A Captain's Duty

Shane was trying to foul the gas so it would mess up the MOB’s engine.
    “Don’t worry,” I said, keying the radio. “I already got enough water in those things.” The Somalis were going to find themselves two hundred miles from shore with a useless hunk of metal for an engine.
    Bucket after bucket came down. When I grabbed the last one and set it down, Musso spoke up.
    “Okay, we need more fuel and some food,” he said.
    I gave him a look.
    “ More fuel? Where are you headed—Disney World?”
    He laughed. The pirates were back on their element—the water—and they had an American captain as a hostage. In their minds, they hadn’t lost a thing. So Musso could afford to crack up at my jokes.
    I wanted to get the MOB away from my ship. I took the vessel about one hundred yards off the ship’s port quarter and killed the engine. We drifted, waiting.
    I called on the radio and ordered up the extra supplies. Shane went to the mess and rounded up some night lunch. Night lunch is what the cook puts out for the evening and early morning watches, or anyone who is clinically insane enough towant to eat it. I couldn’t even begin to tell you what’s in the night lunch. But we have another name for it: “horse cock.” That’s actually an insult to horse penis. I’ve had cooks who’ve put out the same stuff for a week straight, until there was so much mold growing on it you could make your own penicillin. The stuff is just unbelievable.
    It also contains pork. I did know that. So it was Shane’s final “fuck off” to the Somalis, who wouldn’t be caught dead eating the stuff.
    Everything was working fine. We were finally prepared for the exchange. I saw Shane running around, getting ready.
    “Okay, we’re ready,” Shane said on the radio.
    “Roger that,” I said. I hit the ignition on the MOB.
    Nothing.
    I hit the ignition again. Nothing. Don’t do this to me, I thought. Hit it again and it was silent—not even trying to turn over.
    “Fuck,” I said.
    The pirates were looking at me.
    “Something wrong, Captain?” Musso said.
    “It’s dead. Move over. I need to check the batteries.”
    The MOB was supposed to be on a constant charge. Both its batteries should have been topped up automatically from its connection to the ship’s grid. But when I checked the charging switch, I saw it was set to one battery only. The right one had been getting all the juice, but now it was drained, too. When I switched from both batteries to the right one, the engine just went woooo, woooo, woooo and wouldn’t catch.
    “Shane, we got a problem,” I said into the radio.
    “What is it?” Shane called back.
    “Batteries are dead.”
    I heard him breathe out.
    “That’s it. Ball game over.”
    “Not yet,” I said.
    I got some tools out and started working. I checked all the connections, praying there might be a loose wire. But everything looked good. It was the batteries for sure.
    Now came mistake 2.5. I didn’t want to get off the MOB. It was an open boat. If anyone did show up to help us, there was nowhere for the pirates to hide. True, we would have been broiling under a hot sun, but anyone with a rifle could have taken the Somalis out as easy as wooden ducks at the carnival.
    I should have stayed right there. But I was in a problem-solving mode, eager to get things done. With the MOB dead, I moved to the only option left: The lifeboat.
    The lifeboat is an enclosed craft about ten feet high and twenty-five feet long. It’s bright orange, powered with a single outboard, with backward-facing rows of seats inside and a raised cockpit with windows, where you can steer the vessel. It drops from its mount, free-falling forty-five feet into the water with a big splash. And it was the last option left.
    “Listen, we have to row back to the ship,” I said. “This boat ain’t taking us anywhere.”
    We rowed back and tied up alongside the Maersk Alabama. “Level your weapons,” I said to the pirates as we moved in. I didn’t want them pointing their AKs up at the crew as we approached.
    The third engineer and the bosun got on the lifeboat up on the deck, after loading the extra fuel and the food. The life-boat requires only one man aboard during launching, but the third engineer refused to get out. He wanted to be there in case I needed his help.
    Shane wanted to be the one in the lifeboat, but I told him he was now the captain aboard the Maersk Alabama and he needed to stay where he was.
    “But I’ll