The Smugglers Page 8

  The familiar old voice came back, with neither distance nor direction. “Stop your hooting, will ye? I'm here.”

  “Where?” asked Dasher. And stupidly he looked toward the rigging.

  “Here, ye daft gowk,” bellowed Captain Crowe. “By the foremast.”

  “Go,” said I, and took the wheel. I turned it hard to leeward, and the Dragon– half aback–fell slowly off the wind. But Dasher worked himself in front of me.

  “I'll steer,” he said. “Please. I've got no taste for blood.”

  I only stared at him. This was Dashing Tommy Dusker, too frightened to go forward and tend to an injured man?

  “Please,” he said again.” “It makes me queasy. Just the thought of blood does me rather poorly”

  I left him there and went forward myself. By the time I reached the mainmast, the schooner had gathered way. When I reached the foremast she was sailing again, prancing along.

  Down on the deck, his back to me, sat Captain Crowe. In his arms he held a body. A hand, red with blood, clawed at his shoulder. The head slumped back on one side; the legs jutted out on the other, toes turned inward.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Captain Crowe tipped his head. “Stay there!” he barked. “Ye dinna have to see this.”

  “Is he dead?” I asked.

  “He's wishing that he was.”

  I was aware then of the other man watching. Harry, the cook, stood by the mast in the edge of the fog, as silent as a figure carved from stone. He looked directly at me, eye to eye, but whether with fear or hate or tenderness I could not tell at all.

  “Go on,” said Captain Crowe. “Awa' wi' ye now.”

  The hand of the dying sailor clamped tighter onto the captain's shoulder. His head writhed side to side, but the feet moved not at all. From end to end he looked to be seven feet in length. But Mathew was not nearly as tall as that.

  I was sure, in that moment, that he was the one who had warned me of danger. And I was sure that someone had killed him in the cover of the fog. I stepped closer and looked down, and –

  The man was cut in two. The cannonball, or something, had torn right through him, and now his blood and innards were spilling out across the captain's lap. It was a sight that nearly drove me to my knees: poor Mathew's wretched look of horror, the gap between his torso and his legs. I reeled away, back toward the wheel, where Dasher caught me and sat me down.

  “Was it bad?” said he. “I guess it was. Oh, Lord, I can see that it was.”

  Before long I heard a splash. And another after that. Then Captain Crowe came down the deck, past us to the stern. Wherever he walked, there were drops of red. He took off his cloak, bundled it up, and hurled it over the rail.

  There were only four of us now on the Dragon, and we listened in dread to the sounds that came out of the fog. There was a creak of rope, a surge of water, and the terrible rumble of guns across a deck.

  “So they've found us,” said Crowe. He looked up, and I saw the streaks of blood, in four straight lines, that stretched across his cheek. “The fog's no high enough tae hide the masts,” said he. “Dasher, get aloft. And you,” he said to me, “ye've got the wheel.”

  Dasher went up the ratlines and disappeared, swallowed by the fog. I stared at a compass that seemed to swing wherever it wanted. In every direction was only whiteness; there was nothing to steer toward.

  “Ye feel that?” said Captain Crowe. “The wind's going down.”

  It was. The water that had roared at the figurehead now passed with a muffled hush. The schooner stood more up-right, and the sails had lost their fullness. It took a quarter turn of the great wooden wheel to do what a touch had done before.

  “There she is!” cried Dasher suddenly. His voice came from above us.

  “Where?” said Captain Crowe.

  “Beside us there. Don't you see? Beside us, man.”

  I saw her then, the bowsprit first, next the jib and the enormous main. Like a shadow of the Dragon cast upon the fog, she slid along beside us.

  “Bear away!” Captain Crowe commanded.

  I turned the wheel, but not fast enough for him. He threw himself at it, and the king spoke cracked against my knuckles, then passed in a blur with the others. The Dragon whirled to leeward, and the cutter faded into nothing.

  We turned to port, then hard to starboard. We ran with the jib aback, and we jibed across the wind, and the compass spun like a whirligig. The fog fiddled with my senses; I stared wildly at things that weren't there. Flotillas of fantastic ships, enormous faces, and even ladies walking on the water came and went on every side. But I could hear the cutter, the slap of water at her hull, the flapping of her sails.

