Ghastly remembered that. He'd arrived at the docks after the pair cast off, and they were little more than tiny figures in the distance by that point. But he could see the hat being blown off, remembered wincing at the loss of that pirate memorabilia Skulduggery had been so fond of, and then watching with increased shock as the boat actually started turning around to follow it.

Skulduggery hadn't exactly been a capable sorcerer back then. Oh, he was good, and always had been. Natural talent, that man. But he hadn't been able to manipulate the water around a large sailboat, and he hadn't been able to stop the wind from taking his hat. Nowadays, neither disastrous event - the hat loss or the crash - would even have happened in the first place.

But it did back then, and the memory still made Ghastly laugh. "He refused to step onto a boat again until he was able to steer it without using the tiller." Within a few years, of course, Skulduggery was surpassing even Ghastly with his control over water, but that wasn't the point. "Did he ever tell you where he got that tricorn? He stole it right off a pirate's head. That was the day we met. He asked me how it looked, and I said it made him look even gaudier than the pirate who wore it. He treasured it ever since. I'm fairly sure he still has it somewhere."