Chapter 79: Among the Most Competent Fools
By the time James remembered to wonder what had happened to his other boot, he’d already decided it wasn’t worth finding out.
Somewhere between the third tavern and the fourth wager, his boots had become currency, spent away like everything else that held any value that night.
He remembered losing a game of cards to Greasy Pete over who could stay standing after finishing a full bottle of Doyle’s latest attempt at something drinkable. After that, he’d lost an argument to a goat that took offense when James claimed a fish that, in fairness, had never been his to begin with.
There had also been a wager over whether a man could climb the Rat’s roof faster drunk than sober. Nobody had the winnings. The poor fool trying it crashed through the roof, knocked over three tables, and somehow walked away while everyone else started fighting.
Sometime after that, once the drink had blurred things enough that even his own name felt made up, James made the grand decision the Rose needed a bigger gun. Not just bigger, but the biggest cannon ever cast for a ship’s deck, massive enough to turn a sloop into floating driftwood.
The shop refuses service to intoxicated customers. I considered making an exception until you attempted to negotiate the price with a chicken. The chicken declined your offer and I see no reason to overrule its judgment.
At the time, James had thought the refusal outrageously unfair.
This morning, sober and missing one boot, he was simply grateful the voice inside his own head had kept the good sense he’d spent the night throwing away.
Morning greeted him with sunlight that seemed personally offended he’d survived, along with an ache behind one eye that owed less to the rum than to a goat he still couldn’t entirely explain.
The plank-and-cask table sat exactly where he’d left it weeks before. The same borrowed inkpot rested there, pinned against the harbor breeze beneath the same marlinspike.
Everything beyond it, however, had changed.
Cudjoe already stood beside the table with his arms folded, watching a crowd that stretched beyond the warehouses before disappearing around a corner.
"Last time, we signed some dozens fools happy enough to take silver up front."
He nodded toward the crowd. "This time half o’ Nassau’s shown up after hearin’ some tale about ye blowin’ up a fort with a shy mortar."
James smiled.
"Can’t fault a man for havin’ good taste in stories."
Briggs sat on an overturned bucket, drawing a whetstone down the edge of his blade.
"Longer crowd means longer day."
"Aye, that’s the spirit, Briggs. Never met a man so talented at finding misery inside good fortune."
James looked over the crowd one more time, then clapped his hands.
"No point starin’ at it. Might as well get to work."
He waved Bonnet over from where he stood near the docks.
Bonnet made his way across, wearing a coat far too fine for wherever he happened to be and shoes that had already stepped into something unfortunate.
Before James could ask why he was there so early, Cudjoe beat him to it.
"That one’s in. Already decided."
James blinked.
"No questions?"
"Didn’t need tae."
Cudjoe barely glanced Bonnet’s way. "He came by the ships last night and offered tae pay for new cannons for the Fortune out o’ his own purse. Honest and rich beats skilled and poor any day o’ the week, Captain."
Briggs answered with another grunt.
From him, that counted as a second vote.
James looked from Cudjoe to Briggs, then over at Bonnet, who wore some quietly pleased expression.
"So ye’re tellin’ me my quartermaster’s been bought."
"Talked round." Cudjoe shrugged. "Still like him either way."
James rubbed the back of his neck.
STEDE BONNET - CAPTAIN, BLACK FORTUNE (PROVISIONAL)
Status : Financed
Age : 28
Aboard : One night
Note : The price for skipping an interview appears to be a fresh set of cannons. I find myself unable to argue with the logic, which troubles me considerably more than his incompetence does.
"Right then."
James nudged a stool into place with his foot. "Sit down, Bonnet. A captain ought to have some say in who’s servin’ under him, even one who bought his place at the table."
Bonnet lowered himself onto the stool with careful dignity of taking a seat in a church pew.
James looked back at the crowd.
It hadn’t shrunk at all.
Four men interviewing one sailor at a time against a line that size was hopeless. Better to deal with the Fortune’s officers first.
Bonnet straightened eagerly. "If I may, Captain, I took the liberty to arrange two candidates already. Edward recommended one last night, a quartermaster he trusts personally, though he could not make the introduction himself. And I located a navigator with a respectable local reputation."
James leaned back.
"Go on, then. Let’s see what ye’ve bought me this time."
The first man Bonnet waved over was as thin and tall as a marlinspike, all elbows and ink stains, with a quill tucked behind one ear as though it belonged there.
Before anyone could speak, he set a record book neatly on the table.