  “Where is she?” asked Captain Crowe. Then, loud enough that Dasher would hear, “Where the devil is she?”

  Dasher shouted down, “On the port side now.”

  Crowe and I looked to the left, below the mainsail boom. I saw a shape loom up and disappear. A cannon fired wildly.

  “Och, she's sailing circles round us,” said Captain Crowe. He threw the helm down, and around we went again, like children at a deadly game of blindman's bluff, groping through the fog.

  But the wind fell ever lighter. And the fog grew even thicker. “Like porridge,” said Captain Crowe, a fair enough description. It was a bubbling gruel that filled the space between the masts and slowed the Dragon down.

  Dasher came back to the deck. “Never seen a fog so thick,” said he. “I'm going goggle-eyed from all the staring.”

  “If we canna see them, they canna see us,” said Captain Crowe philosophically. But he had hardly spoken when another voice, a stranger's voice, came clearly through the fog.

  “I hear them there,” it said.

  “Not a sound,” said Crowe, his voice a rasping whisper. “Not a sound, ye hear?”

  This voice without a shape was worse than the shadows in the fog. It raised an icy panic in the bottom of my spine. Then came the sounds of the ship, the wood and canvas and water. And another voice, a different one, hailed us from that void.

  “Heave to,” it said. “This is Intrepid. His Majesty's Ship Intrepid.”

  I laughed. I know how odd it sounds, but I laughed from sheer relief. These men weren't smugglers at all. “They're revenue,” I said. “It's all right now; it's the revenue.”

  “Aye, so it is,” said Captain Crowe.

  I raised my hands to answer back, but the captain hauled them down. In a trice he had an arm around my throat, a hand across my mouth. “There'll be no shouting,” he said. “There'll be no sound at a'.”

  I fought against him, but he was far too strong. He ordered Dasher to the wheel, and he dragged me kicking toward the rail. He shoved me down and held me there, bent backward across the bulwark. Like a clamp across my jaw, his fingers pushed against me, until my feet lifted from the deck and I saw the water rushing past the hull.

  His hand smelled of blood. He snarled like a vicious dog.

  “If ye mak' a sound,” he said, “so much as a squeak, I'11 tip ye over the side,”

  Chapter 12

  DEADLOCK

  Somewhere in the fog, by the sounds I heard, the revenue cutter was coming about. Captain Crowe heard them, too, and he raised his great shaggy head to listen. In his hands I struggled like a dying fish, praying the ship would come across our bow. But the flap of sails and squeal of blocks grew only fainter, and at last disappeared. She had lost us in the fog.

  Captain Crowe loosened his fingers, and it was all I could do to breathe again.

  “Now,” said he, “ye're a smart young lad. If ye give me your word that ye'11 keep your mouth shut, we'll go on and finish the job.”

  I slumped down on the deck, my hands at my throat. In the mist at the mainmast, I saw Harry watching me.

  “What will it be?” said Crowe. “The Dragon's going to Dover. And when the brandy's off, ye can do as ye please. So, tell me.” He kicked my ribs. “Do ye give your oath? Ye'11 never breathe a word o' this
to any living soul?”

  “I can't promise that,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Then I'll pitch ye over the side. It's a' the same to me.”

  He reached down, but I squirmed away. “You can't take the Dragon” I said. “What good's she to you?”

  “No good at a',” said he, as calm as anything. “If I try to keep her, they'll hunt me like a pirate. But I can tak' her up to London, can't I, and tell that blasted father of yours how his poor, besotted son went ower the side in a storm. And he'll see me all weepin' and sad, and say, 'Why, bless your heart, Cap'n Crowe, here's a guinea for your troubles.' ”

  He stepped toward me; I scuttled backward.

  “Och, laddie,” he said. “Ye canna go far.”

  I knew he was right, and I had never felt so helpless. Wherever I ran, he could follow. He would toss me over the side without a thought, and I would drown in the Dragon's wake, watching her shrink in the fog. I stood up and stepped back toward the mainmast.

  “Take him, Harry,” said Crowe.

