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.

I always like when we take on new crew members. Entertaining, it is. First they has to acclimate to the ship. You know, a sailing ship is never still but pitches and yaws on the waves. A pirate can walk on a heaving deck as easy as a baron’s daughter on a ballroom floor, but the new ones, most of them have more than a little trouble. Then once they’re thinking they might be able to stand, the first mate sends ‘em up the rat lines to set the sails. If you think the deck is moving, imagine yourself forty feet up in the air on the mast, pitching like someone stuck on the top of tree. Most of ‘em just cling. A few of them sob. Them’s my favorites, if you know what I mean.

I’ll stick close to this new batch.