Bonnet gestured with obvious satisfaction. "Captain, this is the gentleman I mentioned. I believe he’d make an excellent quartermaster."
He turned to the man.
"If you would, introduce yourself."
The man’s tone was calm, "Whitlock. Cargo clerk aboard the Content, or former cargo clerk, after my captain found it easier to disagree with the man than explain where the cargo had gone."
"How many men are standin’ behind you right now, without lookin’?"
"One hundred and forty-three. Sixteen behind pretending they aren’t waiting."
Even Cudjoe’s eyebrows climbed.
"What would you do if a man loses a hand aboard the ship?"
Whitlock didn’t hesitate. "Depends whose ship, whose Articles, and which hand. Left’s worth less than right on every set I’ve ever read. Always struck me as unfair to left-handed men, though nobody’s ever cared what I think."
Bonnet leaned forward.
"And the share a quartermaster receives compared to an ordinary sailor?"
Whitlock shrugged, "One and a half against one, standard enough. Though I’ve seen captains shave it down to one and a quarter whenever they think no one’s paying attention."
His eyes moved to Bonnet.
"I pay attention."
Bonnet beamed.
"I already like this man enormously."
James folded his arms.
"Why take the position at all, with a mouth like that?"
Whitlock tapped the book with a soft thump. "I’ve yet to meet a captain who enjoys being corrected. Most tolerate it for a while, then decide they’d rather be wrong in peace. Captain Bonnet doesn’t strike me as that sort of man."
Cudjoe muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "Christ."
"He’s worse than me."
James grinned.
"Aye. That’s exactly why I like him."
WHITLOCK - QUARTERMASTER, BLACK FORTUNE
Status : Fit for duty, ink and all
Age : 29
Aboard : Less than a day
Note : He recalculated the entire crew’s wages before his own interview, unasked, and discovered two men had been shorted a full share apiece since Mobile. Somebody is about to have an uncomfortable conversation.
The second man approached as though the dock itself might object to his boots.
A strip of red cloth circled one wrist, another wrapped around the brim of his hat, and a carved fish bone hung from a cord around his neck.
"Crick. Been sailin’ longer than most men here’ve been alive. Includin’ meself, some mornings."
"Navigator, then?"
James nodded toward the harbor. "Say we’re three weeks out, the charts are gone, and nobody knows where we are. What do ye do?"
Crick watched the water.
Then the gulls circling above the masts.
Only after he replied, "Watch the current first, then the swell. Birds’ll tell ye how close land is, clouds’ll tell ye where the wind’s been, and the stars’ll tell ye the rest if they aren’t hiding. If the grey lady comes before, I’d trust none of it till she passes."
"The grey lady being?"
"I can’t say, bad luck to name her before she arrives."
He spoke as plainly as if explaining why seawater tasted of salt.
Cudjoe shot James a sidelong look, thoroughly unconvinced and somehow entertained anyway.
Bonnet took his turn.
"Why accept my offer when every ship in Nassau is hiring?"
Crick looked at James instead. "When I was a boy, my grandmother used tae tell me there were signs the sea gave a man if he cared enough tae notice ’em."
Crick scratched at his chin. "She would’ve called your voyage promised."
He gave a small shrug.
"Never saw any profit in arguin’ with my grandmother, even after she was dead."
Silence lingered over the table.
Cudjoe broke it first.
"Every ship needs one madman who reads gulls for a livin’. Might as well be this one."
James laughed.
"So long as the readin’s right, I’ll take the madness free."
CRICK - NAVIGATOR, BLACK FORTUNE
Status : Fit for duty, sanity check pending
Age : 26
Aboard : Less than a day
Note : He claims to have read a favorable omen in Calloway’s survival. I have decided not to correct him, ruining a man’s faith reads like poor economy this early in an alliance.
James looked beyond the table toward the work still waiting for him, and the sight almost made him miss cannon fire.
Sometime during the last hour, the crowd had stopped looking like a crowd at all.
It had become a solid wall of bodies.
Men stood atop crates for a better view, two fought over who had arrived first while a third tried climbing over both of them. Some crooked sailor near the back was selling his place to the highest bidder and farther down, another had started selling places in a queue that had never been numbered in the first place.
Cudjoe followed his gaze and let out a slow breath.
"Reckon that’s the easy part done, Captain."
James rolled his shoulders, unable to stop smiling.
"Aye. Let’s find out just how bad the hard part’s gonna be."