Ten minutes was the amount of silence Cygnus would give Altair, and as soon as the slave left the cabin he trod over to the corner alcove to the right of the cabin's door, where on most days he slept. At the corner was a window facing out to see, and the alcove was concealed smartly by the ragged curtains of the window. The alcove contained a shelf built into its walls, the shelf meant to store whatever trinkets or garments he had, and it contained a handful of neatly folded garments. But for the most part, the storage space was occupied with trinkets - things that he had collected throughout his long sea journeys and pillaging of merchant ships. But the bulk of his collection lay hidden behind a false wood panel on the lowest shelf. With a bit of maneuvering the stiff panel moved to reveal the rest of the captain's stash.<br/><br/>Weapons. Numerous weapons. They ranged from small blades to strange machinations made of rope and hefty stone spheres. But what he was looking for were the<i>whips</i>- whips that he had taken from slave barges. Five in total, he had amassed the collection over the two decades or so he had been at sea. Whips had always fascinated him, and he was taken with a morbid curiosity at times with their effectiveness and usage. It was a near-masochistic delight he had, to find whips to be of interest to him, when they had been used at one point to brutalize his own self. All five he retrieved from the concealed cubby, laying them out to length upon his map-scattered table. Which would he choose to dole out the punishment to Altair? All were finely crafted whips, the best that he had found during his travels.<br/><br/>One at a time he observed each whip, taking it into his hands and stroking them with a profound enthusiasm. One whip was crafted out of chocolate leather, tipped at the ends with pellets of iron. Another was dyed cobalt and had at the tips odd holes where either slivers of obsidian were meant to be inserted, or whatever the person wielding the whip wished to insert. Two whips had multiple tails, and he thought of it to be too cruel for even him to use, not when such usage was a guaranteed execution. In the end he settled on the last of the whips, and arguably the simplest - one crafted out of ebony leather, with a stiff handle made of bull horn. It radiated a draconian aura, and if he brought it to his noise he could've sworn he smelt the scent of metallic iron upon it. Cygnus imagined that, if he knew more of the whip's aside from how he had claimed it from the captain of the filthiest slave barge he had seen with his eyes, that it would have the bloodiest history among any of the weapons in his disposal.<br/><br/>He returned the whips to their sanctuary, replacing the panel. Ten minutes was the amount of time that he had been planning to give Altair, but he imagined that he had lingered past the allotted time. With the whip in hand he stepped out of his cabin, raising the whip above his head and lashing it forward into the empty air before him. A loud crack echoed throughout the air, and his men by the ship railings stopped whatever they were doing to see what he was doing. With a faint gesture two men marched forward to Altair, one with rope in hand, pulling the slave to his feet and forcing him against the mast of the ship.