Loading the contraband

The next morning after the daily deck wash Brenan saw two heavily loaded wagons make their way up the pier towards where his ship was berthed.

"Good." He grunted aloud startling Harry. "Ambrose may be an ass, but at least he wants this delivery to go off without a hitch." Harry nodded in quiet agreement. Brenan was starting to like Harry more now that the lad wasn't constantly yapping his jaw.

Three burly looking teamsters and one of the two bull necked men that had been escorting Ambrose when he had met with him at the bar. None of the teamsters gave any indication that they might help unload the wagon or carry the contraband aboard. That was just as well. Brenan decided, the fewer strangers that climbed aboard his new boat the happier he was.

As far as Brenan was concerned that was just fine. The few men strangers aboard his ship who might see Sasha after yesterday's fireworks the happier he'd be.

"I guess we have some work to do still." Brenan said as he replaced the gangway and walked down the slanted walkway to meet the teamsters.

"Captain." Brenan recognized onr of Ambrose's musclemen from his prior meeting. "Mr. Ambrose said these two were for you." Two of the plain wooden boxes had red marks on them and sat on the wagon seat.

Brenan placed them to one side and made a careful count of the rest. He wouldn't put it past Ambrose to have him sign for crates never delivered, and he also knew that small valuable diliverables like these could sometimes 'fall of' the teamsters wagon and be sold on the side. Today the count matched perfectly and he signed the reciept with confidence.

Twenty minutes later Brenan had a smile on his face as he carried one crate after another up onto the deck. Both the teamstres and his new crew were surprized when he stripped off his tunic and carried the boxes aboard, but after a while they forgot that he was their captain and the wooden crates came aboard quickly.

After a while Brenan slipped below and helped Mr. Michaels and Sasha finish stacking the crates and securing them to the iron rings recessed into the cargo deck flooring. He was surprised by how well Sasha was working even after a full hour of stowing the crates. Brenan and his gun-chief were both sweating and grunting as the last few crates were handed down, but his cook looked as cool and poised as ever as she matched the men box for box.

Brenan had no time to ponder the mystery that was Sasha. He still had to get the supplies that he and Castillo had bought onto the ship, return the shipyard wagon and get the schooner ready to sail on the evening tide.

The first thing to do was to get rid of these rotten old water casks and get the new ones in place.

"Kyle!" He hollered up from the hold. Get Tyler and Calisto to haul these stinking casks out of here to make room for the new ones.

"Captain?" Called out Mr. Michaels as the old barrels were about to be lifted to the deck. "Can we keep these as targets for the guns?" James watched his new Captain as he considered the gun chief's request, he knew that many captains considered target practice as wasteful as shooting bags of silver crowns out to sea. How much money would Brenan be willing to spend to have his gun crews be able to aim with any effect?