The fourth test sample produced an accidental masterpiece of field skill comedy. In her haste to finish the joint before the meal break ended, Mistress Kessa had double-stitched the linen-to-hemp shift with an extra-thick waxed cord, producing a bulging, lumpy seam that looked like a row of crooked teeth.
Eren Tal held the joint up by the firelight, squinting at the lumpy stitches. ‘Well, Dima,’ Eren laughed, ‘that seam won’t win any prizes at the Archon’s flower show. It looks like an angry bulldog that caught its lip on a fish-hook.’
Jo Saye took the sample, tugged on it with her measuring tongs, and grinned. ‘It might look like a bulldog, Eren, but look at the scale reading. One hundred and twenty-two pounds before the linen stretched. That ugly little bulldog is twenty pounds stronger than the prettiest royal stitch in the navy.’
She picked up a piece of charcoal and sketched a small, scowling bulldog face on the timber worktable right beside the joint pattern. ‘That’s our standard, boys. From now on, every moving hinge gets the Bulldog Seam. When you’re crawling along that dark narrow high walkway under sixty feet of water, you don’t need a golden embroidery. You need an ugly bulldog that bites the granite and refuses to let go.’
