'Stow that racket! And hands off! Leave the girl alone. It's me she's come to see.'
An enormous man had risen from his seat by the bar at the far end of the room. From the colour of his hair and the thick growth of beard that sprouted from his chin, Marianne guessed that this was Black Fish and forced back a gasp. Old Nat was right, never had she seen anyone so ugly. He was a giant of a man, black haired and swarthy skinned. His broad face, with its shapeless features and wide, fleshy nose, might almost have been flattened by a blow from some gigantic fist. The eyes, so bloodshot as to obscure whatever colour they might have had, spoke of long familiarity with the bottle. His bear-like form was clad in a striped jersey with, over it, a faded red coat which still retained some remnants of gold braid. An ancient cocked hat adorned with an enormous green cockade sat jauntily sideways on his pigtailed head. Loud-voiced and powerful, brandishing the inevitable pipe, Black Fish loomed up through the thick fug that filled the room like some weird and menacing Father Neptune. It was all Marianne could do to keep from crossing herself. But already a vast hairy hand had grasped her arm and was drawing her irresistibly forward. She found herself seated on the form facing old Nat who was chuckling and rubbing his hands.
'Its just as I told ye, lass! He's a right one is Black Fish—'
More frightened than she was prepared to show, Marianne privately considered that this Black Fish bore a striking resemblance to the pirates whose exploits she had devoured with such relish when safely between the covers of a book. The reality was quite a different matter. The man before her had no black patch over one eye or wooden leg but, these details apart, he seemed the living image of a gentleman of fortune. And so ugly! The prospect of finding herself alone at sea with this dreadful man made her shudder. But for the alarming words she had overheard pass between Jason Beaufort and the short stranger, she would probably have abandoned all thought of any closer acquaintance with this terrifying individual. But the American's presence in the city brought the shadow of the scaffold more menacingly close and she had no choice but to escape by any means and in whatever company, even that of the devil himself if need be.
Black Fish was watching her knowingly from beneath his bushy black brow. He leaned heavily across the table and thrust his face into hers.
'Not so keen now to sail the seas with old Black Fish, eh lass?'
Marianne gritted her teeth and forced herself to look her fearful acquaintance in the face.
'I am obliged to go to France. It is a matter of – of life and death!'
The mariner opened his mouth in a roar of laughter, letting out a gust of pungent, rum-laden breath.
'You love your young coxcomb as much as that do you? You can't be afraid if you mean to cross the Channel at the end of November!'
'I am not afraid of the sea and I wish to go to France. Will you take me?'
'That depends. What'll you pay?'
'A guinea.'
'Not much for the risk of a brave man's life. Well, let's see your guinea then at least we'll know you speak the truth.'
For answer, she opened her hand. The lamplight gleamed for an instant on the heavy gold coin with the plump profile of King George III as it lay in her palm. Black Fish reached across and took it. He bit it and gave her a wink.
'Good enough. It's a bargain, my girl. I'll take you. You're lucky, I've business of my own with the French dogs. Your guinea will serve.'
At once, Marianne felt her spirits revive. Now that he had agreed to take her, hope and courage returned and she was able to fight with all her strength against the insidious counsels of despair. She refused to think that this man might betray her or, having taken her money, that he might leave without her. In any case, she was determined not to let him out of her sight.
'Thank you,' was all she said. 'When do we sail?'
'You seem in a mighty hurry – where do you lodge?'
'Nowhere. If we leave tonight, I have no need of a lodging.'
'Very well, we stay here until ten and then go aboard.'
'The tide is not full until midnight—'
'Bright as a button, ain't we! But over inquisitive. I've things to do before we put to sea, my pretty! Here, drink some of this! Proper turnip head you've got on you.'
This proved to be a glass of steaming grog which Black Fish shoved towards his passenger. Marianne eyed the pungent beverage suspiciously. She had never tasted spirits and was on the point of saying so.
