Dasher went to the weather chains with his coil of line and his lead weight filled at the bottom with tallow. He braced his feet, and when he swung the lead before him the splash it made–in our silent world–was as loud as the fall of a cannon shot. The line sizzled from his hand, the bits of leather and linen that marked the fathoms flying from his fingers like dark little birds.
He knew what he was doing. As the lead hit bottom the line fell straight, and he gauged the depth by the feel of the leather markings. “By the deep twelve,” he called, already coiling the line. When the lead came dripping from the water, he touched the tallow at its base. And finding it bare, he called, “Rock on the bottom.”
Again he swung the lead, then gathered it smartly in. “Ten fathoms. Rock bottom.”
The sound of his chanting was all I heard. His depths, in the same monotonous voice, came ever more quickly as we closed with the shore.
When he called, “Deep six,” Crowe turned the wheel. The soundings went deeper, then shallow again. “Shells on the bottom,” said Dasher, feeling the tallow, and we turned to the west. The captain, I saw, was following a chart that he kept in his mind, one he knew so well that he could go blindly across it, the way old Mrs. Pye navigated through the corridors of the Baskerville.
“Five fathoms,” called Dasher. “By the deep four.” He chanted more quickly as the depths grew shallow. “Three fathoms. Three fathoms. Two strips do I see.”
“Easy,” said Crowe to himself. “Easy there, son.” He was talking to the ship, to the spirit of his child.
“Two fathoms,” said Dasher. “Sand in the tallow.”
“Let go the anchor!” roared Crowe. He kept the wheel steady, then slowly passed the spokes through his hands. “Let go, damn ye! Let go.” And to me he said, in a voice that was awful with anger, “Give them a hand, or I'll strangle ye here on the deck.”
I went forward, Crowe shouting after me, and found Dasher and Harry wrestling with the anchor. It had snared in the rope meant to lash it in place, all the weight of it hanging by a line no thicker than my thumb. Harry was flat on his stomach, fiddling with knots. Dasher was crying, “Cut it! Cut it, you fool.”
“It's your fault,” said Harry. “You've put bloody big knots in here.”
“Cut it!” screamed Dasher.
Harry pulled out a knife and touched the blade to the line. Strands parted with terrifying pops. They flew away, twisted and wild. And the anchor tumbled down, striking the hull, plunging into the sea.
“Snub up!” shouted Crowe.
Fathoms went out before we stopped the cable with a coil thrown round the bitts. Then it snapped taut, and the Dragon jolted, plunged, and finally stopped as the anchor found a bite in the sand.
Dasher turned his back and stepped across the mooring bitts. Harry clutched my arm. “Your book,” he whispered urgently, so faint that only I could hear. “I've got the dead man's book.”
“Where?” I asked.
His eyes looked past me and widened with sudden fear. His hand fell away from my arm. Captain Crowe came stalking up behind us.
“Who was it made a botchery o' that?” He seethed with anger. “Who's the lubber, then?”
“It was him,” said Dasher. He pointed at Harry.
“Ye idiot,” shouted Crowe. “We're ower close to the shore, and she'll touch on the tide.” I had seen him angry before, but never like this. He seemed ready to kill us all. He looked at the strands of the parted line, at the knife in Harry's hand.
“It wasn't me,” said Harry. “Cap'n, please, I – ”
Crowe went for him in a blur of fists. I heard the blows and the grunts and squeals. Dasher stood and watched with a wretched look – of horror, I thought, and maybe shame – as they wrestled on the deck. Then the moonlight flashed on the knife blade, and blood flowed out in a stream from the dark bodies locked in a tangle. And only Captain Crowe stood up again.
“You didn't have to do that,” said Dasher in a trembling voice. “He was just a poor nut. He was harmless.”
“And ye're a coward,” said Crowe. “Ye're a slink and a dunghill, and I've half a mind to end ye right here. And if the tide leaves us dry, that I will. I'll tear ye apart with my hands, and I'll have that yellow liver of yours for my supper.”
Dasher shook at the force of the words, like a sapling in a gale. But he didn't answer back; he turned his head away. Then Crowe kicked at the corpse. “Throw this rubbish ower the side.”
