Calico Palace by Gwen Bristow

Author:Gwen Bristow
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9781480485105
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 1970-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

42

THAT DAY IN THE store Kendra had felt sorry for Captain Pollock. But as the summer went on, her sympathy turned to exasperation.

Kendra believed the Cynthia’s crew had deserted because the men wanted to look for gold, not because of any mystical heartbreak of the ship. But this was not the basic reason for her change of attitude. She simply had no patience with people who went off and sulked when they could not get their own way. She could understand Pollock’s distress when he found that the Cynthia could not finish her voyage—though she thought if he had had any sense he would have stayed away from San Francisco in the first place—but since the ship could not go on, Kendra could not condone his refusal to let her do anything else.

He had many chances. With so much riffraff pouring through the Golden Gate, crimes of all sorts were increasing. Honest folk wanted an adequate prison. The only one they had was a small building left over from the quiet days, so ramshackle that bad men had little trouble breaking out. Several leading citizens had advised that the town buy one of the deserted vessels, anchor it a safe distance from shore, and let convicts serve their sentences there. Mr. Chase asked Captain Pollock if he would sell the Cynthia for this.

Turn the Cynthia into a jail? Pollock was so outraged that Mr. Chase reported, “For a minute I thought he was going to knock me down.”

Dwight Carson offered to buy the Cynthia for a business building. Again, Pollock refused.

Mr. Fenway had another idea. The coastwise vessels did a thriving business bringing in food and lumber and firewood. It was not too hard to find sailors for these short voyages, if only because men wanted to earn a grubstake for the mines. Mr. Fenway said Pollock might go into the coastwise trade.

Pollock would not. He would take his ship home, or nowhere.

When Loren came back from Oregon he told Kendra he believed Pollock could at least make a start on his homeward voyage if he really wanted to. A few of the most determined captains were doing it. Nearly every week the Alta reported the sailing of some vessel bound for Mazatlan or Callao or some other port down the Pacific Coast. True, they were sailing with scanty crews, often including such men as the captains would never have accepted anywhere else. Loren did not suggest that Pollock try to double the Horn with a makeshift crew. But he did say that if Pollock would take what he could get, and put to sea, with any luck at all he could reach a port where he could find competent seamen.

At the advice that he insult the Cynthia with what he called “the sweepings of the waterfront,” Pollock was angrier than before.

Pollock would not, in fact, listen to anything Loren had to say. While he had been friendly toward Loren and Kendra during his first days in port, now that his sailors had left him he was friendly no longer.

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