Get up for a call of nature.

Nils' mouth still burned from that little red thing he'd eaten, but now that the burn had settled down, his bigger source of embarrassment was his loud, persistent hiccoughs.

"Hic!" he emitted as his diaphragm spasmed.

Rusty, Dirk, and Shanks laughed. Annie, Sukey, and Peaches tittered. Polly was still off "curtseying to the Queen of Spain."

Nell the barmaid returned, bringing a pitcher for the thirsty sailors and their girls to refill their tankards.

Dirk was buying this time. He tried to navigate his coins down the front of Nell's dress, but Nell coolly steered Dirk's hand into her apron pocket and twisted his thumb till he released the money.

"Ah, such a hard heart to deny a sailor a bit o'fun!" Dirk said.

"Not a hard heart for you but a soft 'un for myself. If I let your kind have your 'fun', I'd be black 'n blue with pinch marks!" Nell retorted.

"You know my pinch, Nell, it never did bite."

"'S they all say," Nell said. "And for fun, I'd say you've all you can handle sittin' across the table."

Peaches simpered at Dirk, her coy sidelong smile making her freckles dance.

"Hic!" Nils said.

As Nell replenished the bowl of salty, oily, and dangerous morsels, she said helpfully to Nils, "I've heard tell if you can say your alphabet twice backward, it'll get rid of 'em."

"Z, Y, X, eh, W, Hic!" Nils said. "Start over, Z, Y, X, W, V, Hic!"

"Mayhap a shot of rum, Nils?" Shanks suggested. "It allus does it for me."

"Gargle with ale?" Rusty said. "S'what I do."

Dirk scratched his beard. "I shinnies out a spar, knots me heels in the rigging and hangs head down over the water. That stops 'em dead."

Nils' eyes widened at the frightening thought. "Hic!" he spasmed. "Let me get some air," he said.
Nils rose from the table and looked about the street around the bar where his shipmates were drinking at an outside table. A pressure in his bladder led him to quest for a suitable place to empty it. He went round the side of the tavern and started loosening his breeches.

"Hic!" he cried as his chest convulsed.

Nell the barmaid stuck her head round the corner. "Not there, you silly boy!" she scolded. "There's a piss trough back through the common room."

Abashed, Nils followed Nell's directions to a small, reeking room off the main room of the tavern and stood at a wooden trough between two men similarly unburdening themselves. His piss-mate on the right was a large dark-skinned man with the arm and hand scars of a long-working sailor and a thick gold ring through his ear. In his scarred hand was a dark, flaccid, yet impressively long prick. On Nils' left was a young sailor with a crisply inked tattoo of a mermaid on his upper arm. He stood and pissed with an ease and confidence that Nils only hoped he could acquire. Both of the sailors used a one-handed grip to piss, pinching under the head with finger and thumb and sticking the other three fingers up, while Nils pissed with both hands, using his forefingers and thumbs with his other fingers curled in.

The two men talked across Nils.

"Julius," the young sailor addressed the other, "will you not come tonight?"

"Surely not," his muscular fellow said. "For tonight I dine with Dinah the shipchandler's daughter. And with her fault-finding father, her pugilistic mother, and a sharp-clawed auntie or two. It's off to the bath and the barber, and I misdoubt that I shall even pay Wooden Peg a call."

"Hic!" Nils croaked.

The two sailors laughed. "Liquor not setting well?" the young sailor to Nils' left inquired.

"Nothing a gentle slap under the ribs wouldn't cure," the large fellow to Nils' right suggested.

Nils' stream of piss dribbled to drops, then stopped.