  I had no time to look behind me. I heard a footstep on the deck and felt arms encircling my chest. The cook held me in an iron grip, and his breath was hot and spongy on my neck.

  “Just give me your word,” said Crowe. “I ask no more than that.”

  “I won't,” I said.

  “Whit a shame,” said Crowe. “Whit an affy shame.” Then he grabbed me by the wrist and tore me away from Harry. He lifted me right from the deck and turned toward the rail. He held me there as the deck heaved up, and I knew I had but a moment left to live.

  The Dragon shuddered at the peak of her roll. She started back, and the sea came soaring up toward us. And Crowe stepped closer to the side.

  “Stop!” I cried. “I've got the book. I've got Larson's book!”

  He hesitated. The deck dipped down toward the sea and slowly rose again. “Ye're grasping at straws,” he said. But in his eyes I saw a doubt.

  “You'll never find that book,” I said. “But someone will. A week from now-a month from now–it will surely come to light. And they'll hang you then, and all your gang. They'll bind your arms and put a noose around your neck, and – ”

  “Shut up!” roared Captain Crowe.

  My words had found their mark. He rubbed his big fists across his cheeks, smearing the dead man's blood. I felt as though I'd planted a bomb down in the depths of the ship and armed it with a slow match.

  “It's all written in the book,” I said. “The names of every smuggler.” I spoke quickly, blurting it out. “Harry saw it. Ask him if he didn't.”

  Crowe stared at me with his glowering eyes. There was a glimmer there I'd never seen before–a hint of fear, I thought.

  “Whit's he blethering about?” he asked.

  “It's true,” said Harry. “He's got the book; you gived it to him, Captain, sir. And full of names it is, Captain Crowe. I seen it for myself.”

  “Where is it, then?” asked Crowe. He cast me down to the scuppers, half against the rail. His enormous hand spread across my chest, and he held me to the deck. “Where is it?” he asked again.

  “Somewhere safe,” I told him. “I hid it down below.”

  “Ye hid it?” He barked a horrid laugh. “Weel, ye're got your wits about ye, I'll grant ye that. And now ye're going to go and fetch it.” Then he added with a sneer, “If ye please, Mister Spencer.”

  “Why?” I asked. “So you can throw it with me over the side?”

  I saw the veins pulsing in his neck, his teeth grinding hard together as a flash of anger burned through his fingers and into my arm. Then he shook himself, and his grip relaxed.

  He said, “No one's going to hurt ye.”

  I feared him most of all in this mask of calm. “Listen, John,” he said. “Give me the manny's book, and when we've got the barrels ashore, we'll go along to London. Your father gets his ship and cargo, he gets his profit–and a little more perhaps; aye, a little more–and that's the end o' the matter. No harm to no one.”

  With his narrow, folded eyes, his rows of teeth showing in a ghastly smile, he looked like a grinning snake. “No harm to no one,” he said again.

  “All right,” I told him. It seemed I had no choice. “I'll give you the book.”

  “Fine.” He let me go. He stared at me and frowned. “Well, fetch it, then.”

  “Not yet,” said I. “When we get to London, when we're tied to Father's dock, then you get the book. But not before.”

  I heard Dasher laugh. “A deadlock,” he said. “A lovely dilemma.”

  Captain Crowe drew out his knife and flicked it open. “Then I'll have to cut ye into pieces,” he said calmly. “Your fingers and your toes, then your ears and eyes and lips. And what's left o' ye will tell me where it is, a' right.”

  “I won't,” I said, though I feared the quaver in my voice gave away the lie.

  “Oh, ye will,” said he. Crowe took my hand and slapped it on the rail. He pressed the knife against the knuckle of my little finger. The blade rocked across my skin. “Tell me, son,” he said. “Where is it?”

  In the silver of his knife, I saw two hugely staring eyes, horror-struck: my own face reflecting back at me. I saw the blade cut through the skin and the blood ooze out with a shocking, awful redness. And worst of all was Captain Crowe, hunched above me, calmly slicing through my finger. That was the thing that brought a scream to my lips. Captain Crowe was smiling.

