The Smugglers Page 4

  “That's the Goodwin Sands,” said he, with only the briefest of glances. “It's the tide running over the Sands that ye're seeing.”

  I leaned on the rail and stared at the water as it surged and broke. Then humps appeared, some dark, some shining where the last of the sun touched the sand. They looked like the backs of enormous serpents, and I found it strange to think they were moving even now, as though alive, shifting with the tide. I thought of the thirteen ships that had gone aground, the hundreds of men who had been lost. And, in the twilight, I heard their wailing.

  It started faintly at first, then rose to an awful screech–a keening and a droning that sent shivers up my back. But when I turned around, I laughed.

  Captain Crowe had his bagpipes out. The wooden box was empty on the deck, and in his arms he held this thing, like a streamered, five-horned beast he was killing in his hands. His eyes for once were wide, his cheeks puffed out, his face the brightest red. He started walking with the pipes, and the wailing turned to a tune.

  The crew came up from the fo'c's'le and sat in a knot by the capstan. Dasher was in the middle, looking as fat as a carnival man in his strange suit of corks. I saw the flare of tinder sparks, and then the cheerful glow of pipe bowls. Crowe's music rose through the rigging and swirled across the sea. It was sad music that filled me with a yearning to be among the men at the bow, just a sailor and nothing more.

  The tune ended and another began. It was fast and merry, and Dasher stood up to dance. His hands at his hips, now at his back, he jigged upon the capstan. He leapt and twirled, he kicked his legs, and the others clapped to see him. He was at once graceful and grotesque.

  I wondered if Dasher had always been afraid of the sea. Down the length of the ship, he was just a bobbing figure who seemed to feel only joy at the prospect of our adventure. Yes, the Dragon was a happy ship, I thought, and the voyage would be all too short. But on both accounts I was wrong.

  In the morning we sat becalmed. The sun was huge and bright, and there was not a breath of wind. Yet out beyond the Sands I saw the sails of trading ships and frigates scuttling to and fro. Some were making for the river, yet they came pressed by a breeze that did not reach us.

  “What's wrong with the wind?” I asked the captain. “Do you think you could whistle one up?”

  “Och, it's no the wind,” said Crowe. “It's the Dragon. He touched her rail with his hand. “She's waiting on something, I think. She's biding her time, ye see.”

  Through a long afternoon the ships came into the Downs. The wind chased them in and left them there, sails hanging slack from the yards. In a flock, they rode the tide as far as they could, then anchored when it turned against them. And in the evening there was a ring of ships around us, all of them waiting, every one of them lying head to the tide, patient as sheep in a pasture.

  I took my supper alone, in a seat still warm from another's body, in the sound of laughter from the fo'c's'le. The food was cold, my dish speckled with the dried lumps of someone else's dinner, and I went rather dolefully to my cramped little quarters at the bow of the schooner, thinking I might write a note to my father.

  I gathered my paper, pen, and bottle of ink and started up to the deck to sit in the evening sun. But I never finished the journey.

  At the end of the corridor the captain's door stood ajar. And through the gap I saw him there, seated on his bunk and staring at the porthole. His fingers touched at the Dragon's hull, stroking the curve of a massive rib. And though I could see that no one else was there, Captain Crowe was talking. His voice was far too soft to let me hear the words, but he wasn't praying, I was sure of that. He wasn't talking to himself. All I could imagine was that he was talking to the ship.

  Seeing him there, hearing the murmur of his voice, made me think of a time when I was young, when my mother became ill and took to what would be her deathbed. Father would go to her and close the door, and I would hear him talking in that same sad voice that came to me now through the captain's door.

  I didn't disturb the man. I went back to my cabin and penned my little note as the tide burbled past the planking at my elbow. Then Captain Crowe went clomping up on deck, and soon after, I put down my quill and followed him.

  The sun was setting over Kent. The captain's shadow warped across the deck as he fiddled with his wooden box, taking out his bagpipes. The shadow lengthened when he stood, and spiked with the shape of his drones.

