The granite coping of Berth Four at Deep Anchor Anchorage was coated in green bladderwrack and sea slime. When the tide dropped beneath the fender piles, the smell of Crown-Reach rose. Stale harbor silt, rancid animal fat from victualling yards, and tarred oakum baking under pitch-kettles.
Tomas Reed adjusted the buckled calfskin brace around his right forearm. The November wind carried biting spray off the North Channel, and dampness found his scar tissue first. Beneath coarse wool, the gristle where eel-glass had cut his flexor sheath twenty months ago pulled taut against the forearm bone. Step by step, he pressed his thumb against each fingertip until stiffness yielded. Sixty-five percent grip—enough to steady a measuring chain, though if an iron cleat slipped under load, his left hand had to carry the shock.
Two paces back, Nessa Vale knelt on a hemlock plank out of the coal slurry, her oilskin coat buttoned to the jaw. Her dual-chamber brass hearing horn hung from its chest strap, intake funnels angled toward the boat ramp. Meanwhile, she held a pocket transit against her knee, sighting along the waterplane of the black barque tied twenty yards out.
“She draws twenty-two feet aft and nineteen forward,” Nessa said with flat care. “A commercial barque of three hundred registered tons doesn’t draw twenty-two feet in ballast, Tomas. Her copper sheathing sits four inches below lawful waterline. The discharge from her starboard scupper runs thick with animal fat grease.”
