The second paper was a letter, but it too was badly smeared. It tore nearly in two when I tried to open it.
“What does it say?” asked Captain Crowe.
I held it out to him, but he shook his head. “I canna read,” he told me.
I flattened the page on the planks of the deck. My fingers were soon blue with ink, as the whole top third of the letter was an enormous smudge, and the rest not much better. But I read aloud the parts I could–a few words here and there.
“… have come among the Burton gang …”
“The Burton gang!” said Captain Crowe.
“… a small army … eighty men … smuggling spirits …”
“Och, that's enough,” said Crowe. “It's a lot of prattle.”
But I kept reading. “… time running out … I am attracting suspicion …” And the last sentence was nearly all in the clear. “A major run is planned for six nights after the moon is full; the contraband of sixty barrels to be brought across in the …”
“In the what?” asked Captain Crowe.
“It doesn't say,” said I. The rest was fully smudged.
I looked up from the letter to see the captain with his knife in his fist. He had come toward me across the spread-out remnants of the sailcloth, and now–at its edge–he squinted at me. The sailors, too, had stopped their work. Harry stood before me and Mathew behind, and the three made a silent tableau as the deck heaved up on a swell.
“And whit do ye mak'o this?” Crowe asked. “It seems like a lot o' daftness to me.”
“I think he came to find me,” I said. “He was fleeing from this smuggling gang, and he needed my help to get to London, maybe. He knew about the Dragon.”
“Och, yere as daft as the wee manny.” Crowe dug his knife into the cloth and tore away a long and narrow ribbon. This he carried back to the shrouded body, and he started binding the dead man's knees. “Put it a' back in his pockets, I say. Let him tak' his secrets to his grave.”
There was one more thing inside the pouch: a small book–a sort of ledger. It was so sodden that I had to peel the pages open one by one, like the layers of an onion.
Mathew and Hany moved closer, bending forward to see the book. Mathew sucked air through his teeth. But Captain Crowe only glanced at me. “And whit's that?” he asked.
“I don't know,” said I. It seemed to be a list, but the writing was small and blurred. It filled nearly half the book, and beyond it the pages were blank.
“This gang,” said Crowe. “This Burton gang. Ye've heard o' them before?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. It was one of the largest smuggling gangs in all of England. I remembered Father reading of it in The Times, ranting about the villainy. But we'd heard nothing at all of the Burton gang for perhaps a year or more.
I kept turning pages as the Dragon slid along in a hiss of water. Whole sections passed through my fingers in thick and gummy wads. A list of names, perhaps; nothing more than that. And I was about to close the book when, right at the back, I found a note that was not quite so blurred as all the rest.
“Look at this,” I said.
In a different, fainter ink, Larson had recorded every detail of a smuggling run. There were dates and times; there were signals to be made and answered. Everything was included but the name of the ship and the harbor she sailed from. I read it out, and the captain listened, frowning, as he bundled up the dead man's body.
“Captain Crowe,” I said, “it's now!”
“What?” His face grew even greater wrinkles. “Speak sense,” he told me.
“Look.” I shoved the book toward him before I realized it would do no good. “The dates, the moon; this is happening now. This smuggling ship,” I said, and tapped the pages. “She left for France this very morning.”
“Och, whit good does that do ye, then?” asked Captain Crowe. “There must be a thousand craft setting sail today, frae a hundred ports o' call on a hundred leagues o' coastline.” He shook his head. “Laddie, ye're looking for a needle in a haystack.”
What he said was true, and it took the wind from my sails in an instant. The mysterious smuggler could have been anywhere at all from London round to Devon – still in port or far at sea. It could have been a full-rigged ship or a tiny fishing boat. A needle in a haystack? That would be child's play to find, compared to one unnamed craft in all of southeast England.
Captain Crowe came to his feet. He put a hand at the small of his back as he turned to me. “Ye're like a dithering bodach,” he said. “Will ye help me here, or no?” Then he glowered at Mathew and Harry. “Shove off, the pair o' ye now,” he barked. “I dinna care a hoot if the halyards are coiled; it's no a royal yacht that ye're on.”
