Chapter 71: A Town in Rough Timber
The reef gave them one tense moment, then let them pass. Grey stood on the Fortune’s wheel the entire way, calling soundings across to the Rose, and both ships slipped between the coral heads without so much as brushing them.
They dropped anchor in water so clear James could watch the chains settle onto white sand thirty feet below. Within the hour, the crew had already reached the beach or thrown themselves into the sea, while the rest loudly fought over who had earned the right to go first.
James left them to sort it out.
He climbed a low shelf of pale stone at the northern side of the bay, its surface worn smooth by centuries of tides. A single twisted tree grew sideways from a crack near the top, as though it had long ago abandoned any hope of growing straight and decided growing at all was enough.
He rested his back against the crooked trunk, stretched his legs across the warm stone and simply looked.
The bay spread beneath him, calm as polished glass.
Near the shore the water was so pale and clear that he could use it as a mirror. Farther out, beyond where both ships rested easily, the sea darkened into deep blue. Beyond that, a long line of white surf marked where the reef broke the swell before it ever reached the sea.
Nothing larger than the Rose would make it through that narrow passage unless the captain had a chart with every hidden finger of coral beneath the surface.
Down on the beach, Kit was wading through the water with Ned clinging to his back like an oversized baby for no reason beyond the simple fact they seemed to be enjoying themselves.
"Quit bouncin’ Ned!"
"I am not bouncing!"
"Ye are! Ye’re tryin’ to throw me off!"
A heartbeat later they tipped sideways into the shallows with a crash of spray and a chorus of shouting. Both of them surfaced laughing.
James smiled and let his gaze wander away. Pine trees crowded the shoreline in every direction, their trunks straight and plentiful enough to build a respectable harbor three times over.
Around the eastern curve of the bay, where the pines thinned away, a heavier stand of hardwood rose darker and taller. A shipwright would have lingered over timber like that without anyone needing to explain why.
Between those forests lay nearly everything a man could hope to find, including a few things he wouldn’t have thought to ask for.
He spotted Doyle closer to the threes. The man had discovered some sort of local fruit and was crushing it into a jug with complete concentration.
"What in God’s name is that supposed to become?"
Pete eyed the jug with open suspicion.
"Won’t know till it’s finished, will I?"
"And who’s drinkin’ it then?"
Doyle never looked up.
"You are."
Without looking away from his cards, Rook laid another onto the ground.
"Reckon Pete’s dead by mornin’."
"Reckon he is."
Twice slid his wager forward.
James nearly chortled. He made a silent prayer for Pete and looked away.
Some stream flowed down from higher ground beyond the hardwood forest, cutting a clean path across the sand before spilling into the bay. The water looked clear enough to drink without hesitation, something worth more than gold on the islands James had visited.
The beach itself stretched long and even before giving way to shingle farther inland, exactly the sort of place a captain would beach a ship when it came time to scrape her hull and no dockyard yet existed.
He found two sailors fighting over who was supposed to carry a barrel ashore from the boats. It was the sort of disagreement that normally ended with punches.
Briggs eventually wandered over to see what that mess was about. He listened to perhaps three words before letting out a weary grunt that somehow caused both sailors to fall completely silent.
One of them closed his eyes.
"Please don’t make us do that again."
Briggs merely waited.
A moment later they had the barrel between them and were carrying it ashore with cheerful cooperation.
The way two grown-ass sailors had folded, you’d think Briggs had threatened to tuck them into bed and kiss them goodnight. James wasn’t about to ask.
He looked back over the bay instead.
The whole place lay hidden behind low hills and a thick wall of trees. Any ship sailing past offshore would never suspect a sheltered harbor lay beyond that narrow space in the pines unless its crew already knew where to look.
A reef that would stop any warship.
Fresh water.
Timber worth building with.
James leaned back against the tree and gave himself one quiet moment to feel something he would have laughed at if anyone else had suggested it.
This was his.
Eventually he climbed back down to find Sawyer standing with one broad hand against the trunk of a hardwood.
"She’s a fine one."
Sawyer didn’t turn. He sounded as though he’d known James was coming before his boots touched the sand.
"Whoever planted this stretch knew what they were about."
"Nobody planted it, Sawyer. It just grew."
"Well, somebody should’ve."
James stopped beside him. "So what d’ye think? Real prospects here, or am I only lookin’ at a pleasant place to careen a ship?"
Sawyer nodded toward the hardwood grove behind them. "Give me a few days and whatever men ye can spare, and I’ll have a roof over our heads and the storage somewhere the rain can’t get at."
His eyes drifted toward the shoreline, following it until it reached the deeper water.
"Keep me here long enough and I’d put a pier out there."
He pointed toward the bay. "Not with pine, mind. Drive pine into salt water and the worms’ll have it hollow before ye’ve finished admirin’ it. Hardwood’s slower to work, but it’ll still be standin’ years after the pine’s gone soft."
James found himself liking the man even more. Anyone promising him a town before Christmas would never have answered that way.
"You’re plain-spoken."
He smiled.
"How’s a ship’s carpenter come to know so much about buildin’ things besides ships anyway?"
"Carpenter’s not all I ever was."
Sawyer shrugged. "Spent years puttin’ up buildings outside Kingston, back when Jamaica wanted more hands than it had. By the end I was callin’ meself somethin’ close to an architect, though nobody ever wrote it down proper."
Sawyer rested both hands against the trunk.
"I built a roof once that came down."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Truth is, the storm would’ve torn the Almighty’s own roof off if it’d had a mind to."
He rubbed at the rough bark with his thumb.
"Didn’t matter. The fellow who owned it wanted a culprit more than he wanted the truth."
He glanced at James.
"He could afford one."
Silence settled between them for a moment.
"Took to the sea not long after. Later than most men do."
James let the story rest where it was. There was no need to pry.
Sawyer soon returned to quietly muttering to himself about which hardwood he’d cut first if the real work ever began.
James remained beside him another minute, turning the conversation over in his mind. For once he felt no urge to hurry onward. It was enough simply to let a good thing remain exactly as it was.
The preliminary phase has concluded. You have finished it ahead of every projection I made when this began, and I want that recorded as an irritation on my part, not a compliment on yours.
James froze for a fraction longer than he intended.
One phrase snagged in his thoughts before slipping away, leaving only the uneasy certainty that something had been wrong.
"Right then."
He faced Sawyer without letting any of that reach his expression.
"Keep at yer reckonin’. I’ll want the full account before we decide what gets built first."
He left Sawyer with his trees and walked through the beach alone.