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of the man with the blue ribbons and scanned deeper, infiltrating and exploring his body and his mind, touching his deliberately concealed loneliness. Her probing, beyond a strong, sudden smell of the sea and the stink of rotting fish, quite undetected.
    Assigning him and everything about him to her infinite memory she sank down satisfied, into the gloom of her own timeless existence. A man, a handsome, seductive man of passion and charm. A man of the sea who wore blue ribbons in his hair and a golden acorn, a trinket of the land, that other place, dangling from his ear.
    She knew little of the land, it was beyond her interest or care, but her understanding did encompass the life-seed of the oak, a tree of longevity and imposing stature, of dignity, endurance and strength. She knew of oak because ships were made from its wood, and she knew of acorns because the sailors aboard those ships believed they brought luck, protection and fertility.
    She quite fancied an acorn for herself. Either one would do. The earring was pretty – but the man would be the better prize.

Four
    Early March – 1716
    Mermaid had been heeling slightly, as they rounded the point protecting the natural harbour of Cape Town she steadied on an even keel and then rolled to starboard. With cordage and timber complaining, the wheel was put over.
    “Tops’l sheets,” Jesamiah shouted as the ship glided into her destined anchorage to the western edge of the Bay. “Tops’l clew lines…Helm-a-lee!” And Mermaid turned into the wind, her sails coming aback, her forward motion ceasing as she eased sedately to a halt.
    The lime-whitened walls of buildings with their green shutters and tiled or thatched roofs, sprawled between the sea and the rugged, upward sweep of the flat-topped, aptly named Table Mountain. Flanking the dominant plateau was the smaller cone of Devil’s Peak and the elongated Signal Hill, the lower extension of the Lion’s Head, a mass of rock rearing two thousand feet high that did indeed resemble a crouching lion. Jesamiah found himself staring, awe-struck. The panorama was spectacular.
    Driven by the relentless wind howling up from the ice-ridden lands of Antarctica, the Atlantic swept in to spume against tumbled rocks and run against the wide, sweeping curve of sand. Jesamiah had expected Cape Town to be as he imagined all of Africa: impenetrable jungle or empty desert shimmering in a haze of blistering heat. Yes, it was hot, for this was January the southern hemisphere summer, but apart from the bareness of the mountain tops, everything was flushed with a vibrant green.
    The famous gardens of the Dutch East India Company, covering all of forty-five acres, were vivid against the backdrop of Table Mountain. The Dutch had planted them specifically: trees and bushes for fruit, and every kind of vegetable that would grow in this climate. The object, to create a trade post for the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie , the V.O.C., to provide a convenient place for Dutch ships to make repairs, for sailors to rest and stores to be replenished. The trade post had become a settlement, and the settlement had rapidly expanded into a town of more than one thousand permanent residents. Of the fluid population, there was no count. Probably three times as many again.
    The crew, leaning over the rails or hanging from the shrouds were gossiping, excited. Jesamiah ignored the buzz of conversation; there was always this lift of expectation at coming into harbour. He felt the euphoria himself, going ashore was suddenly very appealing. They had been at sea a long time. Mermaid desperately needed careening, to be safely beached somewhere for the barnacles, weed and the worm boring into her wooden hull to be scraped clean. A ship that was not careened was a slow ship, and pirate craft by necessity of their trade needed to be fast. It would have to wait a while though, until they sailed on to Madagascar where pirates were welcome and an anchorage was safe. As