  “You bloodthirsty pirate!” shouted Dasher. He came in a whirl across the deck and kicked the knife from the captain's hand. It flew off the rail and went spinning into the fog, glistening like a fallen star. “I'm not going to watch you cut up a boy. Not a lad and a shipmate. I'm not going to stand for that.”

  “Och, I'd never hae done it,” said Captain Crowe. He had turned in an instant into a madman, in an instant back again. Now he stood and brushed his trouser knees. “You didna have to kick awa' my best knife, Dasher. That was my favorite knife.”

  “Just leave him to think,” said Dasher. “He'll see the sense in the end.” Then he went to the wheel and brought the Dragon back to her course. “Steady as she goes,” he said. “By and large, that is.”

  Captain Crowe tugged at his jacket; he straightened his cravat. “Harry, come with me,” he said, and the two went down below.

  The Dragon sailed on, north toward England, through a fog that grew thick and then thin. I put my finger to my mouth and sucked away the blood, watching Dasher at the wheel, his jaunty self again. I hated to see him happy there, as though he had no other care at all, and hated even more to hear him start to sing.

  “Stop that,” I said.

  He looked wounded.

  “You're a dog in a doublet,” I said.

  He laughed. “What a thing to say! Didn't I save your bacon there? Didn't I risk my life and limb – ”

  “You knew it all along!” I cried. “As soon as you saw that cutter you knew she was a revenue ship. There is no other smuggler, and there never was. It's the Dragon that Larson wrote about. Right from the start it was the Dragon that was going to France.”

  “That's true enough,” said Dasher. He grinned at the binnacle, then cocked up his chin and shook his hair. He had caught his own reflection in the compass glass.

  “You must think me young and foolish,” I said.

  “Not at all,” said Dasher, staring straight ahead. “You're too quick by half, and that's your trouble.”

  I didn't feel clever at all. The truth, I saw, had been right in front of me from the very first day. “Captain Crowe told me that Father had sent him new orders,” I said. “But he can't read, can he? He told me that when I opened Larson's pouch.”

  “Are you still bleeding?” asked Dasher.

  I looked at my finger. “No,” said I.

  Only then did he look toward me. “What's done is done,” he said. “There's no comfort in a misery. But if you'd kept to yourself and asked no questions, we'd be running into Dover with the spirits, then on to London with the wool.
You'd be going home the hero, and guineas richer for your troubles.”

  “Is that the way you planned it? You and Captain Crowe?”

  “More me than him,” said Dasher, beaming proudly. “He's a madman, Captain Haggis is. I'm the one what does the thinking for him. A fortnight to take the Dragon round to London? Why, that was plenty of time, I told him, to make a run to France and back. And then that Larson chap, that little gent, stumbled on it, didn't he? Lord knows how, but he did.”

  “And you killed him for it,” I said.

  “Not I!” Dasher shook his head. “There was no one more surprised than I to see him swimming through the Downs, dead as a doornail. But he was mucking about in a smuggling gang, so it's no wonder he got himself killed. They all do, those who interfere”

  “Like me?” I asked.

  “Not if you watch your step,”said Dasher. “Not if you give us the book.”

  It kept coming back to that waterlogged book and the pages of Larson's notes. “The dead man's secrets,” a sailor had called them. “See you keep them safe.” I dreaded what might happen if I had no secrets left to keep.

  “There's no hurry,” said Dasher. “There's no rush. But you won't see London again until the Haggis has that book. And that's a fact, my friend.”

  He said all this with a cheerful smile that I found more unnerving than all the captain's rage. I picked myself up and wandered away, but Dasher called after me. “Where are you going?”

  “Wherever I please,” said I.

  The fog was not as thick as it had been, and I knew he was watching as I went down the companionway. I heard a thumping up forward, and smiled to myself at the thought of the captain – or Harry, perhaps – searching for a book that wouldn't be found. Then I hurried through the schooner, back toward the stern. I opened the door of my little cabin … and found it all in ruin. The thin mattress had been pulled from my bunk, my sea bag torn open across it. My ledgers were strewn to the deck, kicked in a heap to the corner. Even my quill had been plucked from its pot and cast across the cabin.

  Someone had gone through the room in a rage. But I found a small pleasure in the sadness of the place. No one would search there again.