The wind off the Deep Anchor Anchorage drove fine salt spray through the cracked pine shutters of the net-loft, rattling the iron latches with a persistent, dry chatter.
The net-loft sat in the high rafters of the Old Sailmaker’s Storehouse on the edge of Slipway Four. Overhead, tarred cod-lines, hemp trawl nets, and dried kelp floats hung from blackened cedar collar-beams. He smelled of salt water, animal fat, and fish oil. Below, dark basin water slapped against the stone wharves where the Sea-Gull lay moored in the fog.
On the long carpenter’s bench in the center of the loft, two brass lanterns cast yellow light across a slab of heavy timber.
It was an eight-foot section of the vessel’s upper stern transom, cut free after nightfall by Master Rigger Dunley and Nessa Vale using a greased keyhole saw and carpenter’s auger. Five inches thick and heavy as stone, the wood smelled of coal-tar pitch, rancid mutton fat, and fresh turpentine.
Tomas Reed sat on a three-legged stool beside the frame stand, working the buckles of his left forearm brace.
The freezing dive had left the skin of his left arm mottled purple, the thick white scar along the inner flexor tendon tightened into an unbending ridge that pulled his two smallest fingers inward. He took a small heavy clay pot of bitter pine-resin and sheep-animal fat liniment from his pocket. He kneaded the healing grease hard into the tendon sheath until the throbbing softened to a tolerable burn, then laced…
