Over.” He was sitting forward and, leaning on his elbows, trying to improve the reception. He dressed in a Boston Red Sox tee shirt and shorts. He turned back to Cutter. “Hall’s having trouble with the phone again.” Captain Hall called in each day at noon after he finished sighting the sun for navigation corrections on the boat’s dead reckoning plot or direction.
Cutter grimaced. Dela’s Chinese technician had left River Sunday after grinning all the time but never getting the system to work well. The speaker phone clicked on. Through the broken sentences, Hall was describing the French clipper brig which had arrived during the night. Static ended the broadcast again.
“Keep trying.”
“He’s talking about the Louis 14 from France,” said Sparkles.
“The French have been progressing down from Nova Scotia since she harbored to repair their rigging from the crossing.”
Over Doc Jerry’s desk, Cutter noticed a large colorful poster thumb-tacked on the yellowed plaster wall above the instruments.
“Where’d this come from?”
Doc Jerry said, “Katy found it for me in her museum. It looks good with our boat going to China and the old Far East ports.”
He read from a printout. “This shows you guys the judgment of pirates by the Chinese court. This was the Consoo house. The orange and blue hues of the painting illustrate vividly the decorative interior of a British factory or office. Hundreds of Chinese attendees are there with foreign sailors in colorful costumes as well as Europeans and Americans merchants from the other factories. All are gathered to witness this hearing by Chinese officials sitting at the raised platform. The prisoners are in the foreground bound in small cages. They’re being accused by a French sailor.”
Cutter chuckled, “This is supposed to tell me we’re going to end up in jail?”
Sparkles said in her soft voice, “Never hurts to know your enemy.”
Cutter heard more phone static. “A few years ago, that French captain bid against us on a European deal. He’s a smart businessman.”
“Pierre Etranger. He's also got a top record as an amateur ocean racer,” said Doc Jerry.
“I remember his French venture group took business away from Strand’s people,” said Cutter.
Doc Jerry smiled. “If that boat sails well, he might be competition.”
After a moment Cutter said, looking at Doc Jerry’s downcast eyes, “What’s the matter? You’re not telling me something.”
He hesitated. “Your son and Etranger’s daughter have spent a lot of time together.”
“Jamie and the Frenchman’s girl?”
“He met her at college.”
“Jamie never told me,” said Cutter. He hesitated, then said, “I guess his mother knew.”
Doc Jerry muttered, “Kids tell things to different people.”
Cutter grinned, “Is he serious about her?”
“She seems to be good for him. Way I understand it, she got him to finish school.”
“Where is she now?”
“She’s on the French boat with her father.”
“Goddamn.” Cutter’s eyes twinkled, trying to hide his hurt. His hope of reconciliation with his son had been a fantasy. The boy had not come to sail on the Peregrine to be with his father. He realized the kid came for the girl, not him. He must still have all that hatred of Cutter his mother had taught him.
Cutter said, “He’s like his old man. He should have had better sense than have women on his mind. Sailing around the world is going to take all his concentration.” He remembered that was the cause of his divorce, having his family with him in Africa in the middle of the brutal fighting at the wells in those days.
“If you ask me, he didn’t tell you because you’d have that attitude.”
“Shouldn’t I?”
Doc Jerry continued, “At first he signed to sail on the French boat with her. When he found out you were involved with a replica ship too, he switched and tried out for the Peregrine crew.”
Cutter felt better. His son had come partly to be