I was born a sensitive soul but I was afflicted with a skin condition what disfigured me a bit. Pocks on my nose and pits on my cheeks and a bit of flaking in the eyebrows. I got to the point where I didn’t like the way folk looked at me. Got me in a few scrapes, it did. Fisticuffs flying. Cut short my schooling, all that getting in fights, and I ran away to sea.

My first glory days were on the old Easy Virtue, as fine a smuggler and small time pirate as ever robbed the innocent. Alas, the Revenue Men caught up with us at last, and I was sentenced to serve before the mast in a Royal Navy ship—but that’s an old story. Suffice to say I eventually escaped back to a life of pirating.