Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine.

 

 

Cabin Boy decides that he should be honest if he wishes to get the truth from Mr Marshall, for the boatswain seems to be a sympathetic man who might return the bloomers if he knew how desperate Cabin Boy was to find them.

“Mr Marshall,” he begins, and then the words pour quickly out of him. “I was cleaning the captain’s stuff and the bloomers weren’t there, and I thought Missy might have them because she’s a lady, but she said Cookie might have seen them because he did the laundry, but he said Rob and Riddles might have seen them because they sort it, but Rob said that either the first mate or you might have them because you were both mad at the captain, only you don’t seem mad, which leaves the first mate, but I am afraid to ask him because he is always cross, and is likely to scold me. If I don’t return them before sunset, the captain will know I have lost them, and he is likely to have me keelhauled or make me walk the plank.” He bit his lip to stop from crying. “I don’t want walk the plank. Can you help me find Annie’s Undies?”

Mr Marshall scratches at his beard. Thoughtfully, he says, “That’s quite a tale. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe the first mate would take the bloomers. He is a pirate’s pirate. If word got about that he stole a pair of underpants, he’d never live it down.”

“Not even if he stole them to make the captain look bad?”

“Nope. See, he only be wanting the cap’n to look bad at his job, so the men lose their faith in him. Losing a pair of knickers might make the cap’n look careless, but there’s not a soul on this tub that would think less of him as a sailor. No, the first mate is smarter than that. Now, if it were the charts that were missing…”

Cabin Boy’s respect for Mr Marshall is growing, and he is beginning to understand why the captain trusts such a lazy man to be boatswain. It seems Mr Marshall is a thinker.

“Where do you think I should look for them, then?” he asks.

“I’d be running it by the first mate, just to be sure in yer own head that he didn’t take them, but ye may have to ‘fess up to the cap’n and say ye had no hand in them going missing. Then ye would have to trust that the cap’n is fair in his dealings.”