The Jolly Roger

A Brawl Of History Making Potential

After a long day of signing reference letters for her departing crew and attempting to find new recruits (a fruitless endeavor for the discouraged Carrigan) she, along with a very few of her men, made their way a few streets over from where they had made port, to the Crow's Nest.

The Crow's Nest was known as a pirate's tavern, a rather famous one at that; famous for its prostitutes, brawls, stabbings, and let's not forget the house brew. The brawls and brew was what Carrigan was after at the moment, though she couldn't really be sure of what her men were there for, Xalvador and James Dangerous were strictly escorts; the other three seemed to have different aspirations, disappearing with a couple of penny wenches almost immediately.

Carrigan took up a table that sat catty-corner in the back of the room and the group ordered a round of pints, the barmaid graciously accepted her coin, and her tip, which was more than the maid could have hoped for. Carrigan was known for being generous to barmaids that deserved it, those that showed they had some self respect by not showing all of their, um, assets to the world.

She fancied her mother had been a barmaid, though she actually knew nothing about her mother, and Carrigan was just taking care of her sisters in the business. Of course, Carrigan's mother could have also been a two-bit floozy, that didn't mean Carrigan was going to started tipping prostitutes, well, not the ones that looked like they ate regularly anyway.

The barmaid hurried back with they're drinks and they ordered some fish and chips to go with it; yet another thing The Crow's Nest was famous for. As they waited they chatted amongst themselves about the day's events. Several of Carrigan's veteran sailors had chosen to leave the ship, and she had a little over ten spaces to fill onboard before they could finally set sail again.

"Maybe we should just go anyway," Xalvador suggested. "We could make it to Bournemouth or Portsmouth easily with the crew we have, and there are always people looking to get out of those places."

"Let's stick around another day," Carrigan said with a wink, "We may have some luck after tonight." Xalvador nodded, but said nothing. He wasn't the type to question the motives of his captain even when the motives were certainly questionable. James, however, was of a different breed than Xalvador and was very dedicated to questioning just about everything.

"Why the wink?" James asked, fairly clueless to the situation.

"What wink?" Carrigan said, grinning. It was grin that said she knew exactly what he was talking about but wasn't going to tell him. James had seen it many times, as many times as he had seen all of her other grins, except the flirty one that made him want to crawl around after her in his hands and knees. He has seen that one only a handful of times; he had seen the one with life threatening qualities even less.

It was a grin he would willingly strip off his skin to avoid, and he had only seen it once when she had shot Jean Petite dead on The Jolly Roger's deck. Rumor on the ship was Jean had seen it too, and it had scared his ghost out of haunting the place. James knew better than that, he wasn't a superstitious man, he knew ghosts didn't exist, and even though he had seen plenty of weird shit at sea he wasn't about to start believing in the supernatural now. But some nights, he let his mind wonder, until it was almost possible.

"She means to start a fight." Xalvador whispered to him when Carrigan got up to get some cloth napkins from the bar.

"What why?"

"Well, if the people around here see us as dangerous, fighting pirates and not just a bunch of panties following a girl around by skirts we might get some sign ups."

"This was Carrigan's idea?!" James cried, bewildered.

"Of course not!" Xalvador laughed, "It was Liam's." James sighed and turned to look at Carrigan just in time to see a rather rough sailor make a grab for her fitted trousers. She spun, kicked him in the most sacred of places, hard enough to make James wince from the guy, and stuffed her handful of napkins into his mouth when his jaw hit the floor.