The Smugglers (12 page)

“He was crazy,” said Dasher. “He thought his boy was sort of
in
the ship, a part of the ship. He thought he could hear the little bleeder knocking–tapping–on the hull.”

Again we heard thumps below us, and I nearly jolted from the capstan. Dasher laughed. “He went around talking to the boy, at night in his cabin.”

“I've seen that,” I said. I remembered the way his fingers had touched the bronze of the porthole, lingering at the hinges, as though stroking curls of hair.

“Then he'll never sink her,” I said.

“Except to save his neck,” said Dasher. “He's felt a touch of the noose already.”

“I've seen the scar.”

“But do you know what happened?” Dasher fiddled with his pipe as he began another story. “It went like this,” he said.

Crowe made a second voyage privateering, in the war against the colonies. Again he filled the hold. But this time, as he ran home in a gale, the
Dragon
strayed too close to
France, and he was taken by a frigate west of Ushant. His crew was imprisoned to wait out the war, but Captain Crowe made a bargain with the French. He smuggled their spies across the Channel, right under the nose of the English.

“How he did it is a mystery,” said Dasher. “Some say he hid the men in barrels, others that he rowed them ashore at Sussex. You pays your money and you takes your choice, but I'd guess there was another way. I think the old fox has a lair down below, a secret compartment that he built from the start for his own little stash of plunder.” He smiled. “Oh, you have to admire the captain sometimes.”

My father, I remembered, had measured the
Dragon's
holds. Three times he had paced out their length and their breadth, puzzled because the schooner seemed smaller than he'd thought.

“Old Haggis saw peace coming and fled with the
Dragon,”
said Dasher. “He set off from Calais with a crew of four to bring one more spy across. But he came into Dover all by himself, standing there at the wheel. When the anchor went down in the harbor, he was the only man aboard. The first thing he did was sluice the decks, and the water came off her red as wine.”

“He murdered the crew?” I asked.

“They were French,” said Dasher. He put his pipe down and twiddled his mustache. “So the Haggis had the
Dragon
and once a smuggler, always a smuggler, or so they say. He took all his money and spent it on one enormous run. Tea, my friend: wishy-washy; maskin-pot. He fetched it over from Normandy–so much tea there was just a foot of freeboard
board left, and that wooden dragon there was up to its eyes in the Channel. But the revenue were waiting – someone tipped them to it–and they found him off the marshes in the moonlight. Every bale and leaf was seized, and the
Dragon
too. Then they took Captain Crowe and they–”

“They hanged him,” said I. “The revenue.”

“The smugglers!” cried Dasher. “He made such a botch of the run that they hanged him right there. They sat him on a horse and tied his hands behind him. Round goes the noose. Cinch it tight. You never seen a man sit up so straight.”

Dasher spread his legs across the capstan. His chin high, his back stiff, he sat as though on horseback.

“Captain Crowe's glaring down at everyone; you'Ve seen the way he glares. His eyes, they burn. All these men down below him, they put the whips to that horse, and out she goes; she bolts. The captain drops like a rock.”

Dasher leapt to his feet, his hands at his throat. He tossed his head from side to side in a wild flurry of whiskers and hair. “He's kicking and he's gasping, and his eyes are big as an owl's. He's spinning round and round on the end of that rope, and the branch is bending down to touch his feet to the ground, then jerking him back in the air. Lord, he danced a fine little jig that night.” Dasher smiled. “And you know who cut him down? You know who saved him at just that moment?”

“You?” I asked.

“Dashing Tommy Dusker.” He laughed. “People talked of that for weeks and months, for miles and miles. You could go from Ramsgate round to Beachy Head, and every
second man you'd meet would say, 'Oh, yes, I was there. I saw it happen. Dashing Tommy Dusker riding like a whirl-wind to save his captain.' ” He glowed as he told me this. “I should have left that rat to die. But oh, it must have been a fantastical sight. Lord love me, I wish I could have stood there and seen it myself. What a picture I must have been. What a trump!”

He sat on the capstan and scratched idly at the corks on his chest. “They'll write about it one day. They'll write books about me, and novels and plays. But it's books that I want. You never die if you're written up in books.”

It was nearly dark. At any minute we would set the sails and go on to the end of our journey. And I still didn't know whom to trust, or who it was that held the dead man's book.

“How well do you know Mathew and Harry?” I asked. “I suppose you're all as thick as thieves.”

“A funny thing,” said Dasher. “Mathew's the one who got torn into halves, but it was Harry that we feared might go all to pieces.” He grinned at his own turn of phrase. “Oh, aren't I quick with the words? Mathew would have laughed to hear that one; he was always a man for a joke.” He peered at his pipe and poked at the bowl. “Harry's a strange sort of nut. A hard one to crack. First time I saw him was at Pegwell Bay, when I came down with Mathew to get on the boat.”

He rambled on, but I hardly listened. At last I'd found a bit of hope, like a candle in the darkness.
“There's only one I can't vouch for,”
the captain had said, and he must have meant Harry. Then surely it was Harry who had come to me with a warning. And maybe, I thought, it was he who
had found the book.
“The dead man's secrets. Mind you keep them safe.”

“Harry was a tubman once,” Dasher said. “Mathew was in the black guard.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Just what I'm saying. A tubman carries the tubs, the barrels. The black guard stands watch in case the revenue show up.” He tapped his pipe on the capstan. “There's hardly a man in Kent hasn't been one or the other. When a smuggling run comes in, there's work for everyone.”

“It's foul-hearted work,” I said.

“It's the free trade,” cried Dasher. “And it's all that keeps us going. You'll see for yourself soon enough. The deacons will come to carry the tubs. The masons will come, and the carpenters too. Why, the doctor himself will come for his share.”

