There were two things Mabel would not accept: compliments and promises. The pirate's assurances to protect her did nothing to assuage her anxieties about what would happen if Captain Brailham was usurped. Her first reaction was to tell the man to keep his heroic promises to himself, but she held her tongue. It wouldn't do to piss off her one ally. She really needed to work on impulse control. "Thank you," she scraped out awkwardly. The words felt so alien in her mouth; she wondered when the last time she said them was.

She was still resurfacing from her nightmarish phantasms when she motioned toward the town they had left behind and begun walking towards it. Her boots fell heavily on the hill's decline, making her arms swing in a cumbersome way while her hips knocked side to side. A fancier woman would try to make a show of herself when possible. There was also a reason fancier women did not exist in Nassau, Mabel told herself. She kicked up the dirt on the street as she approached the lively pirates' haven. Mabel made sure to stay a few steps in front of MacNichols so as to make it look like they weren't working together. Just loud enough for Douglas and Douglas only to hear her, she said, "Don't get too distracted in here, Scotsman." With that, Mabel took a turn and brought her boot lightly upon the creaking board of a tavern's veranda. The regulars simply called the establishment Bogart's Tavern, on account of the shiny-headed, corpulent man named Bogart who owned it. The insides were dim; Bogart didn't see the point of burning through so many candles if his patrons were going to get drunk and water-visioned regardless. This, and the loud ubiquitous thrumming of stringed instruments, helped Mabel disappear into the places that the sailors could only recognize as blurry shadows. She would let MacNichols take center stage while she perched crow-like in obscurity.

A few minutes went by. Mabel lingered beneath the stairs, listening to the boards groan every time someone went up and down. She held a tankard at her hip, but she had no intention of drinking it; she only purchased the alcohol to shirk Bogart's suspicion. Mabel watched with her narrow grey eyes. The men here were all sailors, judging by their garb and dark skin tanned from weeks at sea with only the moon's sky for shade. The way they drank was a dead giveaway, too. Any sot that lived on Nassau could get a drink any day, but the sailors drank like it was their last chance. For many of them, it would be; rum was rationed on the open ocean and often reserved for remedies of the physical sort, not a man's boredom.

Mabel was in the middle of her observations when a barmaid sidled up to her in a way very familiar to the pirate. Her shoulders shimmied left and right, and her weight transitioned dramatically from one hip to the other. She had a bottle in her hands, hands that were entirely too young and uncalloused to already be in the service of pouring. "Can I refill for ya, m'lady?" The young girl tilted the bottle neck before Mabel could answer. Consequently, Mabel lured her tankard away and gave a sharp look directly into the girl's eyes. "What'ya doin'?" Mabel queried with that irritated, grating voice. She jutted her chin towards her to emphasize her point. "You're workin' in a bar, lassie, not a bloody brothel. Don't pitch what y'ain't sellin', or else you'll just be people ideas." It was meant as advice but, in Mabel's weary fashion, delivered without the slightest hint of compassion. She gave a wave of her cup-holding hand, sending the red-faced woman away. Mabel watched her go. Something distant fussed in the pit of her gut. She brought the cup up to her lips and took a short drink.

She was mumbling to herself about young fools when a familiar sound vibrated through the drumming floors and through the canals of her ears. A year and a half sailing with a one-legged man would make the sound of a wooden prop recognizable to anyone. Jackham, a man she had no love for but could be more at ease around on account of his inhibited mobility, clacked into the bar. He had two other of the [i]Trident's[/i] sailors in his wake, and they looked too grave to have the intention of merrymaking in a tavern.