The Smugglers Read online

  Chapter 4

  The Dragon

  At dawn the next day I collected our two small bags, and we left the Baskerville Inn. Captain Crowe came out to the door, pointing down the road to give us our directions.

  “Ye've near a mile to walk,” said he. “And ye'11 have to hurry now, if ye've a mind to catch the coach.”

  I was surprised to find that we were so far from the sea as we walked along a road that took us to the edge of cliffs before curving inland to the west. The inn stood well above the water, fully half a mile from the nearest line of surf. I couldn't understand how I had smelled the salt air so strongly from there on a night without any wind.

  Father was back to his old self, striding along with his cane swinging at his arm, barely limping at all. He had only the one coat, but underneath he wore a good, clean shirt, and I could see the whiteness of it through the hole from the highwayman's pistol. It flashed across his chest like a medal he had won.

  All the way to St. Vincent, and all the way north in the coach to Pegwell Bay, he talked of Captain Crowe.

  “The man has been around the Horn,” he said. “He's been to the Indies, East and West. Yet there he sat at the Baskerville. What were the chances of that?”

  I thought the chances were rather good that the man would be found wherever there was liquor, but I didn't tell Father that. And we rode to the north with the sea at our right as the dust clouded round the carriage.

  It was evening before we arrived and I saw the Dragon for the first time. She lay in the incoming tide, with her stern facing us, and I thought she was just about the prettiest little ship I'd ever seen. Though smaller by half than our old Isle of Skye, she looked clever and quick. With her sails carefully furled on the booms and the big yards of the top-sail set perfectly square, she looked more like a small warship than a merchantman.

  “So it's still for sale,” said Father, staring up at the masthead. I followed his gaze and saw the broom lashed there, a signal to all that a buyer was wanted.

  “That's good,” said he. “Providence is with us, young John.”

  Right away we hired a boat to take us out to the Dragon. The oarsman had only one arm, and so he sculled instead of rowed, standing at the stern, grunting with each heave of the oar. “Sit still!” he snapped at me as I scrambled forward into the bow. “It's hard enough to move this old bit of rot without you flopping around like a herring.”

  Father's eyes snapped wide. He was facing forward, and he said over his shoulder, “I'd thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head.”

  “And I'd thank you to keep a silent one in yours,” said the oarsman. “You'd think you might come on the ebbing tide. But no. Lord, no. You're from London, you are, and what's it to you if I have to do twice the work?” He was the rudest boatman I'd ever met.

  Father gritted his teeth. “Just take us around the front of the boat.”

  “The front of the boat!” said the sculler with a sneer. “Lord save me from landsmen. You mean the pointed end, do you?” He pulled and pushed on the oar, the empty sleeve flapping at his side. “I'll take you round the bow, I think. Round the bow of that schooner. Twice the distance, but what's it to you?”

  The oar squealed in its notch in the transom as we snaked forward, twisting through the water. Slowly the ship grew larger, until she was all that I could see. We went up her long, black side, up toward the bowsprit. And there, below it, crouched a dragon.

  This was Father's “enormous great figurehead.” A wooden dragon, its mouth agape and lined with teeth, it stared ferociously toward the open sea. Its lower jaw was fully half a fathom above the water, the mouth so wide that I could have crawled inside it. The eyes were yellow, and they seemed to glow, and the reflections of the water danced across them. It gave the dragon an evil glint, and its big flared nostrils almost seemed to breathe out smoke and fire.

  We passed right below it, between the mouth and the thick cable of the anchor. I turned my head to see the face, and the dragon seemed to watch me.

  “What do you think?” asked Father. He sounded so proud, he might have carved it himself.

  “It's wonderful,” said I.

  “It's madness,” the boatman said. “It's something a Frenchman would do.”

  “Was it built by the French?” asked Father.

  “Don't you know even that? Good crikey! The Dragon was built here in Kent to fight against the French. Only later did she fight against England.”

  “She's got no guns,” said I. “No gunports.”

  “There's other ways to fight,” the boatman said. “The Froggies used her to bring their spies across the Channel. She smuggled spies to England.”

