The Blighted Cliffs (42 page)

I
turned slowly to see him clutching at the bulwark; then, with no
patience for the stunned steersman, he launched himself across the
deck and wrapped himself around the tiller, pushing it over with all
his strength. Even after our scrape we did not want for steerage way,
and the response was immediate:
Orestes
'
bow came up, and for a second time she shuddered as she came head on
into the wind. I could hear cordage straining and popping all about
me as our canvas bulged to its limit, then lost the wind and whipped
back across the deck before beginning to luff. Crawley had stopped us
almost dead but, I saw now, at a crippling cost to our new rigging.
With a wrenching, tearing sound, a block aloft broke free of its line
and tumbled to the deck; then the strains on the mast shifted yet
again, and two stays snapped open.

'Ware
heads on deck!' shouted Ducker. The falling block had struck home
without hitting anyone, but the loose rope-ends dangling from the
masthead bucked and writhed in the air with a fearsome violence, and
I needed no warning as to what those could do to a man's head. 'And
get that sail down!'

'Cap'n,
sir,' yelled a man from the bow, 'man overboard from the owler, sir!'

'What?"
Crawley was on his feet in a second, heedless of any danger from
above. 'What's that?'

With
an eye and a half on the rigging above, I raised myself to my knees
and peered over the side. The sailor was right: although the boat we
had pursued so recklessly was now fading fast into the distance, well
clear of the sands, there was a small object floating above the waves
a little way off. I might have mistaken it for a seal, or a
fisherman's float, or merely some driftwood, were it not for the
occasional arm that broke the surface to wave at us, and the
intermittent sound of desperate shouting.

'Get
the jollyboat in the water and bring him in, Mr Jerrold,' said
Crawley. 'We shall salvage what we can from this incident.'

Getting
the boat launched from under a tangle of fallen rigging proved no
easy task, but after the shock of the chase, and our near wreck, I
think the men were glad of any activity to turn their hands to.
Certainly they rowed with alacrity, if a little raggedly.

The
bobbing head was still above water as we drew near, but I began to
wonder with mounting concern if he was not mortally wounded, for the
sea around him was infused with a rusty brown cloud spreading from
his body.

'Draw
sharks, that,' offered one of the crew.

'Well,
I have no intention of jumping overboard to rescue him.

Give
me that boat-hook.'

Crouching
in the bows, I extended the pole to the buoyant smuggler. Wounded he
might have been, but he latched onto it with vigour and was swiftly
hauled, coughing and shivering, into our boat.

'You
are under arrest,' I told him.

He
was a broad-shouldered man, with a narrow, rat-like face that swept
forward to his nose like a ship's prow, the effect accentuated by the
way his wet hair was slicked tightly back in the opposite direction.
He did not seem to be hurt, but his white shirt bore a dark, rosewood
stain, which seemed neither the colour of blood nor of the weaver's
original design.

'You
can't arrest me,' he said, with astonishing presumption and not the
least hint of remorse. 'What've I done?' It sounded more like a taunt
than a plea for mercy.

'Participated
in an unlawful landing of unaccustomed goods,' I began. 'Ignored an
order from one of his Majesty's ships to heave to. Maliciously
attempted to drive our ship aground.'

He
spat out some sea-water, insolently close to my feet. 'Can't read
signals,' he said. 'An' we didn't force you to come galloping after
us over the sands. Dangerous, they is. You ought to be more careful,
'specially if you can't 'andle your boat proper.'

So
confounded was I by his bravado in the face of all evidence that I
sat there gaping for a moment, speechless. Ducker, though, was
already moving forward, a knife in his hand.

'No,
quartermaster,' I shouted feebly, raising my hand, but with a deft
movement, which our captive had the wit not to resist, he sliced
through the brown-stained smock and pulled it open.

'We'll
do you for this, right enough,' he announced. 'Thought you looked too
big for your trousers.'

I
stared at the wet man's torso. He was not broad-shouldered at all,
but had created the illusion with a pair of long, tubular sacks
hanging on a short length of rope around his neck, like a yoke. They
were swollen out, and stained an even darker shade of the colour that
had permeated the smock. With the tip of his knife, Ducker made a
small incision in one. The taut fabric spilled open, and a mass of
soggy brown leaves oozed through the crack, dribbling into the
bilge.

Ducker
pinched out a small quantity, held them under his nose to sniff, then
passed them to me.

'Tea,
Lieutenant?' he offered.

We
took our captive - the puffer, Ducker called him, from the way his
cargo puffed up his physique - back to
Orestes
,
and thence sailed slowly back to Dover. We had nowhere to keep the
prisoner, who would say nothing once his guilt had been affirmed, and
Crawley was eager to get us into harbour, where he could inspect the
damage. I doubted the exertions we had placed on
Orestes
'
canvas had left it wholly sound, and there was always the worry of
what the sandbar might have done below the waterline.

'Take
our prisoner to the gaol,' Crawley said as we nosed into the outer
harbour. 'A night there may loosen his tongue.'

