every corner of the world, from Europe and Africa, from Indies West and East. Why, her harbour quays were so piled with barrels and casks that a man could hardly reach his own ship. What’s more, every cheap, dutiless drop of spirit or leaf of tobacco was as legal as King George himself.
Naturally it seemed a shame to softhearted Manxmen, such as my great-grandfather, to go hogging such plenty all to themselves when there were poor desperate Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotsmen and Welshmen wailing and moaning at the scandalous cost of their taxed liquor. It seemed just kindness to load up a skiff on a moonless night and slip across the sea to some quiet edge of Ireland or Scotland—or for that matter England or Wales, as Man Island sits clean between all four—and help them out. Forget all this fashionable talk of free trade, as it’s nothing but English mimicking. My great-grandfather was free trading before it was even invented.
But I’m drifting off from that beginning we had. Tom Teare’s second shout came just a moment or two after his first. ‘‘That ship on the port bow. Looks like she’s a cutter.’’
Now here I think we all took a little notice. Not that there was anything clear or certain, but this was definitely worse than just being sail. You see, though there are many ships that might be a cutter, there’s one kind in particular that always is, and this was exactly the kind that we didn’t want to meet. Nobody said anything—the boys carried on scrubbing and slooshing like before, and Brew and myself kept watch-ing—but we were all thinking trouble.
This little jaunt in the Sincerity was taking a chance, I dare say, but still it had seemed worth the risk. The sad truth of it is there never was a family so clever at letting it all slip through their fingers as Kewleys. When Big Kewley died he left farms, half a dozen town houses, an inn and boats enough to take half Peel for a jaunt round the harbour, but by the time it got to me there was just the house we lived in—and that with its roof—together with a farm that was half stones, a shop in the wrong street and a little grubby inn that never paid. It wasn’t even as if it had all gone on gambling and high women, which would at least have had a touch of the hero. No, the Kewleys were careful, sober people, but with a terrible taste for litigating wills, and a perfect eye for a rotten buy. Why, I can’t say I’d done any better than the rest of them. Even with my captain’s wages sailing dirty little vessels back and forth across the Irish Sea with cattle bones and such, I wasn’t even stemming the tide. I knew if I didn’t do something before long it would all be gone, and Kewleys would be begging on Big Street like any set of poor mucks.
Then one day I heard how a merchant vessel had sailed into Ramsey harbour bankrupt. Port dues were owing and she was coming up for auction, while the word was she’d go cheaper than dirty weather. That got me wondering. The fact was there was only one way Kewleys had ever got themselves rich, so perhaps I should give it another try? It was true that the old trade was long out of fashion nowadays, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t pay. At least I should take a look. So I rode across to Ramsey to put a sight on this stranded ship. A battered old vessel she was, with a high quarterdeck like you hardly saw anymore, and even a little toy of a cannon on the prow to scare the seagulls, but I never minded. Why, just looking at her I could feel hope getting into my lungs. I could just see myself there, shouting orders from her deck, my own ship, that would make me rich enough to buy half Douglas town.
Within the week I’d taken her, too, and was looking into selling off those last few scrapings of the great Kewley fortune. My wife was never pleased, of course. Sweet delight of my life though Ealisad is, when it comes to risk she’s one of those watchful, weighing kinds of female who won’t venture tuppence though it could catch her fifty guineas. I did try to win her round for sure. I told her a little about the