Larson, his ashen face still uncovered, his eyes still barely open, seemed to watch me from his shroud. As the Dragon sailed along and Dasher steered us south, the dead man's head rocked slowly side to side, as though he shook it at me sadly in its ragged strip of sailcloth.
It wasn't mere chance that had brought him to the Dragon. He had come to me for help, and I felt I owed him that. I picked up the map and the letter and leapt to my feet.
“Captain Crowe,” I said, “set a course for France.”
Chapter 7
A DREADFUL CURSE
“For France, ye say?” Captain Crowe stared at me with a look of utter amazement. “For France?” he said again. “Did I hear ye right?”
“Isn't the Dragon as fast as any ship around?” I asked. “Couldn't we sail to France before the smugglers and get the brandy that's waiting for them? Couldn't we make the signal they would make?”
I opened the book and tapped the pages. “It's only a pair of flags. The blue peter and the yellow jack. We could hoist them ourselves, Captain Crowe.”
It seemed his eyes might pop from his head. He looked at me in the same astounded way that a visitor to Bedlam would stare at the lunatics. And I heard the excitement in my voice, and blushed.
“It's foolish,” I said. “Isn't it?”
“Foolish?” said he. “Not at a', lad.”
The sun rolled out from behind the jib, and his shadow leapt across the deck to tangle at my feet. “Aye, we'll go across,” he said. “If we crowd on sail, there's nary a ship can match the Dragon. We'll fill her every inch wi' tubs o' brandy.” He laughed out loud. “It's a bonny scheme,” he said. “It's a bonny, bonny scheme.”
“But then,” I said, “it's straight to London. No matter what my father told you, I want to follow my own instructions.”
A dark expression came over his face. I realized he was getting angry, very quickly. His fingers tightened into fists.
“So that's the lay o' the land, is it?” he said. “Ye sense a little profit here for yourself and your father.”
“Wait,” I said, “I-”
“Ye sail into London wi' sixty tubs o' spirits that cost ye not a farthing. Och, I see your game.” He stepped toward me, so close I felt his breath upon my face. “Weel, I'm the master and ye're a boy, and ye '11 do whit I say. Now gie me that.” He snatched away the map and the letter. Then he looked at the book in my hands and snatched that too. He ripped from its back the pages I'd shown him, and crumpled in his fist all the details of the smuggling run. The rest of the book he hurled back at me. It struck my chest and fell to the deck.
“You don't understand.” I bent down for the book, but Crowe put his foot on top of it.
“We'll go to France for the brandy,” he said. “But we'll no be taking it up to London.”
“I don't want to take it to London.” I had to look up at him, feeling small and childish. “I want to take the brandy right where the smugglers would. To the cross on the map.But I'll go ashore–or someone will–and we'll have the revenue waiting. A trap, Captain Crowe. I want to set a trap.”
His face began to soften, and the redness swiftly left it, the way a bit of metal cools when it's taken from a forge. I pointed at Larson. “He had no one else to turn to; I have to do this. Or I have to try. And
when it's done, I want to take the Dragon home.” I stared up at Captain Crowe, and already he was smiling. “That's all I meant,” I said.
“Weel, it's a' for ye to say, Mr. Spencer. Ye're the owner's son.” At last he lifted his boot from the deck. And with a gesture that I was sure was meant to be kindly, he nudged the book toward me with his toe. “She's your own ship, more or less,” he said. “And I'm just a lowly sailor.”
I didn't know how to reply. A moment before, he was the master and I a boy. One moment he was livid with anger, and the next he was doing all he could to please me.
“It's best to take the proper course,” he continued as he helped me up with a tug on my collar. His smile had become a grin. “And if good King George thinks it fit to say a little 'thank ye' wi' a purse full o' guineas, then it's a' the better. But it's no for that I'll do it.”
