I have brought you here, the last of your crew, in my quarters to show you, what it is that I am after. Once you have seen and have heard what it is that you can do for me and my crew of the “Ocean’s Sheath”. I will let you decided what you think it is that we want to hear from your mouth.

Some years ago when I asked the crew to transfer Captain Bleeds’ chandelier to my private quarters and gallery, I wasn’t expecting thee stench of gun powder, rum, and blood from that day’s battle to have followed it. It’s intricate sketching’s of mystical stories from the America’s, on smooth varnished South American Bloodwood was a genuine piece of original art work. It was never my wish to know its origin, but merely my need to have it hanging above me, lighting my true prizes. A reminder that I fear no darkness and I alone instruct the light we see on this unforgiving ocean. It is that formaldehyde stench of death that made me seek out plants from my unusual adventures to mask its hollow smell.

I had these glass panels made by a small Venetian man after we sank his merchants ship in the Atlantic between Seville & Cadiz, the Azores Islands. In exchange for his life he taught two of my men to create glass from any sand my ship touches. I replaced the slave greased wood that was the stern of this old English slave ship with these glass panels you see surrounding my quarters and that of my officers. They open at angle creating slits so that fresh air can come in, and during rain they collect drinkable water for the crew. These sweet and aromatic plants that hang along the side of these glass panels are on swivels and are suspended by pulleys to keep them stable even in the worst of storms. Among the hundred or so trees and plants that grow in my quarters around us and lingering behind each fresh scent of jasmine, the sapling ferns, Fire Lilies from the Cape of Good Hope, herbs, mints, and barely. Even over the aging rum barrels and my personal distillery in the corner to your right, is the mocking odor of rotting souls I delivered into the blue locker.

This navigational desk that stands 2 meters wide and 3 meters long between you and me, is fashioned from five figureheads of ships that my crew and I put beneath the sea. The musty smell of decades’ worth of the salty fog has imbedded deep into the planks that made up those figureheads.

Feel it. Feel the beaten carved wood that led those dead men across the unknown, feel the concave missing chunks from impacts of hot musket shots, or blasting cannon shrapnel. Can you smell the souls of cowards and hero’s that blanket my maps? Death himself knitted a cloth for me to eat and navigate upon, perhaps I am an instrument of his. Along side my compass rose and the sextant beside it.

Take this leaf. It is Coca Exotica, from my personal garden in this gallery. It is a prize from our recent conquest from a Colombian sugar transport in the Bahamas. It is similar to the Bay leaves of England, but you’ll notice something peculiar and different about you, after you chew on it for a minute. Notice is unnatural flavors, its chemical and pharmaceutical similarities. I ration each of my men 10 leaves a week, with a bottle of strong cinnamon rum from a fine distillery on New Providence Island.

Unlike many of the Captains that you and my men have followed, I don’t expect much out of my crew. Just their loyalty in times of battle, and their strength to deliver us there.

The bevel corners of these quarters are unique to all of the seas. In my years of taking what I want, it was this ship that has brought me the greatest of pleasure and these quarters I have forged to resemble my passions. As an adventurer and buccaneer scientists who is more then capable of surviving in turbulent and violent regions, I make empirical observations during battle that has gained me the knowledge, over arm chair academia in civilized European cities. What I have done here in these quarters would upset Kings and make Queens want bed me.

Once you get use to the wretched smell of Death, the sweeter the incense burn, the more pungent the vanilla orchids across the gallery smell in the early evening, and the guilt that follows you with each life you take as a freeman, is sooner forgotten with each coca leaf and sip of rum.

It is here around you in these worn leather bound log journals that smell of opium resin, where I keep my collections of data from Her Majesty’s Royal Navy’s intelligence, along with the Spanish Naval intelligence. Four years of voyaging and wagging war against their world. I have kept myself 20 knots a head of them, just by observing and documenting their stupidities in the hundreds of log books that line my library. Do you know what I love the most about not serving a crown no more?

My ability to take away that, which it wants the most.

So I ask of you, will you help me and my crew pursue our course finishing this war agains the crowns? Will you give me the information on the Urca D’Lima?

Or am I to feed you to the crew?