Waves crack with wicked fury against me ship's hull while ocean currents rage as the full moon rises o're the sea. (Cutthroat's Omen: A Crimson Dawn)

I'm no longer a child and I still want to be, to live with the pirates. Because I want to live forever in wonder. The difference between me as a child and me as an adult is this and only this: when I was a child, I longed to travel into, to live in wonder. Now, I know, as much as I can know anything, that to travel into wonder is to be wonder. So it matters little whether I travel by plane, by rowboat, or by book. Or, by dream. I do not see, for there is no I to see. That is what the pirates know. There is only seeing and, in order to go to see, one must be a pirate.

Three,' reckoned the captain, 'ourselves make seven, counting Hawkins, here. Now, about honest hands?'Most likely Trelawney's own men, said the doctor; 'those he had picked up for himself, before he lit on Silver.'Nay,' replied the squire. 'Hands was one of mine.'I did think I could have trusted Hands,' added the captain.

It's better to swim in the sea belowThan to swing in the air and feed the crow,Says jolly Ned Teach of Bristol.

Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.