The System of the World (Neal Stephenson) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги | Orney ’s Ship-yard, Rotherhithe 31 JULY 1714 #97

Orney’s Ship-yard, Rotherhithe
31 JULY 1714

“SHE IS A FAIR ENOUGH young lady, composed, civil, even when being man-handled off a sandbar by a boat-load of Filipino and Laskar swabbies. But, I was greatly relieved to get her off of my ship.”

Otto van Hoek had the skin and the disposition of a hundred-year-old man, and the vigor of one closer to thirty. He had a steel hook in place of his right hand, and when he was distracted or nervous he would paw at things with it. Taverns, chambers, and cabins habituated by van Hoek sported sheaves of scratches on tabletops and walls, as if a giant cat had been there sharpening its claws. Now he was scoring the lid of a packing-crate lately off-loaded from Minerva. It rested on the wharf of Mr. Orney’s Ship-yard in Rotherhithe. The address read

DR. DAN’L WATERHOUSE