Dasher bobbed his head. “We will,” he said. “We'll do it now.”
“Damn ye, Dasher, ye'll do it yourself,” roared Crowe.
“No,” I said. “I'll help.” If Harry had put the book in his pocket, I had to find it now.
But Crowe grabbed my shirt and hauled me with him down the deck. “The boats will be here any minute. I want every barrel out within the hour.”
He put me to work freeing the hatch covers. He hurled me down to the task, then threw at my feet the same knife that a moment ago he'd driven through the heart of a man.
“Cut the lashings,” he said. “Or try it on me, if ye've a mind.”
I couldn't do it. I couldn't possibly take up that knife and go at him.
He knew it, and I hated him all the more for that. He turned his back on me and went to the halyards. The sails fell in disorderly heaps, in bunches of white like shorn-away feathers. And the Dragon, unwinged, rocked in the ground-swell.
With hot tears in my eyes, I worked at the line. The grunting that came from the foredeck, the sounds of heels dragged along planking, filled me with deep despair. Then, for the third time that voyage, I heard a dead man fall into the sea, and with this one went my last hope of ever finding Larson's book.
Captain Crowe did more work with his hands than I did with the knife. He ripped the lashings off and tore the hatches open. All the time, he watched to windward for a sign of the revenue cutter, until the creaking of oars took him to the rail and the smugglers came out of the night. I slid the knife inside my boot and joined him there.
They came in bumboats and longboats, in dinghies and skiffs and flat-bottomed scows. They came in a raggle-taggle navy of dark-dressed men, some of them standing to scull, others sitting to row, half of them bailing and not one of them speaking a word. They emerged from the night like bats from a cave, in a stream without an end, in a sinister, terrible silence. They swarmed up the side and over the rail, down through the hatch to the hold. Fishermen's boots, dainty shoes, big farmers' brogues, all tramped across the deck, clotted with mud. And up came the barrels, seeming to float like balloons, bobbing from hand to hand down the line of men.
It was done with a speed that amazed me, with the rhythm of a morris dance.
Captain Crowe watched the unloading with the same impatience he'd shown in France. No matter how quickly the barrels passed, it had to be quicker. And he beat with a rope end at any man who let them pause for even a moment.
Then up from below came Dasher. I saw him and I gasped.
Underneath his corks was the bright red coat of my highwayman. On his head was the same broad hat, now with a neat round hole in the brim, where my shot must have passed right through it. Again he was decked out in pistols; from every part of him poked a barrel or a grip. He had a powder horn around his neck, two bags of shot hanging from his belt. Even with his corks, he would sink like a stone if he fell in the water.
I grabbed the tail of his coat as he passed. I wrenched him to a stop. “It was you,” I cried.
In the look he gave me, every bit of my trust melted away like his fanciful jewels. There was no friendliness there, no warmth or kindness at all. “Get your hands off me,” he said.
I held him tighter than ever. “You held up the coach at Alkham.”
“So what if I did?” said he. “I've got seven children, and every one a horror. But I had to put food in their mouths, didn't I? After the Dragon was seized, there was no smuggling at all, so what choice did I have? Well, I thought if Dick Turpin could rob a stage
coach, so could I. He was a thief and a fool, a butcher's boy.”
“You shot my father!” I cried.
“But did I kill him?” asked Dasher.
“You tried to!”
“I harmed no one,” he said. “I only robbed the rich to feed the poor, which happened to be myself.”
“And it was because of that,” I said, “that we went to the Baskerville. It was because of that we met Captain Crowe, and because of that I'll lose the ship and the cargo and everything.”
“Are you trying to say it's all my fault?” asked Dasher. He tugged at his coat. “Because it seems to me you were keen on this yourself. Until it turned against you, anyway. Maybe you saw profit in it; I don't know. Adventure, maybe only that. But it was you that said, 'Let's go to France.' Remember that.”
He was right. I had my share of the blame. I let go of his coat, and he shook it straight. “But why did you do it?” I asked. “Can you just tell me that?”