'With
respect, sir, may I request permission to stay the night ashore. I
fear for the effect of a hammock on these ribs, and the knocks I've
had today will have done little to help them mend.' I also ached to
see Isobel, but I did not think he would find so much merit in that
argument.

Crawley
assumed a pensive scowl. 'Very well, Lieutenant,' he allowed at
length. 'Your eyes, after all, were first to catch the smugglers. You
may as well rest them adequately, and your bones likewise. Come to
the gaol tomorrow morning, and we shall see what this villain has to
say for himself.'

18

I
ARRIVED AT THE GAOL LATE, THOUGH SAD IN NOT THROUGH ANY distraction
of vice. Isobel had not been at the inn when I returned, and despite
the long-drawn minutes, and then hours, I had spent staring at the
ceiling, hoping that each creak on the stairwell might herald her
arrival, she had not come. I had slept badly, my ribs aching more
than ever and my mind tossing with thoughts of Isobel, and with the
dread fear of what my uncle would do if I could not resolve my
innocence to his satisfaction in the next three days. It was that
thought which woke me, and which weighed on my awkward preparations
as I slowly dressed, ate, shaved, and at length ventured reluctantly
out to the prison. Walking under the arch between the two dangling
manacles did little to improve my humour.

It
must have been a peculiarly law-abiding fortnight in Dover, for the
cell seemed as empty now as it had been during my last sojourn.
Visiting custom, though, was much improved: Crawley, Sir Lawrence
Cunningham and Constable Stubb were all there, as well as Captain
Bingham, whom I had not seen since the roadblock. They stood in a
loose crescent, with the hunched form of Gibble holding a lantern
behind them so that the object of their attentions was masked in
shadow.

'Ah,
Jerrold.' Crawley turned to meet me; disconcertingly, one half of his
face was shrouded in darkness. 'Is your health recovered?'

'Passably,
sir,' I said, reluctant to show any enthusiasm.

'Excellent.'
He swung an arm around, like a showman with his freaks. 'Behold, the
fruit of our labours.'

I
pushed in between Cunningham and Bingham, as far from Gibble as I
could manage, and looked at the wall where the captive sat loaded
with irons.

'This,
Lieutenant, is one Daniel Squires.' Crawley did not bother to
reciprocate the introduction. 'Sir Lawrence has just been putting
some questions to him.'

'The
pressing question, of course, being: what does he know?' Cunningham's
hissing tone, I realized, was highly suited to the business of
interrogation. I had not appreciated it as much when I was on the end
of it.

'Who
arranged your landing yesterday?' He put his mouth close to the
prisoner's ear. 'Who leads your little gang?'

Squires
shook his head.

'Whoever
he may be, is he truly worth ten feet of rope choking the life out of
you?' There was an abrasive edge to Cunningham's words now. 'I can
make you dance a merry jig on the gallows, smuggler, until you wonder
that you have the strength in you to continue. Or...' He paused. 'I
can be merciful.'

I
looked about. There was revulsion in the faces around me, but none of
us said a word or raised a finger to interrupt Cunningham. He had us
mesmerized with his cruelty, and we all felt the urgency of the
situation, the possibility that this could be our best chance of
breaking the smugglers. If Crawley was right, that no man came to
Dover save on the strictest probation, then nothing could be more
important to us.

'I
despise you,' Cunningham whispered. 'You flout the laws of the
kingdom and threaten its ordained order. You would see it crumble
into fire and blood and murder, and all to feed your monstrous
wickedness, your libertine appetite for sin and evil.'

With
his tea-stained trousers and loaded chains, our smuggler did not look
the familiar picture of insatiate vice. Nor could I wholly concur
with the opinion that feeding the market for cheap spirits and
tobacco was the apogee of licentiousness. But Cunningham held the
floor.

'In
France, you know, they slice off men's heads like cabbages if they
offend against the state. A quick and painless death, they sa.'
Clearly, in his mind, an opportunity wasted. 'But here in England a
good hangman can wring you out slowly, will keep you strung up
between hope and despair until you've not a drop of life left in
you.' The relish in his voice was grotesque. 'The punishment will
always suit the crime, smuggler, and silence before an officer of his
Majesty's law is perhaps the very greatest crime. Certainly in my
eyes, and they are the eyes that will see you hang.'

'I
doesn't know.' We all started as Squires spoke for the first time.
His voice was sullen, but he seemed to have shrugged off Cunningham's
threats, for there was no fear evident. "S all done with a nudge
an' a tip o' the 'at, no-one knows no-one. You could 'ang us 'til the
crows et us, an' we'd still not give you nothin'.'

'Then
we may as well give the crows their breakfast,' said Cunningham. 'If
you cannot be of any use to us.'

'Didn't
say that, did I?' Insolence crept into Squires' voice. 'We doesn't
know oo runs the gaff, but we still 'as to know where they wants us.'
He leaned forward into the orange light. 'An' they wants us all there
tomorrer night.'

'Where?'
Crawley's voice was taut to breaking.