Losing everything he had ever possessed and ever might possess was not quite worth it to hear Sylvius Duquesne say the word 'thar' but it was still quite the event. The grin though, that was something even more. Elliot caught it, an image before his eyes no matter where he was. This was a dream and as a dream, the key points of the story were utterly apparent. The good things were not missed. Nothing slipped through the cracks.
Do the hard work, Elliot had told his older counterpart, but he hadn't needed to rush to the topmast. He could have run to the wheel. It was telling he hadn't, for himself, for Sylvius. There was something natural and utterly unnatural about the man at the wheel in the face of this torrential sea.
There is understanding here, the understanding of an instant. Neither of them understood the actual necessities of their jobs, not really, but the thiefling knew a thing or two about desperate gambits, and the meaning of this one he was able to recognize despite all logic and reason. If there was any more logic and reason involved, maybe wouldn't have, after all.
There is a collision, a ramming, the smaller vessel becoming one with the larger in the most violent and uninvited manner. Sylvius is thrown down; Elliot, though, is soaring down, rope in hand. By all means, he should wait, but then there was his own gratification to think about. One hand holds the rope tightly, legs locked around it. The other has a dagger, one of the gemmed gifts of so long ago. The other of those is in between his teeth, not exactly the wisest place given the chance of a jarring landing. He was, of course, not the wisest pirate.
Thankfully, the landing itself is skipped. One moment he is in the air, perhaps starting a wholly unnecessary flip to a landing, the next, he is into the fray. The ship itself is the enemy, what it represents, yes, but also what it is. The crew bears this out. They may have been flesh and blood once but that was before years of dehumanizing profiting off the weak and helpless, of breaking the strong with cruelty and worse. They were now of the ship, more wood and iron nail and jagged chain than man. Elliot spoke true; it would take a human to fight beings such as this, a grinning, exhilarant human.
Thankfully, though probably hardly necessarily, Duquesne would have an example in the rogue. Three daggers flashed in a whirl (the third one, in and of itself a blur, not held by his hands or teeth and existing as if it was not there at al), the young man beginning to engage and beguile his opponents with a madness of wasted motion. It was more like art than science.
Distracted as he was, Elliot did not yet notice the cages upon the ship's deck, did not notice the prey of the slavers held within. Upon one side a dozen such cages, full of cramped, soiled, shivering simulations of himself, all at different ages, all in different states of suffering. Upon the other, another dozen and three more, these full of chained and sickly Sylvii Duquesne instead.