Peg-leg's Last Breath

'Twas a windy day, on an early morning wheel-watch, when ole Peg-leg muttered to me; he said, "Today's the day, oh matey mine, that I'm finally claimed by the sea." I looked all askance, and asked him, "Perchance, how would you know the day? There is no prospectus on when Death will take us, and I wouldn't know otherwise, personally." Peg-leg choked out his cackling laugh, as he turned us a point to the east. His one good eye twinkled up at me; his twisted spine an outward sign of his overworked physique. "Listen, laddie, listen close, to the voices of the sea. She's rumbling, now, only mumbling, but she'll get angrier, wait and see. Just you wait and see! She's brewin' up a good one, today, and I'm thinking she's calling for me." I only shrugged, and turned my eyes to the two full moons above. Big and orange and surreal they were, in a night sky clear, and deep. No cloud marred the sky to spoil that view; yet the east wind turned savage the longer it blew. Our ship seemed so small as she dropped into a trough, and her timbers all shivered like a dog all a shudder! Then the First Mate came scrambling 'cross the deck to rudder, seizing the wheel with a confident mutter of "to the sails lads!" Peg-leg and me set ourselves topside, me on the main and he on the mizzen, and we weathered the storm with well-ordered precision. I forgot all about my friend's dire prediction as my body worked and my hands were blistered. I labored past and beyond anything for which I had yet striven. Then, finally, with the sky still clear and our bodies about broken, we felt the wind calm and took it as a token that the storm had passed, we had survived at the last, and we climbed down to the deck as soon when the order was spoken. We crashed into our hammocks, fatigued, and slept the sleep of the deeply wearied; only, something kept niggling at me, something itched my mind. I could not place it, and (as weary men do) asleep I fell. Unsatisfied. I woke to a dream, it could only have been, to the sweetest song ever beheld by a man. It drew me out of my slumber and onto my feet, and thence to the deck where what did I see? Old Peg-leg himself, and a beautiful lass who was singing to him with a smile so sad that my simple heart broke for the labor-bent sailor, who took the girl's hand and walked to the railing. Peg-leg's last breath was with a wink and a grin, afore he turned 'round, was coaxed down, and with a whoop!, leapt on in. The lass that he leapt to? None could say who she was. Some people said siren. Others said ghost. Some said it was nothing, or just a cruel hoax. But Peg-leg's last breath had taken me in, whole. He had breathed in my essence; seen my quivering soul. It took years to get over, and still yet I dream, of the moment old Peg-leg's Last Breath took me in. And now my days grow short, and my bent back shorter. My gnarled hands grasp the ship's wheel with confident ease, as I turn her a point to the east. It has been long years since Peg-leg's last breath took me in; years in which I have sailed the seas of Tellus and seen marvels all therein, and yet still I listen to the voices of the deep. Clear and more clearly I hear the song of the brine; but slowly, so slowly, it took me to realize that it was the same song that Peg-leg had jumped to his death to. So poignant and sweet, and so brutally true, the songs from the deep. They didn't affect the crew, or the ship, or lend us good luck, they simply sang to me, personally, of the deepest kind of love. When the lass came for me, I wasn't surprised. I simply took her hand and looked into her eyes. And just ere I leapt, I took Peg-leg's last breath, and I doomed another mate of mine.