Captain Adam (36 page)

odd hours of gale, toiling, shouting, finding fault, now sagged perceptibly after less than an hour of murmurous talk. Yet he hated to see Adam go. He held Adam's hand for some time.

"You'll be here awhile, sir?"

"A week, ten days."

He sought out the landlord, and left some coins.

"They'd ought to do something about that man, the owners."

"They will," Adam promised. "I'm going to see to it right now."

Walking back to Blake's, his legs swinging, the gulls still uttering those plaintive squeals, the bay on his right now, he determined to take no nonsense from Obadiah Selden, John Saye, John Richardson, and Phineas Monk, the cooper.

So he was angry and his jaw was out when he swung into Blake's. He was acting and feeling as if his wishes had already been flouted.

Only one man sat at the Adventurers' Table—Obadiah Selden. For all his bulk, he looked shrunken, sitting there alone. He was not drinking anything or eating anything.

"Where are the others?" Adam asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, and remembering that he had promised himself not to be harsh with Obadiah: "Will you share dinner with me, sir?"

"Thank you," said the merchant. "I was just on the point of inviting you to go up and have dinner with my daughter and me. We're having vension tonight. And an oyster pie."

Something caught in Adam's throat, and he turned his head away. The Duchess' brat was not used to being asked out.

"Now that's right chirk of you, sir. But would Mistress Deborah have enough food?"

"She'll have enough."

"Even though she don't expect me?"

"She does expect you. She was the one told me to ask you."

"Oh. She, uh, she knows I'm back in Nevqjort then?"

"Known it since seven this morning when she spotted you coming up the bay. She's always at the window with that glass, ever since you been gone. Spends most of her time there."

"I see," said Adam Long. Embarrassed again, he looked around. He wasn't being dominating, imperious, as he'd planned. "But oughtn't we have our meeting here first? I've got some matters to bring up."

"We can have it at my house with less ado."

"You can't bring four men home!"

"No need to. We're all here, all the owners. I bought out John Saye and John Richardson and Monk, the cooper," explained Obadiah, "last week."

"Oh. Meaning that now you own nine-sixteenths of the schooner?"

"Aye."

"While I ovvn seven-sixteenths."

"Aye. And I shall admire very much to hear those suggestions you have to make, Captain."

Adam rose.

"While I shall admire very much to eat that oyster pie, sir. I always have been partial to oysters."

In the gathering gloom lightning bugs were being buffeted about. The leaves underfoot went clicketty-click. In the house across the street, the Evans house, a hght shone-where Elnathan no doubt sat up nursing her husband. Adam, glancing that way as he turned with Obadiah, for a moment had the unchristian thought that Zeph's illness was lucky for him, Adam, inasmuch as it kept Zeph's wife at home. Not for the smallest part of an instant, though, did Adam suppose that he was finished with Elnathan Evans—or, rather, that she was finished with him. Sooner or later they were going to have to have it out. He just couldn't carry on with her the way they had been doing before he sailed for the islands. It would not be right. Well, it had never been right, far as that goes; but he had Maisie to think of now.

Nor did Adam delude himself with the notion that Deborah Selden would quit. What she wanted, being the woman she was, she would try her dad-blamedest to get; and likewise her father here was going to try to get it for her. Adam was, of course, flattered; he was delighted; but also he was more than a mite frightened by the directness of the attack.

Of the two, he calculated that he had more to fear from Deborah. Elnathan was a tasted sweet. She could not aspire to marry him while Zeph lived; and an adulterous relationship, even without the appropriate trimmings, would sure as snakes be known to everybody in town. Liberal though Newport was—of course everybody knew about Maisie, for instance—it would not tolerate this. Fornication afar and fornication at home, right in sight of everybody, were two different things.

Deborah Selden, on the other hand, clad in all the might of her virginity, might be hard to hold off.

Adam took a deep breath before entering the house.

h* hf Manners can come in handy. The Seldens, indoors, were a

^J' «_>^ touch formal in their treatment of Adam, who gratefully was

formal in reply.

