Fiction: One Night's Work

I ask you, what's Christmas Eve without pirates? To correct that omission, here's a short fantasy piece titled "One Night's Work," the newest addition to our 25 Christmas Eves project. By: Erin L. Snyder You could see it in the men’s faces even if you couldn’t feel it: they were getting older. There were few of us, fewer every time you’d look around. The English colonies pinched us from the south and the Americans’ navy pressed us in the north. Their ships were getting faster and their captains smarter. The days of the pirate were waning, and we were dying. The era of legends was a hundred years gone, and we felt dwarfed by their shadows. Against the tales of Black Bart or Morgan, how could we see ourselves but as common thieves? I was the youngest man on the Red Gull, and I’d been at sea more than a decade. I’d sailed with Laffite before I landed on the Gull, and I knew as well as any of the others that our days had all but passed. I think we all kne...