'But – I do not know—'
'You don't know but what it mightn't make you ill, eh? Never tried it before?' Bending forward suddenly so that his beard almost touched Marianne's ear, he muttered rapidly: 'Try and drop the flash talk if y' can. Ye'll get yourself noticed—'
Taken by surprise, she gave him a startled glance then seized the glass and bravely swallowed down a draught of the burning liquid. She gasped, choked and began to cough wildly while Black Fish thumped her mightily between the shoulder blades and roared with laughter.
'Takes you back a bit, at first,' he agreed encouragingly. 'But you'll get used to it—'
The worst of it was that this curious assertion proved correct. Once she had got her breath back, Marianne discovered that the grog had power to spread an agreeable warmth through her exhausted body. It flowed down like a fragrant, fiery river. All in all, she found it very good. She took another sip, rather more cautiously this time, to Black Fish's huge delight.
'We'll make a sailor of her yet!' he boomed, smashing his fist down on the table with such force that old Nat, who for some moments past, had been fast asleep and snoring with his head on his arms, sat up with a start. He sat there, blinking helplessly, still half asleep.
'Go home to bed, Nat,' Black Fish told him. 'Time old grandads were asleep. We'll have another jar, me and the lass, then we'll be off.'
Hiking Nat unceremoniously to his feet, he picked up the red hat which had fallen off the old man's head and stuck it on again at random. Then he gave him a push towards the door.
'G'bye, little lass,' old Nat mumbled. 'God speed—'
'That's enough! Off with you, now!' Black Fish cut him abruptly short.
Marianne, too, felt very much inclined for sleep. She was warm now and the rum, as well as filling her with a comfortable sense of well being, was making her very sleepy. Viewed through the soothing veil of alcohol, her terrors faded, leaving only an insuperable weariness. However, she was obliged to sit a whole hour more with drooping eyelids, watching Black Fish consume quantities of rum and smoke pipe after pipe. In all this time, he paid her no attention at all. He sat with his eyes fixed vacantly on some point in the smoke-filled room and seemed to have forgotten his companion altogether. She sat bravely on, waiting patiently for him to give the signal to leave. The crowd about them had thinned. Two or three men were throwing dice while others were gathered round a table listening to the battle yarns of a quartermaster of marines. A drunken sailor in a corner was singing a tuneless refrain and periodically thrusting away a girl who was trying to take him home. Black Fish and Marianne sat on unnoticed. She was beginning to wonder for how much longer this would go on when the black wooden clock struck ten.
On the last stroke, Black Fish hoisted himself to his feet and, still without looking at her, laid hold of his companion's hand.
'Come, it is time,' was all he said.
Their departure occasioned no remark. Once outside the low doorway with its leaded panes, they were caught up in a fierce gust of wind bringing with it a strong smell of the sea. Marianne breathed in deeply with a sudden exhilaration. The wind smacked of freedom. And suddenly, standing there in the inn doorway, she discovered a new meaning to her flight. Her first thought had been undoubtedly to save her life but as she smelt the sea breeze it came to her suddenly that there was a fierce joy in severing the last ties that bound her, leaving her moorings behind, tearing up the old roots and drifting off into the unknown guided only by her own will. Impulsively, she held out the folds of her cloak, letting the wind sw
ell them, as though she would offer herself to be picked up and carried away by it.
Black Fish had been watching curiously. 'Sure you're not frightened?' he asked suddenly. 'It'll be a hard night!'
'I don't care! It's good, this wind! And besides,' she suddenly remembered her role, 'I am happy, I am going to meet—'
'No!' he interrupted her roughly. 'Don't talk to me about your lover! I don't know why you want to go to France, but it is not for a man.'
'How did you know?' she asked him, making no further attempt at denial.
'One's only to look at your eyes, my beauty! Not a spark of love in them! When I looked at them just now, when old Nat brought you to me, I saw just one thing. Fear! That's why I'm taking you, because you are afraid. I've no truck with love. It's a waste of time! But fear now, there's some sense in that. Now come, its time we were off! There's things to do before we put to sea.'
