The Whaler's Treasure

Chapter One, Scene 2

Rob Thorpe watched the trim figure of the girl scurry down the street, momentarily distracted from business.


"Skittish as a stray cat," his brother Matt murmured.


"She is that," Rob answered without taking his eyes from the girl.


"Might be worth enticing her to hand, though," Matt said with a sly grin.


Rob shot him a reproving look. "Do I need to remind you you're married?"


They started toward the docks and the Molly Jane, sitting low in the water, her hold filled to the deck with casks of oil. 
"Of course not. Just keep your promise to get me home to her by end of year. I was thinking you should do the enticing. If that old man is right she might not take much convincing."


"I've watched her helping out at the boarding house, nursing our men. She doesn't act like a loose woman."


"Appearances can deceive," Matt said with an elbow to Rob's ribs.


"You'll never let me forgot that woman in Cape Town will you?"


"She made a man out of you, didn't she?"


Rob didn't honor that with an answer. It had been different sort of tavern, and he'd come out of the experience sporting a sick head, an empty purse, and a monumental distaste for the furtive, grubby sort of coupling.


The smell of the whaler reached them well before they came to the docks. Unpleasant it may be for others, to Rob it had the pure odor of riches. They'd done well. Two thirds of the oil was spermaceti, which always commanded a premium price, and an even greater treasure lay locked in his cabin, enough to buy his own ship and pay others to chase the whales.


They ought to be three quarters of the way home to Nantucket by now, not stuck in some fishing village in Scotland waiting for their stricken harpooner and his own brother-in-law, the ship's cooper, to heal from their disastrous encounter with the chains from the cutting platform.


As it was Rob dreaded telling Mary Watkins, the surgeon's wife, that her husband had gone overboard, swept away when ropes gave way while the men were peeling off great sheets of blubber. He lay under the sea off Iceland. Rob's decision to try for one more catch in the north had been a disaster. Greed Rob, pure and simple. Still, the Molly lay heavy in the water and many a Nantucket family would rejoice.


The two men walked in deepening silence, a state the vociferous Matt Thorpe could not long tolerate. "Ease up, Rob. The love of a good woman would do you wonders," he said with a grin. His eyes took on a dreamy cast.


Rob clapped him on the back. "We'll get you home to Maud soon. Clarke and Farley get better every day." Rob envied him his Maud. "Easy to talk about a good woman when you've already found one. Have mercy on the rest of us. Besides, you said good woman not tavern wenches."


Matt was right about one thing. Rob had been fifteen that day in Cape Town and his childhood ended there. He thanked the good lord it hadn't put him off women entirely. He promised himself he'd look for a wife after this trip. If profits were what he expected, he would be able to manage it. One thing he knew for certain.


When I look for a wife she won't come from a dockside tavern.