"Numbers," said a stout commissioner at the end of the table, with some irritation, "are only numbers, young man. A clever clerk could invent a matching set in an afternoon. Where is your proof that a single cask was re-headed?"
"Here, sir," said Jem Toller.
He had come forward without being asked and stood at the foot of the long table in his Sunday coat, small and bandy-legged under the painted tritons, with his bundle in his arms. He untied the sailcloth with careful, unsteady fingers. Inside were two things. One was a small greasy book bound in pigskin. The other was a branding iron, its long shaft blackened, its head a backward-reading brass die showing the letters G L and a number frame that could be changed by sliding in small brass blocks.
"Jeremiah Toller, sirs, head cooper at Garrow & Lisle," said the old man. His voice shook, and then grew steadier. "I knocked out them heads. Over nine nights in the winter of 'eleven, me and two lads, on Mr. Gideon Lisle's orders. This here is my tally, in my own hand. Every cask, the old mark and the new, and the night it was done, because I was paid by the piece." He laid the book on the green baize. "And this is the iron Mr. Lisle had made special at Pickett's smithy in Church Street, to burn the new marks. I was meant to throw it in the creek. I didn't. It's the only one like it. You'll find no other iron in the Navy with a sliding number frame, because a true contractor's mark don't need one."
He laid the iron beside the book, very gently, the way a man might set down something that was still warm.
Nobody spoke. The clock over the fireplace ticked. Out on the river a waterman's voice rose and fell.
Sir Ralph Tennant drew the pigskin book toward him and opened it. He turned a page, and another. He ran a thin finger down a column, looked up, and said, without inflexion, "Mr. Garrow. Your number for the *Cygnet*, the first batch."
"GL 4301 to 4355, sir. Fifty-five casks."
Tennant looked down at the tally book for a long moment. Then he closed it and folded his hands on it, and turned in his chair and looked down the length of the table at the contractor's seat.
"Sir Josiah," he said. "Have you anything to say?"
The clock said four minutes to twelve.