You could say I've had a full life, on the high seas scouting for rich merchant vessels and livin' it up with my mates on South Sea islands. Yeah, I don't regret a minute of it, except maybe the fight when I lost me leg, and the time when my best friend turned on me in a drunken brawl and put out my eye with a broken bottle. You know everybody wants to live the easy life and that was my dream when I decided I'd had enough of privateering and headed for my own remote piece of paradise in the Society Islands. Well, it hasn't been as rosy as they claim. Even with my fine clothes the heat and humidity still turns them sour after a week or so, but I can live with my own aroma, I guess. That way I don't mind if my parrot relieves himself on my coat. Also, the bugs are everywhere and get into my gruel, but some of them are kind of crunchy and add extra flavor.
I get around okay, going to the market for breadfruit and sometimes fresh fish, and o'course stopping by the watering hole to reminisce with old pirate pals. When I stay too long I get kinda bleary-eyed, which is bad because I only have one eye and can't really tell where things are in front of me until it's too late. That must be what happened the other evening when I was on my way home. Cursed root had grown across the path during the day and I didn't see it properly. Sure enough I caught it with my good leg and that left me teetering like a ballerina on the point of my wooden leg. Well, in my younger days I would have just laughed and made a pirouette to impress the ladies, but there was nobody there on the path except maybe a few lizards. When they saw me toppling they scattered, and o'course my trusty parrot friend decided to abandon ship.
Well, like a good captain I went down with the vessel, and I did drown in my sorrows for a time, laying there on the path in the gloom, feeling sorry for myself. But you know what? I figured this was my reward for escaping death so many times in the past. It isn't pleasant, this daily struggle, but it has its own kind of sweetness.