Lemuel Stroud

Lemuel Stroud is 44 and the captain and owner of the brigantinebrigantine Two-masted sailing ship with square sails on the front mast and fore-and-aft sails on the rear one. Constance. Born in New Bedford, the son of a whaler, he shipped as a cabin boy at 11 and rose, rung by rung, from sailor to mate, and from mate to captain. He bought the Constance twelve years ago, with an inheritance and the help of a bank. He likes to say a ship is like a horse: she obeys only those who respect her.

He lives with his widowed sister in a gray wooden house in New Bedford, on a hill with a view of the harbor. The parlor has a tall-case clock, a world map with the seas drawn by hand, a brass spyglass above the fireplace and a shelf of leather-bound logbooks. It smells of tar and coffee. Lemuel only occupies the house from December to March, and in those months his sister makes him the fish soup he can't do without.

He is tall and bony, with a face weathered by sun and wind, a short-trimmed brown beard streaked with gray, deep gray eyes and thick eyebrows. He wears a navy captain's coat with brass buttons, holds his black peaked cap in his hands and carries a silver pocket watch tied to his waistcoat. Calm, deep-voiced, he speaks little and measures his words the way one measures a sounding line. He calls Captain Wentworth my old friend in every sentence.

About the 4th, he tells what the deck saw. At 1 p.m., between the Azores and Portugal, the helmsman spotted a brigantinebrigantine Two-masted sailing ship with square sails on the front mast and fore-and-aft sails on the rear one. six miles off, sailing crookedly, with her sails in tatters. He sent the mate in a boat. There was not a soul aboard. About the missing captain, he says he knew him for fifteen years, went to his wedding and, last month, held the little girl in his arms in New York. When the detective states that he went after the ship on purpose, he answers that he went after wind, like every sailor, and asks him to moderate his tone.

It could be the serene sorrow of a sailor who lost a friend and gained, by chance, an empty ship. It could be the trained calm of someone who learned that, at sea, a steady voice is half the maneuver. The detective will have to decide which.