A Captain's Duty

the boat. I looked up and found the pirates all staring at me.
    “What?” I said.
    “Where did you get that?”
    “This?” I said, holding up the knife. I’d completely forgotten they didn’t know I had it. “Oh, you want my knife?”
    I laughed and Musso and Tall Guy joined in. I handed the knife to Musso. The Leader also demanded my watch, so I un-strapped it and gave it to him. He already had my flashlight.
    The Leader was whining like my kids when they fell off their bikes. I unwrapped the dirty rag and saw some minor gashes across his palm. He sucked his breath in.
    “Oh, it’s not too bad,” I said. The Leader was acting like the hand was nearly amputated. I couldn’t believe how quickly this pirate had turned into a whimpering baby.
    I dashed some saline eyewash on the wound, and cleaned all the grime and dirt out. Then I put some balm on the gashes, applied some antiseptic, wrapped the hand up in fresh bandages, and taped it up nicely. Then I gave him some ibuprofen and told him to take two every eight hours.
    “You need to do this every day,” I said.
    The Leader nodded.
    I thought I’d built a little good will.
     
    I began to get a better sense of the pirates’ personalities. Tall Guy and Musso smiled the most. They were easy-going, eager to talk, and in charge when it came to any sailing questions. Maybe these guys were sailors, I thought. They sure knew their way around a boat.
    The Leader rarely cracked a smile. He was smart, always staring at me and trying to figure out what I was up to. It was beyond him that my fellow Yanks had fouled up his plans. Frankly, he reminded me of a few captains I’d sailed with. The world revolved around him and nobody else. But I’ll admit: he was a good leader. He ran a tight ship and his men followed his instructions to the letter.
    One incident that first day confirmed my opinion of the Leader’s priorities. After he’d gotten familiar with the controls, he came down from the cockpit and demanded to see the money. One of the other Somalis handed him the bag, andhe took out the cash: two stacks of hundreds, one of fifties, then twenties, fives, and tens. He began dividing the money into piles, one for each of the pirates.
    It was as if he were saying, “Here’s one for you, one for you, one for you, and one for me.” But he was putting most of the hundreds in his pile and the others were getting the tens and fives. I laughed to myself. You son of a bitch. There really is no honor among thieves. The other pirates didn’t say a word. I never saw the money again. Later, when they gave me a sack to lean against, I felt the stacks of money inside, but I never spotted the cash out in the open again.
    Young Guy was just that. Young. He seemed less hardened than the other three. I could see him giving up the piracy business and becoming a solid citizen in Mogadishu or wherever he was from. Either that, or he could become a Charlie Manson type. Every so often I caught him looking at me as if I were a turkey in a cage on Thanksgiving morning, and he was feeling the axe blade with his thumb. He had the potential to be a maniac. But he wasn’t there yet.
    At one point, while the other three pirates were occupied in the cockpit, I even started giving Young Guy advice. I don’t know what came over me, but he seemed like an immature kid who was getting in over his head. “You’ve got to get away from these guys,” I said. “They’re going to lead you down a road to some very bad places. You can choose another way.” He smiled and nodded, but I’m not sure the message got through.
    By midday, the heat was so intense that the pirates decided to break the windows out on the lifeboat. Tall Guy went up to the cockpit and started swinging the AK-47 back and rammingthe bayonet into the Plexiglas above the Leader’s upturned face. Every time, the muzzle passed within a few inches of his face. And the clip was still in the gun.
    Christ, I thought, these guys are idiots . They’re going to shoot someone by accident and then the navy will be charging in with guns blazing .
    “Hey, hey,” I shouted up to the Leader. “Tell him to take the clip out before he puts a bullet in your head.”
    The Leader looked at me and said something to Tall Guy in Somali. Tall Guy took the clip out and started banging on the windows again. Eventually, he broke two of the panes out, but there was only a trickle of air coming through them. At night, we’d get a nice breeze but