“Very well. How are you and the captain?”
“The captain’ll be back later in the day. I’m just off again.”
“We’d a lot of trouble yesterday. I’ll be glad when you’re back for good.”
“Cheer up, sir,” said Cammock. “Remember. Mrs. Inigo’s door till one bell. If Mrs. Inigo comes out, open it and search the cabin.” He went on deck again, where the steward met him with a tray. He sat down on a coaming and made a hurried breakfast, while the sloop’s crew hoisted sail. When he had finished his meal, he glanced into the alleyway, where the man was rubbing holystone across the door. “Anybody in there?” he said.
“I hear some one shifting around, sir,” said the man. “The woman’s getting her gear, sir.”
“Right,” said Cammock. “I wish I could stay to see the end,” he said to himself. “But I must be off.” In a few minutes he was bound again for Accomac, under a huge square cutter’s foresail, which made the sloop leap like a flying-fish.
Very late one night, having just arrived aboard after a week of labour, Captain Margaret sat in his cabin comparing tally-books with Captain Cammock; but quietly, lest they should wake Perrin. He was very tired; for the hurry from one clearing to another, and the long rides into the wilderness to planters who lived far away, had been a strain. He had endured them only in the fire of his excitement. He had enjoyed his week of bargaining; the zest of the struggle had been like wine to him. On the lonely clearings, or drinking with strangers in woodmen’s shacks, he had forgotten his love, forgotten the torment of the voyage, Olivia’s child, the settlement on Darien. All had been forgotten. Now that the struggle was over, he felt the exhaustion; but nodding as he was, over his tally-book, his whirling brain praised him with that excited inner voice which talks to the overwrought. “You’ve got the pick of the crop, the pick of the crop, the cream of the year’s leaf,” the voice kept telling him. He had bought seven hundred tons of the best tobacco in the colony; the little that remained to be sold was the poor, crude leaf from the young plants and the poorly cured, poorly flavoured leaf from the distant walks in the forest.
“We’ve got the whole trade, sir,” said Cammock. “You needn’t fear for your owners.”
“No,” said Margaret. “Now to get a bottom to carry it home. Of course, in a week we ought to have the summer fleet here.”
“They’ll not find much,” said Cammock. “We’ve got it all. But supposing a letter comes with the fleet. We shall have to sail that night probably, shan’t we? Supposing we’ve to cut and run, leaving it all in the warehouse?”