He woke from his reverie, at his desk, nailed to the pitching deck, to the sound of a heavy tear whetting his parchment. His attempt at memoir continued to elude him, ever stalling at the Spanish Mission where he had made the acquaintance of the murderous, marooned Scotsman. He had been just a boy. Now 26 years later, fully into his majority at age 40, that brief, savage encounter, yet defined him. That fact, in and of itself, was worthy of a good haunting. To make matters worse, in his mind's eye, he could advance his story no further than his meeting with that bloody-handed enigma—the very uncouth man who had counseled him to warn the mariners of his nation not to trespass on the shores he now approached aboard a war vessel of the Protectorate. A man of reasonable accomplishments and armed with the steady trust and faith of men in high places, he was poised to finally make a mark—and found himself unable to write of it.

The creak of Hempstead’s lame foot clomping down the stair in its wooden shoe brought him from his self-castigating pity, and focused his attention on the patter of the heavy snow falling on his cabin window. He pitied the old boy his aching bones, and counted himself lucky as well, to have enjoyed such faithful service for his entire waking life, since emerging from the fairytale age of boyhood at five.

The heavy, uneven tread came remorselessly toward his door.

Then sounded the respectfully cadent knock of two beats—one firm, one soft—followed in kind by the cracking voice of the man who had been his father and slave in equal parts, for his entire life, “Lord Shaw, Captain Smithers requires you on deck. It is noon, Lord—the clock has struck the nine-tailed hour, it has.”

“Yes, yes of course, Hempstead. Give yourself a rest and I shall make the obligatory appearance upon the main deck—It is to be the Main and not the poop, I presume?”

“Aye, Lord, a bright fellow you are. I shall accompany you. The hammock will wait—always waits, eager to toss these old bones on those buggered swells.”

He rose and buckled on his sword belt, replacing the quill in the ink well—for he would return directly and conquer this damnable reticence of the written word, once and for all!

The narrow door had creaked open, revealing Hempstead’s bulk, shoulder, arm and belly, encased like iron in stretched wool. How he envied the man his strength and robust constitution.

“Lord Shaw, don your cloak and hat—it’s a weathering out there, the crone at heaven’s gate blowing her nose again, if you will. We cannot have you arriving at your post under the wretched weather, now can we, Lord Shaw.”

Looking at the barrel-chested man, who had been sick but once in his life and had cured the killing ague by guzzling a cask of rum, Pendelton Shaw was reminded, as if by a flood of icy water, of his constitutional frailty, of the many winters of wracking ague, of the belly cramps from rich food, of his pathetic sword arm. He reached for his cloak and slung it over his narrows shoulders, wishing for once that some bulging muscle might obstruct the maddeningly easy task. Having buckled his neck clasp with studied skill, as his left hand was too palsied to assist, he then reached for his beaver hat, wondering for a moment if he would ever see one of their rodent-made damns that the Canadian voyagers spoke of.

“Doubtful that is, that my narrow arse shall ever venture beyond the fallow fields and pasturage of my domain.”

“Lord Shaw,” grumbled Hempstead, “you are thinking out in public again. Comport yourself, Lord, if you will.”

He choked back two tears—one for him and one for Hempstead—and snapped, “Indeed, Hempstead, it would not do for that savage pirate, Captain Slaughters-in-big-bloody-lots, to hear me babbling. Do not worry, Auntie, you shall not see myself hauled before a council of The Protectorate for mumbling like Merlyn.”

“Indeed, Lord, for they shall come in the night when I lay drunk, having washed away the echo of your impertinent solicitude with a good measure of Barbados spirits.”

Pendelton was now walking through the narrow door, not needing to turn or duck, as any other man on this ship would have had to do, and, as he felt her heave under his booted feet—made less dainty by this brash, swashbuckling artifice—he thought that he might miss the sea, as he made order out of disorder from the seat of his office in Porto Soto, lord of the very nominally British pirate’s den that had sprouted like a noxious weed from the ruin of the City of the Dons, which he had seen burned from the deck of a Dutch man-of-war on his fourteenth year.

Somehow Hempstead had made room for his slight form, and he glided elfishly by, assaulted by the salt sea air and the drum roll above, a terse, expectant noise that would not cease its maddening dirge until he had taken the place of honor, at the right hand of a man that could never respect him, Captain Edward Smithers, one of the more aptly-named fellows strutting upon the pitching deck of this cruel world.