  The boatman brought us beyond the Dragon, then let the tide swing us round to face her. In silence we floated on the river, drifting down toward her, all of us staring at that huge and frightful head. Then Father cracked his fist against the gunwale. “I'm going to buy it,” he said. “By the saints, I'm going to buy that boat!”

  “You've lost your head.” The boatman swore. “She'll bring you trouble and nothing else. See how black she is? It's her soul you're looking at. Her heart is black inside her.”

  “That's rubbish,” said Father.

  “I think not.” With a sweep of his oar, the boatman brought us in toward the hull. “Half her life she's been a smuggler. First from France and then from England. And it spoils her, mark my words. Once a ship has seen a smuggling run, she's spoiled for anything else.”

  Father stood up. He nearly lost his balance, then found it, and reached out with his cane to hook on to the Dragon's shrouds.

  I went up after Father, and the boatman drifted down the hull. He neither came aboard nor even touched the ship.

  “Wait here,” said Father.

  “Not on your life,” said the boatman as the tide took him away. “You want me, you whistle. I ain't laying here beside her.” He shouted after us even as he vanished on the tide. “I don't trust her, I don't.”

  When he was just a tiny thing, turning in the current, he still called across the water. “She'll seek out dangers. For the sake of the boy, find another ship.”

  Had Father listened, I would only have talked him out of it. The Dragon was a lovely thing, and I could hardly wait to sail. We looked her over from bow to stern, from deck to keelson. Father paced through the holds, counting his steps, converting the total into barrels and boxes and bags.

  “It's smaller than it looks from the outside,” said he. “But the boat can pay its way, I've no doubt of that.”

  We walked through the cabins, from large to small, forward from the stern. In the last, Father could stretch his hands from side to side. “This one will be yours,” he said.

  “Mine?” said I.

  “You'll be the owner's representative.” He sat on the narrow bunk. He wrote with an imaginary quill on imaginary ledgers spread across the table. “You'll be second to none but the captain.”

  I stood with my head bowed; the cabin was too low to stand upright. “Father, I would rather be a sailor. Just an ordinary sailor.”

  “Just a mindless slug?” he asked. “Just a pair of hands, is all?” He looked at me and smiled. “Oh, you'll get your share of work. You'll be at the wheel and up the mast and tangled in the ropes, I'm sure. But you'll have to see to the business as well.”

  “The business?” I asked.

  “The manifests,” said he. “The cargo. The food and water, the sailcloth and whatnot.” He made a rolling motion with his hand, like a wheel going on and on. “But work hard, study well, and you'll be a captain yourself before you know it.”

  I was pleased with this, though I would have agreed to anything for a chance to sail on the Dragon.

  Father went back to London, and I stayed at a waterfront inn. I expected Captain Dawson to arrive, but the days went by and he didn't. I passed my time walking on the fishermen's wharves or sitting for hours on the riverbank, just staring at that graceful ship. And nearly a week was out befor
e a letter came from Father.

  My dearest son,

  A tragedy has befallen us. Poor Captain Dawson was overtaken by thieves on his way from London and was killed in Canterbury as he waited for the coach. I know you share my grief at this, but we must buck up and carry on.

  I have sent word to Captain Crowe at the Baskerville, who may already, as you receive this, be on the road to Pegwell Bay. I have asked him to assume command, and he has replied in a favorable way. You will understand that the state of affairs is such that I will not be able to come and see you off on this first voyage of the Dragon. And so, with the greatest of confidence, I am entrusting to you the duties of loading a cargo of wool and bringing it to our docks in London. Enclosed are various papers attesting to legal ownership of the Dragon, and others setting forth the particulars of the cargo, including details of from where and from whom it is to be obtained. You will answer to Captain Crowe in all matters pertaining to the sailing of the boat, but as to the welfare of the cargo and its expediency in delivery–matters of safety notwithstanding–he shall be subservient to yourself I have spelled this out to him, and trust there will be no difficulties.

