"The ingredients are ... marinated grilled chicken breasts."
"Toast, bacon, lettuce, tomato, cream, strawberry ... and bread and carrots."
"Directions ... Toast cut off the grilled edges, spread with butter, cushion the bottom ... Put lettuce and tomato, put bread ... Chicken breast with bacon to be folded in. Cover with another piece of toast."
"Cut along the diagonal ...!"
"Finish by sticking on the strawberries, sprinkling on the shredded radishes, and inserting a thin strip of wood ... Perfect Grandma Lorraine's secret version of the Royal Grocery Sandwich, done!"
In the galley of the Attis Beauty, young Pierce carefully packed up the legacy recipes left to him by Grandma Lorraine, plated the sandwiches, lifted them, and pulled the hatch open.
It was a gorgeous sunny day with a warm sea breeze and gentle waves.
Lorraine was lying on her back on the deck, working on a charting job against the huge charts that lay all around her.
Pierce walked up with his sandwich and asked curiously, "Mr. Captain, aren't Hooker's charts readily available? Why are you redrawing them?"
"Because of precision." Lorraine added a smooth curve to the chart, put down her pen, and looked at Pierce, "Hooker's charts give us the location of twenty-four black harbors covering Norway, Finland, Holland, Prussia, England, France, and Spain, and it's worth every penny."
"But the set of plans should have been inherited or robbed. Because there are different handwriting on the labeling and the base map is very old. Judging from the coastline and the signatures, I'd guess it's probably an early sixteenth-century, Dutch Maritime Authority civilian drawing."
"You even see that?" Pierce's eyes widened.
Lorraine smiled and took the dinner plate, "In order to familiarize myself with the evolution of the coastline, I've hand-drawn a total of seventeen versions of military strait maps from the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries. Hooker's set of maps also includes the strait maps, so it's roughly comparable."
"Wow ..."
Ignoring Pierce, who was lying on his back trying to find a difference in the chart, Lorraine put down her plate and pinched up a sandwich and stuffed it into her mouth.
The sandwiches were excellent.
The lettuce and tomato neutralize the grease and highlight the saltiness of the chicken and bacon. The fresh cream is mirrored in the toast, one smooth and the other creamy, making for a versatile texture and a long aftertaste.
Lorraine chewed a couple bites beautifully and quipped, "Little Pierce, another one of Grandma Lorraine's recipes?"
"Right." Pierce didn't look up, "What's the difference in the chart, sir?"
"The most noticeable change is Dunkirk, around the Pas de Calais." Lorraine ate three large pieces in a row and rubbed her stomach, "Did you send it to Haina?"
"Ms. Yzra was practicing her flying dagger, I left it in her cabin."
Lorraine nodded in satisfaction and suddenly her face changed, "Wait, bacon!"
Pierce oohed and aahed and stood up, "God! I'll be right there!"
As he watched Pierce Jr.'s wolfish figure scurry into the transom compartment, Lorraine chewed on her sandwich with nothing but a bitter smile.
Three days after the close of the auction, a visit to Sir Vermi yielded good results, and Clun. Scott had not yet arrived to mount the harpoon gun.
Piddick had Ramos send word that Keren was taking care of the departure formalities at the Bell Dockyard. In other words, although the two had yet to meet, the Piddick family had already solved the biggest obstacle to Keren's boarding for Lorraine.
And the auction haul ...
Fishing harpoon gun, octant, and charts, for the purchase of these three items, Lorraine paid a total of 615 pounds 18 shillings and 10 pence with taxes, which is almost 616 pounds.
And pewter and spices only earn £281 after tax.
In order to alleviate the financial pressure on the merchant group, Lorraine, after much deliberation, had to temporarily add a set of doucai porcelain tea set to the auction on the second day.
This operation was not in line with the auction's regular procedures, but considering the quality of the porcelain offered by Lorraine, Ramos ran through all nine auction VIPs in addition to Lorraine overnight, and gained unanimous consideration and approval.
The tea set thus took to the auction block and generated no less bidding than the Beautiful Fish in the morning session the following day, eventually selling for £323 after tax.
The money became Lorraine's saving grace.
With money in hand again, he struck out in full force in the afternoon, capturing three bids in quick succession at an average price of £1.50 per barrel, purchasing a total of one hundred and fifty casks of third-rate whisky, and refilling the bilges of the Atis Beauty.
At the end of the entire round of trading, he had close to £160 cash left on hand, which in most cases was more than enough to cover the problems that the merchant marine would face.
The next destination to Scandinavia is also set.
In the Norwegian kingdom of Borkenfjord, near the fourth largest city, Stavanger, there is an unnamed black harbor, which Hooker labeled with the same name of Stavanger.
It was a Viking black harbor, and Lorraine was looking forward to the next meeting with her compatriots.
With that, all things being equal, the only task left for him in Elgin was to recruit Keren ...
Lorraine took a deep breath and picked up the protractor again. The latitude and longitude of a new harbor had not yet been calculated when a sudden shout came from Ramos from below the ship.
"Lorraine!"
After all, they were both young men, and both had experience serving together in the Royal Navy. After a few days together, Lorraine and Ramos had developed a friendship that was strong enough to call them by their first names.
Ramos shouted from under the boat, "Lower the boards, and look who I've brought!"
Lorraine looked up suspiciously to see a tall, athletic, white-haired young man standing beside Ramos.
The man had an extremely high nose, a pale complexion, deep sockets with amber eyes, and thick eyebrows.
He wore a beige half-sleeve shirt with brown cotton pants, a huge hammer half a man high strapped to his back, and in his hands he carried a wide wooden crate, which was stained with grease, but managed to give a strange feeling of cleanliness and neatness.
And he's exceptionally tall.
Ramos and Lorraine were of similar height, already over one hundred and eighty centimeters tall in their own right, but they were born shorter next to him.
Looking at his thick arms, a name popped into Lorraine's head, Keren. Scott.
Apprentice shipwright in name only, have you finally arrived?
Lorraine hurriedly lowered the board.
The youth and Ramos boarded the ship with great strides, and in a moment stood opposite Lorraine.
Ramos smiled and introduced, "Lorraine, this is ..."
"Vikings?" Lorraine asked, interrupting Ramos and tilting her head.
The youth grinned, "Germanic, but my homeland is the Kingdom of Finland."
"No wonder ... as far as I know, few people in either Prussia or the Holy Roman Empire are as tall as you." Lorraine reached out and squeezed the youth's cast-iron arm, "And strong."
The youth puffed up his mountainous biceps in front of Lorraine, "It can't be helped, shipwrighting is supposed to be a labor of strength, not to mention I'm an excellent sail handler."
"How brilliant?"
"The world is unrivaled."
Lorraine let out a laugh and shook her head, extending her hand toward the youth, "Lorraine, Lorraine . Arnason. Drake."
"Clun. Scott, a shipwright's apprentice that no one wants." Keren stared arrogantly into Lorraine's eyes, "Captain, are you short of men on your ship?"
"If you're talking about shipwrights of the rank of master craftsmen and sailmakers unrivaled in the world, lacking."
There was a loud snap, and the two large hands came firmly together.
Lorraine smiled and said, "Mr. Scott, congratulations, you've been accepted."