The Jolly Regina

by Kara LaReau

  “I remember our father attempting to serve something other than oatmeal for breakfast one morning,” Jaundice said.

  Both sisters shuddered.

  “Well, I think they had good intentions,” Kale noted.

  “I think we need to have a plan,” Jaundice said.

  “A what?” asked Kale.

  “A plan, for rescuing them,” Jaundice said. Sometimes, Kale was a little slow on the uptake. “Why do you think our parents told Delilah where to find us?”

  “Because they were willing to sacrifice us to save themselves?” Kale offered.

  “No.” Jaundice sighed. “Because they wanted to find a way to get us on The Jolly Regina, so we could find Gilly Guns Island and rescue them.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Kale said. “I thought our parents were running an errand.”

  “Somehow that errand led them here,” Jaundice said. “And now they’re missing.”

  “Marooned,” Kale added.

  “Right-o,” Jaundice said. “Now you’re getting the hang of it.”

  “But what can we do?” Kale said.

  “I’m not completely sure,” Jaundice said. “I’ve never devised a plan before.”

  ROWWWWWWWWR.

  “What was that?” Jaundice said.

  “Sorry,” Kale said, clutching her stomach. “Hunger pangs.”

  “Maybe we should find some food,” Jaundice suggested. “If we eat, it might allow us to think more clearly.”

  “There isn’t any food in here,” Kale said, looking around Delilah’s chamber. “Lots of jugs of rum, but no food.”

  “If only I had stowed something else in my smock that was edible, let alone useful,” Jaundice said, scooping up a cork from an empty rum jug and slipping it into one of her pockets. She was always pocketing things, here and there, just as she’d absentmindedly pocketed the kitchen magnet that morning after she’d used it to pick up some sock-darning needles she’d dropped. Jaundice was odd in that way, among many others.

  “I miss our sundries basket,” Kale said wistfully.

  “Me, too,” said Jaundice. “We never even got a chance to try the new cheese. It looked very promising.”

  “Even if there isn’t any food here, I’d rather not leave this room,” Kale said.

  “Me, neither,” said Jaundice. “It’s comforting to stay in one place, surrounded by walls and a ceiling and a floor.”

  “Almost . . . like home,” Kale said.

  ROWWWWWWWWR.

  “Oh, no. Not you, too,” Jaundice said, looking down at her stomach. “I guess there’s only one thing to do.”

  “Sleep?” offered Kale.

  “No,” said Jaundice. “Go out and look for food.”

  “Are you sure?” Kale asked.

  “No,” said Jaundice. “But my stomach is.”

  Slowly, quietly, the Bland Sisters tiptoed down the corridor and looked around until they found a door marked GALLEY.

  “It’s locked,” Kale said, jiggling the knob. “We’ll need to find the key.”

  “Fat chance of that,” said Jaundice.

  “You don’t have a skeleton key in one of those pockets, do you?” asked Kale. “That would be terribly helpful.”

  “It would,” said Jaundice, rooting around, then pulling out the paper clip. “But I might have something just as good.”

  As she had never attempted to pick a lock before, let alone with a paper clip, it took Jaundice an extended period of time to get the door open. But as they say, better late than never.

  Inside the galley, the Bland Sisters found a long wooden table, stacks of pots and pans, and a row of barrels and sacks. In one corner, a cauldron sat on a hearth. Jaundice reached out and touched the side of it cautiously.

  “Whatever it is, it’s still warm,” she said. She lifted the lid.

  The contents of the cauldron looked almost uniformly brown. Chunks of potatoes and unidentifiable meat floated in a greasy, beefy broth. Kale wrinkled her nose.

  “That looks questionable,” she said, though brown was her favorite color.

  “What is it?” Jaundice asked.

  “A stew . . . I think,” said Kale, thumbing through Dr. Snoote to be sure. Neither sister had ever eaten anything more than oatmeal and cheese sandwiches, so they could only guess.

  “I found these,” said Jaundice, holding out two large crackers. “They seem a bit harder than our bread at home, but I think they’ll do.”

