"You might've let me know sooner," the midshipman mumbled.
"You might've given me a chance to," Adam snapped.
Willis Beach loudly admired the signature, when the gang had gone.
"Better'n the real one!"
"What makes you think that this isn't real?"
"Just 'appens I know old Johnny Benbow. Used to dark on 'is flagship. You see, Cap'n, it just so 'appens I am a deserter from the bloody Nivy. If they'd 'ad me in, I'd've got fifty-sixty lashes."
He rose. He shook Adam's hand.
"I'm 'eading for the 'ills, and I'll stie there till these wessels've gone awie. Gawd bless you, Cap'n. Good-bye."
That evening Adam announced that there would be no shore leave in Kingston.
"Unless some of you got a hankering to join the English Navy?"
The hoops and staves fetched a fancy price, but nobody would touch the eels. It seemed that the Navy had impounded all the food reserves on the island, or had threatened to. A fleet was expected from Home, the admiral declared, and he must prepare to stock it. But the colonists had to eat, and what's more they had to feed their slaves, the governor had replied, adding that the admiral did not have the right to do any such impounding. The admiral rejoined that he certainly did, and anyway he was doing it. Voices had been raised, tables thumped. The governor, beset by political enemies, was unsure of his position, for he held only an interim appointment, and word from the new monarch, Anne, had not yet been received. Neither had official news of the declaration of war been received. Something had gone astray, some ship had been sunk? Meanwhile nobody knew whether the admiral's order stood, or in fact just what it was; but the planters in from their plantations couldn't buy food, and Adam Long was not permitted to sell.
"You'd have to get permission from Admiral Benbow himself."
"All right," he said. "I'll go and ask him."
He waited for four days in an anteroom. Nobody paid much attention to him. He was not uncomfortable; but he never did get a glimpse of the admiral. All the functionaries he ever saw, aside from a few clerks who sometimes scurried in to check the spelling of his name or the tonnage of his vessel, were a couple of marine guards, changed too often to make it worth while to hit up an acquaintance with them.
Alone, then, and uneasy in mind, he fell into the habit of surveying his own clothes and wondering what folks thought of him here—either that or else gazing out of a window to where he could see Goodwill in the midst of a cluster of bumboats. The bumboats made more tolerable the confinement of those aboard the schooner, but all the same the captain didn't like them. They were dirty, like the men and women who rowed them, and he misliked to think of dirty people near Goodwill.
He had turned from the window, the afternoon of the fourth day, and closed his throbbing eyes for a moment. The sunlight was merciless, blaring off the roofs, fleering away from the palm trees.
"Is the admiral in, pray?"
Adam opened his eyes.
This was a willowy stripling in silver and blue, who carried one hand on his hip whilst with the other he waved a square of lace doused with perfume. He looked as if a good breeze might blow him away, and his voice was a cultivated screech, a macaw's.
Adam made a leg, mockingly.
"They tell me he is, sir. I wouldn't know. I've never seen him myself. But then, I've only been waiting here since Tuesday."
The stripling's mouth fell open, and he seemed to gasp, like a fish out of water. The hand with the kerchief became still.
What if anything this apparition would have replied, Adam was never to know, for at this moment a clerk bustled in, swirling with apologies, milording this and milording that, and offered the stripling his arm and conducted him to the inner chamber.
It was too much for Adam, who left.
He was thoughtful when he called the hands aft that evening. There were no bumboats then, and the harbor was quiet. Night would come soon, in a rush. The lovely birds that sought garbage were gone. The surface of the water was crumpled with catspaws.
"There's plenty want food but they can't buy it here. So we'll take it to them around the other side of the island. The customs folks won't let us deliver our goods at the front door, we'll use the back."
"That'd be smuggling," Peterson cried.
"Why, so it would," said Adam.
Jeth Gardner pointed out: "But we can't even leave this harbor withouten we have clearance papers!"
Adam patted the mainsail.
"There's our clearance paper. All right—now let's have the hook up!"
Mr. Pendleton was a worried man with worried washy eyes.
His sigh rose full from his feet. Whenever he came to a stop there seemed to settle upon him, invisible until it landed, a gritty sediment, ashes mixed with sand perhaps, giving forth an acrid odor like dust from some discouraged volcano. He dragged, and drooped.
Conscientiously he conducted his visitor around the plantation. It was nothing to be proud of. In those parts you always had a sense of rottenness. You could feel the nearness, the emergence, like a stealthy miasma, of decay. But this place was worse than most. It was falling apart.
Mr. Pendleton was the third Jamaica planter Adam had tried. The first had only recently been visited by another Yankee with dried codfish and live horses—so his slaves would eat for a while. The second had wanted the eels, but couldn't pay for them. Four dozen coconuts in exchange for a cask of oysters, was the best that struggler could do.
Mr. Pendleton was not going to be any more profitable.
"Shall we have a drink. Captain?"
"Don't mind."
Not the suggestion but its tardiness was strange. The average planter produced liquor as soon as you hove into sight. For one thing, he welcomed news from outside, and hoped you'd be talky. For another, if you got a bit drunk you might come down in your price.
They were lonesome, these out-of-the-way planters.
Adam decided to try a Frencher next. He'd run over to Hispaniola. Meanwhile it was only mannerly to have that drink.
Mr. Pendleton led the way past a ramshackle garden and into a mouldering house. He clapped his hands. Nobody came. He shouted; but the echoes of his shout chased themselves to rest. Muttering something about sickness, Mr. Pendleton said he would get the rum himself.
"Why don't you go out there under those roses, Captain?"
Adam bowed gravely and went out to a shabby little arbor and sat down. He could see the schooner from there, which was good. He reckoned he wasn't entirely shoved out of everything when he could command Goodwill to Men, He might own only one-sixteenth of her, but she'd obey him when he put over the tiller. And he would own the whole vessel some day. He was bound and determined that this should be so.
"Here we are. Sorry I took so long. Will you have a cigarro, too?"
They lit up. They sipped. Adam's drink was powerful.
"Shall we talk business?"
"All right."
Adam did not even look at his host but continued to gaze down at the schooner, from which the Moses boat was putting out. That was right: he had instructed Resolved Forbes to send the boat at this time.
He named his price. He heard a gasp. Then came the tale of woe. It was sloppy, slippy, the words like pewter plates with gobbets of food still sticking to them. Mr. Pendleton was willing to pay, but— When his next shipment came—
Adam shook his head. He took a little, not much, of his drink. The Moses boat was nearing shore. It looked absurdly small and toylike down there on the blue, blue bay.
Suddenly Adam caught a change in Mr. Pendleton's voice.
"What was that you said?"
"I repeat: I am not going to debase myself with any more pleading. Either you sell me those eels at a price I can pay, or I'll have you seized and sent to Kingston as a smuggler."