She insisted that the captain teach her more about the business that had made him the man he was.  But, as the old superstition goes, women bring bad luck on the high seas.  His wife being very dear to him, very lovely, and very, shall we say, persuasive, got him to agree to take her on a cargo run between several of his ports of call.

   Alas, the old superstition proved true on this voyage.  The merchant ship was attacked by a giant white Kraken, and
sunk.  The captain lost everything he held dear on that fateful voyage.  The sea had robbed him of his life and happiness, leaving him a bitter shell of the once proud and noble merchant captain he once was.

   Swearing revenge, he used his vast moneys to outfit a new ship, a whaling ship.  A mighty vessel, outfitted with as many cannons and harpoons as the smiths could fit onto the hull.  There were five masts, each with a crows nest, complete with scrying crystals.  A mystical circle from which wizards would be employed to hurl mighty magics had been burned into an area of the deck near the bow with dark flames.  The sails had been finely embroided with the emblem the captain now took as his own; a White Kraken.  He dubbed the instrument of his vengeance the "Kraken's Bane". Truly, no sea monster would stand before this juggernaut of a ship.  The Kraken would not be allowed to wreak any more havoc on the high seas were it to meet this marvel of engineering.

   The prey proved more elusive than the captain had first anticipated.  He spent many Deochs hunting the Kraken, but could not find it.  His behemoth of a ship was costly to run, but it was the captain's sole means of striking back at the monster, he could not part with it.  His moneys and resources dwindling away, the once proud merchant found himself turning to piracy to help support the ever lengthening crusade to kill the beast of his nightmares.  No ship could match the Kraken's Bane.  Many simple, honest merchants met their end at the hands of a proud captain who once counted himself among their numbers.

   One day, the fates deemed to deliver to the captain the fate he had earned.  Whilst adrift in the middle of the ocean one day, one of the lookouts shouted from the crow's nest, "Thar she blows!".  Over enthused and filled with glee, the captain rushed to the bow of the ship and looked through his glass. There, not a mile away, sat the white Kraken, resting on the gentle ocean currents.

   "Full speed ahead!", shouted the captain, "Man the guns!  Wake the wizards!  Revenge shall be mine!"

   At his side, as is only proper, the first mate stood.  He was not the first of the first mates, as the Captain's temper tended to end the careers, not to mention lives, of first mates that did not serve him well.  The first mate also had been looking at the ocean ahead.  "I don't think that's a good idea, captain.", he said.

   "Now's no time to be showing signs of cowardice, boy!  Full speed ahead!", shouted the captain in reply.

   "But..."

   "The beast shall die by my hands!  It can nae survive the searing wrath of vengeance!"

   "It's just that..."

   "Do as I say or I'll skin yer yellow hide!"

   Brandishing his sword, with a gleam that only the truly mad can achieve, he managed to convince his crew to obey his orders.  The mighty sails were unfurled.  With the ship well underway, the captain stood at the bow,  cackling like mad, "Here comes yer doom, Kraken!  Ye'll not rob any more innocents of their life!"

 ..So fixated was the captain on his prize that he failed to notice his crew heading for the lifeboats.  He continued to stand at the bow of the ship, laughing with insane joy.  His mad reverie was brought to an abrupt halt not  long thereafter.  The ship's hull was ripped apart well in front of the Kraken.  It seems this beast had made its home behind a rather large coral reef.  'Twas most obvious to his crew, but the captain, blinded by his madness had failed to see it.

   As the Kraken's Bane's once invincible hull filled with water and sank, it's crew headed to safer ports, the mad captain did the only thing he could.  He clenched his sword in his teeth, dove beyond the reef and swam towards his foe.  He had lost yet another ship, and was about to lose his life, for he had failed to see anything but his goal.  He had not seen that he had become a greater scourge of the sea than any Kraken in his piracy of other merchants.  He had not seen naught but what he wanted.  And that was his undoing.  We can only hope he found peace at last in the belly of the Kraken.  Perhaps in his next life he will have learned the lesson that escaped him in this one:

Do not be so focused on your goal that you fail to see the pitfalls upon the road towards it.