  You will sail as soon as the cargo is loaded, and you will come directly to London. Considering the vagaries of wind and weather, I will not worry unduly until a fortnight had passed from this date.

  I am, in closing, your most loving and respectful

  Father

  I moved aboard the Dragon that very day, and though it shames me to say it, I frolicked like a child in a ship that was all my own. I ran shouting through the cabins and the hold; I skylarked in the rigging. I clattered pots and juggled with belaying pins. I climbed to the mainmast head and cut away the broom that marked her as a ship for sale. I climbed to the foremast, and I inched along the footropes of the long and slender topsail yard. I was hanging upside down from the ratlines, singing the only chantey I knew, when I heard a shout below me and saw Captain Crowe staring up from the afterdeck.

  “When ye're through wi' that,” he said, “I should like a word wi' ye, Mr. Spencer.”

  No man had ever called me that, and I blushed as red as roses. The one-armed man, just sculling off toward the shore, gave me a cheeky grin. “Box his ears, Cap'n,” he told Turner Crowe. “It's what I would do, the scallywag. And box 'em for me while you're at it.”

  Captain Crowe had a great heap of things piled beside the rail: two chests, a duffel, a pair of boots stuffed to their tops with rolled-up signal flags. Across his shoulders was the same cloak of salt-stained cloth, and tucked inside it, below his arm, he carried a bulky roll of charts. And with these, as I came up to him, he struck me lightly on the head.

  “Dignity,” said he, and smiled. “Ye should a'ways act as if there's someone there to watch ye.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  His face was ruddy and all aglow, the eyes lost within their wrinkles. He said, “Have ye seen to the cargo?”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “Have ye seen to a berth?”

  “No,” said I.

  He shook his head. “Then we'd best get started. There's muckle work to be done.”

  Chapter 5

  THE CREW COMES ABOARD

  Captain Crowe might have been a different man from the one I had found at the Baskerville Inn. Sober as a rock, cheerful to a fault, he went to work with a fever that shamed me for ever doubting him. Before a day had passed, the Dragon was moored alongside a jetty and the cargo of wool was coming aboard. Enormous bales arrived, and a swarm of men carried them up, each bent under his awkward load. They staggered up one plank and scampered down another, a long line going round and round, making me think of ants at a sugar bowl. Slowly the holds came full.

  I stood with my lists, now and then taking them into my mouth to haul on a line and help a barrel or box aboard. I worked from sunup to sundown, until my head reeled with figures; I dreamt of numbers in my sleep that night.

  Captain Crowe was here, there, and everywhere. He did a great deal of fussing down in the holds, a great deal of shouting up on the deck. At one point he took me aside and asked me to sit by the starboard rail.

  He'd cast off his cloak, replacing it with a big cravat that hid his neck from shoulders to ears. His face, so reddened by the wind, seemed to bulge from it, as though he'd tied the cloth too tightly.

  “Ye're doing well, Mr. Spencer,” he said. “Your father would be proud to see ye.”

  “Thank you,” said I.

  “But there's the matter of–” He started, then stopped, and finally just laid it out. “Och, we havena got a crew.”

  So I had failed after all. I had somehow assumed that the crew would simply be there–though how or why, I couldn't imagine. With a sigh, I got out my lists and spread them on the deck. “How many do we need?”

  He scratched his head. “A handful is plenty. A man and a boy can handle a schooner, Mr. Spencer. But I would think, say, three's a nice number.”

  I wrote that down, then said, “How do I find them?”

  “Och, ye've been put over your head,” said he, and smiled in a kindly manner. “I'll tell ye, John. The usual way is that ye ask the captain to do it.”

  This I knew was not true. Finding the hands who'd work a ship was a task that Father would never have left to the captain. Yet neither had he assigned it to me.

  “But o' course,” said Crowe, seeing my hesitation, “if ye'd rather tak' it upon yoursel' …” He shrugged and started to go. “No matter to me. I was only trying to dae ye a wee kindness.”

