King of the Sea

Chapter 1

CAPTAIN Troy WOULD NOT even let the gangway near the ship until the second mate had confirmed that the after breast rope was secure. He was a stickler, Troy. Any other captain of a five-masted barque with a fast cargo for Boston would risk head and stern lines only, with perhaps a forward spring; and he'd raise the gangway moment any one of them was fast. But not Troy. the Not even with this onshore wind to pin the ship to the quay.

The shore g**g was annoyed. The raising of the gangway was the last chore of their day. They had the afternoon off - or they were going to take it off, anyway, to watch Cork play Youghall in the most important match of the season. One of them gave a sour nod in the Captain's direction. They all knew Troy and feared the reach of his temper. "That fella," he said, "wouldn't give you the ..." He was about to say, "the steam off his own piss," when he realized that a group of females was standing within earshot. "Wouldn't give you the time of day," he concluded lamely.

They nodded and heaved their shoulders and con tained their impatience as best they might; sure, what could anyone do about it, anyway? A captain was a captain; the next one up was God. Not that Troy looked like anyone's idea of a god. Declan Kennedy, the oldest of the dock porters, who'd served in the Royal Navy long ago and had mounted guard on Elba, always said Troy was the nearest thing to Napoleon he ever met. The others couldn't see it, of course, because all they knew of Old Boney's appear ance was from prints; and, apart from the fact that both men were small in stature, the outward resemblance was slight. But when you drew near to the man you began to feel what old Declan meant and to know something of the powerful and frightening magnetism of the old dictator of Europe.

For Captain Troy, Captain Francis Brandon Troy, seemed to carry about with him a kind of lethal electrical charge; the air immediately about him held an indefinably vibrant quality that kept you at bay like the bars around the tiger cage in the zoo. Indeed, the comparison is apt, for there was some thing very tiger-like about the man. His head was sleek, close-cropped and clean-shaven, with curious ly pointed ears that lay back against his skull. His eyes, which were deep and piercing, seemed never to rest; and even when his back was turned you dared not slacken your effort, for, like the tiger, he could turn and pounce in the blink of an eye.

The porters stared up at him until his merciless gaze fell upon them; then they looked away, shuffled their boots uneasily in the mud of that damp March day, and hankered after something, anything, at which they could seem busy. Happily for them, the group of females caught Troy's attention next. Steerage passengers, of course. The only sort that ever seemed to emigrate from this wretched country. He eyed them with that impersonal curiosity all old seadogs acquire when they stare at females ashore. 

Not that he considered steerage women to be fair game. In deed, he'd keelhaul the man who laid an unwelcome finger on any one of them. But they weren't like ladies; you could look them over easily, and without impertinence. "I'd take a hose to that lot, Cap'n," Tony Boris, the First Officer, commented.

 He had the reputation of being the one man aboard phoenix who did not go in fear of Captain Troy; in fact, he was just as terrified as everyone else, but he masked it with a respectful bonhomie that deceived them all, even Troy. Indeed, it was Troy who held Boris in slight awe - one of the few men he'd met in his long career as ship's master who knew how to stand up to him, and not in any pugnacious way but simply by behaving as if there were nothing there that especial ly needed standing up to.

"You've Irish blood yourself, Mr Boris," he growled, still running his eye over the females.

But whatever the officer may have replied, Troy heard none of it. Suddenly his blood stood still, his heart dropped a beat, and his knuckles whitened on the rail.

It couldn't be. It was. Yet it couldn't be. His mind teetered in a daze between what he saw and what he knew. She was dead surely she was dead? Any way, she'd be ... what? Twenty years older than that one. But he could not take his eyes off the girl down there on the quay. Jenny to a T, to the last curl of her rich red hair. Trick of the light. It must be.

At that moment the girl herself looked up at him. Or perhaps she was merely surveying her home for the next two weeks? Telepathy or chance? Dear God, what did it matter? Those eyes transfixed him. Pale green eyes, languid, intelligent, just like hers. It could not be chance, or life itself was all chance. If this were an accident, then so was his very existence.

"Cap'n?" Boris prompted at his elbow. The after breast was secure - minute or more. had been secure for the past

"Oh yes," he muttered. "Raise the gangway." Boris and the young cadet exchanged bemused glances.

The familiar routine of the ship crept between Troy and ... he would not call her Jenny, he would not even think of her as Jenny. The familiar routines crept between him and that apparition on the quay. "And bring to me any man who lets it foul the side."

The threat brought an odd sort of ease to the quarterdeck; whatever excursion Cap'n Troy had taken, he was now back. The world, like phoenix, was on an even keel again. Then it was "Is the leadsman in the chains?" and "Aye, Cap'n!" and "Is his line freshly marked?" and again, "Aye, Cap'n!" - as if they didn't sail in and out of Queenstown a dozen times a year.

He gave the new passengers no more than half an hour to come aboard, get stowed, and say their farewells all those well-intended promises to write soon and come back one day, from people who would probably never set pen to paper nor glimpse the Atlantic again.