Exit Stratergy

[Melsiebug]

A reviwer brought up the question of why the admral would bother to give Exit a history lesson as he is just a pet and not an offical part of the family or crew. Their are reasons for this.

The admiral is is retired, and like most men who have given up an all consuming job (is pirating a job?), he is a mixture of relived and very very bored. He knew he couldn't carry on and he had trained his son from an early age to take over, but he still misses it greatly and is happy to take any chance to talk to anyone about his family and life at sea in general. A newcomer is great news to him as they wouln't have already heard all his stories .

He also feels that everyone who lives on the island or is any way connected with his family should know the history, all his servants would have most likely been dragged into the portrate gallery when they first started and given a much longer version than Exit got (there was cake downstairs to be eaten after all), and the young femail ones would have also got a little light sexual harassment as well, I imagine he's a big one for pinching bottoms. In fact if someone came the door selling god bothering leaflets (which they wouldn't because they live on their own island, but go with me here) they would end up knowing more about pirates and sailing than they ever wanted to.

Quint never bothered, and he's not excatly being truthful when he tells his father their hasn't been time, it simply hadn't occured to him to do it, he is much more of the "just a pet" opinion, although he is very fond of them as well in his own way.

It may have also occured to some readers that the admiral doesn't seem like someone who was considered a strong leader and fearsom pirate in his day, just remember that this is the retired version of him, at some point in the future we will see the other side of him, and it won't be pretty.

[Melsiebug]

Why did the captain think that Exit knew any thing about Topher's attempt to get Jasper punished?

Well, I fucked up a bit. In my original draft of the chapter Quint just orders Exit to accompany him and the others to his cabin, when I read that back I realised that their was absolutly no justification for this whatsoever, and that if I didn't think it made sense I couldn't expect anyone else to either.

I didn't want to have to compleatly pull apart the chapter and re write it, and clearly Exit had to be there, so I considered my options. I could have moved the whole scene and had it played out on the deck in public, but firstly that would have made Quint behave very ooc, he just wouldn't want the crew to see all that, and secondly I wanted to get rid of Jasper during the actual sorting out of the punishments, otherwise he would have been a total pain in the backside arguing every point with the captain.

So I kind of fudged it a bit by throwing a line where Quint asks him if he knows anything about what's going on and Exit stalling, that was my justification really, perhaps I should have made a little more of it to get the point across.

I don't think it's unlikely that he would have asked Exit about this however, he's the only person other than Quint who spends any real time with Topher, and he's clearly noticed that they are getting on a lot better than they used to. On that subject, yes, this is the catalyst that will speed up the shift in their relatioship with one another, I don't want to give anything away but I hope readers enjoy the upcoming chapters.