turned into months and in the month of December, three months after our story started, the action shall begin.9

As usual, Peggie got up at the crack of dawn to wake everyone else up, broth was served by the cook and jobs began. Except nobody began their jobs, they simply stood, dumbfounded in the doorways of their cabins, looking at the decks.10

'What's wrong with you filthy landlubbers!' Peggie yelled from the back, 'Get a'workin'!'11

A few pirates shuffled out onto the freezing decks and Peggie pushed her way to the front to find that the ship was covered in ice and snow. 12

'We've reached the pole.' The cabin boy stuttered, his teeth clacking.13

'I can see that you buffoon.' Peggie said, grumpy at not noticing the obvious.14

'The edge must be quite near.' York Breadbeard, a pirate, said.15

'Yes.' mused Peggie, 'but we should be okay as we seem to have been becalmed.' and indeed they had. Not a breath of air was blowing, they were completely still in the ocean, surrounded by icebergs.16

'We'll wait for the wind then head out of here.' Peggie swiftly decided. (she was actually quite useful in a crisis.). 'But first, let's get this snow off the decks!'17

'Aye aye!' filled with courage, the pirates began this arduous task.18

At the end of the day (which was at about three in the afternoon) the sun began to set on a clean, snow-free deck and when the sun rose again the next morning (about two in the afternoon), the deck was once more coated in ice and snow.19

Hiding their groans, the pirates set to work, clearing it again.20

It was during the night of the third day in the second week of becalmment that the wind began to blow. Only the lookout, Timmy Trump was awake (well, supposed to be), so no-one knew about it until the next day when everyone awoke to find themselves looking at the end of the horizon.21

'We've reached the edge!' Tom Trout screamed in a panic until Jay Birdbrain wrestled him to the ground to shut him up.22

But Tom Trout was correct, they had indeed reached the edge. The edge of the map. Water poured of the Earth and into an eternal abyss from this point and no-one knew what lay beyond for ships which were sucked over the edge.23

'Hoist the sails!' Peggie Bluebeard's voice bellowed true over the wind and the sailors hurried to do as she asked.24

'Not that sail you fool! The mainsails!' Peggie's voice acted as an encouragement for the pirates and they worked ever faster to hoist the sail.25

'Hard a'port!'26

'Stern you fools!'27

'Port! Port!'28

After much struggling with the sails and wheel, everyone flopped down for a rest only to find that when they were ready to resume their work that the ship had strayed ever closer to the edge. The current was starting to affect the movement of the ship and tempers were running high. 29

Tom Trout had long since curled up in a shaking ball in the lifeboat and Gore Fishbrain was loudly reading bits of Revelations out of the Bible to anyone who cared to listen.30

Luckily, before anyone had a heart attack, The Melody struck an iceberg and became firmly lodged, stopping her spin off the edge. 31

However the sighs of relief were short lived when Jam Doughnut went down to the food store for a doughnut and came back soaked saying that there was a hole in the ship.32

'Below decks! Grab a bucket!' Peggie shouted and grabbed one herself.33

Everyone got below decks and started filling buckets with the water which had flooded in.34

Then Gore Fishbrain had one of those ideas that is handed down from father to son, through the generations until the end of time. His idea was to stop up the hole with people. As Gore Fishbrain was rather larger than anyone else, he had soon grabbed an armful of the pirates and was stuffing them in the hole.35

Before Peggie could utter a word (which must have been very fast as Peggie can usually say something in half the time anyone else would take saying it), the hole was filled and the water stopped flowing in.36

The store was still full of water and all the pirates were otherwise engaged so Peggie and Pinky were left the task of hauling the buckets up onto the deck to give to Tom Trout for his bucket collection. (If you remember, Tom Trout was still curled up in the lifeboat.)37

Peggie and Tom and Pinky managed to control the entire ship for two weeks, carefully steering it away from the edge until they reached land where they could plunder and burn and rob. However this time, Peggie decided not to do any of the above as she needed The Melody to be fixed so she paid (in stolen money) for her ship to be fixed.38

Here Ends the first of many short, ridiculous tales of The Melody and her crew