Epilogue.
Today I live on the island. The Captain visits regularly, and sometimes he even stays for a few weeks while the pirates go off on their own under the command of the first mate. It is a strange arrangement. Even the Captain thinks so. None of his men had ever heard of a pirate taking a wife.
I rarely travel with the ship any more. I have three children and soon shall have a fourth. I am very happy. Robb, the cabin boy, stays on the island and assists me. The Captain has no worries about the loyalty of either of us. He has forgiven us both and the boy has forgiven me, and I him, though I cannot say what there was that I forgive him, but he insisted on it. He has grown into a fine man, though he is reclusive and lives by himself in a small cabin he built on the opposite side of the island. He does not talk much any more, though he seems content. I can no longer worry myself about him. What happened was done and is in the past. We must move on.
My relationship with the pirate known as the Red Devil is still something of a mystery to me. He himself cannot explain it. “Opposites attract,” he says and shrugs, as though that is explanation enough. I think there must be more to it than that, but I cannot fathom how he makes me feel. With him I am complete, satisfied, whole. When he punishes me it is with love and I feel released and am able to be true to my soul, passionate and open, hiding nothing.
He has conquered me utterly. I cannot imagine how I could have withstood my dull life in London’s upper circles, smiling at people I hated and putting on airs as though I was better than anyone else.
Here I run naked on the beach and swim with my children. I teach them to handle swords and pistols, to hunt the tasty wild boar so plentiful on this island, to grow delicious vegetables and exotic legumes. We eat better than most kings, and though we must work hard to survive and earn our food, we enjoy the rewards of our labors far more than I ever enjoyed any meal prepared by servants and placed before me when I was a spoiled child.
And at night, among the quiet lull of the waves on the beach and the gentle sounds of the night animals, my husband and I make passionate love. It is nothing like civilized love I am proud to say. It is wild and uncontrolled, unplanned, unrehearsed, untamed. There is nothing delicate about it. We tear up the beach with our insane lust, groping and fondling and roaring like animals. It is often painful, always pleasurable, and indescribably intense. Hours pass like minutes and we return to consciousness surprised at where we are and astonished at our scratched and bruised bodies.
There is nothing like it on earth, and I count the minutes when the Captain is away. He spends more and more time here on the island, and I suspect he will soon retire. Though his fellow pirates scoff and jeer at him “becoming soft” they dare not do it in his presence–and I know that his pride grows less and less important to him every day, and it is his children that he values most highly, and his beloved wife.
The Captains Wife – Part 15 : The Epilogue
by Flogmaster
THE END
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