Buried [FICTOID]

The pirates weighed anchor in the isolated cove, their sails shredded, their hull riddled with cannonballs. 

They managed to escape the pursuing flotilla by blind luck – literally.  A thick flog a thick fog bank enabled them to escape. 

While the flotilla searched the seas, they made their way to the island.

“Which island is this?” the captain asked.

The first mate shrugged.  The navigator lay dead, the ship's compass and sextant obliterated by the same cannonball. 

“Put a party ashore,” said the captain.  “Look for trees we can use to make repairs, fresh water and food to restock our supplies.

“And find a suitable site to bury our dead.”

For the next three days the surviving pirates labored to repair and replenish their ship.

The bodies – one in three of the crew -- they dumped in a common unmarked grave.

“Why should the land be any different from the sea?” the captain asked.

On the fourth day a crewman turned up missing.

At first they assumed he just wandered off but a search of the island showed no sign of him.

“A deserter,” the captain said.  “Coward!  So be it.  Leave him to die alone on this miserable rock.”

The next day two prates went missing.

“Something on this island is taking them,” said the captain.  He armed the entire crew, leaving only two wounded men on board, then set off to search the island. 

The pirates did a far more thorough job than before but found no sign of their missing crewmates.

But when they returned to the cove they felt dismayed to see their ship vanished.  

“How could two wounded men sail that ship by themselves? the captain said.

“Perhaps the flotilla found them,” said the first mate.

“Impossible!  Had they done so they would simply lay an ambush for us, not simply sail off!”

Improvising shelter, the remaining pirates slept on the island.

The next morning the captain and first made awoke.  The shelters sat empty, the fire pit cold, the rest of the crew gone.  

“They must be somewhere on the island,” said the captain.

“Where? asked the first mate.  “We searched every place.”

“Every place except one,” said the captain.

They began digging up the mass grave.

They found the initial casualties they buried then they found the first missing sailor, then the two after that, then the two left on the ship.

Horrified yet driven by a frantic compulsion, the captain and first mate kept digging.

One by one they uncovered the rest of the crew.

“What's the meaning of this?” the first mate wailed.

“Shut up and keep digging!” said the captain.

The captain’s spade struck something.

He squatted down and brushed the sand away to uncover the face of the new corpse.

The face was that of the first mate. 

Knowing what he would find yet no more able to avoid it than a mouse could avoid a snake, the captain kept digging.  He found another corpse; the face, his. 

The pirates weighed anchor in the isolated cove…

© Buzz Dixon