“Ha!” Thomas laughed, “It’ll be my pleasure to smack you aside the head, though I’d be more worried about the angel of your affection beating me to the punch.”

Thomas joined Jax at the railing, and cast his eyes downward as the man called out to the first mate. “She seems to be quite the prize,” he replied earnestly. “I certainly don’t blame you for the desire of the chase. Not unlike diving for deep pearls, don’t you think? I hope you can hold your breath for a good while.” 

“But, pox on the whole lot of them and their damned feminine powers,” Thomas said with a playful jab to Jax’s ribs. He spun back into the small deck of the crow’s nest, and took another drink of rum. “And pox on me as well, damn it all. I promised you a story, and if I won’t be telling you the one about last night, I’ll regale you with another!”

Thomas turned again, leaning against the opposite railing from Jax. After taking yet another drink, he tossed the bottle back to the helmsman. 

“Now, let me see. It needs to a good one to fulfill my debt.” Thomas said, his face looking up to the dark sky as he thought. “Ah ha, I have a splendid one for you.”

“When I was around eighteen or nineteen,” Thomas began with a smile, “and a right scoundrel and scallywag, Lightfoot had us running raids out of Nassau. We were there long enough that we even had to careen the [i]Skate[/i] once or twice. Now, on one such occasion, I returned to our shore camp after a long day of scraping barnacles. Exhausted, I went straight to my tent and collapsed with the desire for a long night’s rest.”

“I had lain there not five minutes when I heard a whisper, persistent and flirtatious, from just beyond the fabric of the tarp. Our camp was in a well-known location, and had been frequented by the whores from Nassau on a daily basis. Now, the ones that had been visiting our camp were not your normal street woman. These were famed courtesans from a respected bawdy house within Nassau. They were beautiful, exotic, and damned expensive.”

Thomas shrugged. “Now, being the over-confident man I am, I immediately thought I was being accosted by one of these fine island seductresses. Exhaustion be damned, I pulled aside my tent, and sure enough, there was a woman waiting on the other side. Mind you, it was near pitch black, and I could not clearly see this woman, but my expectant mind filled in all the pertinent details.” Thomas laughed at himself, and shook his head a moment before continuing.

“At any rate, I passed a long and vigorous night with this woman, and fell asleep in the wee hours thinking myself to be the very embodiment of the virile pirate. I awoke some time later to the first rays of the sun, and though still tired, I forced myself awake so as to gaze upon the goddess I had tamed during the night.”

A scowl came to Thomas’ face, and his eyes squinted with the disdainful memory. “What I awoke to, however, was no goddess. She was a dogfish of a woman, Jax. A real iron-chewer that looked as if she could handle a halyard as good as any man aboard the [i]Skate[/i]. I still remember with all-too vivid detail that the hair upon her lip looked as if it could have been braided into cordage, and still there would have been enough for the woman to have a respectable mustache.”