Of Cutlass and Katana Part 1

It was a clear night with a full moon. The light was enough that we could make out every detail of the ship. I'm still not sure if the fact that we didn't have to light any lanterns worked to our advantage or not. The wind was calm, so we weren't moving very fast.

The crew was in a jovial mood that night. Most of them were on the deck drinking grog and singing "Yo Ho Yo Ho". I was on the deck enjoying myself like the rest of the crew having a bit too much of the grog.Ol' Jim was manning the wheel, while the captain was looking out over the ocean.

Captain Gray Beard was a beast of a man. He stood five and a half feet tall, and was solid muscle. His eyes were so dark that they seemed black. The beard that was his namesake was indeed gray and hung to the middle of his chest. He was a hard ass of a captain to work for, but no one dared do anything to anger him.

The captain usually spent his evenings alone in his quarters. It was unusual for him to even be around the crew when they were being social. Perhaps he suspected that something was going to happen. He had a good sense of the seas and usually knew when something was up. If he knew, he didn't let on to any of the rest of us, because what happened took us completely by surprise.

It was a couple hours past sundown when the attack began. No one saw the other ship pull up by ours. No one heard the oars of the other ship in the water. The first thing we heard was the scraping sound of a grappling hook being pulled across our deck. "Yarr, we are bein boarded" someone yelled. I turned to the sound and saw four more hooks fly up and catch onto the rail of our ship.

Within moments we were surrounded by ninjas. There was a long pause while we looked at them and they looked at us. They were covered head to toe in black. A slit in their mask allowed us to see their eyes. I heard a pistol to me left go off, and one of the ninjas took a shot in the chest and flew backwards over the rail. Then chaos erupted. The sound of cutlass clashing with katana could be heard all over the deck.

The ninjas were completely silent as they fought. There were no screams of pain when they died, or shouts of joy when they cut one of us down. Our crew was half drunk and prone to shouting. All around mixed in with the clashing of steel and occasional pistol shot, were the sounds of pirates shouting, "Avast!", "Yarr", and "Arg".