  At the first sound of the pipes, the crew came to sit at the capstan, and it was as though the day had not existed at all. Soon Dasher was dancing, his wild hair flying, his corks bouncing. And I stood by myself at the rail as the captain paced, as the crew laughed and clapped and smoked. To see it made me lonesome, and, thinking I might join the men, I started forward, past the mainmast, past the cabin. But when I reached the foremast, one of them looked up. There was a nudging of elbows, and all as one the trio went below, down to the gloom of the fo'c's'le. The last was Dasher, who had to jam himself through the hatchway.

  The music stopped then, and Captain Crowe called out to me, down half the length of the Dragon. “Mr. Spencer, come aft, if ye please.”

  The bagpipes were still under his arm, the long horns of the drones hanging down. The bag wheezed softly, as though he had almost–but not quite–strangled the life out of it.

  “Ye're not one o' the crew,” he said. There was no anger in his voice, and he turned as I came up, to walk beside me along the rail. “Ye'11 find it's a lonely life sometimes, being a part o' the afterguard. But good or bad, that's the way it is.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I knew the cook was called Harry and that he was the biggest of the three, a dim-looking man with arms as thick as my legs. And the thin pole of a man was called Mathew, but that was all I knew. I had spoken only once with Dasher, and not at all with either of the others.

  “Ye'11 get used to it. Ye'11 get to like it, even.” With each step the captain took, the bagpipes groaned beneath his arm. “When the Dragon thinks the time has come, we'll make our offing. Then a quick call at t'other place, and it's on to London. More or less.”

  “What other place?” I asked.

  Captain Crowe stopped walking. “Didn't your father tell you, then?”

  “Tell me what?”

  He frowned. “Och, the man was affy busy.”

  Captain Crowe knelt on the deck. He put his bagpipes down and stretched them along his wooden box. “We've got another cargo waiting for us. We're to pick it up and …” He shook his head. “Yer father should have telt ye this. We're to fill the holds – ”

  “No,” said I. “That isn't right.”

  “Aye, it is,” he insisted. The bagpipes squealed and shouted as he shoved them in the box. “Living on the Dragon the way ye were, I suppose ye never got his orders.”

  “But I wasn't on the Dragon at first,” I said. “I stayed at an inn, and he sent me instructions there.” I felt through my pockets, searching for the letter.

  “Och, those are the old orders.” He closed the box; he snapped the latches shut. “The new orders came to the Baskerville. And they say what I'm telling ye now.”

  Crowe came to his feet, and he was taller than me by only inches. Yet for a moment I felt almost fearful, for I heard in his voice that old hint of anger. “Don't cross him,” Dasher had said.

  But he didn't get angry. He sighed, and smiled, and said, “But o' course, it's no for me to say. If ye want to tak' this wool to London, Mr. Spencer, then who am I to argue?” He gazed toward the masthead, and his fingers stroked his chin. “It isna me who'll have to answer to your father.”

  I stared at him and wondered what I should do. Had Father, in his rush, changed his plans and then forgotten to tell me? Or had he sent a second letter that never reached me on the Dragon?

  It was past all understanding. Maybe Captain Crowe had the old orders and I the new ones. No matter what I did, I might turn up in London with the wrong cargo. And through my foolishness, Father might lose a fortune.
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br />   I carried these thoughts up and down the deck. I felt them weighing upon me as though they were bricks instead of mere ideas. I almost wished that Captain Crowe would order me to take this new direction.

  But he only stood and watched me pace. Now and then he asked, “Well?” or “What's it going to be?”

  But in the end, the choice was neither mine nor his to make. For a message came, carried on the river, borne by a thing that would forever give me nightmares.

  Chapter 6

  AN EERIE WIND

  It was just a speck in the falling tide, a dot of black floating in the river. It came out of a mist that hugged the land, out from the night to the dawn.

  It was I who saw it first; I thought it was a coconut. And I watched it curiously, to see if it might pass close beside us. Then suddenly I saw the arms, just below the water, the fingers white as pastry. They were moving, but barely so, like the tentacles of a jellyfish. The speck was a head, and it turned from black to white as the face lifted up, and then to black again as all but his hair disappeared. Startled, I called for Captain Crowe.

  He came up half dressed, his clothes awry, fastening first the big cravat around his neck. He took a glance down to the water, then led me to the bows, and we stood above the great carved dragon as the tide rippled past below us.

