He counted eighteen of them in the ten minutes it took him to walk from one end of the town to the other. They ranged from The Feathers, a grimy-looking alehouse close by the fish market, to the new-built Three Mariners where he turned back, realising that he had reached the town limits. Retracing his steps along the main waterfront, Thames Street, he found himself skirting around stove-in barrels, broken handcarts, discarded sacking, and several drunks lying snoring in the rubbish or slumped against the doors of the warehouses which lined one side of the street. The wharves across the road were built on pilings because Port Royal perched on the tip of a sand spit and land was very scarce. Every berth was occupied. Vessels were loading cargoes of tobacco, hides and skins, indigo and ebony, and above all sugar whose earthy, sickly sweet smell Hector was beginning to recognise. Whenever he met a longshoreman or a half-sober sailor he asked if any of the vessels might be bound for Petit Guave, but he was always disappointed.