Suddenly he looked truly sad for the first time since I'd met him. He scratched at his pathetic suit of corks. “I'm a sheepherder,” he said. “That's what I do. I poke sheep around the hills all day. I know you think I'm a reckless cove, but that's the truth. And your blasted coach was the only one I ever robbed. I'll earn tonight a month's wages, so you stay out of my way, you hear? Things are different now. You keep to yourself and it will go all right in the end.”
I didn't know what he meant, and he gave me no time to ask. He whirled on his heel and left. He went at a run, then slowed to a swaggering walk. He leapt to the cabin top, up to the foresail boom. And he stood there, a hand on the halyard, a hand on his hip, grinning down at the men on the deck.
“I'm here, boys,” said he. It was the old Dasher again, bright with his boyish charm, and I was surprised to find that I could hate a man and like him as well.
“I've done it,” he said. “I'm back from France with more spirits than ever haunted a castle. Flying the flag of the heart of oak, dodging the cutters of the revenue.”
Not a man paid him the slightest attention. But Dasher stood atop the furled sail and rambled on, full of boasts and deeds. “I outsailed a dead man,” he proclaimed. “I swindled the French and outfoxed the navy. Five we left, and only three came back.”
A man laughed, and then another, and despite myself I felt awfully sorry for Dasher. “You might give us a hand, Tommy,” said one of the smugglers.
Dasher seemed not to notice. He let go of the halyard and went teetering to the middle of the boom. “I'm coming ashore with you. I'll be leading you home. And one day you'll be telling your children that you were there for the run of the Dragon, when Dashing Tommy Dusker led the way to safety.”
He raised his hand in a fist. “Lads!” he cried. And then he stopped. He froze there, high above us, like a statue of a hero. But slowly his arm came down, and he stared toward the shore with a look of fear. “He's coming,” he said.
The revenue, I thought. I spun round. But all I saw was a little boat, with one man rowing and another in the stern. It was a big man who sat there, with a face that seemed to shine.
“Burton!” said Dasher.
A whisper ran through the ship. “It's Burton,” said some-one. “Burton's coming,” said another.
The boat bumped against the hull. And over the rail came a man in fine clothes, with white frills of lace at his collars and cuffs, a watch fob swinging, and a silver-tipped stick in his hand. He stepped to the deck with shoes that were delicate and clean, as though someone had carried him above the mud and the water. His skin was so scrubbed that it sparkled, while his face had the round and pinkish look of a prize pig at the market.
I couldn't help staring; everyone did, even Crowe at the hatch and Dasher on the boom. This was the man Father cursed and hated so, the one he blamed for bringing us close to ruin. On the stained deck of the battered Dragon, surrounded by dark-dressed men, Burton was like a single glittering sovereign in a purse full of tarnished pennies.
His stick tapped on the deck. His hands folded across it. Then the fingers of one tugged at the frilly cuff of the other.
The men stood and watched him. Some held barrels and others didn't, but they all breathed hard from their work. Burton stepped up to the nearest one, a strong young man with a farmer's build.
“What's your name?” asked Burton. His voice was soft and polite.
“Jimmy Rivers, sir.”
Burton smiled. “Where are you from, Mr. Rivers?”
“East Bottom, sir,” the man said proudly. He returned Burton's smile with a grin.
“Any children?”
“Two, sir.”
Burton nodded. “And pray tell me,” said he, in the same gentle tone, “do you always stand about as idle as a post?” The stick rolled through his fingers. “Hmmm? Are you really such a lazy dullard as you seem to be?”
The grin dropped from the man's face like a theatrical mask. In its place came a look of fear as Burton's hands drew apart, and out from his stick, glinting in the moonlight, came the long, wicked blade of a sword.
In a moment it was done. The young farmer never made a sound as the blade went in through his ribs. He folded up on the deck, and Burton–as casually as he pleased – took out a handkerchief to wipe the blood from his sword.
“I detest idle hands,” said he.
The men went to work with the fever of dogs in a harness. They closed up the gap where the farmer had stood, and the barrels passed from hand to hand in a fearful silence. Only Dasher spoke. From his perch atop the boom, he shouted down at the deck. “Back to work, you shiftless lot. I want these barrels off the boat, or it's me you'll answer to the next time.”
Burton slid the sword back inside his stick. His voice was as calm as before. “Captain Crowe. A word with you, please.”
