Anne Dray's Arc

Chapter 20 of 28

The chain lay half-strung across the harbor mouth, but the crews had stopped hauling it. Anne heard why before she saw it. The cook pots at the fire pit were near empty. With every scattered crew now moored behind the Shelf, she had more mouths than food. A base was worth nothing if the men who built it starved. And hungry men drifted. She had watched crews melt off other captains for a single bad week of rations. Dr. Sarah Caldwell caught her at the fire pit. The ship's cook and surgeon stirred a thin pot with one hand and counted barrels with her eyes. Her apron was streaked with grease and old blood. She did not soften the news. "Salt pork's down to nine barrels," Sarah said. "Biscuit, four days if I stretch it. We feed this many crews a week, then nothing." She tapped the pot. "I can't cook water." Anne knew the numbers were true. Sarah had once traced three deaths to one bad barrel. She did not guess. "Then we don't wait a week," Anne said. Emily Deepwood came up from the dock, tar black on her hands. The exiled shipwright had learned the Shelf route straight from Grimjack's fever-talk. She was one of two people alive who could lead a ship back through it. "The local captains at the cut grow their own," Emily said. "Grain. Goats. Salt fish in sheds. They call it stores. I call it more than three ships can eat." She wiped her hands. "They defend the cut with us. They could feed us too." "For what price?" Anne asked. "You gave them shared defense," Emily said. "Give them a share of every prize we take. They stay behind the Shelf. The Crown can't touch their harvest here. That's worth more to them than gold they can't spend." Anne rowed out to the cut that afternoon. She met the local captain on his own deck and laid it plain. Her fleet would guard the entrance and hand the locals a fixed cut of every treasure ship they took. In return, the local sheds would feed her crews through the season. The captain walked his stores with her, counting grain sacks against her count of ships. By dusk they marked the terms. The first boats came at dawn. Grain, salt fish, penned goats, barrels of hard biscuit rowed across the flat water to the harbor. Anne's crews hauled them up the dock beside the half-strung chain. Sarah opened a sack, rubbed the grain between her fingers, and nodded once. "This holds," she said. "Months, not days." The fleet would not drift now. Anne had traded prize-shares for a full larder, and her crews had reason to stay and finish the base. But the terms bound her fleet to the cut. To keep feeding this many men, she now had to take more Crown ships, and every prize would draw the Crown's hunt closer to the one way in.