Cox
| First Mate Cox | |
 | |
| Name | Cox (given name unknown) |
| Race | |
| Age | |
| Occupation | First Mate on the Sweet Judy, then chief of the Raiders |
| Physical appearance | Tall and almost as big as Milo. Smiles all the time. Wore boots and, as chief of the Raiders, a hat with red feathers round it. |
| Residence | |
| Death | Took an axe to the chest in a duel with Mau, then eaten by sharks |
| Parents | |
| Relatives | |
| Children | |
| Marital Status | |
| Appearances | |
| Books | Nation |
| Cameos | |
Mr Cox is a character in Nation. He came aboard the ship Sweet Judy as First Mate. He comes with glowing references from previous captains desperate to get rid of him. He is a nasty piece of work.
He is not a driven villain. He kills things because he enjoys it. Daphne sees him shoot a butterfly, dolphins, and finally a fisherman. He has the ability to see inside your head, and leave it feeling grubby. He puts his finger on vulnerabilities instinctively.
He makes other people around him like himself. The weaker ones fall into line like remora tagging along with a shark.
With people of more substance, the danger is that you will start to think like him in self-defence. On board the Sweet Judy he goes for the captain, the religious Captain Roberts. Filled with do-gooding zeal, Captain Roberts hopes to reform Cox. Cox attends all of the three-times day prayers, and pays attention, says "Amen", but this is just the starting point in his goading of Captain Roberts. He was looking for a way to kill the Captain's religion.
In the end things come to a head between Cox and Captain Roberts, who now loathes him with a hot anger. Cox leads a kind of mutiny, and the Captain turns a small cannon on them. Realising that to blow them away would be a betrayal of everything he believed in, and a victory for Cox, the Captain stands away from the cannon, Cox is bemused by his refusal to take advantage, and the other crew come to their senses. Cox and his allies (including Polegrave and Foxlip) are put into the ship's boat, and left, but they are also left some weapons for self-defence. They use these to take over a Dutch ship which stops to help them, shortly after which that ship is overtaken by the Raiders - a tribe of cannibal headhunters. But they have caught a shark, and Cox having killed their leader, he becomes the chief.
In this way he comes to lead a raid on Nation, and comes up against Mau, who kills Cox in a duel.
If he were to be compared to a Discworld character, it would be Carcer.