At three bells into the middle watch, the tide reached the top of the flood.
A freezing sea fog rolled off the outer roads of Crown-Reach, spilling through the timber shears and iron derrick towers of the Royal Shipyard. It glazed the granite coping stones. Then it turned the black boat ramp water into a churning broth of coal slurry and rotten woodchips.
Master Rigger Dunley crouched on the upper narrow high walkway of Timber Shed Seven, his woolen mitts wrapped around a damp iron stay-cable. Beside him, eighteen-year-old Olla knelt on the pine wooden walkway planks, her canvas messenger pouch hung across her chest with her horn-tipped metal pen and split-bamboo route slips tucked inside. Around her neck hung a small brass blotting metal tube against her dark wool frock.
Forty feet below in the shadows of Slipway Four, the Sea-Gull was discharging cargo.
No harbor lanterns were lit on the wharf. The work went on under the muffled glow of three pierced-tin horn lamps hung from the main yardarms, their shutters turned inboard to hide the light from the customs cutter anchored half a mile out in the public fairway.
“Look at the sling,” Dunley murmured over the creak of the hemp whip and the slap of the basin swells. “Watch how the yardarm bows when the tackle bites. That’s no five-hundredweight crate of salted cod.”