Adam was jolted when a girl he had once pursued with japes, being

halted only when she turned to stick her tongue out at him—when such a one, Deborah, swept him a practiced curtsey. But Adam caught himself and made a leg Londonwise, his cocked hat held over his heart.

Deborah was wearing French gray camlet. There was white linen, thin and crisp, narrow, too, at the neck and cuffs. There was no cap and not even a suggestion of that tottering monstrosity the "commode," as affected by ladies of ton.

They talked a few minutes, proper but not stiff. She congratulated him on a successful voyage. He replied that it had yet to be voted a success, since his report to the other owner was not yet in; and it could be that he put some slight stress on that word "other." She said that she was sure it would prove a success; and then, directly, womanlike, she started to pump him about the dress materials he'd brought. She was worked up to hear about the wax candles, and told her father promptly and decisively that they should buy up a large stock of these. Obadiah, doffing his cloak, nodded. There were five candles in the branch on the table right then, and every one lighted. It made Adam feel like a duke.

Deborah excused herself and went back to the kitchen.

There was a poker being hotted in the fire.

Obadiah wasted no time on amenities. Even while he made flip, he was asking questions. He listened carefully to the answers. He approved the cargo and agreed to handle all of it, including Adam's own share, without any charge to Adam. With no hesitation he agreed to the payment of four pounds a month for Jethro Gardner's room and victuals, this to come out of the ship's fund. Concerning the few Dutch sails, though he bugged his eves a bit at the cost, he said only that this was in the captain's province.

"That extra smitch of speed," Adam pointed out, "might save everything, the seas down that way being what they are."

"Well, well, I trust you, Captain. I think you know best."

"It'll be mostly your money this time, sir. Mine's going to go over there." And he nodded in the direction of the Evans house.

Obadiah studied the brim of his mug.

"I wonder if you'd tell me. Captain—that is, if you caie to—how much, uh, how much you paid Zeph Evans for those four-sixteenths?"

Adam told him.

Obadiah's eyebrows, very bushv, were the only expressive feature of a face ordinarily impassive. Now the eyebrows leapt. Obadiah looked at Adam Long with interest and admiration.

"That was a bargain. Zeph try to get you drunk first, did he?"

"He tried."

"Want me to tell you what I paid Saye and Monk and Richardson?"

"I'd admire very much to hear, sir."

Obadiah told him.

Adam stared, aghast. Highly as he esteemed the schooner, who knew her better than anybody else, he found it hard to believe that more should be paid for five-sixteenths of her than was put out for the building of the entire vessel a year ago. Yet Obadiah Selden, never a boastful man anyway, surely was not boasting now.

"I had a good reason for paying that price," he said. Deborah appeared. "Dinner's ready."

After grace the talk took to less commercial matters. Adam's previous return had been so brief and withal so eventful that he was not well posted on conditions in Newport, any more than the Seldens were posted on conditions as he'd found them in Jamaica.

The kitchen was wondrously bright, and the conversation matched it. Obadiah himself didn't talk much, but Deborah was downright chatty. As for Adam, he became a clam only when they asked him what he thought of London. "Well, it's different."

"You mean, better than you expected? Or worse?" "Well-different."

The meal itself lived up to the earlier odors. In addition to the vension, with potatoes, they had baked fresh pickerel; and the oyster pie, served with some creamy meat sauce, was a masterpiece. Adam said as much, roundly.

He looked at Deborah as often as he dared. Not only was she mighty handsome, she had always been that, but her trimness flummoxed him. She'd had nobody to help her—Adam several times had peeked into the kitchen—yet when she sat down, after putting the food on the table, she was cool and trig. No hair was loose, her hands weren't red, there was not a fleck of spilled gravy anywhere on her. Adam liked things that way, shipshape.

Still the girl wasn't at ease. Though there was no scrape in her voice to show the strain, Adam was sure she was holding herself in. She didn't tremble, but she darn' near shook.

Adam would not have mentioned Seth Selden, but Obadiah himself brought up this subject, asking what had happened to his brother. Obadiah knew, of course; but he wished to hear Adam say it.

