[Christ, of all the things to which he's disinclined. Flint is not the least bit bawdry. It isn't that he's puritanical in any sense, but he's possessed of great reservations.

And very few of his stories can be told without cost. So, so few.

But Gates is already on his mind, and however they ended (I'm sorry, I'm sorry--) the man was a brother once. James is removed enough from the circumstances now that he can celebrate what was. Ten good years, had they. Before the last.

He can't tell it to the letter. That would give away his piracy, and open the avenues of conversation he has no desire to answer, but.]

I was working a shipbreaking job once. A group of men under me I'd known for years. One of them had a knack for finding hidden cargo and the like on old derelicts, things even the ship's captains had forgotten about. He specialized in tracking down booze. [a lift of his glass to signify his meaning.] So, we pull apart the bulkhead of an old sloop and he finds this bottle. We all think he's won the jackpot. Bastard pulls the cork out with his teeth and takes a swig've'it.

[His accent is generally a fairly cultured Londonian thing. It speaks of, God help him, elocution lessons that he never had but mimicked exactly. It slips there, at the end.]

Not water, not liquor. Straight piss. Sprayed half the rest of my work crew spitting it out again. I've never seen a man so virulently dunked in an ocean as that. Poor recompense, but I wager it made them feel better.