We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot
Drink up, me 'earties, yo ho!
We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot
Drink up me 'earties, yo ho!
Yo ho, you ho, a pirate's life for me!
It was raining – a heavy, crushing rain that sent even the toughest pirate belowdecks, cursing at the sky and Nature in general all the while. The sails were furled, as no Captain was crazy enough to pilot in a gale like this, and no crew worth their salt would sail in one. All the crew was crowded below, listening to the fierce, steady drum of rain on wood, and thanking whatever God they happened to believe in (or just giving out a generic prayer of thanks as shared by all atheists and agnostics in times like these) that they had managed to find even partial shelter in the cliffs of an unnamed island in the Atlantic, somewhere quite a ways off the coast of South America.
We extort and pilfer, we filch and sack
Drink up me 'earties, yo ho!
Maraud and embezzle and even highjack
Drink up me 'earties, yo ho!
Yo ho, Yo ho, a pirate's life for me!
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!
The rain fell not in drops, not even in sheets, but in quilts – big and thick and very bulky – and created a sound not unlike a thousand drummers performing a fanfare – for every square inch of ship. Thus, it wasn't surprising that none of the heard the song, although none of them would have been surprised if they did, and more than half of them suspected it was being sung anyways. And, well, why not? Their latest raid had been a success, and they actually hadn't killed all that many people, which, contrary to popular opinion, they weren't all that fond of. Oh, yes, any one of them on that ship would've been willing to kill without a thought, every one of them had killed without a thought, and none of them had agonized over it all that much later – or, at least, they hadn't agonized over killing for a long time. Still, the Cap'n was a bit of a queer one (much in the way the sun in the desert at high noon is a tad warm), and vaguely paranoid (again, only in the way water is vaguely wet) and so it came to be that any crewman who got the bloodlust was dumped off in the nearest port they could find, no matter how long the crewman had been with them, what he knew, or how short-handed they were.
We kindle and char, inflame and ignite
Drink up me 'earties, yo ho!
We burn up the city, we're really a fright
Drink up, me 'earties, yo ho!
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!
And yet, no matter the Captain's idiosyncrasies, every last one of them, right down to the parrot, would follow him anywhere. They'd probably even sail out into this storm if he told them to – but not even the Captain was daft enough for that. Indeed, they'd all come to develop a sort of fierce pride for their Captain and all his "quirks" as they called him, an attitude that was as easily roused and as hard to cool as a mother's defense of her young. It could be summed up as almost "'E may be a daft ol' drunkard, an' a mutherluvi'n sunnuva dog, but 'e's our daft ol' mutherluvi'n sunnava dog, ya 'ear?", but not really because … because … well, you'd have to be a pirate to understand. No, you'd have to be more than a pirate, you'd have to be one of them, you'd have to have sailed under the Captain, you have to have met the Captain before you could even begin to understand. Without that, without having known him, you may as well explain the color of time, or tell what sound orange makes, than describe the effect he had on people.
We're rascals, scoundrel's, villans and knaves
Drink up, me 'earties, yo ho!
We're devils and black sheep, really bad eggs
Drink up me 'earties, yo ho!
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!
In the end, you could probably say it was because of the rain. In the rain, the ship stayed lashed down, wallowing in a rocky "harbor" that gave half-shelter which was so very, very much better than none at all, and in the rain the crew ran belowdecks and cursed. Birds found shelter where they could, or died; animals curled in their dens and waited for the end, or drowned; people huddled up in their houses with blankets and hot drinks, or were chilled to the bone and probably caught ill. But in rain such as this, Captain Jack Sparrow danced on the slippery decks, heedless of such trifles as soaking clothes, sodden boots, smearing khol, and death-slick wooden boards, his feet landing as surely as if the decks had been bone dry, head upturned to the weeping heavens, singing, as if the wind did not steal his voice from his lips, and as if the rain did not drown out his song so that you could not hear him even if you stood an arm's-length away. It was a song about pirates, understandably, and pillaging and looting and rum and all those other things associated with pirates. But underneath that, beyond that, it was a song about joy and hope in the face of damnation, about laughing it up and standing until the last, and beyond. It was a song about freedom – and a song about dancing in the rain.
We're beggars and blighters and ne'er-do-well cads
Drink up, me 'earties, yo ho!
Aye! But we are loved by our mommies and dads
Drink up, me 'earties, yo ho!
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!