Aldrick is obsessed with finding his grandfather's treasure. More than half a century and seventeen voyages have failed to locate his ships after they wrecked in Windward Passage, deeply-laden with pirate plunder and homeward-bound from the Caribbea...
Aldrick surveyed their surroundings in the common room of the Red Lion, then he pointed to an empty table and said to Captain Peters, "Shall we sit over there in private to discuss our business?"
Peters nodded and led the way while Aldrick paused in his seat and whispered to Johnson, "Mick and Tim outside. Tell them to enter in two fifty or three hundred heartbeats and confront Peters about Jimmy."
Johnson smiled, then asked, "Drinks aboard this evening, Skipper?"
"A fine idea that, Captain." Aldrick picked up his tankard and followed Peters across the room. Once they had both settled into chairs, Aldrick said, "I have a sloop of a hundred and fifty tons now laying to anchor in the harbour. Still sound of hull, and she sails well, but she needs a complete re-rigging before she is fit for another crossing. Larger, I have two barks of nearly three hundred tons I use in the fair-weather seasons for trade between here, Carolina and Virginia. Larger still, I have —"
"What price for the sloop?"
"Twelve hundred and fifty pounds."
"And what would you take in Spanish coin?"
Aldrick pursed his lips. "We find it increasingly difficult to use Spanish here with the embargo. Its value has returned to the bullion content, and it has begun debasing from there as the tension continues."
Peters winced. "So, what rate for doubloons?"
"Their gold suffers the same rate of debasement as their silver, so it also now requires more than ten to make the former eight." He shrugged. "A doubloon of two escudos is now fifteen shillings thrupence."
"How many doubloons of eight to make the price?"
"We allow sixty-one shillings each unless they are from Peru. The Lima mint is less consistent with fineness, so for them, we can allow only fifty-seven." Aldrick tilted his head side-to-side while he ciphered, then he looked into Peter's eyes. "The sloop needs four hundred and ten pieces —four hundred and forty if they are Peruvian. All of them neither clipped nor heavily worn. If any are impaired, they must be weighed."
Peters smiled as he withdrew a purse from his waistcoat pocket, opened it to show the contents, then he selected one. "They are all like this." He handed the coin across the table.
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Aldrick hefted it, then he dropped it on the tabletop to listen to its ring, nodding as he picked it up to examine for clipping. "This is fresh as the day it was struck half a century ago. If all are like this, there is no need to weigh. Where have you acquired these?"
"We raised..." Peters put a hand to his mouth and feigned a cough. "I raised them in a game of loo."
Aldrick examined the coin more closely, noting mintmark and the date. "This is from the lost 1676 Peru mint shipment. So, finally, San Joaquin's wreck has been discovered. Do you remember the man from whom you won these? There is a vast fortune laying where these were found. Tens of millions of reales if Spanish records are to be believed."