He was a scoundrel, I thought. It was just for that he'd do it.
“And now,” he said happily, “let's get your friend over the side.”
I put the book back in the envelope and shoved it in my pocket. We went back to the dreary task of wrapping Larson in his shroud. But Captain Crowe seemed more cheerful than he ever had, as though a tremendous burden had been taken from him. He laughed, and he tweaked the dead man's cheek before he covered up that poor white face. Then the body lay between us like a big cocoon, and the captain sent me down to fetch a weight. “A ballast stone,” he said. “And mind ye get one big enough.”
I fetched a lantern and went right to the depths of the ship, where water, brown and fetid, slurped among the timbers. I went through the darkness in a circle of light, frightening cockroaches into shelter, hearing the groans and creaks of the hull as it worked. The places where I had to go were small and cramped, and I slithered through them as the lantern made the shadows zoom and tilt.
And someone came behind me.
When I stopped, he was silent. When I moved, so did he. I heard a faint creaking of wood as he crept up, closing the distance. He was quiet as a cat. And suddenly I felt a hand touch my shoulder. I cried out, startled, as he pushed me down against the hull.
“You're in danger, boy,” said he.
I tried to lift myself, to turn and see him, but the sailor held me down.
“Watch yourself,” he said. “There's one aboard who'll kill you.”
“Who?”
For a moment I only heard him breathing. He said, “The one who seems least likely.”
“But who?” I asked again.
He pressed harder on my shoulder. “He'll want the dead man's secrets. See you keep them safe.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“A man you never saw.” And then the hand was gone.
I struggled around and raised my lantern. But the sailor had vanished so quickly there was nothing to see but shadows. It was as though he had never come at all. Yet some-how I could feel him in the damp air, and for a long, long time I stayed still, listening and watching. But only shadows moved; only wood and water made a sound. And finally I carried on, down toward the stern.
I made my way to the lazarette, to a gloomy place below the wheel, where the tiller–as big as a ceiling beam–shook and rattled as it swung to turn the rudder post. The steering lines were badly slack, and they squealed through the blocks with the sound of frightened pigs. It was there I found a pile of stones, worn smooth and round, and began to take one from the top.
The tiller swung; the lines creaked. I heard the rush of water and the squawking of the gulls. I thought of Dasher just a deck away, above me at the wheel. It didn't seem possible that he meant me any harm, but … “The one who seems least likely.” I felt as though a dreadful curse had been placed upon me, that the man I would come to trust would be the one to harm me. But who? And why?
“He'll want the dead man's secrets.”
With shaking hands and a racing heart, I took Larson's pouch from my pocket, and the little book from that.
I set the lantern on the deck and knelt beside it as it rocked on its bottom with a little tick of metal. I opened the book and turned it to catch the glow from the flame. Water had left the writing indistinct, but I could see that it held a list of names – of smugglers, I supposed. Some were blurred and others not, and all were copied by the water backward onto the page before. Here and there was one so clear that it leapt out at me: Richard Harks, miller; Gordon Burns, apothecary. Somewhere in the book would be a name I knew, but the list was set down in no order, and most entries I couldn't read at all. The lamp rocked beside me: tick, tick, tick.
Then, suddenly, it stopped. A grinding, groaning crack of wood echoed through the ship. I heard footsteps above me. Two people, or three; it was hard to tell. And suddenly the room tilted up and sent me flying across the deck.
I crashed against the hull and saw the lantern teeter on its side, then tumble down toward me. Glass shattered. Oil poured out. The wick flared and guttered. And I threw myself forward, smothering the tiny glow before the oil could catch and the whole ship go up in flames.
The tiller rumbled to the side and back; the lines that held it screamed. With a lurch, the deck came level.
I was left in almost utter darkness. Only tiny slits of light slipped past the cheeks of the rudder. And with them came the sound of the gulls, a screeching that unnerved me. Crouched in that space with the book in my hand, I was seized with a sudden fear that the man who meant me harm would find me with it there. I shoved the book, in its envelope, down among the ballast stones, deep within the pile. I took a stone into my shaking grasp and fumbled with it back the way I'd come.