It was true. I'd seen them written down in Larson's book, farmers and bakers and herdsmen.

“And what do you do,” I asked, “when you're not busy smuggling?”

“I rob coaches,” said Dasher.

I stiffened beside him. My old suspicions came back in an instant: the sound of his laugh, the way he moved. “How many have you robbed?” I asked.

“Oh, dozens,” he said. “Two or three a night sometimes. Why, not a fortnight ago I stopped the coach on the road from Ashford.”

I had passed through there with my father on the night he was shot. But any thought I had that Dasher might
admit to being the highwayman vanished when he spoke again.

“I got away with pounds and pounds,” he boasted. “There was a lady there–a princess, she said she was-– a real Bartholomew doll fairly dripping with jewels. I plucked them from her like plums from a pudding. I stuffed my pockets, John, and the law came riding after me. I could hear them coming with horses and hounds. I looked back.”

Dasher glanced over his shoulder, into the fog by the bowsprit. “They were only yards behind, trying to follow my trail by the emeralds and pearls that fell from my pockets. But it started raining, and the blasted jewels all melted away. They were only paste; she wasn't a real princess at all.”

His story was nothing but fancy. Paste jewels were no softer than real ones; rain would never melt them. But Dasher swept himself up in the tale and seemed to gallop on the capstan with a breeze in his hair.

“I made my escape by the skin of my teeth,” he said. “I rode all the way to York, until the horse–my faithful horse–burst its little heart. And even stone-cold dead it kept on going; a quarter mile it ran like that.”

He grinned at me. “There! That's a fine tale for my book, don't you think?” He put his pipe in his mouth and took it out again. “The horse was called Clementine.”

“That's rubbish,” I said.

His happiness faded away; I'd snuffed it out like a candle flame. “You don't believe it?” he asked.

“It's a pack of lies. And so are you,” I said. “All you do is make up stories to make yourself seem grand.”

There was another thump from the deck below us, but I barely heard it, and Dasher not at all. He stared down at his hands as they fiddled with the pipe.

“You're not a highwayman,” I said. “You're nothing but a smuggler.”

I meant it cruelly, but Dasher took it as a compliment. “I am that anyway,” he said. “Aren't I?”

“And you always were,” said I. “The captain told me you were pinned under a box when you were just a boy. Tobacco, was it? Or tea?”

“Something heavy, whatever it was,” he said. Then he looked up, grinning again. “But I'll tell you this; I'm the king of all the smugglers! Why, I've killed a dozen men with nothing but my hands.”

To my surprise, Captain Crowe shouted out, “And ye'11 have your chance to kill one more.” He appeared from the stern and not the hold, walking from the fog with a heavy thud of boots.

Dasher stood up from the capstan. “Are we going in?”

“Aye,” said Crowe. “Make sail.” Then he turned to me. “It's your last chance, Mr. Spencer. Will you be giving me that book, then?”

“I can't,” said I.

“Och, ye're a brave lad,” he said, “but a fool. It means the end for ye. And the end for the
Dragon
as well.” He turned away, shouting at Dasher, calling for Harry. “Jib and main-sail! Arm your lead and cat the anchor. And keep an eye out for that cutter; she won't have gone waltzing awa'.”

I
wasn't asked to work the ship, and I offered no help. The sails went streaming up, and the
Dragon
gathered way. Dasher and Harry together could hardly hoist the anchor from its bed. Long before they had it hanging at the cathead, we were clear of the fog and fetching England on a reach.

The moon was but a sliver, like the white of a thumbnail, yet Crowe cursed its light. All three of the men watched for the cutter to come out of the fog, or out from the shadows of shore. But none watched so hard as I. Crowe, in a jacket now, was as black as the land, and his head seemed to float in the night, turning this way, then that, as we sailed down the path of the moon.

Astern the sea was speckled with silver, but ahead it was dark. The scattered lights of a village seemed far away until I saw the pale lines of the cliffs below them and realized we were much closer to land than I'd thought.

The mainsail sheet was eased and the boom swung wide, spilling wind in a flutter of canvas. One by one the village lights vanished as the cliff rose high above us.

Captain Crowe fumbled below his jacket. “There's no waiting any longer,” said he, and pulled a pistol from his waist. He cocked the hammer. He swung out his arm and pointed the thing at me. “Turn around,” he told me. I felt a rush of fear until I saw it had no barrel.

He snapped at me. “Turn around, I telt ye. The flash will blind ye otherwise. Look for an answer from shore.”

I heard the click of the hammer. A sharp blue light glared against the rigging and the rail. And a moment later, high on the cliff not half a mile ahead, I saw a ball of gold as a lantern was opened and swung in a lazy arc.

It took me back in an instant to the wreck of the
Isle of Skye.
Mysterious lights on a hazardous shore; the same aw-ful thrill of danger and excitement. But then, I had thought the lights were leading me to safely, and this one meant only peril. I watched the light but did not speak.

Then Dasher shouted. “There!” he cried. “The coast is clear.”

Crowe, in the moonlight, smiled. As well he might, I thought. Despite myself, I had to admire a man who could sail circles in a blinding fog, then come from it hours later within half a mile of the place he sought. My father had measured Crowe's skills right to the penny, though when it came to gauging character, he'd been abysmal.

The captain put his pistol away and turned the
Dragon
to follow the shore. Whoever it was that stood on the cliff
showed us the lantern in brief little flashes. And soon the
Dragon
swung toward it.

“We're on the spot,” said Crowe. “Now tak'your soundings, Dasher. And sing out when it's sand that ye're finding.”

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.”