Chapter 7: Dealing with all the Problems

I took another couple of days off before doing anything important. I’d only been gone a week, but Millie looked better and got some good personal attention that afternoon. I stole some of little Jay-Jay’s dinner and Millie tried to fuck me to death.

Ceecee looked pregnanter if that was possible and acted needy instead of her usual ‘happy to please’ when she got her turn that evening, but she was simply too big for her to be on her back. We had to do it doggy-style.

Around here they called it ‘the cow way’, and she didn’t want to be told she was a cow but she wanted her bull to mount her. I insisted on trying to milk her udders which had grown even more. They still weren’t producing yet but Millie was producing more than enough for Jason and Ceecee’s baby although probably not enough for both of them plus me. If she was slow to produce milk then Millie would be able to feed her baby.

Gina looked more like a young woman, maybe fourteen or fifteen, and I was beginning to think that she was really about seventeen or eighteen. I even let her sleep with me, as long as she wore clothes to bed. She got spanked in the morning when I found her naked. She was becoming a beautiful young woman, but she wasn’t there yet, dammit.

After a relaxing couple of days spent servicing my small herd of cows I started bothering people again. I told Filo that I was taking my ship back and he could have Thunder; what repairs did Wrong Place need? He said some lines were getting ragged but that was all. No problem there, we should still be able to replace them.

That reminded me that we needed to get a hemp farm going so that we could make our own rope. That led to an expedition upriver, looking for a place where hemp would thrive but no one would bother it. We found a place about twenty or thirty miles upriver, just downstream of where the river emerged from the wide marsh that it was for most of the distance between Widemouth and the Narrows.

We cleared all the underbrush for a small garden plot, planted about a third of my hemp seeds, and then marked the location as well as we could so that we could find it again. It should be safe; who else was on the river besides us? The only danger would be from animals eating the young plants. In a couple of weeks we’d have to have someone stay up here, maybe build a little hut, and spend their time building a fence to keep out big animals and traps to catch the little animals.

That first test plot was just to learn what it took to grow hemp. It was supposed to be self-sufficient and not even need weeding, since it grew faster than most weeds and starved them of sunlight, water, and nutrients. Once the plot matured we would harvest the seeds for the next planting and hand the rest of the plants to the paper-boy. We’d worry about making rope when we had a larger crop.

Meanwhile, Filo and I and the lieutenants got together and talked about all the things we’d learned on our various voyages. I was going to let him take a couple of his favorite people with him to Thunder, if he had any, but I wanted the majority of the crew to stay on the Place. They knew the ship.

I considered the Marines, both the Guard shield-men and the militia archer-spearmen, to be basically interchangeable and I expected to get a different set every time we went to sea, but all the seamen should stay on the ship they knew. The same for the artillerymen. Garth and Jen and their crews knew their particular launchers and they wouldn’t do as well with another one. They also knew how the Place pitched and rolled in the different seas. They wouldn’t be as accurate on another ship even if they had their original launcher.

Jono and I talked about the inspections and assigning the different lieutenants and their men responsibility for maintaining the different sections of the ship. Filo and Matto said that their lookouts became much more alert when they passed the word that whoever was first to report a sail would get paid a Quad. We brought up having to station Marines at the hatches to keep idiots from using the hold as a chamber-pot.

I was going to take Wrong Place out again looking for trouble, and we were going to stay out until we found it so I wanted it supplied as well as possible. I wanted Filo to stay home until Dolphin was ready, then use Thunder to escort Dolphin on a trading voyage. If they were attacked I was okay with them coming home with an extra ship or two, but I didn’t want him to go off looking for pirates if that meant leaving Dolphin unprotected. It should have some Marines onboard in case they got attacked, maybe ten-plus-twenty, but it wasn’t a warship like Thunder.

Widemouth didn’t really have anything to sell anywhere else, but we had the money to buy cargo from elsewhere. I wanted him to take the two ships to Long Cut and buy as many of those hundred-gallon barrels as they thought that Dolphin could safely carry, and then go to Small Cove and Bridgetown to sell as many as those towns would buy.

Filo and I had talked one of the older fishing-boat captains named Steven into assuming command of Dolphin, and once we got him involved with our discussions we talked about trading and prices. I would authorize the bank at Long Cut to give him ten Conchs to buy a cargo with. He’d have to see what was available. He knew everything that Widemouth and the rest of the Island needed. Probably better than me.

The brewery at Long Cut sold their hundred-gallon barrels for only three Shells. I was confident that, after giving out a few free samples, they could price each barrel at ten Shells or more and any town or tavern on the Island would buy as many barrels as they could afford. Certainly, the people running Small Cove and Bridgetown would want to buy some. That was a hundred and sixty Pinches, a huge amount, but at eight pints per gallon and a hundred gallons per barrel anyone planning to resell it could charge a Pinch for two pints and get back four hundred.