Black Fish spat magnificently, stuffed his pipe in his pocket and ramming his improbable hat down on his head against the wind, set off with great strides along the quay. Marianne followed him, still wondering why this hideous pirate should fill her with such instinctive trust.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Stormy Seas
Black Fish's vessel, the Seagull, lay at the far end of the Barbican, not far from the stone set up to mark for all time the berth of the Mayflower before she had set sail across the Atlantic to New England with her cargo of Pilgrim Fathers. Beneath her grimy appearance and chipped green paintwork, she was a handy little sloop with well-caulked seams and a snug cabin into which, on Black Fish's orders, Marianne descended.
'You stay there, and not a sound! We don't want to tell the coastguards we're here.'
He turned his attention to the sails and the little vessel slipped slowly out of harbour. But, to the not inconsiderable surprise of his passenger, instead of making for the open sea, Black Fish turned up the estuary of the Tamar in the direction of the naval dockyard. Curious as to the reason for this behaviour, she crawled on hands and knees out of the cabin and whispered: 'Where are we?'
'I told you I've something to do. Another passenger to take on board. Now, that's enough. One more word and its down to Davy Jones with you!'
He was stowing the sail as he spoke and now produced a great oar with which he began sculling noiselessly but with an effectiveness that did honour to his strength. Now that they had left the beacon behind them, the darkness was complete, only pierced now and then by the distant riding light of some vessel. At night, the tower crowned with its glowing brazier was a fantastic sight, but Black Fish had made a considerable detour in order to avoid the stippled red light thrown on the dark water. Clinging to the rail of the tiny vessel, Marianne breathed in the night air greedily and stared at the ghostly shapes of the hills gliding past with the occasional bright point of light. The sloop worked slowly up the estuary, fighting the current. It was not long to high tide and the swell was already making itself felt in a short, choppy sea. Black Fish must be straining every muscle but he was a man of uncommon strength, well able to do the work of two. Marianne thought that he must also have cat's eyes to find his way in such conditions, although now that her own eyes were becoming accustomed to it, she was able to make out some small shapes.
Abruptly, as they passed the crumbling stonework of an old, disused mole, Black Fish stopped sculling, shipped his oar and tied up to what must have been an ancient ring in the wall. Seating himself in the stern, he cupped his hands about his mouth and mewed three times like a gull, with a realism which astonished Marianne. After that, he seemed to listen for something.
Marianne, full of curiosity, was about to speak, but he waved her curtly to be silent and she subsided meekly.
It was getting colder and there was something forbidding about the darkness and silence of their surroundings. Not far away, a number of dark shapes loomed up looking like a barricade of huge ships lying across the Tamar. Even the slap of the waves had stopped. The monsters lay huge and motionless, a lantern burning here and there, and the water in between them and the sloop looked curiously flat, smooth and thick, like cream. It gave off a faint smell of mud. Unable to contain her curiosity any longer, Marianne crept closer to Black Fish and in spite of his prohibition, whispered softly: 'What is it? Where are we?'
Black Fish pointed to the dark shapes.
'The hulks,' he said simply. 'You know what they are?'
Marianne knew, she had heard of the old ships, no longer seaworthy, with their barred ports, that were used as prisons to house those of Boney's sailors who fell into English hands.
'Admirable prisons,' Aunt Ellis had been wont to say with satisfaction, 'only too good for them, I dare say! They say some manage to escape—'
But what were they doing here? Why this mystery? Black Fish was speaking again in a low voice.
'The Europa, the St Isidore, the St Nicholas, each one of them a hell! The French are crammed in there so tight that every night some die of suffocation—'
To her surprise, Marianne heard a note of anger in the big man's voice and she did not hide her astonishment.
'But they're enemies! You ought to be glad. But it seems to grieve you.' The beginnings of an oath escaped Black Fish but he controlled himself at once and only said gruffly: 'I am a seaman, not a jailor, and they too are seamen—'
Suddenly Marianne understood.
