WeTried Translations
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Wind and a Cluster of Stars
Chapter 9
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Disappointment
17. Disappointment
This tour of the North Sea coastal cities brought in a huge profit.
It was mainly because luck favored me in Amsterdam, and because my idea of using local spices worked exactly as intended.
My poor leather purse, always shriveled and pitiful, was now so full of gold coins it felt ready to burst.
Inside were thin Venetian gold coins, ducats, stamped with stars and saints.
"Amy, we got lucky this time."
"Hehe, we really did."
Amy picked up a coin, fascinated, and turned it this way and that in the sunlight.
The coins had already passed through many countries and many pockets, so they were covered in tiny scratches, but that did nothing to reduce their value.
In the reflected sunlight, the saint on the coin seemed to wear a golden halo.
First, I had Amy exchange some of the gold for silver.
I needed it to end the contracts of the sailors I had hired and pay out their allowances.
Four sailors. I terminated all their contracts.
For a voyage that lasted only a few days.
"Stay healthy, Captain."
The sailors lined up, took their silver, and dispersed.
There was a reason I ended every contract.
Now that I knew the ship was damaged, I had no desire to keep sailing.
I could not spend my life worrying about leaks.
With this money, I would rather buy a new Balsa...
"What about a small brigantine or a two-masted cog?"
With the money I had, those small ships were affordable.
Of course, at that price, they were not much better than a Balsa...
All afternoon, I took Zenon and Amy around shipyards and broker offices.
At his desk, the broker adjusted his pince-nez and rummaged through ledgers and papers.
But small ships were almost never on the market.
"Would you be interested in a large schooner or a galleon?"
The broker looked up at me through his glasses.
"If I had that kind of money, maybe. I do not. Do you have anything cheap in cedar or spruce?"
"Almost nothing, but there is one brigantine for sale."
I went straight to the dock with him to inspect it.
"Uh... this is..."
It was so rotten it looked like it would break if I kicked it.
It had been tied up too long, and below the waterline it was black with barnacles and seaweed.
On top of that, every time it rose and fell with the waves, it groaned and creaked.
"That is not even fit for firewood."
Zenon's verdict was brutally honest.
In the end, it was not worth buying, and that was the only ship we saw that day.
"So we are buying another Balsa after all, Captain?"
"Probably..."
"I have never heard of anyone buying two Balsas in a row."
It was not as if I were some river porter hauling goods for a living.
"What choice do I have? Even if I spend everything, I can only just afford a new brigantine."
"That is true."
While we were dealing with a leaking ship, nearby people were busy with a noisy celebration.
A sharp scent drifted over, so we went to look, and found a crowd.
At its center stood a merchant who looked extremely wealthy.
Wearing furs, with thick gold rings on his fingers, he grabbed a fistful of black pepper from a sack.
Then he held it up to the crowd like a showman.
When the pepper was sprinkled into a brazier, the spicy scent spread all over again.
"He must be a spice merchant."
Behind the fat merchant stood a massive new galleon decked in blue, white, and red.
He was holding a launch ceremony for the ship.
The giant merchant galleon slid into the sea as the grinning merchant smashed an expensive bottle of wine against the hull.
After rocking a few times in a huge spray, it steadied itself and stood upright.
Then came a thunderous cheer.
"An ambition worthy of a spice merchant. They say pepper is worth its weight in gold."
Even I had only tasted pepper a few times, and only as a flourish in expensive dishes.
Watching that ceremony, my mouth felt as bitter as pepper's bite.
"With all these ships here, not one of them is mine."
That thought came to me while I looked at a two-deck ship of the line moored in a quiet corner of the harbor nearby.
More than a hundred sailors climbed up and down the backstays, maintaining the ship and hauling supplies aboard.
"What kind of man commands a ship like that?"
"Ha. Everybody starts with a leaking Balsa."
Zenon snorted as if I had said something amusing.
...
April 14, 7 o'clock.
Like any sailor without a home port, I woke up in a cheap inn.
