Pirates in the South China Sea

"Rig the sails!”
It was a stormy day, and our Captain Ayush was getting desperate. The wind blew our flagship, “Magdalena” into a much sunnier place where no storms were brewing. I was relieved.
Ship ahead to the east! Flying a French flag. She’s sailing low in the waters, she must be loaded with treasure! Go get ‘em!” I raised our flag which was two crossed swords and a skull.
Then I saw some oil rigs, and I reckoned we had sailed into the South China Sea. “Board the ship!” I cried, as I was quartermaster. I grabbed a cutlass, a pistol and a dagger. I hung them onto my belt, and then lit wicks laced with gunpowder, and put them into my long hair, so smoke weaved out of my head, giving me a notorious and swashbuckling look. I charged onto the ship, where I saw Azhar, another crewmember and Ayush, torturing this ship’s captain. They had him naked, and were slapping him with the flat side of their cutlasses and daggers, so if he flinched, he would be cut. I stopped them with a wave of my hand. “Yes, mam!” they muttered. When the captain saw I was a girl, I noticed the
man had a look of hope that the worst was over. I clapped my hand onto his back and said, “ I understand you must be extremely hot and thirsty.” Azhar eagerly placed lit candles in a circle around the main mast. The captain was shoved into the ring. “Now start running inside the circle of candles and don’t stop until I tell you to. If you step outside the circle of candles, we will kill you.”
After he had ran for ten minutes, I stopped him. “Men, cool off the poor gentleman and refresh him with water.” My crew picked up the captain and, with glee, tossed him overboard. They ransacked the place while I held the dead captain’s crew by gunpoint and tortured them. I hollered as we whipped the quartermaster with a cat o’ nine tail, “You are nothing but a bunch of yellow-bellied milksops. You deserve to die!” Some of them muttered, “What a ruthless, bloodthirsty woman, so ferocious and violent!”
Parvesh, another quartermaster of “Magdelena”, and a great friend of mine, helped me toss all the cowards into the sea.
“Fellows, this is a wonderful ship. I shall use it for my own good
and call it ‘Marquesa’!” I addressed my crew.
“Hurray!” Everybody whooped and cheered.
I could see that Ayush didn’t like it, but he was so chicken that he
didn’t say so. He acted as if there was a cloud hovering over him, while the others all yelped with joy.
“There’s treasure down here!” Azhar, who was searching “Manquesa” for valuables, had found tanks of opium down in the decks! Opium wasn’t anything but priceless in these days. We were all very excited. Opium was a drug to make people drowsy, and the Europeans used it to control us. We dumped a lot of it into the sea.
“Ship close behind! She’s flying British colours and is loaded with twenty cannons. Looks like more than several hundred sailors!” Parvesh reported. “Roll the cannons around, fly the flag, all hands upon deck!”
Hey! the deck was empty! Everything was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. Nobody obeyed my orders. Parvesh was still balanced upon the crow’s nest.
“Where are the men?” asked Parvesh.
“Dunno.” someone replied.
Now, the other ship sailed behind, fast closing on us. “I’m so frightened of them,” “They might kill us all…” All the men cowered below
deck, moaning and groaning.
“Are you men? It’s only an attack. Why is Captain Ayush so petrified
and panic-stricken? Why is Azhar, the courageous one, so alarmed and terrified? Huh?” Parvesh shrieked sarcastically.
Nobody answered. She was interrupted by a shout, “Here we are!” the men boarded the ship.
We grabbed our pistols and daggers and began to fire at the crowd.
Our cutlasses flew to and fro so fast that it soon became a blur. Dozens fell down immediately, but there were more to come. “We can’t go on like this,” I whispered to Parvesh behind my bleeding hand. We were cut by flying debri and bullets whizzed past our ears. “Just follow me,” I leapt over the rails into the lukewarm water, swam to the other side and scrambled up the empty “Marquesa”. I took one of the shell explosions out of my pocket and lit it. These would explode after you count five hundred seconds. I put that in the Captain’s cabin, grabbed the bags of booty and hurled it over the other side, onto our ship. We then lit bombs here and there, in the food cupboard (we threw all the food out first), in the decks below, in the secret compartment in the steering wheel, everywhere! Dozens and dozens of them were hidden in every nook and cranny.
By the time we had finished our mission, the first few men came on
board. They weren’t as quick as us. We fired at those upon the hull, but we let some go on purpose. As the last man climbed on deck, we plunged into the water. The two of us were still swimming as the first few explosions rocketed the fire ship, forcing us to swim underwater to avoid getting hit by the flying debri. We reached the “Magdelena” and looked with satisfying fascination as the flaming ship listed to her side and sank.
The pirates were yet dancing along to the music of the fiddler at midnight. “Rubina, we‘ll just get the riches and go, yeah? This pirating life is not for us.” I agreed. So, we told Ayush. For our bravery, he gave us each a chest full of gold, silver, oil, jewels, rum, and opium which were priceless treasures.
Girls really aren’t as timid as they think.
Boys can’t compete with girls at all!