Lucifer Devil Jr.'s Christmas Surprise... And Other Short Stories

A Crazy Pirate

Banana Joe considered himself a very lucky pirate. 

His parents and grandparents had been very strict Puritans who lived in the American colonies, but he, who had been saddled with a name from the Bible that was even crazier than his nickname, had always wanted to escape from there. And one day he had just gone missing during a trip to Nantucket with his father after he had begged the captain of a ship to hire him. Anything was better than to remain at home! Plus it was far better to hang out in the Carribean with its beautiful beaches, women and booze than to sit in a gloomy study and study to become a pious minister! Banana Joe had become a pirate because he had quickly realized that he could make a lot of money on pirate ships, and he had changed his name. He loved bananas so much that the other crew members had nicknamed him "Banana" anyway. Moreover, he happened to be bananas because he wouldn't live his life like this if he wasn't. 

He was currently on Captain Abraham's team. The captain was a strange pirate: He was a tall, thin man and had the commanding personality that seemed to be a prerequisite for his job. On the other hand, he was unlike any other pirate Banana Joe knew because he wasn't interested in treasures so much than in discovering mythical places in the Carribean. More often than not, these places also contained treasures when you discovered them, so the crew didn't mind the captain's idiosyncrasy so much.  

But then, something bad happened on a sunny day. They had been looking for an ancient temple on Atlantica, a holy island that could not be found in any map, and succeeded in finding it. It was a small tropical island with beautiful sandy beaches. So the first thing the pirates did was to go for a swim and get drunk. Only Captain Abraham seemed to be in a pensive mood and continued to consult his personal notebook about all the details they knew about the temple, which was supposed to be in a cave. 

They were about to start the search for the temple when Banana Joe accidentally stumbled upon its entrance. He was so drunk that he literally fell on a rock, which moved and opened up the entrance to the cave. 

Everyone congratulated him even though he was so drunk that all he could do was nod. "Well done, mate!" 

Strangely enough, the temple in the cave had the appearance of a Christian church. It was full of gold that just sat there. Basically, you only had to take it with you, which the pirates intended to do.

But before they could move all the treasure chests out of the cave, Captain Abraham stopped them. "Look!" he said and showed them a golden inscription that was written on the altar: "Whoever taketh gold from here shall be cursed and die!"

"Yeah, whoever was so stupid and wrote this knew we would steal the gold!" a pirate laughed.

"I don't know. I think the captain's right: Perhaps it's not such a good idea to take gold from here. This looks like a real church," another pirate said, and a few others nodded even though most of them were blind drunk. 

So they followed the captain's advice and put the treasure chests back. But not all of them. Banana Joe had passed out below deck on his treasure chest and was not found until the ship had sailed away from the island and the weather had gotten bad all of a sudden. "It seems like someone has put a curse on us in that cave! I've never seen the weather change this quickly before" one of the pirates said. 

They were sailing through astorm  when Banana Joe woke up, stroked his treasure chest and went up on deck. 

"Where have you been, Joe?" the captain wanted to know. His voice was like thunder and not unlike the one the preacher at his church in Massachusetts had used when he had been upset.

"I've been asleep, sir. But I'm happy to report that I managed to carry out one of the treasure chests all by myself. It's safe below deck now, sir," Joe replied.

The captain was furious. "I gave everyone explicit orders to put all the treasure chests back! What shall we do with that chest now? It's cursed, and we cannot go back! It took us weeks to find the island the first time around"

"We can throw it overboard and Banana Joe along with it!" the first officer said.

"That won't help! We need to put all that gold back and be careful until we can do that!" the captain stated and gave orders to turn the ship around.

It was a bad decision. They were sailing straight into the eye of the storm. They could barely hold on to the ship, the masts broke soon and a few people went overboard. At one point, the sailors realized that they could no longer navigate the ship, so they held on to the railing and hoped they would survive the storm. 

The surviving members of the crew managed never saw land again. The sea moved the ship in different directions just as it pleased, and everyone on that ship knew that they were doomed. They feared the treasure chest now and the things it contained. After a few weeks, there were rumors that the ghosts of the dead crew members were haunting the ship by night. Others claimed that the sailors were just having visions because the ship was slowly running out of supplies. 

Be that as it may: Banana Joe had never prayed so much in his life. Thus, he finally became the person his parents had always wanted him to be and was known as "the minister" in the last weeks of his life.