  “Ah,” said Captain Crowe. “This will be what the old Dragons been a-waiting for.”

  The man came weaving on the current. First to the left, then to the right, but always toward the Dragon. He came around the stern of an anchored ship, around the bow of another. Then he bumped against the dragon's mouth, and his arms spread wide across the wood, as though he meant to hold it. He floated there, on his stomach, his face within the water.

  “He's dying,” I said.

  “He's dead already,” said Captain Crowe. “But we'd better bring him up. It seems he's come to find us.”

  Mathew scrambled up and rigged a tackle from the forestay. I went down, right to the very mouth of the wooden dragon, and held the man by the collar. His hand swirled away from the hull and brushed against my wrist. His touch was so cold, so clammy, that I knew I held a dead man. Then my skin revolted at the thought of this, and I shook so badly that his head bobbed up and down. But a bight of rope was lowered for me, and I passed it around his shoulders. “Haul away,” I said, and climbed to the deck.

  The sailors pulled, the corpse came up; they pulled again, and he rose some more. He seemed to dance and shake, climbing from the water like a puppet from a stage. His chin rested on his chest, and his hair hung down to hide his face. And then he dangled above the rail, a figure in gray with buckled shoes, and the water fell from him in splashes on the deck.

  “Och, he's a wee manny,” said Captain Crowe. “Just a wee little manny.” He reached out and lifted the chin and I gasped.

  “Larson,” I said. The gentleman from the carriage. He had promised to find me, I remembered. He had told me to watch for him. “I think I'm a dead man,” he'd said. “Now or later, I'm a goner,”

  “You know him, then?” asked Captain Crowe.

  “I met him once,” said I.

  Then Dasher spoke behind me. He said, “Throw him back.” He laughed, and I thought I'd heard that laugh before. “He seems to like his swimming,” Dasher said. “He's doing so well at it, he might be in Devon in a day or two.”

  “Stow it!” roared Captain Crowe. It was the first time in two days I'd heard him shout. “We'll heave him aboard, and when we're out at sea we'll bury him.” He saw me watching, and he tried to smile. “A proper burial,” he added.

  Poor little Larson was swung inboard and lowered to the deck. And the instant his shoes touched the planks, the wind came up. It wasn't strong, but it was fair. It carried a smell of muddy earth, in a strange and chilling coldness, and the Dragon tugged against her anchor like a horse against its harness.

  “Make sail!” said Captain Crowe. He was grinning, his crinkled eyes barely there. “Main and foresail, jib and staysail. Lively, lads; the Dragon wants to go.”

  Larson was left in a slump at the rail, the bight of rope still around his shoulders. Mathew and Harry went to the halyards, the captain to the sail lashings.

  “Mr. Spencer, you'll tak' the wheel, if ye please,” said Crowe. “We'll go south to the end of the Sands.”

  Huge and white, the sails streamed up and opened, flapping in the breeze. The anchor came aboard, and I felt us drifting back across the Downs. I spun the wheel; the Dragon lurched on her side. I spun it the other way, and she turned her head toward the open sea.

  It was an eerie wind that the dead man brought. It touched the Dragon but no other ship, and we passed through the anchored fleet like a silent, drifting cloud. A rippling patch of water went with us, but all around was calm. We sailed on a reach past a big East Indiaman that sat so still, even her flag wasn't ruffled. On every ship, a line of astonished men watched us pass.

  “Set the topsail,” said Captain Crowe, and–still grinning–he opened his long wooden box. “I'll even pipe ye aloft.”

  And so the Dragon went to sea, with a skirl of pipes in a ghostly breeze. The drifting dunes of the Goodwin Sands went by to port, the shores of Kent to starboard, and I alone steered this ship, this little world of ours. The square topsail flapped and filled, and I felt the pulse of the Dragon through the wheel as she quickened on her way.

  But soon Dasher came to take my place. “You can go,” he said. “I'll steer this thing. What's the course?”

  “Running free,” said I.

  “Running free,” he answered with a nod. “Straight ahead. Steady as she goes.” He wore an impish grin. “Lord love me, I like this sailor talk.”

  He settled in behind the wheel, his arms poking out from his suit of corks as though from a barrel, awkwardly bent to grasp the spokes.

