John Kenny said with care: "But if you have captain's papers, I can't suppose you'd wish to sign on for small pay and scant authority."
Shawn sighed, smiling again with tight upper lip and steady eyes. "I think, sir, if the vessel were the Artemis, the position of mate would find me content as any man on salt water, now that's no lie. Truth is I love ships, Mr. Kenny; I know a fair one when I see her. Mother of God, in the old days, the ships I'd see standing out from Sligo Bay, and I too young to follow! I'm a Sligo man, Mr. Kenny, born in Dromore forty-one years ago and can't bear the life on the bloody beach. Steady as she goes!—it's I need a deck under me feet or I'm not living."
Mr. Kenny shook his head unhappily. "Jan Dyckman hath sailed as mate with Mr. Jenks a long time now. I can't imagine Mr. Jenks considering any other in the room of him."
"Still," said Shawn, his head on one side, his smile perhaps no more than a flicker of the candles—"still, sir, you are the owner."
"I am the owner," said Mr. Kenny stiffly, "and merely that. With such a captain as Mr. Jenks, I say nothing about the manning of my craft."
"And very just, sir. I was but thinking this Mr. Dyckman might be ready for a command himself, in one of your other vessels—thus an advancement for him, an opportunity for me."
"I see.... At present I own but two others, Mr. Shawn, one a mere sloop. The other is a ship that should now be at Virginia, a fair sturdy vessel, but she won't be homeward-bound for some months—Captain Foster is intending a triangle course, Barbados and then home. Further, I fear Jan Dyckman himself hath no wish for a captain's place. Splendid fellow, but by his own estimation a natural second in command, who tells me his ambition flies no higher. 'Tis true"—John Kenny's head slanted back and he was looking down his nose—"'tis true Artemis will carry a second mate with her usual complement."
"What is that complement, sir, may I ask?"
"She put out last August with fourteen hands. Came home with ten—smallpox and tropic fever. Three of the ten were new men Mr. Jenks signed on at Kingston. Worked her on the homeward passage with three men and a boy to a watch. I dare say the cook was obliged to turn a hand in dirty weather—he's a renegade Frenchman, by the way, and utterly mad."
"Sir, if a cook aboard ship be not mad he must become so, a law of nature. Why, I recall one we had when I captained the sloop Viceroy, King William's time—she was for Naples out of Bristol and a pleasant passage, the most of it. Rot my liver if this cook didn't go overboard off Malta—in a moderate gale, mind you—crying that a pack of Sirens was corrupting the ship's boys and he'd have 'em flayed for it, and all the time wasn't it only the wind in the stays? A Yorkshireman, and broad in the beam with a list to la'board from a broken leg that'd healed somewhat crook. No Sirens that day, and didn't I put about to fish him out of the drink?—the more fool me, for he was na' but a bundle of disaster ever after. His fancy, d'you see, took another turn—O the child he was, the great smiling angry child!—and he'd have it he must train the weevils in our biscuit to be the like of some educated fleas he'd seen, I think it was at the Cambridge Fair, and he all in a frenzy when they wouldn't answer to the names he gave 'em but continued weevils, nothing more. Mother of God, had he wished he could've had fleas a-plenty, Bristol fleas, the best in the world. Well, there was Jemima, Hannibal, Simon, Jasper—many more I forget. His time passed in shaking more of 'em out of the biscuit and bidding 'em increase and multiply in the bottom of a stewpot, the way he saw his fortune made the day we'd raise Land's End once more, but it did so happen, Mr. Kenny, on a brisk golden afternoon, that a cross-wind caught us for a moment, and no blame to vessel or man, over went the stewpot, and someone stepped on Jemima, and here was fourteen stone of redheaded Yorkshireman coming at me with a knife, for he declared the fault was mine. We were obliged to tie him below. For the rest of the voyage the cooking was done by a highland Scot from Inverness, 'tis a mystery of God we didn't all die—no Scottishmen present, I hope?... Well, I think I would not despise the place of second mate if the vessel was your Artemis, now that's no lie. Nowadays a berth is hard to find."