<strong>Joseph Harden<br/>Mess Hall</strong><br/><br/>Harden wasn’t very keen on leaving the brunette with the captain, but it wasn’t as if he had a choice in the matter. After they had dropped Eloise off at the captain’s stateroom, news came through to them that there was a serious disturbance in the mess hall. It was hardly a challenge to figure out what might have caused it. Harden’s expression went grim. This was exactly what he had feared. The presence of the women was always going to rouse the men, but putting one on full display in the mess hall had just sped up the process. The Hawk had been inviting trouble with his decision to punish her in that manner. It took the commander and him only a minute to arrive on the scene, but it was a horrid sight. A large cluster of men was around the cage, the half of them with their hands through the bars, pawing the girl. The other half was shaking and yanking on the cage itself, obviously trying to break it.<br/><br/>A few of the men noticed the arrival of Harden and Commander Macheath, but they were too transfixed by the show in the cage to pay them much attention.<strong>“Attention on deck!”</strong>Harden bellowed, but he might as well have been whispering into an oncoming hurricane.<br/><br/>One small group of sailors did turn towards them.<em><strong> “On look, Macheath and his lackey. Come to take the other girl away for the officers too? Macauley already did the same, but we’ll deal with him later…”</strong></em>Harden recognized the man as Marc ‘Skip’ Jones. He had a big mouth on the best of days, but now he was so far out of line that he made Harden’s blood boil. The Chief Petty Officer stamped across the mess hall to where he was standing and took a mighty swing at him. In his youth, Harden had been quite the navy boxer, and his right hook still carried a mighty punch. Skip Jones was vaulted into the air and landed on his back with a loud and painful sounding clank.<br/><br/>Another one of the men grabbed Harden’s upper arm, but Harden reacted by pulling free from the grasp and then pinning down the man’s arm high up his back, and then slamming him into the bulkhead.<strong>“I will beat the crap out of every single one of you if you do not stand to attention right this instant!”</strong>It wasn’t enough to make the men comply, but it was enough to make most of them turn their gaze away from the cage for an instant. Harden hoped that Macheath would use the opportunity to sort the mess out for real.<br/>