Some important procedure's underway on the gundeck. The gunports are all closed, except for one cracked open a hand's breadth on the starboard side – therefore, not far from Daniel when he emerges from the staircase. Several relatively important officers have gathered in a semicircle around this port, as if for a baptism. There's a general commotion of pinging and thudding coming from the hull-planks and the deck above. It could be gunfire. And if it could be, it probably is. Someone grabs the sack from Daniel and drags it to the center of the gundeck. Men with empty blunderbusses converge on it like jackals on a haunch.