"They'll approve," Adam said.
Jeth tired. He who had more than once kept the deck through thirty-odd hours of gale, toiling, shouting, finding fault, now sagged perceptibly after less than an hour of murmurous talk. Yet he hated to see Adam go. He held Adam's hand for some time.
"You'll be here awhile, sir?"
"A week, ten days."
He sought out the landlord, and left some coins.
"They'd ought to do something about that man, the owners."
"They will," Adam promised. "I'm going to see to it right now."
Walking back to Blake's, his legs swinging, the gulls still uttering those plaintive squeals, the bay on his right now, he determined to take no nonsense from Obadiah Selden, John Saye, John Richardson, and Phineas Monk, the cooper.
So he was angry and his jaw was out when he swung into Blake's. He was acting and feeling as if his wishes had already been flouted.
Only one man sat at the Adventurers' Table—Obadiah Selden. For all his bulk, he looked shrunken, sitting there alone. He was not drinking anything or eating anything.
"Where are the others?" Adam asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, and remembering that he had promised himself not to be harsh with Obadiah: "Will you share dinner with me, sir?"
"Thank you," said the merchant. "I was just on the point of inviting you to go up and have dinner with my daughter and me. We're having vension tonight. And an oyster pie."
Something caught in Adam's throat, and he turned his head away. The Duchess' brat was not used to being asked out.
"Now that's right chirk of you, sir. But would Mistress Deborah have enough food?"
"She'll have enough."
"Even though she don't expect me?"
"She does expect you. She was the one told me to ask you."
"Oh. She, uh, she knows I'm back in Nevqjort then?"
"Known it since seven this morning when she spotted you coming up the bay. She's always at the window with that glass, ever since you been gone. Spends most of her time there."
"I see," said Adam Long. Embarrassed again, he looked around. He wasn't being dominating, imperious, as he'd planned. "But oughtn't we have our meeting here first? I've got some matters to bring up."
"We can have it at my house with less ado."
"You can't bring four men home!"
"No need to. We're all here, all the owners. I bought out John Saye and John Richardson and Monk, the cooper," explained Obadiah, "last week."
"Oh. Meaning that now you own nine-sixteenths of the schooner?"
"Aye."
"While I own seven-sixteenths."
"Aye. And I shall admire very much to hear those suggestions you have to make, Captain."
Adam rose.
"While I shall admire very much to eat that oyster pie, sir. I always have been partial to oysters."
In the gathering gloom lightning bugs were being buffeted about. The leaves underfoot went clicketty-click. In the house across the street, the Evans house, a light shone-where Elnathan no doubt sat up nursing her husband. Adam, glancing that way as he turned with Obadiah, for a moment had the unchristian thought that Zeph's illness was lucky for him, Adam, inasmuch as it kept Zeph's wife at home. Not for the smallest part of an instant, though, did Adam suppose that he was finished with Elnathan Evans—or, rather, that she was finished with him. Sooner or later they were going to have to have it out. He just couldn't carry on with her the way they had been doing before he sailed for the islands. It would not be right. Well, it had never been right, far as that goes; but he had Maisie to think of now.
Nor did Adam delude himself with the notion that Deborah Selden would quit. What she wanted, being the woman she was, she would try her dad-blamedest to get; and likewise her father here was going to try to get it for her. Adam was, of course, flattered; he was delighted; but also he was more than a mite frightened by the directness of the attack.
Of the two, he calculated that he had more to fear from Deborah. Elnathan was a tasted sweet. She could not aspire to marry him while Zeph lived; and an adulterous relationship, even without the appropriate trimmings, would sure as snakes be known to everybody in town. Liberal though Newport was—of course everybody knew about Maisie, for instance—it would not tolerate this. Fornication afar and fornication at home, right in sight of everybody, were two different things.
Deborah Selden, on the other hand, clad in all the might of her virginity, might be hard to hold off.
Adam took a deep breath before entering the house.
Manners can come in handy. The Seldens, indoors, were a touch formal in their treatment of Adam, who gratefully was formal in reply.
Adam was jolted when a girl he had once pursued with japes, being halted only when she turned to stick her tongue out at him—when such a one, Deborah, swept him a practiced curtsey. But Adam caught himself and made a leg Londonwise, his cocked hat held over his heart.
Deborah was wearing French gray camlet. There was white linen, thin and crisp, narrow, too, at the neck and cuffs. There was no cap and not even a suggestion of that tottering monstrosity the "commode," as affected by ladies of ton.
They talked a few minutes, proper but not stiff. She congratulated him on a successful voyage. He replied that it had yet to be voted a success, since his report to the other owner was not yet in; and it could be that he put some slight stress on that word "other." She said that she was sure it would prove a success; and then, directly, womanlike, she started to pump him about the dress materials he'd brought. She was worked up to hear about the wax candles, and told her father promptly and decisively that they should buy up a large stock of these. Obadiah, doffing his cloak, nodded. There were five candles in the branch on the table right then, and every one lighted. It made Adam feel like a duke.
Deborah excused herself and went back to the kitchen.
There was a poker being hotted in the fire.
Obadiah wasted no time on amenities. Even while he made flip, he was asking questions. He listened carefully to the answers. He approved the cargo and agreed to handle all of it, including Adam's own share, without any charge to Adam. With no hesitation he agreed to the payment of four pounds a month for Jethro Gardner's room and victuals, this to come out of the ship's fund. Concerning the few Dutch sails, though he bugged his eves a bit at the cost, he said only that this was in the captain's province.
"That extra smitch of speed," Adam pointed out, "might save everything, the seas down that way being what they are."
"Well, well, I trust you, Captain. I think you know best."
"It'll be mostly your money this time, sir. Mine's going to go over there." And he nodded in the direction of the Evans house.
Obadiah studied the brim of his mug.
"I wonder if you'd tell me. Captain—that is, if you caie to—how much, uh, how much you paid Zeph Evans for those four-sixteenths?"
Adam told him.
Obadiah's eyebrows, very bushv, were the only expressive feature of a face ordinarily impassive. Now the eyebrows leapt. Obadiah looked at Adam Long with interest and admiration.
"That was a bargain. Zeph try to get you drunk first, did he?"
"He tried."
"Want me to tell you what I paid Saye and Monk and Richardson?"
"I'd admire very much to hear, sir."
Obadiah told him.
Adam stared, aghast. Highly as he esteemed the schooner, who knew her better than anybody else, he found it hard to believe that more should be paid for five-sixteenths of her than was put out for the building of the entire vessel a year ago. Yet Obadiah Selden, never a boastful man anyway, surely was not boasting now.
"I had a good reason for paying that price," he said. Deborah appeared. "Dinner's ready."