  The Bland Sisters found two wooden bowls and scooped themselves some stew from the cauldron. They each sat on one of the barrels and ate, using the crackers to sop up the last bits. Kale would remember it as the most satisfying meal she’d ever had, mostly because she was so utterly famished.

  “I’m not sure I like meat,” announced Jaundice afterward. “It’s tough and gristly, isn’t it?”

  “Just be glad we don’t know what animal it came from,” said Kale, patting her belly.

  “True,” said Jaundice. “Very true.”

  “Funny, you don’t see very many rats on these pirate ships, do you?” Kale said. “It must be because of how clean they keep the decks. I would have thought there’d be rats everywhere.”

  “That’s something to stew on, isn’t it?” said Jaundice, letting out a little burp.

  chantey |'shantē| noun

  a song usually sung by sailors

  Chapter Eleven

  After their questionable meal, the Bland Sisters tried to make their way back to Delilah’s quarters. Unfortunately, their sense of direction was less than keen, and before long, Jaundice and Kale were lost.

  “We’re lost,” said Jaundice, leaning against a ladder. “All the doors here look the same.”

  “I guess this is what they call a dead end,” Kale said.

  “If there were only some means of getting around that didn’t involve a door,” said Jaundice.

  Kale rested her head on one of the ladder’s rungs. “Like a window,” she said.

  “Or stairs,” said Jaundice. “Or something stair-like.”

  The Bland Sisters took a moment to flirt with despair.

  “It’s too bad this ladder’s no good,” Kale said, sighing.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Jaundice asked, pressing against it to test its sturdiness.

  “We have no idea where it goes,” said Kale.

  Jaundice rolled her eyes. “Of course we know where it goes,” she said.

  “We do? Where?” asked Kale.

  “Obviously,” said her sister, “it goes up.”

  Jaundice climbed up first and poked her head out.

  “All clear,” she said.

  Not surprisingly, Jaundice was right. The ladder did go up. In fact, it led the Bland Sisters above deck. It was nighttime now, and the sky was filled with stars. Jaundice and Kale took a moment to take in the glittering array.

  “The night sky looks different here than from our window at home,” Kale said, tilting her head back.

  “We don’t get much of a view from our window at home,” Jaundice said.

  “It reminds me of our bedroom wallpaper,” Kale said. “But sparklier.”

  Jaundice looked around the deck. “It’s strange that no one is up here,” she said. “Where is everyone? And where is that music coming from?”

  It was true; there was loud music and singing and clapping coming from the other end of the ship, below deck. The sisters crept to the other end, lifted the overhead door, and peeked down. There, they saw what looked to be the entire crew assembled in a circle. In the center was Peg, playing a hornpipe, and a large woman in a stained apron, doing what appeared to be a jig.

  “I bet that’s the cook,” Kale said.

  The Jigging Woman Who Might Be the Cook was also singing a song—the Bland Sisters recognized it as a chantey, as defined by Dr. Snoote.

  Ohhh we are some saucy beau-tees,

  we rules the seven seas,

  we steals the menfolk’s booty

  an’ bring
s ’em to their knees.

  Ohhh you’d best be wary, misters,

  the seas are cold and deep,

  so keep a lookout for me sisters

  and hold yer booty whiles ye sleep!

  Saucy beau-tees, yo-ho-ho!

  Menfolks’ booty, yo-ho-ho!

  Wary, misters, yo-ho-ho!

  Look out for me sisters—yo-HO!

  “She’s quite good,” Kale said, though she wasn’t a qualified judge. The Bland Sisters hadn’t heard much by way of music while they were growing up; they did have a record player, but all they had ever played was a boxed set of public speaking records called The Elegance of Eloquence with Mavis Diphthong. And their radio had terrible reception. Kale got very good at discerning the subtle crackles and pops of static.

  Jaundice, on the other hand, was not impressed. In her opinion, the might-be cook sounded like she had one of those hard crackers in her throat, and Peg was a bit slow with the beat, given that she was keeping time with her wooden leg.

