“This ‘Main Room’ was a close, shadowy, cluttered chamber. The first thing Amadeo noticed was the elegant bar, the second, what was plainly the room’s presiding spirit hanging behind it, a brightly colored portrait illuminated by two lamps. Amadeo stopped for a moment to stare.

The painting depicted a decapitated man seated at a table and toasting the room with a tankard made from a human skull. This convivial gent’s head lay on its side in a pool of blood on the rough boards at his elbow. The artist had done a fine job of making the eyes of the head alive and intelligent, its smile white, its sodden black beard tied into strands with blue ribbons, and tangled like the arms of a squid in the crimson puddle.”

The tavern, referred to locally as “the Death,” is a hollowed out beached ship set far back from the water on Sanctuary Strand. It has been part of Saint Nicholas for as long as anyone can remember.

For most male islanders, a night at the Death means drinking, gambling and other activities beneath the broad, lamplit section of tents in the back. For well-off businessmen and owners of property, however, there is the Main Room, which has its own separate entrance. This chamber is within the “ship” itself, and overseen by the grisly, brightly colored portrait of “The Captain.” (To see it, you must click the link and type in the toast, “tothecaptain”.)

Across the room and so placed that the picture’s severed head seems to be staring at it, is the “Captain’s Table,” where sit the most important of the prosperous men of the island.