“Exalted are the winds Moliére! The everlasting hands of time have brought us once more to pay our homage to the unparalleled splendor that is life! With the dawn’s deliverance, again are we allowed to caress the divine beauty of the seas as they sweep beneath us, as the passionate siege of the wind flows through us like a transient spirit, as we are held captive to the sweet dominance this natural world evokes on our senses! Tell me, Moliére—could one ever hope to find a more amorous world of desire than this unfettered sovereignty at sea?”
Moliére, his parrot and shipmate, squawked back in vehement accord. Outside the window of the captain’s quarters, the rising sun illuminated the Barbary Coast, delivering a new day.
Doing his rounds on the ship, the pirate absorbed himself in the pride that was his vessel. The ship’s sails—hand-stitched from the finest Moroccan silk—billowed against the wind with fierce resilience. The cannons gleamed in their regular positions, embellished with intricate designs sculpted from 24-karat Egyptian gold. Upon the bow hung the ravishing statuette of a mermaid, with hair as black as a raven’s wing and enough beauty to send men into both madness and despair. To be trapped on this ship atop the vast immensity of the sea brought the captain great pleasure.
“Aye, how I cherish this carefree deliverance from man. ’Tis the unshackling of the oppressive, harrowing grip by which the avaricious hands of civilization had around me neck. Those countrymen were nothing but swine, Moliére. They were sure to suffocate me through their stifling suppression of me sybaritic needs. Had I not resolved to take flight from their toxic perfidious ways, I would have been soon to breathe me last…
“Yet, now I choke on naught but pity as I drink a nectar of vitality—the likes of which those blighted hapless fools are to never know the taste! Which reminds me, Moliére—if we have time at all, then it is a time for rum.”
The splinters in his peg leg flexing with anticipation in each step, the pirate trekked to the ship’s hold for a glass of the succulent rum. But, as it creaked forth, the hold’s door revealed a sight more ghastly than a gibbet blocking a strumpet house.
“Yarrrgh! Me hogshead!”
His rum had vanished. The barrel of the beverage distilled from fermented molasses and sugarcane was nowhere to be found. He could not believe his eye. Amidst all his great fortune, without a bottle of rum, none of it would be worth a schilling. To live a life without rum would be more dreadful than to live no life at all.
With pistol and cutlass in hand, he hunted murderously from fore to aft for the thief. “What kind of vile, treacherous dog would purloin me liquid treasure? O, the depraved acts I will unleash upon the loathsome scallywag who would dare abscond with me rum! O, the immeasurable bounty I will place upon this execrable man’s head!”
He scoured every part of the ship for the plunderer with no avail.
Several weeks passed, and with each day that the memory of rum receded into the depths of his mind, he too fell into darkness. The pirate had lost his spirit.
His only eye now laid sunken deep within his emaciated face, bloodshot veins cutting across it like a thousand saber wounds. The hair of his once-bountiful mane had all fallen out; his rich, exuberant forest of a beard was now a barren wasteland. Moliére, his faithful parrot and companion, had deserted him in the night. The ship was no better. Its sails of the finest Moroccan silk were now withered and torn. The galley teemed with hordes of bilge rats. The mermaid’s hair was gray and her skin wrinkled; the once radiant light of her beauty now dim. The deck had not been scrubbed in a fortnight.
Lost at sea without rum, the buccaneer could not lift the agonizing curse of sobriety.
“How long can I go on like this? If only someone would rescue this poor wretch from such a cruel, merciless existence. Without the sacred rum, I am bound to perish. All the treasures in the world I would trade; every seaside I would pillage; any wench I would renounce for just a measly drop! Surely, this is but only a…”
Overwhelmed by tremors of fear and hatred, the sea around him began to spin like the boom of his mast. Without warning, the captain collapsed to the floor.
Dragging himself to the ship’s plank, the defeated pirate gazed downward into the shroud of the sea. Peering deeper and deeper, he caught a faint glimpse of a jade treasure chest. Inside it was a myriad of that which he desired most—the sacred rum. Taking a breath, he dove overboard and immersed into the brine, swimming countless leagues to reach the only antidote for his discontent. His legs fanatically kicked the sea with an unflinching spiritual urgency. Choking for air, he finally reached inside the chest to clutch a bottle of the divine drink within his longing grasp. He had regained his sweet nectar. The liquid rushed into his throat, filling him with cold, rapturous bliss.
