I was just sinking mother's snake-handled dirk into a jugular when a hand touched my shoulder and there was a thin fellow covered in patterns with white and black clay from head to toe, but otherwise completely naked. "Dinner?" he asked.

My dirk was already at his throat before I realized who it was. "Henry! Where -- how came ye to be here?" I asked, lowering the blade.

"I've had more than my fill of your grandmother's prictical humor." He rubbed across the bottom of his nose with an ivory white finger and clay crumbled away and fell to the deck in a powder. "Can you imagine -- she sent me, ostensibly upon an errand to retrieve a debt owed her, to an island known to be infested with head-hunters? I determined to turn the skiff toward Tortuga instead, here to seek my fortunes in less dangerous waters. I see that you're - um - let me not interrupt your - work."

"You've run away! But how did you find me?"

"I came asail into Buttonhole Cove this morning. In the distance I saw you and Mr. Birdsong. When you returned to this ship, I followed -- thought to surprise you. I must have been a quarter mile out when I heard sounds of a pitched battle. I'm most pleased, but not surprised that you are the survivor. Is Mr. Birdsong uninjured?" His eyes were two deep holes in the cracked clay covering his face.

"A bruise upon his rump is the full extent of his injuries, as best I can determine. --This clay you're covered with... against the sun?" I slipped the blade behind the dead sailor's jugular, then flipped it outward in a bloody arc. "Fetch me that keg from o're by the railing, 'f ye please"

"Well, there's that, and then there's the matter of stylish dress." It seemed not to occur to him that he was not dressed at all.He had the small keg by me and I grabbed the bung with my teeth and extracted it.

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