In his younger years, Capitaine Boudreaux Balfa had been a doughty figure of a buccaneer and privateersman, but time and shore living on a hard-scrabble plot of land had not been kind. He had thickened and grown a trencherman's gut, a shad belly, though not an ounce of him was yet soft. Balfa was as thick as a fierce boar hog.

"Ah oui, Boudreaux mon cher," Lanxade agreed. "We don't make a ceremony out of it, we can be fifteen lieues alee by sundown. In deep water, and scudding Large. Bosun, fetch them up!"

He took Balfa by the arm and together they walked back to the rails, away from the swaggering, tipsy revellers. Time had been somewhat kinder to Lanxade; he was still tall, lean, and flat-bellied, unbowed after the toils of peaceful employment on trading company shalopes upriver to Manchac, Natchez, St. Louis, and the old Illinois settlements, and back. But Boudreaux did imagine he heard a suspicious creak from somewhere near Lanxade's middle, which put him in mind of a well-hidden corset. And Balfa allowed himself a secret smile to note that his old compatriot's grey roots were showing, along with the telltale splotch of greenish walnut-husk oil on his ears that betrayed his use of hair dye to remain so dark and virile-looking!

Sure enough, a playful poke at Lanxade's boudins met well-stayed canvas and whalebone resistance. "Hawn hawn hawn!" He softly, nasally chortled at such vanity.

"Oh, shut up, you old bougre," Lanxade hissed back, stiffening to maintain his dignity. And his secrets.

"So, we kill dem, or we maroon dem?" Balfa asked off-handedly.

"Maroon," Lanxade told him, "for the novelty of it."

"Dem babies not tired o' killin' yet?" Balfa wondered aloud.

"Bored with it, more likely," Lanxade said in a harsh mutter. "I could say queasy of the consequences, but with this lot, I wouldn't count on it. Sated for now, but a few weeks ashore, and they'll wish to be back at it. Piracy's addictive… as we both know, cher. Pissing God and the Devil in the eye."