Captain Crowe was waiting at the companionway. He took the stone, and I went behind him along the deck. Dasher stood at the wheel, but I saw no sign of Mathew or Harry.
“Ye get lost down there?” asked Crowe over his shoulder.
“My lantern broke,” I told him.
He grunted. “We touched the Sands. They're shirting, see.”
He worked the stone into the shroud, down by Larson's feet, then bound it there with strips of sail. For a seaman he did a slovenly job, but Crowe was a lazy man with rope and lashings, and every line he touched was left in a terrible tangle. When he finished, the shroud looked like the work of a spider, with its tattered threads flying in tresses. “Tak' the head,” he told me, and we heaved the body up to the bulwark and held it there as the Dragon gently rolled.
“We commit this body to the deep,” said Captain Crowe. “May he rest in peace.” Then he gave a shove, and Larson tumbled from the rail, down toward the sea. The stone hit the hull with a thump, and I heard the shush of the cloth as it scraped along the planking. The bundle hit the water, and spray came up, icy cold.
We stared down from the rail, side by side. Captain Crowe, his hands braced, leaned far from the ship to stare aft down the hull. “It's no a bad way to go,” said he. “I'd rather that than – ” He stopped, and he leaned farther from the rail, until I thought he might topple right over the side. “By the saints,” he whispered.
Against the planks, by the mainmast shrouds, Larson floated to the surface. Scraps of cloth billowed in twisted strands from his fingers and his arms, as though he had frantically torn himself loose from the shroud. The band I'd tied around his chin was the only thing still in place, and it gave his face an awful, tight-lipped smile.
He went bumping down the side and in below the counter, tapping at the hull as the Dragon surged on past him.
With Captain Crowe behind me, I ran toward the stern, past Dasher at the wheel, who shouted out, “What's the matter? What's gone wrong?”
Larson floated in the Dragon's wake, tossing about in the foam from the counter. We saw his head and then his heels, his arms and legs together. We saw his hands reach up and flounder at the surface, and we saw his face as he somer-saulted after us, the eyes wide open in a look that seemed like horror.
Even Dasher came to watch, and without him at the wheel, the Dragon wavered along on her course, and the wake stretched
back in lazy curves. But no matter how the ship turned, Larson followed close behind, trapped in the swirl of water like a stick at the base of a falls.
“I don't like this,” said Dasher. “I don't care for this at all.”
“More canvas!” cried the captain. “Set the staysail. Main topsail too.” He whirled round and looked forward up the deck. The wheel turned left and right, snubbing up against the loop of line that Dasher had thrown across the king spoke. “We'll see how fast a dead man swims.”
Again I took the wheel. Dasher shouted for the others, and they tumbled together from the fo'c's'le. They seemed a furtive, scuttling pair, content to lie in darkness until they were called, the way the ghost of Drake was said to wait for the beating of a drum. One of them had come to me in the shadows, but I had no idea which it was, and neither gave a sign.
The wind rose from astern. It caught the sails and cracked them open, and I felt the Dragon rushing forward. Her deck aslant, her rigging taut and humming, she raced for France with a roar of water.
And the dead man came behind her.
Chapter 8
DASHING TOMMY DUSKER
In half a gale of wind, the Dragon left the land astern. She plunged along with too much sail but couldn't outrun the corpse. Trapped by the flow of water, spun by whirls and eddies, it followed in the churning foam. And the gulls came down in crowds.
I could hear them as I steered the schooner south, and I saw their shadows fly across the deck and the mass of sails. But not once did I look back; the clamor of their voices as they pecked upon the corpse was bad enough.
“I'll tak' the wheel,” said Captain Crowe when the sails were set and drawing. I gave up my place, and we stood together on a slanted deck as the ship leaned far to starboard. The gulls clustered all round us, and the captain flinched whenever one came close.
The Smugglers Page 5
