The day the potatoes ran out

It was in the early days of pirating with the Narwhal. Peter James Jacobson was not even fully used to being Captain. Bobby was already there as crew, as was I as boatswain. Alejandro was new onboard as our Cook. We had sold our wares to Armani's Warehouse and spend all our money in Plage de Sable. We cruised along to the other side of the Caribbean to spread our hunting grounds, and were a few days in the journey. The wind wasn't strong, but it blew the right way.

Alejandro had just made a midday dinner. "Oh, beans?" Peter asked rhetorically. Alejandro, unaware of our captain's food habits, foolishly answered: "Si, we're out of papas. I still remember the look on captain's face, how his fork full of beans stopped halfway between dinner plate and mouth. The captain didn't say anything at that moment, just finished his plate. But his mood was sour, and he was restless the whole afternoon, pacing the deck, fore to aft, port to starboard, needlessly adjusting the sails and then adjusting them back. Supper came and went. I was taking the dog watch and I could hear the captain rummaging around below deck, I recognised Alejandro's voice below, but couldn't make out what they were talking about. A while later captain came back on deck. "We're really out of potatoes." He told me, then before I could answer, he went down, only to turn around on the companionway and say: "Call me when you see a ship, we need to steal their potatoes."

It was just before dawn when I was on watch again, when I saw a small ship. It was a cargo ship, we had never attacked a cargo ship before, just yachts. "Actually I think it might have been a ship from our friends from the TPSC." Did Michael interrupt his story. Anyway we had never done a cargo ship before. But there was no stopping the captain, he wanted Potatoes. There wasn't much planning going on, we just sailed towards it. The ship was slow. We had the rising sun behind us, but I think that didn't matter much when we got closer. As it turned out the mate was busy working on the computer on the bridge and never saw us come along side. He only found out when we were on his bridge.

We rounded up their crew and forced them all into the captain's cabin. I think that cargo ship captain thought that was the worst thing of all about the whole situation. "What do you want? Money? I can open my strongbox for you, no need to hurt my crew." The man spoke. But Peter just ignored it all, and asked. "Where do you store your potatoes." (It was Bobby who fell into the story with the most perfect imitation of Peter's voice.) The mate started laughing; "You want our potatoes. The whole hold is full of potatoes! It's our cargo!"

So we locked that crew up in that cabin, and broke open the hold. We didn't take one bag of potatoes, no we took thirty -two. Thirty-two, twenty-five kilogram bags of potatoes. And then sailed away, our black pirate flag flying proud from the mizzen gaff.

Being our cookie, Alejandro was a bit upset with the quantity, but then proved he was a pirate after all. We had potato salad for breakfast. French fried potatoes for dinner with mashed potatoes on the side. And then boiled potatoes warm or cold for supper. With a baked in the skin potato as a midnight snack. Then Sliced and fried potatoes as chips for coffee time. Alejandro kept it up for the whole trip over to The Last Drop ale house. Everyone was sick of potatoes at that point, and we all ran ashore to go eat something else. Except the captain tho, he didn't complain about a single meal and ate it all. We sold a few bags to restaurants in town to make some coin, wasn't even a bad profit.