Michael Jecks - The Death Ship of Dartmouth

Strete pondered that. They had beaten him cruelly for not paying them the debt which they had made him incur because they had used unfair dice. He had never heard of such a thing before. ‘They could have killed me for cheating me!’ he exclaimed. What a fool he had been.

‘Aye. They wouldn’t want someone else in town to hear that they’d let a man off too lightly when he owed them money, Peter. No, I think you’re much better off away from them. Where will you go now?’

Strete felt a great wash of enthusiasm. ‘I shall go to Exeter,’ he declared.

In Exeter, he knew, there were manufacturers of dice. With a little advance on his first winnings, he was sure that a man could be persuaded to make a special set for him.

‘What are we?’

‘No, Al, not again!’

‘Come on! What are we?’

‘I said no, Al. I’m not having it!’

‘What are we?’

‘Shit, Al, since you ask, we’re cold, we’re wet, we’re without a job since Dartmouth took so bleeding long, and we’re footsore and weary and pissed off. All right?’

There was a moment’s silence, and then a new voice: ‘Cor! Did you see her ? She was looking at me, she was! Do you think if I was to go and-’

‘Shut up, Law!’

‘Once you’ve got a beard, boy, you can think about girls like that.’

‘Just because you couldn’t get a girl like that, Bill.’

‘What did you say, you young tyke?’

‘I said, old man, that you couldn’t hope to attract a girl like her. She wants young and fit like me!’

‘I think she’d prefer a man with brains, lad. Someone like me.’

‘So, come on, boys! We don’t mind a little rain, do we? No, because we’re bleeding paviours, that’s why!’

In unison the other two voices rose:

‘Al, will you shut up !’

And Alred smiled to himself under his cowl because when the two were bickering like this, all was right in his world. It was only when they sulked quietly that he worried.

For now he had not a worry in the world.