human
Mr. Kenny, sir, if you have a moment?
gpt
Certainly, Mr. Eames. I saw your _Regina_ was in on the tide this morning. Had she a fair passage?
human
Middling, they tell me. The Lord maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters. No, I thank you, I never drink, he said as Mr. Kenny fumbled at a drawer of his desk. Mr. Eames sniffed, glancing in distaste at the bowed head of Captain Jenks, which had not lifted to acknowledge his presence.
gpt
I regret, Mr. Kenny, it is my grievous Christian duty to be the bearer of ill news, in the which one must seek to discover the infinite wisdom of Providence, the Dispenser of all mercies. Reuben sickened with understanding: the ship _Regina_ was in the Virginia trade, and so was Uncle John's ship _Iris_; any moment now this pious carrion crow would come to the end of the preliminaries he was enjoying so much, and declare a disaster in plain words. Meanwhile the man was talking, and talking, and had not yet begun, and Daniel Shawn had swung away from the window to thrust his hands in the pockets of his green coat and gaze down at the sad speaker as one might watch a yapping dog. Reuben thought: What's it to Shawn? Why should _he_ step forward so, where Uncle John must be aware of him, and put on a plain show of anger at the bringer of bad news?
human
Mr. Eames, said John Kenny, and the noise ended. Simon Eames was not accustomed to interruptions; he probably found them ill-bred. He stood patiently, expecting blasphemy.
gpt
Mr. Eames, I have not much time, not here at my warehouse this morning and perhaps not in the world. As for God's providence and disposition of the burdens men bear, may I leave such questions to God himself, rather than have them expounded unto me by men who, I suppose, share my humility as well as my mortality?
human
John Kenny, you had ever a somewhat naughty spirit.
gpt
That may be so. Will you speak your news?
human
Mr. Kenny, your ship _Iris_, Captain Samuel Foster commanding, put out of Norfolk a fortnight before the departure thence of my ship _Regina_. I have this intelligence from Captain Bart of the _Regina_, with whom I was but now speaking. The _Iris_ sailed on the third day of April to be precise, for Barbados, at least that was the destination announced by Captain Foster.
gpt
Yes, it was Captain Foster's intention to make Barbados.
human
The _Regina_ sailed on the sixteenth day of April, arriving here this morning after a slow passage, having encountered contrary winds as the Lord willed. On her second day out of Norfolk, the seventeenth day of April, the weather being overcast and a dirty sea running, my Captain Bart hath told me, the _Regina_ overtook the longboat of the ship _Iris_.
gpt
The--longboat,
human
Three men were in it, Mr. Kenny, rather two men and a boy, the boy's name being Bartram Wilks, of Dedham, a lad of about sixteen years....
gpt
I remember him. Will you continue?
human
All three were wounded and famished, the Lord having seen fit to visit them with the vials of his wrath. The boy Wilks and one of the men were brought aboard. The other man--the sea running high and as God disposeth--burst his head against the strakes and sank immediate. The man brought aboard perished later, having overeaten though suffering from pistol wounds, but the boy Wilks lived two days.
gpt
Had Mr. Dyckman wife and children?
human
Eh? Mr. Kenny turned to him, startled.
gpt
He had, sir. A wife and two little girls survive him.
human
Oh, hanging's too gentle, said Shawn, rubbing the coin, his eyelids lowered on a blueness like that of two bright mirrors turned to a blue sky.
gpt
Is there a blacker thing than murder in the Decalogue? Isn't it the destroying of the one thing we know we possess? Forgive me, sir--I should not be talking, belike I should not be here in your time of trouble, but I--sir, I feel it. I can't explain--steady as she goes, can I not! for didn't I see a friend murdered in a knife brawl on the brig _Terschelling_, and for nothing, a thing done in the time it'd take you to breathe twice, the time it took me, sir, to run from companionway to la'board rail and no chance, no chance to aid him at all, and then his blood blackening in the deck seams hour by hour, the way no holystone would ever rub it out? Mr. Shawn seemed blankly startled to discover the farthing in his fingers, and put it away.
human
Mr. Kenny, they're saying about the docks that the poor soul was yet living when he was found. Could he not speak at all, to damn the man who'd done the thing?
gpt
Little enough, said Mr. Kenny slowly.
human
Little enough, Mr. Shawn.... Will you continue, Mr. Eames?
gpt
Ha? Oh.... I believe I was about to say, Wilks lived two days, and then died of an infection of his wounds, cutlass wounds, though Captain Bart tended the boy in his own cabin, bled him, did whatever he might, but--having lived long enough on this wretched earth to give Captain Bart the tidings and to prepare his soul for its going unto the Father of all mercies, the boy died, being a lad of decent conversation evidently raised in fear of the Lord, for Captain Bart saith he did make a most touching confession of faith, indeed exemplary, and may have been of the elect, we may hope....
human
Will you continue?
gpt
Why, as it was told by Wilks, your ship _Iris_ was set upon by a fast sloop which came out of the starboard quarter at dawn on the eighth day of April, the _Iris_ being then at about latitude thirty, having made very little southing because of scant and fitful winds, also a sudden leak near the water line--but Captain Foster, it seems, preferred to beat out the passage to Barbados with extra toil at the pumps rather than put back to Norfolk, the Lord having so moved his heart to his own sad destruction.
human
What? said Jenks.
gpt
What? What did you say?
human
Why--he was lost, Mr. Jenks, with the others. On the eighth of April the weather was fair, the sea moderate. The sloop ran up a French flag and may have been a privateer. The boy Wilks, however, said that the men who boarded the _Iris_ appeared to be plain pirates, and their general conduct of the affair would so indicate. Yet they allowed Wilks and four others, all wounded and of no mind to go on the account, to take the longboat, so to make the continental shore if they might or the Bermudas--thus carrying out the plain intent of Providence that the intelligence should come to us for a warning and a judgment. They could not row with much effect, yet the Lord sent them a southwesterly, early for the season, and by his infinite mercy they did cross the course of the _Regina_ as I have said, after nine days afloat with a trifle of water and biscuit, during which time two of the men died of their wounds, having accomplished their part in God's purpose.
gpt
Sam Foster, Jenks said.
human
Sam was a sailor of King William's time. How did he die, Mr. Eames? Will you tell me how he died?
gpt
It would appear he placed the _Iris_ in posture to resist as best he might, but was overwhelmed. A shot at close quarters swept away the mainmast. The pirates grappled, swarmed aboard superior in numbers and weapons. They were stripping the ship of all they wished to carry aboard the sloop, when the longboat was put overside. Wilks and the others saw her burned to the water, the sloop bearing off south by southeast.
human
They will have been from the Bahamas, Mr. Kenny--wolves, sir, wolves, and with the flags of a dozen nations in the locker to suit the occasion.
gpt
Eh? Yes, I suppose. Mr. Eames, did any go alive on the sloop?