After a quick breakfast, I went back out early, making the rounds of the harbor and broker offices again.
A couple of hours later, I found a few candidates, but they were still too expensive.
One sleek, handsome sloop was so far beyond my means I could not even begin to ask its price.
My ship was leaking badly enough to flood at any moment, but my funds were limited.
That left me with almost no options.
I sent Amy and Zenon to check different places separately, but all they found was one used small dhow.
"How did this ship even make it all the way to London?"
As far as I knew, it was a vessel usually used in Islamic regions.
Later in the afternoon, we found one more possibility: a light galley.
"You are not seriously thinking of buying a galley, are you?"
I had only looked at it out of curiosity, but Amy asked with visible concern.
Galleys were fast, yes, but they needed more crew, which meant smaller cargo space.
And the biggest problem was...
"I would go bankrupt paying rowers."
Rowers also had to be fed very well, and human power had limits, so deep-ocean voyages were nearly impossible.
"Let us go in and rest. You worked hard today."
That was when I finally hit my limit.
In the end, I got nothing I wanted.
With no other choice, I was stuck buying another small Balsa built by clumsy apprentice shipwrights...
Everyone was worn out from all the legwork, we had no results, and there seemed to be no hope left.
...
April 14, evening.
Zenon ran into an acquaintance on the street and went off drinking. Amy and I wandered London's streets with nothing to do.
"Eek!"
A woman suddenly dumped dirty water out a window onto the road. Amy barely dodged it, then scampered away in shock.
"Amy!"
-Woof woof woof! Woof woof woof woof!
My legs were already killing me, and then a passing dog saw the cat in Amy's arms, started barking madly, and chased her. She ran while screaming at the top of her lungs.
"Help! Somebody help me!"
"Is that really a life-or-death situation?!"
I only managed to catch up with her after a struggle, and only then could I breathe.
"Let us rest. Do your legs not hurt too?!"
She collapsed pitifully onto the library steps.
A blue-eyed young lady sitting there miserably with a cat in front of her made me want to toss her a coin.
"It is still too early for dinner. I am going to see whether they have any books about ships."
Drained of energy, Amy stood without a word and followed me.
Naturally, with the cat hidden inside her coat, since cats were forbidden in the library.
...
Library.
It held many books, but only about one section covered ships or maritime history.
Compared to the entire collection, that was very little.
Which meant very few people looked for them.
I leafed through maritime histories, reading how old captains and sailors had survived crises.
Then one book caught my eye.
It was a maritime disaster chronicle written by someone named Richardson, a record of a very old sea tragedy.
It was tucked in the corner of the bottom shelf, where the lamp light did not reach.
"Ah, damn."
I brought it to a lamp-lit desk and set it down, and the cover fell off.
Still, I forced myself to read the old, decaying book.
Amy kept soothing the cat so it would not squirm or cry.
"Shh, Cabbage, stay still!"
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Year 1xxx, November 21.
A French privateer, the Saint Philippe, captured a foreign merchant vessel while in pursuit, and on its way back engaged a frigate that had come to protect merchant traffic.
On the 19th, the Saint Philippe had planned to put in at nearby San Juan in the Caribbean, but while pressing an unexpected privateering action, it encountered the frigate.
The Saint Philippe fought a Dutch frigate, but when another frigate arrived as reinforcement, it decided to retreat.
The Saint Philippe fled eastward. Though it had struck first, the ship was heavily damaged from the battle and the captain was wounded, so they attempted to make landfall in a nearby bay.
But a storm drove the ship into reefs near the bay. Flooding began, and because the already damaged hull leaked uncontrollably, they were forced to abandon ship.
In the chaos, the captain died, and the attempt to lower a cutter and escape in the storm failed, which is why only two sailors survived.
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I copied it into my notes and wrote it down carefully.
It happened almost sixty years ago, but with this log, it might still be possible to find the wreck.
If I ever passed near that area, it would be worth keeping an eye out.
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