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Date Posted: 03:55:48 09/21/02 Sat
Author: Judge Holden
Subject: A true and verifiable tale of woman and the sea.

For aye, the seas of the world whereon whales ferry their vast inscrutable souls take no notice of the sailor's gender and only their mettle absolute is weighed in the ocean's quicksilver balance. In the year of 1567 the Irish pirate admiral Grace O'Malley birthed a son on the high seas, laboring in her bunk even as her ship beat homeward with a bright wind blowing out of the blue void to the west. One day later as she lay belowdecks nursing her babe a Turkish pirate vessel came against them. The Turks had a bronze falconette at the rail and they fired a 3-pound ball across the bow of the Irish ship and howled for surrender in wild unchristian voices. The Irishmen replied with a brace of two-inch culverain deck cannon and the gunfire quickly became general.

O'Malley still sore from childbirth heard the cracking of shot on the ship's timbers. Heard the shouts of her crew become desperate. One of the Irish two-inchers had burst and the Turks held position upwind and could not be shaken. They raked the Irishmen with grapeshot and the scuppers filled with blood. The Turks came alongside. Then did the Irish captain retreat below crying that the battle was going against them. O'Malley cursed him, saying May you be seven times worse this day twelve months, who cannot do without me for one day. She put her infant aside and siezed a blunderbuss, charged the piece and tamped it. She sprang up the gangway and the Turks were at the rail. Point blank she fired on them, shouting Take this from unconsecrated hands. The Turkish first mate's head exploded in a fountain of gore and his body dropped like a sack of meal between the vessels. The Turks wavered. O'Malley's men had blocked the cart of the remaining culverain to fire dead level and now they discharged it, and the concussion at that short range burst the Turks' eardrums so that the blood ran into their beards. The boarding party ran. O'Malley rallied her men and stormed the Turks, taking the vessel.

The fate of the Irish captain that O'Malley cursed is not recorded in book nor in legend but it is said of those men weighed in the meteoric and liquid balance of warfare and therein found wanting that they are granted no favor in this world nor in the next.

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