Simon Rich brings us a short story about two pirates, Black Bones the Wicked and his first mate Rotten Pete the Scoundrel. They aren't quite Long John Silver or even Captain Jack Sparrow. They mutinied and took over the ship Delicious, intending to use her to find treasure all over the world. The ship's captain rued the day he hired these men as crew members.
In any case, we made him walk the plank, along with all his hoity-toity educated officers. And that’s when I took out me treasure map. I’d won it in a dice game against Blackjack the Crazy, and it gave us directions to all the buried gold in the known world. I nailed it to the mainmast, where every man could see it, and we all stood around it for a while, staring at it in the boiling midday sun. And after some time, I cleared me throat and said, “So, does anyone here be knowing how to read?” And there were some groans and cursing, and I realized maybe it had been a mistake to be killing all the educated officers.
The real story starts when the pirates find they have a stowaway on the ship. You can read the whole thing at The New Yorker. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Faye Moorhouse)