  This he said gruffly, with that same edge of anger I'd heard at the Baskerville, as though he'd taken offense at my doubts. I watched him lumber off, and I remembered what Father had said:“The man's a devil, but a harmless one. Proud as Punch, and that's his failing.”

  “Wait,” I called after him. He turned back to face me. “I would like that, Captain Crowe, if you'd do that favor for me.”

  “Aye, aye,” he said, and smiled. But his smile was a troubling one, one that reminded me how thin was my thread of authority. Only that thread, I saw, kept him from giving me the back of his hand instead of his kindness.

  But Crowe took up the task with great efficiency, and in a single trip to shore he found a crew for the Dragon. It was as though the men were there and waiting, so quickly did they come aboard. Captain Crowe brought them up the plank like sheep that he was herding. He put them straight to work lashing down the hatches.

  “Three good men,” he told me. “Twa to reef and steer, anither to dae the cooking and the whatnot. There's only one I canna vouch for. But I hear he's good at his work, with eyes like a hawk in the dark.”

  Why this was a virtue, I didn't bother asking. It was enough for me simply to have them aboard. They seemed neither young nor old, just three sailors, one long and thin, one as broad as an ox. And the third wore a thing so bulky and huge that he could scarcely get his arms in front of him to tighten up his knots. Curious, I walked up to him and saw that it was a strange sort of jerkin he wore, every inch of it covered with corks that he must have sewn in place one at a time, in layers and layers. It reminded me of nothing less than a huge and hollow pinecone.

  He looked up from his work with the widest grin I'd ever seen. “And here he is,” said he.“ Here's the boy that tamed the Haggis.”

  “The what?” I asked.

  “The Haggis! Captain Crowe,” he said. “The man's a bloated old gut stuffed full of pudding and blood. But I've never seen the old gaffer so meek, bobbing like a pigeon, hopping to your orders.” He pecked with his nose at the air, so comical an imitation that I threw back my head and laughed.

  He was pleased with his cleverness. “You'll get along fine, I think,” said he. “But don't cross him, you hear? Oh, he gets in a fit when he's mad.”

  “I've seen that already,” I said.

  “And you'll see it again if he catches you here.” The corks squeaked against each other as he stretched to look past me. Then he spoke in a warblin
g Scottish brogue, a mockery of the captain: “Aff ye go, ye sleekit beastie!”

  I returned to my lists as the sailors finished their lashings and went on to work at the sails. And when the captain came up from below, I stopped him at the mainmast.

  “Captain Crowe?” said I, pointing to the sailors. “Who is that man?”

  “Eh?” he asked. “Which man's that?”

  “The one with all the corks.”

  “Och, that's only Tommy Dusker.” The captain laughed. “They call him Dasher.”

  It was a good name for him. His hair was loose and flowing, not tarred in the usual fashion. He had a thin little mustache, side-whiskers, and teeth that sparkled like polished stones. He moved his legs with graceful ease, yet from the waist up he was ungainly as an elephant.

  “I've sailed wi' him before,” said Captain Crowe. “He's a good man.”

  “Why does he wear those corks?”

  “Dasher's afraid of the water,” said Crowe.

  I couldn't believe it. “A sailor afraid of the water?”

  “Aye. It's odd, isn't it?”

  That was all he would say. Suddenly there was a task that needed his attention, and I didn't see him again until evening, when the Dragon was ready to sail.

  We took the lashings from the sails, and hauled aloft the canvas. With creaks and groans the Dragon came to life, as though the sails were wings she spread, on bony spars stretched toward the clouds. The wind became her breath, and she sighed as she started down the river, free from land at last. She shivered with her eagerness to get upon the sea.

  The setting sun behind us, we rode the tide past wharves and warehouses, past the landsmen who stopped and stood to watch us go. But the wind was faint, and it vanished with the sun. And when the tide, turning to the flood, threatened to carry us back again, we dropped our anchor in the Downs to wait for wind and weather.

  I stood on the afterdeck and watched the sea go dark. Well to the west, I noticed whitecaps where there was no wind. When Captain Crowe came up, a wooden box in his hand, I pointed to the surf and asked him what it meant.