"It seems she's gaining on us, sir."
"Eh?" said Kirk. He was standing in the bows of the Albatross with captain Craw at his side. They were both watching the yellowish sail about a mile in front of the cog. When Craw made his observation, Kirk had been cursing the Fort Baker glass maker for failing to deliver a telescope for the cog's maiden voyage.
"I don't have the right tools to grind a lens," the glass maker had told Kirk. "Yes, I could probably have a telescope ready. But the view you'd get would be very poor. Everything would be distorted."
Kirk had subsequently paid a stormy visit to Fort Baker's toolmaker, but there wasn't much that could be done. Making precision tools required precision. Precision was something hard to come by at the current level of the settlement's economic development. Progress was being made, but all too often it resembled the progress made by a very tired, weak snail.
