And so Marlowe was not surprised to find her in fine shape when he stepped aboard. Her decks had been swept fore and aft, and what little gear she still had aboard was in good order. He could smell fresh tar on her shrouds and linseed oil on her rails and sides. He looked around and nodded his approval.
“She is spacious as a ballroom with the great guns gone,” Francis observed. They had all come in through the entry port and stood in the waist, taking the ship in.
“She is that,” Thomas agreed. “And that relieves us of the need to carry powder or shot, which leaves plenty of room below for all our hogsheads and our neighbors’ as well. It is a good thing, really, the governor has taken our guns.”
“I could almost believe you are sincere,” said Francis.
Marlowe took a step inboard, letting his eye roam over the familiar deck. So many ghosts floating around that space, too. He could see the big Spaniard looming alongside as he prepared to lead the Elizabeth Galleys over the rail. He could see again the men struggling along that deck as they were blasted by the heavy guns of the French Indiaman. He could recall the sight of Whydah slipping below the horizon as he looked over that taffrail at the place where they had buried King James.
Ghosts everywhere. His entire life was haunted.
“Yes, well…” he said to no one in particular. “Let us inspect belowdecks. I’ll wager you will be pleasantly surprised by what you find.”
He would have won the wager, had any taken him up on it. The lower decks were musty and hot, having been shut up and uninhabited for so long. But they were clean and maintained, with no sign of mold or rot or vermin. That was because Marlowe had his people wash her out with vinegar on a regular basis and fumigate her with brimstone once a year.
They made their way through the hold, inspecting that lower part of the ship by lantern light. Nothing amiss. She was tight and seaworthy.
They returned to the quarterdeck, blinking in the brilliant sun, blinded after the gloom of the hold. “She is in fine shape,” Marlowe announced. “And I’ll warrant the rest of her gear is just as well preserved. Give me a decent crew and I will have her ready for sea in a month.”
The first part of the crew was easy enough to find. Upon returning to Marlowe House, he summoned all the former slaves together and told them that he was going to sail the Elizabeth Galley to England and he needed men and would any of them like to sign on?
There were no takers among the older men, those for whom ships meant the middle passage, the six weeks of hell stuffed into the festering hold of a slaver.
But among the younger men that association was not so strong. Hesiod was the first of them to step forward. He, like several others, had been young enough then that the memory had faded. Still others had been born in the colonies and had no firsthand knowledge of that horror. They were the young, strong, adventurous types that Marlowe wanted, and twelve of them stepped forward and eagerly volunteered.
“You do not think this might be a problem?” Bickerstaff asked Thomas in a private moment. “Sure, these fellows are as capable as any landsmen, but you will have to hire genuine seamen as well. Do you think others might object to being shipmates with black men?”
“Your sailor is an altogether more liberal fellow than your landsman,” Marlowe said. “I don’t think they will object to any man who pulls his weight. It is not unprecedented, you know, white men and black working together on shipboard.”
“Indeed? I have never seen it.”
“You don’t too often aboard honest ships, but aboard pirates it is common enough.”
“Humph,” said Bickerstaff. “That is not a precedent I might wish to follow.”
Smart, able, and willing as those young black men were, they were not sailors. Marlowe set them to work transferring all of the gear in storage back to the ship-work that needed no special expertise.
At the appointed hour Peleg Dinwiddie reported aboard. With an experienced first officer to oversee the setting up of the rig, Marlowe was free to begin his campaign for the recruitment of experienced mariners, a scarce commodity in the Tidewater. He took his own sloop, the Northumberland, down the James River and across Hampton Roads to the small, rough port town of Norfolk, where he hoped to find sailors in a region that did not see a fraction of the shipping that the northern colonies did.
He went immediately to the taverns, the likeliest place to find not just sailors but sailors in a compliant mood. In the second loud, dark, smoke-filled, stinking tavern he entered, he found one.
The man was sitting alone at a small table. He was dressed in a linen shirt and well-worn broadcloth coat. His face was a sailor’s face, lined and tanned, his hair was long and worn clubbed, sailor fashion. He might have been an ordinary seaman at one point in his career, but he looked now like a bosun or mate of a small merchantman. Perhaps a bit of privateering, perhaps a bit of piracy.
There was a quality that drew Marlowe’s eye, an air of self-assurance. A certain attitude. There was nothing soft about the man; he was all sharp edges. If Peleg was something of a tame bear, this man looked like a wolf, and a hungry one. But those qualities were good, too, if they could be channeled the right way.
“Mind if I join you?” Marlowe stood in front of the small table. The man looked up, regarded Marlowe for a long moment, said nothing. Marlowe was wearing his seagoing clothes: faded blue coat, cotton waistcoat and shirt, and soft, well-worn canvas breeches. The clothes he might wear to call on the governor would not answer in a place like this.
Finally the man nodded to the other seat. Marlowe put his mug on the table and sat.
“Name’s Marlowe. Thomas Marlowe.”
The man nodded.
“I’m shipping a crew. Tobacco to London. You’ve the look of a seaman. Are you a’wanting a berth?”
The man looked up from the table, met Marlowe’s eye, and then nodded, slowly. “Perhaps.”
“Ship paid off? Sail without you?”
“No. I sailed in here as bosun on a merchantman bound out of Plymouth. But the master and I didn’t see eye to eye, and now I’m on the beach.”
“What was the matter?”
“The master was a horse’s arse.”
Marlowe nodded. This made things difficult. A judgment call. Perhaps the master was a horse’s arse. Or perhaps this man was incompetent, a thief, a drunkard. But these were the risks one always took, hiring on a crew. Sailors were not tame men, not bookkeepers or dancing masters. They were the original troublemakers. It was little wonder that Jesus had picked mariners as his apostles when he wanted to stir things up.
“You shipped as bosun, eh? I’ve need of a bosun. Care to come aboard for the fitting out, see if you want to sail with us?”
“Tobacco to London? I guess I was keeping a weather eye out for something that was a bit more… lucrative.”
“So am I. I had a thought to perhaps sail to Madagascar, after.”
The man grinned. “ ‘Perhaps’? That don’t sound too certain.”
“It’s not certain. It’s the most I can promise.”
What in hell am I saying? Marlowe thought. He was starting to bandy this Madagascar thing around like he had decided on it, which he had not, not at all. And even if he had, Bickerstaff and Elizabeth would never go along with it.
But he needed sailors, and they needed inducement, so there it was.
“All right,” the man said at last. “I see something in you I like. I’ll come aboard for the fitting out, and if we can stand each other, I’ll sail as bosun with you.” He grinned again. “Then we’ll see what you decide.”
His name was Honeyman. Duncan Honeyman, and he arrived aboard the Elizabeth Galley with three sailors in tow, men also looking for berths.
“Friends of yours, Honeyman?”
“Shipmates. They thought the master of our old ship was a horse’s arse, too.”
Marlowe nodded, looked the men over. They were a rough-looking bunch. Gold earrings; big knives worn with ease in the small of their backs; arms like gnarled tree limbs; long hair, clubbed like Honeyman wore it; wide slop trousers, patched and tar-stained. They each chewed absently on the tobacco in their cheeks. They smelled of rum and sweat. But he had seen worse, and shipped with much worse.
