William Brand

Welcome aboard the Pub, Miss Constance.

Happy Birthday!

I had two tires blow off the rims at 95 miles per hour at four in the morning just forty miles outside of Winnemucca, Nevada. We never left the road and we didn't hit a thing. Four years before that I was thrown from the bed of a truck in a roll over accident and walked away with only a scrape and some troublesome long term whiplash. I've been clipped or nearly hit by other people so many times in my life I've lost count. I'm a near miss magnet.

A little lamb and rosemary to round out a good holiday.

Happy Easter!

Cannibal.

I'll throw the project to my friend Big Mike. He has done stuff for me before and he might be able to tackle this one.

Really? How much? How will you make it? Sandcast? I don't know how I would make it. That's why it would cost you. It would take me longer than most. Still, I do want to make one, so I plan to learn how. I've done a little forge work and some sandcasting, but I'm not set up for either at present. If you need one right away, you should chase after a craftsman more experienced than me.

Temptation, Reward or Regret, depending on your point of view or time of day.

Tonight's special is...well... Damn. Doesn't that look good?

Aye, that's the spirit. Doubling our rank and file. We'll soon sink the fort in mass.

An arm and a leg ...and I am sure he can get them too. Gory and funny both. Like my fridge.

Aye. Bloodiest band of cut-throats ever.

Aye. You are the 456th person on the list by my reckoning.

I can...but it will cost you.

Aye, we hang them there. Okay, we don't actually hang them. They cart in their own gallows, and after several days of music, sword biscuits and the like, they hang themselves.

We're waiting for France to annex Martinique to me. At present, I don't own so much as a broom closet in the tropics.

If I owned Martinique, I would insist that you visit, or rather live permanently, and play pirate. I would insist that a great many here do the same.

We need those numbers up, people. Recruit, recruit, recruit. Let's see some more pirates!

...but the chocolate is good for a start.

In that case I want a ship with 74 guns and the whole island of Martinique for my very own.

I was thinking more of a sipping cocoa, but that looks delicious.

Everything is suitable for a return to the Kate, provided that you have enough time to eat...well...everything. I would first recommend a dark chocolate, unsweetened, and laced with something equally dark. Then a stroll on the Kate's quarterdeck by afternoon light and then a long dinner served in parts over a period of several hours with a fiddler and rice pudding for company.

Welcome aboard. You may already know this, but we have a great many Texan pirates in this Pub, so you're in good company.

Nothing would please me more than to see three or four lads and lasses at the forge during the events. The ring of the hammers carrying over the fort and the encampments would add greatly to the festival and I have always felt that the forge is one of our best untapped points of interest at the fort, it being almost central to the foot traffic to and from the fort, parking lots and encampments. Not only would it prove educational and inviting to all ages, but the products made there could enrich the fort pub and the encampments greatly. We could make tongs, vent picks, baling hooks, hoops, strikers, knapping hammers, hearth hooks, nails, baldric hardwear, shackles, tent staves, pokers, and all matter of goods there.