Twas sprung upon me with but a moment’s notice, that me fair brother young Timothy Seasbuttock would wring a tale from me filled with adventure on this, the day he’ll finally consummate his manhood.
Allow me to sketch ye a crude portrait o’ the lad noting first that his noggin is free of the flowing locks which grace his elder brother. So too, the handsome features, wisdom and judgement which were splashed upon the brother and sister he followed. Tis true, and sad – all that was left to the youngest of three siblings are baldness and mighty facial caterpillars determined to mate upon his brow.
This is the tale of how we met…
In the port town of Gunt-on-Trent, the locals spoke of a madman – Terrible Tim, a hermit-hobo who lurked in an abandoned circus tent. Twas rumoured that he’d been shat out by the stars, for as a child he seemed an angel, with his shock o’ blond hair and winning grin. He spoiled it by stripping naked incessantly and waving his pixie-stick at ladies till the menfolk grew testy and beat him off with sticks.
When we blasted his home into smoke and splinters he burst forth, his formerly adorable fur matted into vile dreadlocks like a clown had died on his scalp. He looked amusing, but was alarmingly scented. We treated the malodorous hum by towing him behind the ship. A school o’ porpoises had their wicked way with him, and doused Timothy in their salty stud suds – it’s a kind of cleansing scrub. To deter his obsessive nudity we stapled a fat man’s clothes to his furry frame.
Tis necessary that all hands perform some task o’ value aboard a ship; twas not his way. In even the simplest matter he displayed a baffling defiance, risking his own life for the mere sake of being free to do so. Gaargh, the vital and base task of scrapin’ barnacles from the hull (a task, I should add, which was previously undertaken by a brain damaged monkey) lead to him knocking a hole in the ship and drowning three cabin lads. Aye, even when directed to merely “stay here, touch nothing” he left sails aflame and a village o’ fresh widows. At best, his works ended in disaster.
Clearly young Tim was a special fellow, in the sense of quietly leaving him on the beach at low tide, but he had a charm that belied his outright idiocy. He was the sort to headbutt a shark, or plug a dolphin’s blowhole with a cheeky grin and wink o’ the eye. He’d break ye most valued possessions and turn them big brown eyes upon ye – the wenches were suckers for it. Save that one lass with the fetish for knives… but the boy looked fine in his eye patch. It added to the wooden fingers, peg leg and gashes that came from his unique combination o’ carelessness, bad luck and stupidity.
In time he became one o’ the crew, in disfigurement if not competence. So we took him ashore for larks and giggles. Once we’d swum to land (for he had contrived to sink the jolly boat with no more than an innocent whistle) he simply vanished. I swear to ye that I turned me back for less than a heartbeat and all that remained was a jumper hanging from a fence post. Eventually we found him in the cut-price brothel down Skanking Lane where he’d nested in the questionable bosom of old ab-gendered Sally (or the Pound Stretcher as they called her). While swaddled in her dubious dugs he’d had a revelation, or so he claimed before he was dragged away by the watchmen for public bare-buttockry.
Gaargh, breaking him out tested me patience. So fierce was Tim’s rejection of all possible aid that he screamed and wailed that we were trying to ruin his life. I wanted to strangle the little monster. So I did. Once he awoke he demanded that we travel to the Lowing Grounds. Tis a magical place where the beasts of the ocean meet to breed and eat each other. He’d convinced himself that mermaids danced between the humping brutes and he’d got a flutter in his heart for a fishy lass.
The journey was fraught with danger – nearly all of it from Tim’s terrifying blend of laziness and manic activity. One night I found him and the simpler mates discharging their pistols at the moon. I confiscated their weapons and bade ’em button their flies. On another, he spent an hour bellowing about mushrooms before collapsing in a sweating heap. Strange lad.
At last we reached the fabled lands of humpery. Young Tim, drunk on rum he’d filched from me cabin reeled vomiting from starboard to larboard till I grew weary of his whining and pitched him overboard. His curious expulsions, thrashing and the octupine dreads that infested his skull drifted like a submarine temptress beneath the waves. Naturally, he was besieged with horny beasts, from felch-fish to giant shagging squid. We fired cannon and flintlock into their ranks, for though this was a hammock of his own hanging sometimes a man needs to be tipped out of it. However our loads were no match for the marine man-maulers. The boy was surely lost to the frothing waters of lust, so we began to divvy up what little of worth Timmy had.
A shimmer of rainbow scales and undersea bosom raced through the waves, striking the salacious sharks back into the depths with fierce scowls and flourishes of her ebon locks. A ravishing mermaid erupted from the ocean in a fountain of spray and fishy gore. In her arms lay the bleeding idiot child, battered and newly bald, grinning like a man with his brains removed. Her prize clasped to her breasts and her lady-gills a-quiver she too grinned triumphantly and plunged once more into the deeps.
We resumed our selection of his private tat: Billy No Mates had his tobacco tin, Hamish McMuffin took his debts and I was saddled with a painting he’d made with glue and a sock. Ye see, though the mermaid was a creature of great mystery and beauty – this one especially (she’d no deformity or gruesome appendages as Tim’s luck would normally dictate), having saved him she’d take him down to her undersea boudoir to ravish him in her piscean way…and then drown him, that he might be hers for evermore.
Twas both an ending, and a new beginning for our mad mate Timothy Seasbuttock. He found love (to our enormous surprise) in the arms of a fearsome warrior merwench, Susie Saltheart. Kindly raise ye glasses and toast me black hearted pirate brother whose black heart turned pink and fluffy for his beautiful marine miss.