  “Encore, encore!” shouted Lefty, and the song started up again.

  Great, thought Jaundice. Then she looked at Lefty and had a realization.

  “Who’s steering the ship?” she asked.

  The sisters crept over to the ship’s wheel. It was held fast with a rope.

  “What’s this?” Kale asked, producing a long tube of leather, tied loosely with a string. She untied it and unrolled the tube, revealing a very large, detailed map.

  “Look,” Jaundice said, placing her finger on a patch of land. “Here’s Dullsville.”

  Kale traced her finger south, all the way down to the bottom of the page.

  “And here’s where Delilah said we were going,” she said. “Due south, to Port Innastorm.”

  “But here’s where we want to go,” Jaundice said. “Southwest.”

  She pointed to a tiny speck in the middle of the ocean. Over the speck, someone had penciled in the letters GGI.

  “Gilly Guns Island,” Kale whispered.

  It took the Bland Sisters some effort to absorb all of this information. It helped to focus on the starry sky above. Jaundice found that if she squinted, it really did look like their wallpaper at home.

  “Are you having any thoughts?” Kale asked after a few minutes.

  “I’m not sure,” said Jaundice. “But I do have a plan.”

  “Do tell,” said Kale, clapping her hands.

  “Well, if we steer the ship to sail west each night, after everyone else goes to sleep, then steer it to sail south each morning, before everyone else wakes up, we’ll secretly be headed southwest,” Jaundice explained. “We’ll be there in no time.”

  “But how do we know which way is south and which way is west?” asked Kale.

  “Oh. Right,” said Jaundice. “How do the pirates know?”

  Kale flipped to the N section of the dictionary and looked up navigation.

  “According to Dr. Snoote, we need to find the North Star. Wherever it is will be north,” Kale explained. “We can figure out south and west from there. And east, if we have to.”

  The Bland Sisters looked up at the sky again. The wallpaper of constellations blinked down at them, beautiful and mysterious.

  “All these stars look the same. What a stupid plan. Stupid, stupid, stupid,” said Jaundice, kicking a barrel filled with rainwater.

  “It isn’t stupid. It’s just not fully developed,” said Kale, looking at the stars again for inspiration.

  “Why did I have to fill my pockets with sock-darning needles and kitchen magnets?” said Jaundice. “Why couldn’t I have brought something useful, like a compass?”

  Kale’s eyes grew wide.

  “Oh,” she said. “Wait.”

  She flipped to the C section of the dictionary, and thumbed over to the entry for compass. To the left was one of Dr. Snoote’s many Educational Sidebars, called

  Make Your Own Compass

  YOU’LL NEED

  • a needle

  • a bar magnet

  • a cork

  • a cup of water

  Rub the North end of the magnet against the point of the needle 20 times.

  Rub the South end of the magnet against the eye of the needle 20 times.

  Stick the needle all the way through the cork.

  Float the cork in the cup of water. The needle will point North.

  (in this case, a sock-darning needle)

  (in this case, a kitchen magnet)

  (in this case, a cork from a pirate queen’s empty rum jug)

  (in this case, a barrel filled with rainwater)

  Once the compass showed Jaundice and Kale which direction was south, they determined which way was west. Jaundice steered the ship in that direction.

  “Voilà,” said Kale, admiring their handiwork.

  The Bland Sisters yawned. Exploring and thinking and planning and navigating were draining endeavors, especially when one does not perform those tasks regularly.

  “It’s late. Should we sleep here?” Kale asked.

  “The deck’s too hard,” Jaundice said. “We need to find beds.”

  “I bet there are beds down below,” Kale said.

  “Possibly,” said Jaundice. “But we’ll need to find a ladder that goes down.”

  The Bland Sisters were about to address this predicament when a bright light shone in their faces.

  “W-who’s there?” a timid voice said. It was Millie Mudd, one of the youngest of the crew, assigned as a lookout.

  Jaundice decided to improvise. “Er, it’s just Jaundice and Kale Bland, getting some fresh air. Kale’s a bit seasick, unfortunately. She hasn’t got her sea legs yet. Or her sea stomach.”

