He wore a red eyepatch.

‘Haul to, ye dozy lubbers,

I’m fat’n’bad an’ tough,

An’ I smells plunder on the air,

Wot might be skilly’n’duff.’

Whoa skilly’n’duff, that’s the stuff,

Us waterbeasts can’t get enough!

Well I tell you, me word ’tis true,

Our crew got quite upset,

To rob a sailor’s dinner was,

The worst thing we’d ’eard yet,

So we put down our bowls’n’spoons,

Then armed ourselves with slings,

We slung at those ole pirate rats,

A dozen kinds o’ things.

Whoa skilly’n’duff, that’s the stuff,

To eat while fightin’ searats gruff!

That pirate Cap’n he got shot,

By a barrel load of peas,

Wot blacked his eyes an’ stung his thighs,

An’ fractured all his knees.

We hit the crew with onion skins,

Big cabbage stalks as well,

With hardcrust pies an’ ’orrible cries,

They splashed into the swell.

Whoa skilly’n’duff, that’s the stuff,

When vermin crews you must rebuff!

As Wobblechop sailed away that day,

We sang a jolly song,

The bottlenosed cook with laughter shook,

As the dinner bell went bong.

I’m old an’ fat with a greasy hat,

But this to you I say,

I must’ve scoffed a score o’ bowls,

Of skilly’n’duff that day.

Whoa skilly’n’duff, that’s the stuff,

When winter winds do howl’n’puff!”

High King Mokkan slept, though not peacefully or well, that night. The Marlfox’s dreams were a nightmare of disjointed visions. Lantur, the sister he had slyly murdered, kept trying to drag him into the pike-infested lake, smiling wickedly at him and repeating a hollow chant.

“Never trust a vixen, never trust a vixen!”

He turned to run, but was confronted by the brothers and sisters he had deserted. Their faces pale and wan, they pointed accusingly at him, murmuring, “Blood for blood, a Marlfox lies slain, somebeast must pay, blood calls for blood!”

He fled from them and, seeking safety, found himself leaping into his mother’s palanquin. However, he was surrounded not by a silk curtain, but by the tapestry from Redwall Abbey. Stern-faced and fearless, the mouse warrior figure stepped out from the tapestry and raised his magnificent sword. Panic such as he had never known seized Mokkan. With the blood in his veins like ice water, he hurled himself from the palanquin. Time stood still, and the Marlfox stumbled slowly to the ground, only to find himself confronted by others. A grim-faced young squirrel wielding the same sword that the warrior mouse had brandished, a squirrelmaid armed with a rod tipped by a glowing green stone, a great black and white eagle, talons spread, beak open. Creatures he could not identify, a watervole, a shrew, hedgehogs, all gathered around him, and his mother’s voice echoed mockingly in the gloom.

“Hail, High King Mokkan, last of the Marlfox brood!”