The Dragon touched the bottom then. It was little more than a bump as the schooner dipped in a swell that was deeper than the others, and no one but I seemed to notice. Captain Crowe, busy with his rope end, came through the smugglers and stood before Burton.
I moved toward the rail.
Burton turned the captain aside. “You've done rather well,” he said, then glanced pointedly toward me. “No trouble aboard?”
“Och, no trouble at a'.”
“Good,” said Burton. “I went up to Canterbury. I had a–” He waved a lacy hand. “A word, shall we say, with the constabulary about that Captain Dawson up there.”
I had no doubt what this meant. “Poor Captain Dawson was overtaken by thieves on hid way from London,” Father had written me. Only through his death had Crowe come to command the Dragon. Now I understood the power in this smuggling gang, and the reason for Father's hatred. In a moment, I thought, Burton would turn to me, and I would see again that sword drawn from his stick.
I backed away.
Again the Dragon touched. I quickened my pace. I moved to the rail and slipped over the side. If I got to shore, I thought, if I found the revenue men, I might bring them back before the Dragon could sail. With the tide running out, she'd be held fast on the bottom for an hour at least. But before my head had even dropped below the bulwark, I heard Dasher shout, “Wait there, John!” And then Captain Crowe himself roared out, “Stop!”
I slid down the curve of the hull, into a skiff where a man gaped at me from the stern sheets. I shoved him aside and leapt to the next boat, and on to the next, from gunwale to thwart as they rocked and pitched below me.
“Stop!” shouted Captain Crowe again. I saw his shaggy gray shape at the rail. He swore. “After him, Dasher!”
Then Burton's calm voice chilled me right to the bone. “And Dasher,” he said, “if the boy gets away, it is I you will answer to.”
The Dragon hit for a third time, harder than ever. I heard the blow shiver through the masts and the rigging. Dark, flitting forms vaulted over the rail, and I raced for the last of the boats, a tiny clinkered dinghy. I fumbled with the line and cast off; I threw myself down at the oars.
Behind me came a band of men, and Dasher was in the lead.
Chapter 15
THE BLACK GUARD
Dasher moved as if he were dancing, leaping high, bounding from boat to boat.
“Ten guineas!” roared Crowe. “Ten guineas for the man who brings me the ugsome head o' that swine.”
It was at least a quarter mile to shore, and I rowed faster than I'd ever rowed before. The little boat bounced along, veering madly in the swell, shipping water bow and stern. There were other boats shuttling barrels to shore, and I passed them far to leeward as my little craft wandered down the wind.
The Dragon grew indistinct behind me, her hull and masts black against the moon. But a froth of white glimmered in the bulk of her shape, and I knew at least one boat was coming after me. I bent to the oars until my entire body ached, too frightened to glance even once over my shoulder.
I hit the beach so suddenly that I tumbled backward from the thwart. And when I finally scrambled over the bow, oozing mud waited for me. It sucked at my feet and dragged me down, and I plodded more than I ran.
I heard a crunch of wood and looked back as Dasher leapt from a boat he'd beached beside mine. His legs were longer and he waded easily up through the mud, while for me each step was a struggle.
“Wait!” he shouted. “Wait. I can help you.”
Once I might have listened, but now I had no trust in him at all. I carried on until the mud gave way to the hard, smooth rock of shingle, and I raced up the beach with Dasher behind me. After days at sea, the land made me dizzy. I reeled, but I was free, I thought; at last I was safe. Then I looked up at the cliffs. They rose impossibly high, all craggy and worn by the sea and the wind. I could no more climb them than hope to fly to the top, and I hesitated for a moment. Turn north or turn south: My life could hang on the decision I made.
To the north were the smugglers. They formed a long line across the beach, from the sea to the cliffs. In the dim glow of moonlight I saw them standing–Dasher's black guard, fifty men or more, each with a stick or a cudgel. And up the line, bent under the weight of the barrels, staggered a dozen more. When they reached the bluff and put their barrels in a pile, they turned and started back for more. Others took them on from there, up a path along the cliffs, lined again by the men of Dasher's black guard.
The Smugglers Page 10
