"You need to repaint," Lewrie said with a droll grin, pointing at the new-come American hulk that sported red-white-blue on gunwales, lower hull, and bulwarks, and huge white stars on the blue; giant American "grid-iron" flags flew from every mast stump. Astern of Pollock's hulk was a small, dowdy store ship flying a French flag; the American was just upriver of Pollock's, and a fourth that flew a Spanish flag lay beyond.
"Damn those interlopers to Hell and gone, Lewrie, damn 'em all!" Pollock fumed. "Do I show half the usual profit this time, I will be flat amazed. You, sir! They won't know you, you could go aboard her and see how fine their goods, how low their prices, browse about!"
Spy? Lewrie drolly thought; Me? He was just about to say it when Jugg ambled up, wringing his wide-brim farmer's hat in his hands, as if loath to intrude, and clearing his throat for attention.
"Beg pardon, sir, but… 'at th' head o' th' line?" Jugg said. "Can't rightly say from here, sir, but damned if she don't look peculiar like our missing prize. D'ye not think so, Cap'm?"
Lewrie looked nonplussed for a second, wondering if the task of finding her could possibly be this easy, then spun as quickly as decorum allowed to eye her with his telescope.
The Azucena del Oeste was edging in nearly alongside her store ship's landing stage, making the viewing angle acute, so he couldn't make out all her details… perhaps half her stern gallery and transom, but a slice of her starboard side, yet… she seemed at least a tad familiar, a ship he'd seen before.
"Know her, Mister Pollock?" Lewrie asked, his gaze intent upon the strange ship.
"Never clapped eyes on her before, sir," Pollock glumly stated.
Lewrie could make out royal blue upperworks and bulwarks; that tweaked his memory. She bore ornate carvings about her stern gallery and sash windows, her arched taff-rail and lanthorn posts, and quarter-galleries; mermaids, cherubs, seahorses, and dolphins, all the work of decent carpenters, and painted in white, pink, and pale blue, decorated with gilt filigrees, and they twanged his chords of memory, too, that last sight he'd seen of her in daylight after her midnight taking as she sailed off for Dominica.
Her name-boards did not match, though; nothing decorative, but merely rectangular planks that didn't equal the size or shape of those that might have once adorned her, leaving faint bands of pale timbers not darkened by sea, sun, linseed oil, or tar. At his acute angle, he could barely make out a crudely painted-on name, not carved intaglio: Fleur de Sud. That name most definitely did not match his dimmed recollection!
Her lower hull, her quickwork! His last sight of her, she'd been heeled over heavily, exposing a badly maintained hull below the waterline, and before he'd turned away to deal with Proteus's demands, he could recall thinking that she might not fetch the highest price at auction, for she hadn't been completely coppered against barnacles and ship-killing teredo worms. Along her waterline and for about two or three feet below it, she'd been coated with linseed-soaked felt, tar-paper, and stark white-lead paint, before the proper bronze-greened chequerboard of copper sheets began.
Penny-pinching ship's husbands, a miserly master, or a dearth of sheet-copper in the French Antilles, where she'd departed after her last slap-dash beaching to burn off seaweed and chip away barnacles… forced to make do with all the copper that could be had outside a European port, tacked on down where it mattered most, on the hope that if she got weeded, it might be where it could be gotten at by her sailors when still under way, heeled well over to leeward as her people hung in bosun's chairs on her windward side?
"Damn my eyes," Lewrie exclaimed at last, taking his telescope from his eye. "I do b'lieve you're right, Mister Jugg. That's her, to the life. Damme, we found her, right off? Why, this all could turn out simpler than we first thought!"
Uh-oh! Lewrie thought a second later; Fate, forget I said it! Saying such hopeful things, he had learned from hard experience, was about as bad as whistling on deck, a dare to Dame Fortune to come boot him up the arse… as she usually did… again!
CHAPTER TEN
Silks, satins, cambrics, and lace; cards of steel sewing needles and pins from Sheffield; bolts of cloth, from sheerest cotton or linen to winter-weight, hard-finished broadcloth and kerseymere wools. Dolls so lifelike one expected them to move or speak, dressed in miniature to exhibit the latest styles from Paris, for one of which Lewrie greedily spoke up, as a gift for his daughter, Charlotte. There were stacks of gentlemen's hats in every style, gloves for gentlemen and ladies, from canvas duck or deerskin work gloves to the thinnest, snuggest kidskin.
There were cases of elegant shoes and boots, ready-made, ready-to-wear, that went swaying up on a yardarm from Azucena del Oeste to the stout landing stage, thence by ramp or yardarm into the emporium hulk. Wooden casks and straw-packed crates bearing gin, sherry, fine clarets, ports, Madeiras, and aged brandies emerged, followed by bales of ready-made shirts, boxes of neck-stocks, boxes of spooled ribbons and flouncings. Ornate penknives, workaday jackknives, needle-thin smallswords and scabbards, slim hunting hangers, old-style swept hilt rapiers and matching daggers… pocket watches, fobs, and chains; ormulu clocks, mantel clocks, and hallway clocks. Duelling pistols cased, dragoon pistols by the dozen to the box, pocket pistols, rifled German Jaegers and Pennsylvania hunters, fowling pieces, blunderbusses, coach-guns… flints, powder flasks, bullet moulds and lead nippers and vent picks. Spices, sealing waxes, tallow and beeswax candles for entertaining, thick votives, and short, stubby prayer candles!
And coffee beans, sugar cones, and licorice whips, cinnamon sticks, bitter blocks of chocolate, teas and tea caddies, mote spoons; everyday tableware, sterling silver compotes and candelabras, coffee and tea services, complete sets of silverware… and the trading brig was only half unloaded!
"The rest will be landed on the quays, the rougher goods," Mr. Pollock announced as they took a break for supper aboard. "Ready-made slop clothing, cruder shoes and such for the planters' slaves, rough muskets and Indian trade goods. The sort of junk our agents will fob off among the Yankee settlers, too. Another day, and we'll empty her of the quality goods, then slant over to the docks to unload the rest."
"Then what do I do?" Lewrie asked as they shared a succulent supper aboard ship. "Do I just loaf about, go ashore and prowl, or… "
"Don the guise that your Mister Peel chose for you, Mister… Willoughby," Pollock said, winking craftily as he reached for a bottle of hock. Being back on his home turf had cheered up the little fellow most disgustingly wondrous, Lewrie thought. "Stand with a tally as the cargo is broken from the hold. You are ostensibly in charge of my new-hired protective force, ahem. Temporarily employed in support of our dowdy commercial doings. Such a dangerous-lookin' chap, really…"
Pollock stroked a finger down his left cheek to sketch Lewrie's teen-years duelling scar on his own face. Lewrie knew he was being twitted, paid back for all the bloodthirsty teasing he'd used upon the unsettled Pollock on the voyage.
"I still don't know as I care much for-" Lewrie objected.
" Willoughby 's a common name, after all," Pollock breezily said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "You might even claim to be American, it's so common on both sides of the Atlantic. And your accent isn't so Oxonion or top-lofty that you could not play the part of a new-come American, to the Spanish and Creoles at least. An emigre from old England to the New World, as are so many. And it is your sire's name, so… "