Since many of our discussions took place in Millie’s shop, refreshments came from our own stock of Long Cut ale, the last barrel we had left. Apparently the women had been absolute lushes while I was gone. It seemed to me that the household would have had to drink about a gallon a day to have emptied one of those huge barrels in that time. Either that, or they’d thrown some hellacious parties!

Millie and Ceecee didn’t appear to drink much. I’d asked that they not while they were pregnant or nursing as it was bad for the baby. Certainly, Gina drank more than Millie and Ceecee combined. She was well on her way to becoming a lush. Henry, Jim, and Aldo knew their way around it, too. Anyway, whether Steven ever visited the taverns or not, he knew first-hand what I meant by there being a market for Long Cut ale.

Or, if they thought that the barrels were too large for a tavern to buy, they could ship as many of the brewery’s five and twenty-gallon casks as they could get. They wouldn’t make as much profit but they’d be easier to sell. They’d be a lot easier to move, too. Looking at that huge barrel in the corner of the shop and remembering how hard it had been to get it in there in the first place, I had to agree that maybe the smaller casks would be a better idea.

I assured Steven that, if they had any trouble selling their cargo, I would personally buy any Long Cut ale that was still onboard when they made it back to Widemouth. Although, I wouldn’t be paying as much since it was my ship that moved their cargo and my money that bought the cargo in the first place. It could reasonably be said that it was my cargo, right?

Besides ale and other cargo, we had a manpower shortage. We could get more people for our town and farms at any mainland port. The mainland was always in turmoil with the Brotherhood and other assholes constantly trying to conquer their neighbors. Any port city probably had hundreds if not thousands of people who would pay whatever they had to buy passage to Hunter Island.

I knew from my short time on the mainland that it was common knowledge there that the Island’s people were so warlike and skilled at slaughter that they had easily kicked the Brotherhood out. Apparently, before that campaign the Hunter Island people had been regarded as backwards, maybe even subjects of ridicule. Now, however, there was respect and fear when an Islander was annoyed.

The mainlanders knew that the Brotherhood talked about going back and ‘doing it right this time’ but in reality they were concentrating on problems closer to home. They didn’t have the forces they needed to conquer Hunter Island. Sure, they had all the men they would need, but they had no way to move an invading army to the Island. Homeless people would jump at a chance to live at a place where the Brotherhood could not bother them.

I didn’t want our ships to charge the people for their passage. I wanted them to take on any who wanted to come, but to give priority to families. We needed working men, yes, but family men would work harder to give their families a good home. I’d rather have one family with wife and children than two single men who would work hard for a couple of days, but then spend all their pay getting drunk and be useless for several days. We needed the work done and we needed people who would work.

Or, rather, I did want them to charge the people for their passage, but the cost was “Come to Widemouth and put your skills to work. Join the Guard, run a farm, crew a ship, or work at a shop. Whatever your chosen work is, do it and we’ll help you take care of your family.” We weren’t going to insist upon any particular time they had to serve, just that they came to Widemouth and worked somewhere at something. People who came to Widemouth and then just sat around and begged would be taken back to a Brotherhood port and kicked off the ship.

If the passengers worried about being enslaved or mistreated, offer to arm them. We had plenty of arms and the two ships should have no problem arming anyone who wanted it so that they could protect their families during the voyage. They would have to turn their arms back in when we landed, but any who joined the Guard or militia would be trained in how to fight and issued their weapons. Only the Guard got paid, though.

I wanted them to make that trip a couple of times and see how it went. If they found a cargo that made money, that was fine, but I wanted a steady supply of Long Cut ale for the Island and I wanted as many people as they could bring over. Once we had enough ale they could just move passengers for a few trips, but talk to the people at Small Cove and Bridgetown and Polliton before unloading any there; they may already have all the refugees they want. Those towns were happy the way they were and extra people were just mouths to feed.

We, on the other hand, were trying to expand and needed all the workers we could get. We could easily handle fifty or a hundred people per trip. Every person we put to work made it easier to handle the next group.

The Captain should be willing to refuse passage to anyone who caused trouble, though. We don’t need more problems.

After a few days we spread the word that I was taking Wrong Place out again, to look for more pirate ships to capture. I was offering the same pay as usual, one Pinch per day for trained seamen and Marines, and I wanted as many of the Place’s usual crew as I could get. Veterans of one of our sea-fights would get double that, while unskilled landsmen would get half-pay until they could do their jobs. If we got into a fight everyone’s pay would double again.

It wasn’t critical to get everyone back. Most of them, yes, but not all. The time was coming when we would have to crew several ships at once, so it was fine with me if some of the regular crew wanted to stay home for a while. They would provide a core of experienced crew for the other ships.