For as long as anyone can remember, a woman aboard a ship has been bad luck.
That is, until the *Marigold* washed up on the shore of a colony town a few months back. The flesh of its sailors peeled off, limbs strewn about like children’s toys, and a message written on the white sail in dried, brown blood.
*I desire a girl.*
Further messages arrived, written in viscera and gore, on the docks of port towns. It was evident to all. Ships that departed without one of the fairer sex aboard did not return.
Sailors mutinied. Brothels were raided, screaming whores dragged into the holds of ships. Fathers locked their daughters in their rooms – or else decided they were better off with a pocketful of coin and one less mouth to feed.
Soon, women realized they could secure free passage across the Endless Ocean, with merely a gamble.
The Captain’s Bait, the position became to be known as. Dangled, metaphorically – and sometimes, it was rumoured, literally – over the monstrous jaw of the unknown creature of the sea.