The Big Gamble in Paradise; Episode 11

This is the tenth episode of the novel, The Big Gamble in Paradise. It has just been released. This is the second book in the Trace Troy Paradise Series. It can be purchased in the Kindle digital version or paperback. 

Episode 11

  Trace’s alarm rang at 4:00 AM. He dressed, walked out of his cabin, and climbed into the pilothouse. He switched on the instrument lights. Light rain sprinkled against the windshield. He prepared a pot of coffee from the small coffee maker in the pilothouse. He sat in the pilot’s chair and waited for the coffee to brew. A few minutes passed, and the coffeemaker sputtered, Trace poured a cup. He returned to the chair and sat in the darkness with only the instrument lights illuminating the pilothouse.

Since winning the boat this was the only time he felt a degree of calm. No thoughts rushed one against the other. He stopped to wonder what this all meant. He resigned himself to sailing without Sage. The trip to the South Seas was planned but the winning; it was more than luck. It seemed contrived and played out unwittingly by me. Was I meant to come here? Years ago this was where my father sailed. He said he came here for the adventure, to think, and to make enough money to put a down payment on a ranch. Grandpa had enough ranch for half of a dozen ranchers. It was all going to be his anyway. Dad told me I had to go to sea to find myself. He wanted to see and do something only others dared dream about. He never told me much about it, but only said I should do it.”

Thoughts continued. He finished the coffee and walked down the steps of the companionway. Makani dashed around in the galley. 

Trace knocked on Sean’s and  Chuck’s door. “Shoving off in thirty minutes. Shake a leg.” 

Trace passed by the galley. “Make sure there’s coffee.”

“It’s ready,” Makani said.

Trace climbed the stairs to the pilothouse. He flipped on a bow and stern light. He grabbed his cup and walked into the saloon. Sean and  Chuck staggered sleepily in after him.

“How’d you guys sleep?” Trace said as they drew coffee from the urn that sat on a counter between the galley and the saloon. 

They both said fine.

They sat at a table.

“Before we get some sea between us and land, how comfortable are you two with hauling copra,” Trace said. “If there’s any trepidation I want to know now before later. If you’re not good with it, I’ll let Allie before we shove off.”

“We’ve hauled it before,”  Chuck said. “We know how to handle it.”

“I know Allie,” Sean said. “She would not have given you the freight if she didn’t think you could handle it. She trusts you.”

Trace smirked. “She doesn’t know me. She trusts you.”

Sean smirked. “Spence was a drunken gamblin’ fool but he never missed a freight—but missed a lot of payments.”

 Chuck chuckled. “He couldn’t afford to. He owed everybody in every port.”

“If the truth be told,” Sean said, “it wouldn’t surprise me if he isn’t dancing right now in Djakarta or Papua. He got rid of the responsibility of his ship and his debt, all in one night. For certain, he’s not in Australia, he owes too many people back there.”

“Why did you guys stay with him so long?”

“He promised us if we’d stick with him he’d make us partners someday,” Sean said.

“He always had his eye on other boats to buy,”  Chuck said. “He’d buy another and another and make us all equal partners.”

“We believed him at first,” Sean said.

“And he truly believed himself too,”  Chuck added.

“He was a man full of promises with no promise,” Sean said. “Both me and  Chuck are suckers.”

“We liked the guy,”  Chuck said. “He was easy to work for. We didn’t always get paid on time but we got paid.”

“He came by before you found the boat,” Sean said. “He told us you gave him a thousand. He tried to give it to us.”

“We told him to take the money and get as far away from the South Seas as he could get,”  Chuck said. “We knew he was in big trouble; the biggest he’d ever been in.”

“He told us the guy he lost the boat to seemed like a good guy,” Sean said.

“But a greenhorn rookie,” Trace added.

“In so many words,” Sean said.

“It was a strange game,” Trace said. “I had the worst hand I had all night. I wasn’t afraid to lose it all on that hand. I would have only lost what I won. Nothing would have really been lost. To me, it was just a fun evening. Before the night started, I said to myself, this will be the first and last time I gamble. You know, get it out of your system, experience it once. I really think my goal was to win it and lose it all in one night. And you take Spence; that was probably his worst hand of the night and he put everything he had on the table. I guess he saw a greenhorn rookie he could bluff.”

“Maybe you did him a favor,”  Chuck said. “If he’d have won it that night he’d lose it the next.”

“Maybe it was his lucky night,” Sean said. “He lost and lost to a guy who saw to it he wasn’t broke.”

“Players got to know the table,”  Chuck said. “Maybe he knew the table pretty good.”

“What do you guys think of Makani’s coffee?” Trace said.

They raised their cups. “Good. Very good.”

“Let’s keep him happy,” Trace said. “I’ve been on ships where there’s always a guy they pick on.”

“Oh, that’s no problem. The three of us got together and decided it would be you,”  Chuck joked.

Trace smiled and stood. He grabbed his cup. “I’m about to start the engine. So you two toss the lines, and prepare to shove off.”