David filmed, Jay was recruited for lighting, and Marty was assured that it didn’t matter if he made mistakes or wanted to go back, it was fine. The footage would be edited.
It went well. Marty was a natural showman, and if any man looked like an old pirate, it was Marty. He talked about the early days of Key West—the very early days, when the Calusa Indians were around, through the Spanish period, the English period, the Spanish period, and then the days when Florida—and Key West—became a territory of the United States. He knew his piracy and could trace it through the sixteen, seventeen and eighteen hundreds—and he could even tell hair-raising tales of modern-day piracy.
Sean led him to talking about the attack on the Santa Geneva, Mad Miller and Kitty Cutlass.
“Ah, well, there’s a story!” Marty said, his eyes blazing. “Mad Miller was born and bred on the island, just like his paramour, Kitty Cutlass. Kitty was a saloon girl, right on Duval Street, and let me tell you, they were rough places back then, shacks, they were. Some say she was a sweet girl gone bad, and some say she was born pure evil. Mad Miller was working a rich man’s merchant vessel when he turned it around and made her a pirate ship. He managed to take a gunboat down and steal her cannons, then reworked the merchant ship into a fine pirate vessel with twenty guns. Now, it’s said that the early days were good days—Mad Miller would blast a merchant ship or any enemy ship to smithereens, but he’d always pick up the survivors, and he never kidnapped a soul for ransom, just left them all beached somewhere. Ah, but then the battle of the sexes began! There’s always a woman, right? In any story. Except in this story, there were two. Key West had barely become an American territory, Admiral David Porter had just begun his campaign with his Mosquito Squadron to clear out the pirates, when Mad Miller and his crew came upon the Santa Geneva. Relations with Spain were doing fine—God knew, enough Spaniards were still living here. Now Dona Isabella was a great beauty of her day. Black eyes, black hair, fair skin, white bosom and wasp waist, and she lived a fine life of society right around the Southern tip of Duval—the house is long gone now, though a fine residence still stands where it once was. She was married to Don Diego de Hidalgo, a man highly respected in his native Spain, where he chose to reside most of the time. Dona Isabella had just left Key West to return to Spain—her husband wanted her back with him—when Mad Miller and his crew lit out after her ship, said to carry great riches upon it. But it seemed that Mad Miller suddenly changed his ways—he took a number of the surviving crew captive, but it’s said that his men slashed to death those in the water who were begging to be saved. From the point of the attack—near Pirate Cut and the Pirate Cut reef—Mad Miller sailed off to his safe harbor at Haunt Island, a nearly desolate islet off South Bimini. There it’s said that Mad Miller and his crew massacred the survivors—even the beautiful Dona Isabella. Of course, much of what we suspect is theory, since no one knows what really happened. But there were rumors among other men of unsavory repute that Mad Miller had gone insane with desire for Dona Isabella and that Kitty Cutlass, in a jealous rage, had murdered her. Mad Miller then left Haunt Island, ready to attack more ships, but it wasn’t to be. He met his demise not at the end of a hangman’s noose but in the midst of the fury of the Atlantic. A hurricane came through, and Mad Miller’s ship was sunk with all aboard, and all his treasure. This is known because another ship caught in the weather made it back. The hazardous conditions prevented any type of rescue operation, and frankly, since the ship that reported her foundering was a part of the Mosquito Squadron, it’s likely that the men watched her go down with laughter on their lips—when they weren’t fighting to stay afloat themselves!”
Marty stopped speaking and looked at Sean and then David and then Sean again.
“Wonderful. You were great, Marty.”
“Yeah? Really?” Marty asked.
“Wonderful!” Jay said. He looked really pleased. “Marty, you’re so damned good, it’s going to be easy for me to appear to be the world’s most talented editor. When I’m done, you’ll see what I can do. You’re going to love the final footage.”
“I know it’s going to be good,” David said.
“One more thing, Marty. Will you do one of your sea shanties for us?”
“A privilege, boys, a privilege!” Marty said. He went for his old guitar in the corner. “Should have a squeeze box, really, but this will do.”
“Give us a chance to move the lights and the camera around a bit,” Sean said. Marty nodded happily and practiced strumming his string and tuning the instrument.
“Ready,” Sean said. “And we can film several takes, so you’re under no pressure.”
Marty grinned, strummed and sang.
“Oh, the sea, she is my lady,
E’er my lady true,
For the lady t’was my lady
Back upon the shore”
Mary strummed the last chord, set the guitar down and grinned.