Chapter 129: Divers for Hire
One bell hung crooked between the ship’s boat and the dock, swinging in a slow, ugly motion every time the hull rolled. The four men trying to lower her could not agree on which way to lean, and the bell seemed determined to punish them for it.
James felt like he ought to help them.
"The bloody lines are crossed!"
He caught the nearest rope and threw his weight against it, boots slipping on the wet planks.
"Feed from the bow end first, or she’ll swing wide and take the lot of ye with her!"
Nobody argued much with a man who was already helping.
The dockhands shifted their grips, cursing every inch of the way, and with five pairs of hands instead of four, the bell was set down onto the dock with a deep, hollow boom that rattled clear up through James’s boots. She rocked once on her iron rim, then came to rest without so much as a crack.
James stepped back and had a look at what they’d just saved.
It was a squat, sturdy thing, weighted with lead around the bottom and wrapped in iron hoops thick enough to survive a fall twice that height. A little glass port sat in the crown so the poor soul inside could look up at whatever daylight managed to find him.
Anne came up on one side of him, Mary on the other. The notion struck all three together.
"That’s a divin’ bell." Anne blinked in disbelief.
"An ugly one, too."
"We were talkin’ about needin’ divers not two minutes ago."
"Curious, isn’t it?"
Mary folded her arms and looked at him sideways. "That kind of timin’ don’t sit right with me, James. Things don’t just drop out the sky the minute a man asks for ’em, not unless somebody’s pullin’ strings where decent folk can’t see."
"Might be I’ve a talent for it."
"Might be the devil’s already got yer measurements and enjoys makin’ clothes for ye."
James grinned. "Either way, lass, I’d hate to waste a suit that fits."
The two men fussing over the bell looked as weathered as the gear they tended. The older of the pair had a broad chest gone soft with age, ears swollen thick as old rope knots, and a wool cap pulled low over a scalp that hadn’t seen a full head of hair since the last king passed on. His coat had been patched so many times the patches needed patching.
Beside him stood a leaner, younger man, his sun-browned skin tanned to the permanent brown-red of one who spent more time beneath the sea than above it. Salt had bleached the knees of his trousers and the cuffs of his sleeves white, and his eyes never lingered anywhere for long before finding something else to inspect.
James walked over with Anne and Mary beside him.
"Mornin’. I’d like a word with whoever’s runnin’ this operation."
The older man cupped a hand behind one battered ear and squinted at him as though James had spoken from the bottom of the harbor.
"Beg yer pardon, sir? Come again. Thought ye mentioned a bird."
"I’m lookin’ to hire a diver."
"A LIAR, ye say?"
The old fellow frowned as though he’d been struck. "Well now, that’s a poor sort o’ greetin’, callin’ an honest man a liar before he’s even told ye his name. There’s an old sailin’ proverb about folks that do exactly that."
His partner kept running a thumb over the bell iron bands, feeling for cracks.
"He said DIVER, Coombes, ye deaf old barnacle. D as in the devil. IVER as in the rest of it."
Coombes brightened at once. "Ohhh. Well, that’s altogether different, ought to have said it clearer, sir. Save an old man’s heart the trouble."
James couldn’t help smiling, headache or no headache.
"And who might I be speakin’ with?"
"Obadiah Coombes. Captain, master and commander of this fine vessel and every glorious inch of her history."
He swept a hand toward the dented bell with all the pride of a man introducing royalty.
"And this miserable bastard beside me answers to Voss. That’s when he answers at all."
"Bucket’ll do."
Voss still didn’t look up.
"That’s what everybody calls me."
Coombes drew a breath, looking ready to object to something on general principle.
James cut him off before the two could tumble into what promised to be another well-practiced argument.
"I’m puttin’ together a crew to dive a wreck."
He let that sit a moment.
"I’ll pay it, real coin. The wreck is ours."
Coombes froze so completely James wondered whether the man’s hearing had deserted him again.
Then his whole face folded up. He grabbed James by both shoulders like a drowning sailor catching hold of driftwood.
"Bless ye. BLESS ye, sir. Bless yer mother too, and every saint that steered ye down this dock today."
He shook James hard enough to loosen teeth. "I’d near taken ye for the Almighty Himself. Imagine, two poor sinners standin’ here starvin’ while this dock would rather cut a man’s throat than pay him wages."
Bucket straightened so fast he cracked his head against the boom above the bell. He swore with admirable skill, rubbed the sore spot once, then forgot all about it.
"Ye mean it? Actual divin’? Not haulin’ rope for some fool playin’ at bravery?"
"Actual divin’, on a real wreck."
"Christ preserve us."
He looked at Coombes.
Coombes looked back.
Neither one trusted good fortune enough to celebrate before it proved itself.
