Knock. Knock. Knock.
"Aye?" thundered Barbossa, throwing down his set square and fixing a terrible look at the door.
A long forehead appeared, followed by an eyebrow, followed by the rest of Captain Lovehaste. Barbossa rolled his eyes and suppressed the new desire to run amok with his pen knife, gouging things and singing obscene drinking songs.
She edged into the room. She was so unbelievably pathetic Barbossa couldn't even bring himself to dislike her strongly enough to get her viciously killed. She was also carrying some rum, which was a saving grace. He took it off her as genteely as the circumstances would allow, and swigged.
She coughed. "Erm… dinner is being served."
"I eat in me quarters," he said dismissively. "Join the men. Help yourself to what you want- quite a lot of it's the stuff we salvaged from yer ex-ship."
For a moment he could see she was going to consider being angry at him (her eyebrow jumped in a most alarming way up and down, straining for her hairline then falling back, exhausted), but dismissed this and coughed again. "Erm… I suppose you'll ask me to dine with you?"
"Will I?" he exclaimed, a little aghast.
"Yes," she said, brightening up now that she was on surer ground. "That's the tradition."
He shrugged. You don't serve as first mate under Jack 'Delirium on Legs' Sparrow without developing a certainly resistance to the ridiculous, and having the scrawny Captain Lovehaste bleat at him through dinner was almost restful in comparison to what he used to get up to with Jack.
("Barbie!"
"Yes, cap'n?"
"I smell opportunity a-comin'."
"Aye, cap'n, and what does it smell like?"
"Coconuts, my salty sailing sanguine shark. Look. Over there. Harpoon me one for breakfast.")
He realised she'd just prompted him about something. "What?" he snapped, still recalling the terrible struggle with the coconit. ("The pineapples are coming! The pineapples are coming!" "It's fine, Jack, they only bite if provoked.")
"I said," she said petulantly, "I suppose you'll want me to wear a dress to dinner? One you have in your store of exotic treasures, mmm?"
Barbossa unsuccessfully tried to not shudder as an image of Mariella Lovehaste in harem pants and a pair of metal bowls floated past, on the word 'exotic'. "If it makes you happy," he mumbled. She beamed- apparently he was sticking to his half of the script- and skipped out.
Barbossa groaned and started thinking about ripping out people's stomachs and showing them their lunch before they died. It was one of his favourite pastimes, and thinking about it usually dispelled gloom. Not today though.
Half an hour later Barbossa was sitting before a laden table, picking at his meat and watching Captain Lovehaste primly cut her bread (her bread forgod'ssake) into little square inches. He fantasised about turning into a large enraged mallard duck and pecking her unfortunate-looking nose until she ate it with her fingers, sobbing in submission all the while. He couldn't help noticing she'd chosen a particularly resplendent dress of cream, with golden embroidery in a fleur-de-lis pattern, that was designed for a fuller figured woman. The occasionally slosh rather disturbingly suggested that a tepid hot water bottle was doing the job of a pair of 36Cs.