Cassie Moody

Black Jack's tavern on Kunt A'kinte, haven for all scum and villainy of the new word and the place where you currently reside. The tavern patrons mind their own business, drinking, smoking, playing games and chatting, some of them singing along to the tune played by local band. By some tables you can see people sitting – each armed to the teeth, with pistols, cartridge boxes, and swords on their hips. Everyone in the tavern knows that these men are crew of Captain Moody – one of only few female sea rovers in the New World. You can clearly see her, sitting alone by her usual table, knowing well what kind of clients her crew and she herself is.

There were nights when she took a deal more rum than her head would carry; and then she would sometimes sit and sing her wicked, old, wild sea-songs, minding nobody; but sometimes she would call for glasses 'round and force all the trembling company to listen to her stories or bear a chorus to her singing. Often could be heard whole tavern shaking with “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”, all the neighbors joining in for dear life, with the fear of death upon them, and each singing louder than the other to avoid remark. For in these fits she was the most overriding companion ever known. She wouldn't even allow anyone to leave the inn till she had drunk herself sleepy and reeled off to bed. As the tavern band stops playing, and as you think of all this, suddenly she – the captain, that is – begins to pipe up her eternal song:

"Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum Drink and the devil be done for the rest Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum The mate was fixed by the bosun’s pike The bosun’ brained with a marlinspike And Cookey’s throat was marked be-like It had been gripped by fingers ten And there they lay all good dead men Like break o’ day in a boozing ken Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of rum"

And then, unexpectedly, she raises from her seat and unsheathes her cutlass, pointing towards you with a smile

"Fifteen men of a whole ship’s list...?"

She says towards you, clearly demanding you to finish the verse.