Centuries of June by Keith Donohue Page A

did the child even know her tall sister gone to the New World? And what good is the New World and its riches if no ship would ever come?
    On his feet, Chard played the tyrant. “Hove, you dirty bastards. We must find some hiding place to store our treasure, and should Somers or some other English rescue come—or worse, the ungallant Spaniard—we will smuggle the goods aboard. This is mine—our discovery—and not the Virginia Company’s. Come, dogs, and make haste, let’s carry off the fruits of this isle and keep the bounty, for by this amber grease we shall one day be covered in gold.”
    They found a dark, dry cave in which to stow the whale’s perfume, and there it remained through the long summer, tho not undisturbed. Once a week or more oft, they made an expedition to assure no harm had come to it nor any man alone had dared move the ambergris. Always in the company of one or the other, and no man alone, for each suspected his fellow castaways, and none could be trusted. Edward Chard thought of little else, and when he spoke of the treasure, said “I” and “me” when he intended “we” and “us,” or “mine” when “ours” waspreferred. As well, he seemed to have forgot Jane and took no interest in their dalliance, nor offered so much as a kiss, an embrace, a telling look, or even one kind word. As the fog hides the morning, the idea of riches obscured his nature and rolled o’er him until he had but vanished. He did not notice, as time wore on, how Jane drifted to Waters or how Waters had become enchanted with Long Jane. As she lay unbound, she became more bound to him.
    “When we are safely home and our fortune secure, I shall make an honest woman of you, for methinks I love you.” They nestled in a bower of palm fronds, sweet talking their dreams. Jane rested her head upon Robert’s arm and stared at the moon awink in the August sky. “We will sail back here if you like and build the finest house and be lord and lady of these islands when an English colony is here set. You shall have a proper bed—long enough for you to stretch head to toe—and a kitchen, too, and perhaps some Moorish girl to help govern our children, for I wish at least four of ’em, each taller than the next, and they shall not want for anything. We’ll have old Carter marry us, should he become a vicar from carrying the Good Book so.”
    She sighed at the prospect and draped her bare leg over his. “And I can bring my mother to live with us here and make a home in paradise for my sisters, too.”
    “Aye, bring the whole Long clan, and we shall make a forest of ourselves. We are rich, my girl, beyond the dream of richness.”
    With a kiss, she sealed the matter. “Robert Waters, you are my secret love.”
    “Aye, and you mine.” He rolled off his back and lay atop her, a cracked smile on his face. “The boy who was a woman, and the woman who swallowed the whale.”
    Thus, many a happy hour they spent dreaming and plotting as the calendar turned awhile Mr. Chard chewed on how to get the ambergris—and himself—off the isle. Day by day he attended tothe horizon, desperate for sail, and nights he took to building blazing fires on the shore lest any passing vessel creep by unnoticing. Admiral Somers had left behind a small fishing boat when the Patience and Deliverance departed, and Chard toyed with the notion of crafting a mast and cloth to sail the six hundred miles to Jamestown, but he dared not risk the treasure to the mercies of the Atlantic, not alone at least, and there was no one with whom he wished to share the voyage or the spoils. His speech grew thick with curses and in his temper, he lashed out to man and beast and God at the cruelty of fate and circumstance. He would feign to kick old Crab when he could, tho dared not chance a bite in the ankle. To Mr. Carter he was most uncivil, tho his cruelty was benign against his holy shield. Chard saved his most bitter rancor for the two lovebirds who had come to