'Any other captain would – but whoever arranged to put you aboard, must've known about Captain van Hoek's feelings concerning pirates. Behold!' and Dappa steps out of the way to give Daniel an unobstructed view of a sight stranger than anything gawkers would pay to view at St. Bartholomew's Fair: a hammer-handed man climbing up into the rigging of a ship. That is to say that one of his arms is terminated, not by a hand, and not by a hook, but by an actual hammer. Van Hoek ascends to a suitably perilous altitude, up there alongside the colors that fly from the mizzenmast: a Dutch flag, and below it, a smaller one depicting the Ægis. After getting himself securely tangled in the shrouds – weaving limbs through rope so that his body is spliced into the rigging – he begins to pluck nails out of his mouth and drive them through the hem of each flag into the wood of the mast.