“I sure do. Let’s go.” Kit started down the hill. “I don’t understand why Jan’s anchoring here. He always puts in near Central Wharf so he can head right home.”
The two men watched from the pier for signs of a launch. When none came, they commandeered a dinghy and rowed out to the ship. As they neared her, a crewman shouted something, but the loud barking of seals on a nearby rock drowned out his words. A rope ladder fell over the ship’s port side, and the men climbed aboard. Kit swung over the railing and noticed a few crewmen standing together. He looked past them, searching for their captain. When Jan didn’t appear to greet them, he glanced at Lee, whose shrug echoed his own bewilderment.
A small, sea-baked whaleman stepped forward hesitantly. “Mr. Howland. Capt’n Prescott.” He wrung his hands nervously. “I—”
“Where’s your captain, seaman?” Kit cut in. “Go tell’m to get off his old duff and come greet his friends.”
“Mr. Howland, sir, I’m a-tryin’ ta tell ya. The capt’n... he went an’ got himself killed, right outside o’ Magdalena Bay.”
“Oh, God.” Kit slumped back against the hard ship rail. His hands massaged his forehead and his mouth bit into an anguished grimace.
Lee’s face flinched with the same pained look. “How did it happen?”
“We had one o’ them devilfish ironed, an’ the capt’n, he said this ‘un’d bein’ his last, he’d be damned if’n he’d not be a part o’ it. He upped an’ got in with the boat crew. He ‘pooneered her himse’f, he surely did, but when the foul line busted, well... he tried ta grap it. That she-devil of a whale rolled an’ crushed the boat an’ crew.” The sailor’s shoulders sagged from reliving the gruesome sight. He looked up. “Ya see, the sharks was so bad, sir, well, ya know what I’m a-sayin’? Not a one o’ them five men made it.”
Silence and grief for the men lost in this death tale weighted the atmosphere with a cumbrous sense of loss, and of guilt, for although not even one of the men lacked sorrow for their mates, each man still left alive was forced, by the death of his crewmen, to remember his own fragile mortality. Deep within each survivor’s mind, every man was secretly glad it wasn’t he who lay in a watery grave.
The poor man looked unsure and a little lost. “Mr. Howland, sir, the capt’n said I was ta come ta ya if’nanythin’ ev’rhappan’d ta him. I thought I should come to ya right away. We heared ya was with Capt’n Prescott in Whaler’s Bay, so we figgered we’d sail here ta find ya.”
There was no time now for mourning, Kit had too much to do. His head was filled with conflicting notions of what he should do first, until the most important of his duties pushed any other plans right out of his conscious mind.
Break the news to Hallie.
With that thought, Kit took command. “Haul up the anchor, men, and get her ready to sail about. We’re going across the bay. You coming, Lee?”
“I’ll be ready as soon as I send a message to my repair crew.”
“Fine. I need to check the ships logs and cargo tallies. I’ll be in the aft cabin.” He started toward the steerage, and then, as if in afterthought, he stopped and turned back to the sailor. “What’s your name, seaman?”
“Smalley, sir. Amos Smalley, second mate.”
“And the first mate, where’s he?”
“Dove in after the capt’n, sir.”
After a prolonged silence, Kit asked, “You sailed her back to port fully loaded?”
Smalley nodded.
Although the man was uncommonly jittery, Kit knew he must be competent if he had managed to get theSea Havenback home. “Okay, consider yourself first mate and get this ship ready to sail.” Kit turned and headed toward the small aft cabin he knew Jan used for his quarters.
When Lee entered a short time later, Kit was immersed in a pile of papers. He slumped into a nearby chair and scratched his beard while Kit added a column of figures. “So what’s the haul?”
“A little over fifteen hundred barrels and”—Kit scratched some figures on the ledger—”“looks like twelve thousand or so pounds of baleen. No gris.”
Kit picked up a heavy sheet of paper that sat in one corner of the desk and handed it to Lee. “Read this and tell me what you think it means.”
While Lee read the paper, Kit listened to the active scurrying aboveboard. The aft anchor was hauled up and the anchor chain rattled and banged against the outside wall of the cabin.
“Where was this?” Lee asked, still reading, or maybe rereading the paper.
“In the drawer with some other documents.” Kit squirmed a little in his chair. “How would you interpret that?”
“I think, my friend, that you are now proud owner of theSea Haven.”
“That’s what I thought, but read on.”
“I did.”
