International Talk Like A Pirate Day

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“Avast, ye scurvy dog! Strike your colors or I’ll…I’ll…what will I do, Mr. Turnbull?”
“Say, ‘I’ll scupper your ship and use your guts for garters, ye lily-livered—oh. Captain, sir!” Turnbull knuckled his forehead and said, “Um, I have to be off now, Mattie,” before scurrying below.
Mattie looked up then and spotted the governess, her face lighting up. She ran over and Lydia Burke squatted down on the deck to open her arms to Mattie’s embrace.
“Miss Burke! Miss Burke! I am so happy to see you again!”
“I am happy to see you too, Mathilde. I missed you,” she said fiercely, hugging the child to her chest. Mattie drew back her head and looked at her.
“I am not Mathilde any more, Miss Burke. Now I’m Marauding Mattie, the terror of the West Indies!”
“Are you indeed, miss?” She said in a voice that might have left icicles on the rigging as she looked up at Marauding Mattie’s father, who devoutly wished he was somewhere else at the moment.
The governess stood, still holding Mathilde. If she were a dragon she’d be breathing flame protecting the child. Rather than make Robert angry, he found it gratifying she would champion her welfare. Mathilde needed someone to watch her back because while there were few things in the world he was certain of, he knew pirates did not die of old age in bed. At least, not their own beds.
“Mathilde, you know I said you needed a governess.”
“Papa did say that, miss. He said my governess would keelhaul me if I disobeyed her commands.”
--From The Pirate's Governess, a work in progress


 Happy ITLAP Day to all the girls and boys with piratical aspirations!

"Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates." - Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain


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