'Do you mean – you are going to help one of them to escape?'
'Why not? He is like you, willing to pay. I'm helping you to escape. So keep your questions to yourself. Now, keep your trap shut or you'll have us spotted.'
Marianne did not persist. She was made forcibly conscious that now she was only a girl, like any other, less than others even, because she was obliged to hide and flee. She had no choice but to accept, humbly and in silence, what fate might send her, even to being ordered about by someone who was practically a pirate.
But in a moment, her thoughts were distracted by something very odd that seemed to be happening. Something appeared to be crawling towards them over the water. Marianne could not make out what it was precisely. Again, Black Fish imitated the gull's cry softly beside her and she almost cried out. There was something frightful and terrifying about the blurred form spread-eagled on the water. She pointed with a trembling hand.
'There – do you see?'
'Quiet. It's him.'
Marianne's eyes were by now sufficiently accustomed to the darkness for her to be able to see that the figure was in fact that of a man. She was about to ask another question when Black Fish prudently forestalled her by whispering hastily: 'The hulks are anchored in a muddy creak. We're at the edge of a lake of liquid mud. It's a death trap – if he tries to stand up, the mud will suck him down—'
This time, it was fear that kept Marianne silent. Her heart was in her mouth and her eyes wide with terror as she followed the fugitive's agonizing progress. The first hulk was not very far away but to her the distance seemed immense, and then there was the additional danger that the prisoner's flight would be discovered or of his being overcome by cold in the water. The man must not be recaptured because if he were, she would be taken with him. He must succeed for her own life to be safe. Moreover, in her heart of hearts, she admired the courage of a man, who, to regain his freedom, would risk a hideous death in the slimy depths of that perilous sea of mud.
Black Fish, paying no more attention to her, was bent over the rails, leaning as far out as he could and holding the oar at arm's length.
He gave the gull's cry once more, then Marianne heard him whisper in French: 'Over here, lad. One more heave-there you are!'
There was something so timeless and improbable about the whole of this night that now she was no longer even astonished that a one-time English pirate should express himself with perfect familiarity in the language of Voltaire. It was no stranger than everything else. Nothing, in any of the books that she had read, not even Robinson Crusoe itself, had been anything like this.
She heard the sound of someone gasping for breath, followed by a muffled, wordless cry and then the boat lurched violently. Black Fish came upright hauling after him, as though dredged from the bottom of the sea, something heavy, wet and slimy which he deposited upon the deck where it lay motionless. But for the rattle of the man's breathing, Marianne would have thought him dead. Without wasting a moment, Black Fish took him by the feet and dragged him towards the cabin. Marianne, listening eagerly, overheard a scrap of dialogue, likewise in French.
'Not too bad, was it?'
'No. I've known worse, but we must be away from here – I think a spy saw me go! Oh God, it's cold!'
'Here, wrap this round you. When you're dry, I'll get you some clothes. And take this. There's rum in the flask – then try and sleep. We'll get off now. Tide's all but full.'
In fact, Marianne noticed a tremor of the ship's planking where she lay at the edge of the mud, as though something were working and writhing below. Black Fish reappeared, cast off and shoved the boat away from the old jetty with a strong push of the oar. Not before time. Lanterns were moving like will o' the wisps about the hulk and a light shone out through barred portholes, revealing gesticulating black figures. Soldiers could be seen, trailing their guns. But the sloop, freed from the mud by a lusty stroke of the oar, was already passing behind the crumbling stone jetty, back into the main stream of the Tamar. Black Fish stuck to his oar, rowing like a trojan, and now, with the current in her favour, the light vessel was making a good speed. Marianne watched, fascinated. The man was like some fantastic human machine and thanks to him the heavy ship seemed endowed with an extraordinary driving force. She was just passing the beacon, lying well out in the middle of the estuary, when the gun boomed out behind them. Black Fish cursed without troubling to keep his voice down.
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