"I cannot very well take suggestions so easily once the story is halfway completed," Watson countered. "If I write half the story and you then request that I craft some sort of situation with a young aristocrat being held for ransom by an unsavoury pirate captain, and I've already done something with, I don't know, a romance between two sailors plotting mutiny, it will be hard to implement."

In truth he was at present favouring neither scenario, and was at that moment considering a romance between a young captain and his first mate, but he hadn't firmly decided on anything at that point, either.