"How’d two men with a trade like yours end up beggin’ work on a Nassau dock?"
Anne asked. There wasn’t a trace of judgment in it, she simply wanted the story.
Coombes drew himself up with satisfaction, "Ah, missus, that’s a tale. More than one tale, truth be told. Starts the same way most bad stories do, when some fool decided he was cleverer than the men signin’ his wages."
"We worked for the Spanish."
Bucket continued. "To salvage the fleet the hurricane sank off the Florida coast last year, them Spaniards need men who can stay underwater long enough to earn their pay."
"And we were the finest pair o’ hands on the whole blessed operation."
Coombes jabbed himself proudly in the chest. "Ninety feet down and deeper, water cold enough to make a bishop reconsider his faith. Every trip we came back carryin’ silver while the other poor devils came back empty, or never came back at all."
"And the Spaniards paid us like common dockhands."
Bucket went on. "Meanwhile some fat officer sat warm on the beach countin’ every treasure we fetched up and helpin’ himself to the biggest share."
"So naturally."
Coombes said, lowering his voice as though the tide itself might overhear, "We concluded an honest man ought to keep a fair portion of what he’d risked his own neck to recover. I’d have wagered the Almighty would agree with that logic."
"We skimmed."
Bucket shrugged.
"Small at first, then bigger."
"Until one officer began lookin’ better than we’d hoped."
Some of the cheer slipped out of Coombes’s voice. "We read which way the wind was blowin’ and departed with our skins. Didn’t take much besides, except the bell. I’d sooner leave behind an arm."
"Came to Nassau with a respectable haul, enough to set a sensible man up for life."
"And Nassau."
Coombes said, spreading both hands, "Bein’ Nassau, helped us of every shillin’ before the season was done. Rum, cards, women who swore she loved me for reasons entirely unrelated to me purse. That ought to have warned me."
Anne snorted.
"Ought to have warned ye plenty."
"Aye, missus."
He sighed.
"Trouble is, hindsight always knows more than the man livin’ through it."
"And now."
Bucket sighed, "There ain’t a market in this town for divers. Plenty o’ work for murderers, drunkards, and fools that’ll climb a mast for a wager, none for the one honest trade we’ve got."
Coombes nodded as solemn as church mass. "Me old captain used to say the sea gives with one hand and Nassau takes with the other. A lucky man keeps his teeth between the two."
Coombes looked ready to launch into another tale, hands already spreading wide as though he meant to reenact the whole affair from the first wave to the last bottle of rum. Bucket shifted his weight, the look on his face making it plain he was preparing to interrupt somewhere around the second sentence.
James raised a hand. "As much as I’d enjoy hearin’ the rest, we’ll all have grey beards before ye two finish fightin’ over whose misery was more miserable."
That earned him a sheepish grin from Coombes and a grunt from Voss.
"So let’s speak o’ money."
James popped one shoulder.
"Same as every hand aboard. You dive, recover what we’re after, take yer cut."
"Whatever ye think fair, sir."
Coombes bowed so low his cap nearly came off. "A tenth, twentieth. Give me a copper and a thank ye, and I’ll count meself the richest man in the Caribbean."
"A tenth’s an insult and ye know it."
Bucket rounded on him. "We’re the only two men on this dock who can get down there and come back with anythin’ worth havin’. And ye’d sell us for a copper because an Scotsmen spoke polite?"
"He’s askin’ us to earn it this time, Bucket, not steal it. That’s a powerful difference."
"So is the difference between grateful and foolish."
Bucket jabbed a finger at him.
"Ye’re standin’ squarely in the second."
Anne laughed into her hand.
"The Almighty and a Nassau harlot, all in one conversation. Ye don’t waste time, Coombes."
Mary made no effort to hide her grin.
"Bucket’s right."
She nodded toward him. "The pair o’ ye are worth more than a copper, and any captain worth followin’ knows it."
James considered it for about the length of a heartbeat.
"Full share and a bonus, if you do the work, you eat like the men who earned it."
Coombes looked fit to cry all over again.
Bucket simply nodded once, sharp and satisfied.
They shook on it.
Coombes pumped James’s arm hard enough to draw water from dry ground and Bucket’s grip lasted only a moment, but it was firm enough to settle the matter.
⚔ [QUEST ISSUED]
The Duchess’s Dowry
The title you possess has generously delivered an expensive diving bell directly into your lap through the miracle of incompetent dockwork. This is what scholars refer to as someone else’s problem becoming your opportunity.
Recruit the divers who have survived the sea, the Spanish, and their own financial decisions. Together, recover the Duchess’s lost dowry from the wreck before someone else remembers where they left it.
Failure is unlikely.
For you, anyway.
Reward : 15 Fate.