  In the light of Millie’s lantern, Kale immediately began to look green and ill at ease. It was a bravura performance, Jaundice thought. Perhaps her sister had some marketable skills after all.

  Millie Mudd sighed and lowered her lantern. “Yer not allowed to be above deck after sundown,” she said, trying to sound stern. “Get down below now and see if ye can’t find a place to rest yer bones.”

  “Aye aye,” said Jaundice, executing a salute. Millie sighed again and moved along.

  “Ohhhhh,” said Kale.

  “I know,” said Jaundice. “That was close. But you saved it with your seasick routine. Well done.”

  “It’s no act,” Kale said. “I think something in that stew didn’t agree with me. Look out!”

  And with that, Kale ran to the nearest railing, leaned over, and watched as her dinner jumped ship and floated away on the waves.

  “Rats,” she said, without a hint of irony.

  paraphernalia |'parəfə(r)'nālyə| noun

  equipment needed for a particular activity

  Chapter Twelve

  The Bland Sisters could not find any beds below deck, as the pirates of The Jolly Regina slept in hammocks. By the time Jaundice and Kale discovered this fact, there were no spare hammocks to be had, so they spent their first night aboard sprawled on two lumpy sacks of grain in the galley. As you might imagine, the night involved quite a bit of tossing and turning.

  “This can’t be good for my back,” Jaundice said in the morning, stretching awkwardly. “Or my front.”

  “Is this burlap?” Kale said, poking at the sack. “I think I’m chafed again.”

  “I miss our cozy beds at home,” said Jaundice. “The blankets, the sheets, the pillows . . .”

  “The mattresses,” Kale said, sighing.

  As the sisters attempted to rouse themselves, they heard a terrible clatter, followed by a string of words Jaundice and Kale had never heard before, or seen in their dictionary—though they had a pretty good idea what they were.

  “Profanities,” Kale whispered to Jaundice.

  “Obscenities,” Jaundice whispered to Kale.

  “Stowaways!” a voice shouted at both of them.

  Suddenly, the Bland Sisters were face-to-face with the chantey singer from the previous evening. It was confirmed, th
en: This was the cook. She was a rather large woman with very ruddy skin, and she was sweating quite a bit. While Jaundice and Kale didn’t say it aloud, they were both thinking the same thing: The cook very much resembled a ham with a head on top.

  For a ham with a head on top, she was strong. She grabbed Kale and Jaundice by their collars and held them aloft, their feet dangling well above the galley floor.

  “Do ye know what we does to stowaways on The Jolly Regina?” the cook asked, her nostrils flaring.

  “Um . . . the Jack Ketch?” suggested Kale.

  “A sound keelhauling?” offered Jaundice.

  “Or perhaps,” guessed Kale, “a good marooning?”

  “Hmm,” the cook said, looking each of the sisters in the eye. “Yer awfully familiar with pirate justice.”

  “That’s because we’re not stowaways,” said Kale.

  “No?” said the cook.

  “No,” said Jaundice, looking around for an idea and seeing nothing but pots and pans and other kitcheny paraphernalia. She was stumped.

  “We’re, uh, we’re here to assist you!” Kale exclaimed, finally.

  “To assist me?” The cook threw her head back and laughed.

  Jaundice glared at her sister, who gave her a little shrug. This situation had a good chance of going sour at any moment. After all, what did the Bland Sisters know about cooking, let alone pirate cooking? Dr. Snoote didn’t feature any recipes, though he did offer a helpful Educational Sidebar called How to Set a Table.

  “Well, well, well,” the cook said. “It’s about time they brought someone in to give old Fatima a hand. And two galley rats, no less! Though the two of ye together don’t come close to measurin’ up to me.”

  This was true, on many levels.

  Fatima let go of Jaundice and Kale, who stumbled to the floor. “Well? What are ye waiting for? An in-vee-tation? Grab those sacks ye were lazin’ on and help me with breakfast!”