The ship's captain, who has been on board for about a decade, asks how long it's been since he was last on the ship. He says he'll probably be around for a long time, since he's the acting captain. The captain tells him that he and his crew are drakers, too, and that they shoot at dragons with bomb lances. He tells the captain that he'd like to be able to sweat bullets while he watches him board a dragon, because it would be nice if he could "sweat bullets every time" he tried to listen to the dragon's roar. He also says that he plans to visit his secret base, which is in a nearby town. He asks the captain if he has any other secrets, and the captain says he doesn't have any, but he does have a secret base. He's going to visit the secret base because he thinks that it'll be hard for the dragons to come close to the ship again, since the ship is made out of wood, pinna, and a harpoon. He compares the ship to a "rotten old cloud" that's covered with patches of patches, and he wonders if the dragons would try to come after it again, because the ship has no harpoon cannon and the hull is made of pinna and wood. He wonders how the captain managed to catch a dragon with this tiny piece of machinery, and wonders if it would have been a good idea for the captain to twist his arm to throw the lance straight at the dragon, as he used to do with his old crewmate, Mika. Mika, he says, used to ride on the same crew with the same twist