When they were not busy tending their crops, hunting hogs or birds, fishing in the shallows of the harbor, or keeping watch, they often went exploring, rowing a small boat...to nearby islands, where they walked the shore, looking for pearls or Spanish coins or other valuables that might have washed ashore from some stricken and long-lost vessel. On one such trip, as the three men wandered along the beach just above the high-water mark, they spied a man-sized grayish white chunk of material wedged in the rocks that fronted the beach. As soon as the three men--all mariners--spotted the mass, they immediately recognized it as ambergris, a naturally occurring substance that is created in the intestines of sperm whales and found floating on the sea or cast ashore on beaches. They would have known, too, that the roughly 180-pound chunk of ambergris, along with a few other smaller chunks, were worth a not-so-small fortune in England, where the substance was used in the manufacture of perfume.
While Chard would later claim he was the first to spot the ambergris, all three immediately laid claim to it and, no doubt, set to dancing and shouting gleefully on the beach, imagining themselves living the good life in London town or perhaps sailing the seas as the owners of their own ships. Of course, reality soon set in. They must have wondered how on earth could they possible [sic] get a chunk of ambergris--a chunk described in a letter as "a piece...as big as the body of giant [with] the head and arms...wanting"--off the Bermudas and to England, where they could sell it and pocket the proceeds. How could they keep it out of the hands of the adventurers of the Virginia Company who would, if they knew of its existence, claim it as their own?
The first thing the three men did was hide it, perhaps in one of the many caves that mark the Bermudas. Then they began to argue. Chard claimed the bulk of the ambergris belonged to him since he had discovered it. Waters and Carter, not surprisingly, disagreed. The Three argued, then fought, for the better part of two years. At one point, while fishing together in their little boat, they started bickering and the bickering escalated into open combat. They had at each other with fists and teeth and oars and anything else they could use as weapons. Snarling and bloody, they fell overboard, where they kept fighting until, exhausted, they dragged themselves ashore. Things were so bad that a dog that had remained on the island with the three sailors...waded into the middle of a particularly noisy fracas, biting Waters in a apparent attempt to make them stop. Eventually, Chard and Waters were prepared to fight to the death with swords or pistols rather than share the ambergris. Carter, though, was determined to avoid bloodshed and not happy at all at the thought of spending years--perhaps the rest of his life--along in the Bermudas with no company other than the dog. He hid the weapons so that an uneasy peace settled over the little camp on Smith's Island.
There's your sample of Doherty's lively writing style. Now we have to revert to my lesser skills.
Later, despairing the non-appearance any English ships, the men got together to build their own boat, in which to ride the Gulf Stream to Newfoundland, but the effort turned out to be unnecessary, as the Virginia Company finally got around to relieving them.
I think its a real life illustration of the development of morality under Natural Law, and why we really don't need to fear the messiness of life to the degree that we do. And it adds some credence to Crusoe Economics, though with no whitewashing of the dangers.
No anarchist doubts that the State of Nature has its dangers, they just doubt that The State is better. Actually, I doubt it. They flat out deny it.
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