Adam was blunt. He said that Seth was now, to the best of his knowledge, on Providence island in the Bahamas, a nest of piracy that might last through the war or might get wiped out at any time, depending on Admiral Benbow. But that camp would certainly be flattened immediately after peace was declared, Adam added. He said he doubted that Seth would ever come back.

Obadiah nodded, and changed the subject.

The meal was sumptuous by Newport standards, yet Adam, watchful, sensed that this was the way the Seldens ordinarily ate. He was impressed. The table was covered with a linen cloth, and they were even given individual small squares of linen to wipe their hands on. There were no trenchers: everything was served on pewter. As head of the family Obadiah Selden even sat in a chair. He seldom picked his teeth during the meal, and Deborah never did, so Adam didn't.

They had a sweet pudding, and then the men returned to the parlor, where the biggest surprise of all awaited Adam. He and his host had brandy, real French brandy, and they had it not in leather jacks or in mugs but in cups made of glass.

They talked again of trade. Obadiah Selden was a sound merchant, one who knew his market, and he asked a great many questions.

"I don't go in for smuggling any more'n I have to," Adam told him. "But you can't get away from it for all." He dinged his glass with a forefinger. "I'll warrant this very brandy came in at the cove, sir?"

Obadiah said nothing.

"Some of the owners wondered how I got that molasses so cheap. Well, it was French, that's why. The French planters used to throw their molasses away until a little while ago."

"It came in English barrels."

"Aye. I bought the barrels already branded, only empty. Then I arranged through a friend of mine down there, a Mr. Cartwright, who's a lawyer, to get assigned to a flag-of-truce fleet that was going over to Guadeloupe to dicker with the Frenchies—I never did find out what about. It cost me twenty pounds to get that assignment. I put it on my list as entertainment expenses."

"But—I don't understand."

"Guadeloupe's French. The way they see the law in Jamaica it's not dealing with the enemy if you do some business while there's a flag-of-truce talk going on, provided you're a part of the official party. That's why they have so many of 'em there, to exchange prisoners and all like that. And that's why it costs so much to get assigned to one. We went as a supply vessel. I don't know what we was supposed to supply."

"And—you bought molasses?"

"Fleet was only there half a day, so we had to move brisk. But we got all the barrels filled—a thruppence a gallon, about half what we'd've paid in Kingston. I just mention this to give you an idea of how thev do things down in the islands."

"I see."

"Why, down that way Englishmen buy their own wool from Frenchies.

That's right! There's French vessels that stand off Dover, and the 'owlers' run out and stock 'em with woolens. You've heard of the owlers?"

"Aye."

"Then they take the bolts to Jamaica or the Barbados and spirit em ashore. First the stuff's smuggled out of England, to avoid the export duties, and then it's smuggled into an English colony to avoid the import duties. Sometimes some of that stuff gets smuggled out of Jamaica again and into one of the mainland colonies here. That makes three full sets of smuggling, as you might say. And still it's cheaper than if you bought it legitimate. Though not much cheaper by that time," Adam added. "Not enough to make it worth the risk."

"I am glad to hear you say that. Captain. The penalties for violating the Navigation Acts are getting more severe all the time, and that man Dudley up to Boston means business."

"I'm perfectly clear!"

"I'm sure you are. And I'm sure you'll stay that way." He put a hand on Adam's shoulder, an act in him as astonishing as a kiss. "Our fortunes are tied up together now, and you must watch your reputation."

"Just because I bladed with that collector—"

"It ain't that. I'd say most folks think the better of you for that. There was lot out in the street heard what Wingfield said. But you mustn't forget that these are touchy times. The Lords of Trade over there can do pretty much anything they want with us, if they get to supposing we're a rabble of pirate lovers. And you're vulnerable. Captain. You've never denied that you've helped unload, out at Contraband Cove."

"I had heaps of company there!"

"Sure. But there's still those who say it's odd you jumped right from apprentice to invester."

"There was no coin involved! I got an interest in the schooner because I worked so much to build her, and everybody knows that. And I had the right to collect. Only I can't prove that now. Mr. Sedgewick is dead."

"I don't question a thing you say. I'm only reminding you that there are folks who'll go right on whispering that you might have been Tom Hart's agent here—that that's how you got your start."