  Suddenly he seemed disturbingly familiar. His laughter, his swaggering walk, even the words that he sometimes used made me think of the highwayman who had stopped us in the forest. But I could see that he knew what he was doing when it came to working a ship. He looked up at the sails, then down at the compass, and with the smallest turn of the wheel he gained half a knot. The wake stretched arrow-straight behind the Dragons's stern.

  “You can go,” he said again. “They're about to launch that little gent. That fancy friend of yours.”

  “A little fancy gent,” the highwayman had called him. I watched Dasher as he steered the ship. I said, “Have you seen that man before?”

  “Don't ask me that,” he said, and laughed. “I'm a terrible one for faces. Even worse for names. I pass my veiy own mother on the street and think, 'Now, who's that Mrs. Hickenbothom?' Get along now or you'll miss the launching. The Haggis wants your help.”

  Up at the bows, Captain Crowe had a swath of sailcloth spread across the fo'c's'le deck. He was down on his hands and knees, cutting out a burial shroud. His knife ripped through the cloth, and he went along behind it. At the pinrail on the weather side, Mathew and the cook were coiling halyards. Side by side, they worked with their heads down, but now and then they lifted them, and I saw the worried looks they cast across the deck.

  “Ah, Mr. Spencer,” said Crowe. “Perhaps ye'11 lend a hand.”

  We spread out the shroud and laid Larson upon it; we lifted him there, with the captain at his heels and me at his head. He made a sorry sight, his tiny hands and face all ghastly pale. His eyes were not quite closed; his mouthhung open. I said, “We need a cloth. A tie to put around his head.”1

  “Och,” said Crowe, “we'll just wrap him in the shroud.”

  “No,” said I. “I'd like to do it right.”

  He tore a piece of cloth into a ribbon, which he gave to me. I tied it round the dead man's chin, and when I lifted his head I discovered that the bones were all broken. I felt them grinding in my fingers.

  “He didn't drown,” I said, looking up at Captain Crowe. “Someone smashed his skull.”

  The captain came and prodded Larson's he
ad. “Aye, ye might be right. Or he might have had a fall.”

  “Whatever happened,” I said, “it wasn't long ago.” There was still a pinkish touch of blood in his mat of hair. “He was alive when he set out for the Dragon. ”

  Crowe shrugged. He squinted at me. “Still, we canna keep him on the ship. Ye dinna want to keep him, do ye?”

  “No,” I said. To have a corpse on board was the worst of luck. “But we should tell someone about it.”

  “Oh, aye,” he said. “We'll do that, Mr. Spencer.”

  We folded the shroud over the body. The captain worked up from the feet, tucking and smoothing. Harry and Mathew crossed to the starboard pinrail, circling wide around the corpse, like cats past a sleeping dog. They went to work just yards away.

  I didn't want to be the one to cover Larson's face; I started at his chest. And my hands, as they pressed and tugged at the cloth, felt a bulk below it, a square thing hard and stiff.

  “There's something in his pockets,” I said.

  “I dinna see how that could be,” said Crowe. “Dasher had a look already. Aye, and Mathew too. Didn't ye, Mathew?”

  The sailor nodded, a quick and rapid gesture. He had prominent teeth, and the way his head moved made me think of a rabbit.

  Captain Crowe grunted when I opened the shroud. “Och, Mr. Spencer,” said he, “I'd like to get this done then.”

  I felt across Larson's wet clothes and found the thing, not within a pocket, but sewn behind the lining. The cloth was water-soaked and frayed from wear; I tore it with my fingers. And out came a little bundle, an envelope of oilskin.

  “Whit's that, then?” asked Captain Crowe.

  I opened the flap, and water poured out. It flowed down the side of the dead man's shroud, a rivulet tinged blue with ink. It streamed across the deck, then up, then down as the Dragon rolled to the south around the Goodwin Sands. The big curve of the jib threw shadows across us, and the wind ruffled cold at the papers I pulled from the pouch.

  The first was a map folded in four. It was crudely drawn, and the lines had smudged near the creases, but I saw the coast of Kent and the English Channel, the entrance to the Thames. It was much like the image Captain Crowe had drawn on the table of the Baskerville, but in two places were markings in the shape of an X, and some writing was blurred beyond reading.