Friction into reality; I should say into fiction into life. Small beads form on the upper lip, Shoes strings become untied, a bottle is cracked as the ship leaves it’s slip. Fret and cascade escape a troubled brow. A boat builder an architect leans smirks and shifts toward the end of the pier. The wake presses a ripple across the bay’s cloudy shiloutte. Mooring lines tighten righting an unballasted keel. Its crew makes up chalks and moors with figure eights and half hitches. Take up slack and pull with the boatswains command.
Captain, Executive officer, and first mate critique fit for crew and evolution.
Pea coats smocked, boots weather sealed with wax, glove, slacks, hat, and pants. Stores are stacked and awaiting brow and chain gang. Rations and stores for 4 weeks. The harbor’s main berthing finds vacancy at the vessels underway taking. Bow to stern aspect three hundred feet washed and clean. She has a 9 foot draft with another 22 feet to the first rail.
The lines in the boat shore for a nimble light sailing ship. A clipper maybe, I’ll wait to report further direction possibly assuming more command. A cigarette falls from my first *******. A jostle to my left crafts seagulls posturing a stolen meal. Sulfur stings my nostril igniting the first of two puffs. The captian rolls his eyes my direction gives the once over finding his intrest in the rest of the evolution.
A few pier hands set eyes on the clipper, smoking.
Mice run along the wooden edge of the pier away from some of the salted pork and grain. Two other mice lose courage at my sight line. XO and first mate shift and turn retrieving my concern. The brow is being landed at the stern of the ship.
No decals and no name yet. At some point Ill find or ask to be apart of the ships crew. Deck hand, cook, messenger, helmsman, assistant to first mate all compatible with ability. The first mate chuckles and mentions a figurative by stander knowing that an employment opportunity starts with a conversation.
Crew’s first leiutenant for the most part looks squared away and a bit untouchable, salty. Pants tucked into calf high boots, a beard, pea coat and a lost stare. Hesitating a bit he grins and settles back to appropriate conversation.
My bag and jacket drop accompany to the stores. Maybe a slow patient walk aft, there has to be a name for her. At the stern a marching movement to my right and I can follow the rear of the boat and in peripheral the command group.
The Lion’s Winter in large old English print below a iron clad window pane bounces with the tide to the left and right in a roll. I can see the ship, now calming into a quiet slop off of the pier and its mooring lines. The rudder is a massive distorted key shaped piece of poplar with copper piano hinges all the way to the back of the keel. A small blue crab lengthens a breast stroke across the top of the water.
The three follow the appropriate custom before crossing the brow and the first louie barks a few times. Two of the ship’s crew begin inventory on stores while a bit of nervousness creeps over the contents of my only possessions. Wetting my lips I can taste the salt on my face.
One of the crew yells,
“Louie, move him off. He stump’n around the grub.”
He barks again,
“Turn two. Got more an him eny’d, a Rat!”
I took that as on opportunity to introduction. Mr. Louie straightened pursed heels and drained thought from my façade. His eyes narrowed, he felt the calm of my urgency. He knew I needed, obliged then walked to conversation. “Cryme's, you look’n for someone.”
“Humm, a shipmate.”
I could see the it was not the conversation he was expecting. He leveled, “Pretty tight around here. What do you have in the bag?”
“Mostly books.”
“You cant cross the atlantic reading books.”
Sharply understood in sponse to kurt, “Is that an opportunity or an intrest accompany to nothing.”
“You can naught cross the Atlantic.”
Tim says leave the world. I laugh and he says no righting, laughter.
The first chapter