The Smugglers (4 page)

Father's eyes snapped wide. He was facing forward, and he said over his shoulder, “I'd thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head.”

“And I'd thank you to keep a silent one in yours,” said the oarsman. “You'd think you might come on the ebbing tide. But no. Lord, no. You're from London, you are, and what's it to you if I have to do twice the work?” He was the rudest boatman I'd ever met.

Father gritted his teeth. “Just take us around the front of the boat.”

“The front of the boat!” said the sculler with a sneer. “Lord save me from landsmen. You mean the pointed end, do you?” He pulled and pushed on the oar, the empty sleeve flapping at his side. “I'll take you round the
bow,
I think. Round the
bow
of that
schooner.
Twice the distance, but what's it to you?”

The oar squealed in its notch in the transom as we snaked forward, twisting through the water. Slowly the ship grew larger, until she was all that I could see. We went up her long, black side, up toward the bowsprit. And there, below it, crouched a dragon.

This was Father's “enormous great figurehead.” A wooden dragon, its mouth agape and lined with teeth, it stared ferociously toward the open sea. Its lower jaw was fully half a fathom above the water, the mouth so wide that I could have crawled inside it. The eyes were yellow, and they seemed to glow, and the reflections of the water danced across them. It gave the dragon an evil glint, and its big flared nostrils almost seemed to breathe out smoke and fire.

We passed right below it, between the mouth and the thick cable of the anchor. I turned my head to see the face, and the dragon seemed to watch me.

“What do you think?” asked Father. He sounded so proud, he might have carved it himself.

“It's wonderful,” said I.

“It's madness,” the boatman said. “It's something a Frenchman would do.”

“Was it built by the French?” asked Father.

“Don't you know even
that?
Good crikey! The
Dragon
was built here in Kent to fight against the French. Only later did she fight against England.”

“She's got no guns,” said I. “No gunports.”

“There's other ways to fight,” the boatman said. “The Froggies used her to bring their spies across the Channel. She smuggled spies to England.”

The boatman brought us beyond the
Dragon,
then let the tide swing us round to face her. In silence we floated on the river, drifting down toward her, all of us staring at that huge and frightful head. Then Father cracked his fist against the gunwale. “I'm going to buy it,” he said. “By the saints, I'm going to buy that boat!”

“You've lost your head.” The boatman swore. “She'll bring you trouble and nothing else. See how black she is? It's her soul you're looking at. Her heart is black inside her.”

“That's rubbish,” said Father.

“I think not.” With a sweep of his oar, the boatman brought us in toward the hull. “Half her life she's been a smuggler. First from France and then from England. And it
spoils her, mark my words. Once a ship has seen a smuggling run, she's spoiled for anything else.”

Father stood up. He nearly lost his balance, then found it, and reached out with his cane to hook on to the
Dragon's
shrouds.

I went up after Father, and the boatman drifted down the hull. He neither came aboard nor even touched the ship.

“Wait here,” said Father.

“Not on your life,” said the boatman as the tide took him away. “You want me, you whistle. I ain't laying here beside her.” He shouted after us even as he vanished on the tide. “I don't trust her, I don't.”

When he was just a tiny thing, turning in the current, he still called across the water. “She'll seek out dangers. For the sake of the boy, find another ship.”

Had Father listened, I would only have talked him out of it. The
Dragon
was a lovely thing, and I could hardly wait to sail. We looked her over from bow to stern, from deck to keelson. Father paced through the holds, counting his steps, converting the total into barrels and boxes and bags.

“It's smaller than it looks from the outside,” said he. “But the boat can pay its way, I've no doubt of that.”

We walked through the cabins, from large to small, forward from the stern. In the last, Father could stretch his hands from side to side. “This one will be yours,” he said.

“Mine?” said I.

“You'll be the owner's representative.” He sat on the narrow bunk. He wrote with an imaginary quill on imaginary ledgers spread across the table. “You'll be second to none but the captain.”

I stood with my head bowed; the cabin was too low to stand upright. “Father, I would rather be a sailor. Just an ordinary sailor.”

“Just a mindless slug?” he asked. “Just a pair of hands, is all?” He looked at me and smiled. “Oh, you'll get your share of work. You'll be at the wheel and up the mast and tangled in the ropes, I'm sure. But you'll have to see to the business as well.”

“The business?” I asked.

“The manifests,” said he. “The cargo. The food and water, the sailcloth and whatnot.” He made a rolling motion with his hand, like a wheel going on and on. “But work hard, study well, and you'll be a captain yourself before you know it.”

I was pleased with this, though I would have agreed to anything for a chance to sail on the
Dragon.

Father went back to London, and I stayed at a waterfront inn. I expected Captain Dawson to arrive, but the days went by and he didn't. I passed my time walking on the fishermen's wharves or sitting for hours on the riverbank, just staring at that graceful ship. And nearly a week was out before a letter came from Father.

I moved aboard the
Dragon
that very day, and though it shames me to say it, I frolicked like a child in a ship that was all my own. I ran shouting through the cabins and the hold; I skylarked in the rigging. I clattered pots and juggled with belaying pins. I climbed to the mainmast head and cut away the broom that marked her as a ship for sale. I
climbed to the foremast, and I inched along the footropes of the long and slender topsail yard. I was hanging upside down from the ratlines, singing the only chantey I knew, when I heard a shout below me and saw Captain Crowe staring up from the afterdeck.

“When ye're through wi' that,” he said, “I should like a word wi' ye, Mr. Spencer.”

No man had ever called me that, and I blushed as red as roses. The one-armed man, just sculling off toward the shore, gave me a cheeky grin. “Box his ears, Cap'n,” he told Turner Crowe. “It's what I would do, the scallywag. And box 'em for me while you're at it.”

Captain Crowe had a great heap of things piled beside the rail: two chests, a duffel, a pair of boots stuffed to their tops with rolled-up signal flags. Across his shoulders was the same cloak of salt-stained cloth, and tucked inside it, below his arm, he carried a bulky roll of charts. And with these, as I came up to him, he struck me lightly on the head.

“Dignity,” said he, and smiled. “Ye should a'ways act as if there's someone there to watch ye.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

His face was ruddy and all aglow, the eyes lost within their wrinkles. He said, “Have ye seen to the cargo?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Have ye seen to a berth?”

“No,” said I.

He shook his head. “Then we'd best get started. There's muckle work to be done.”

C
aptain Crowe might have been a different man from the one I had found at the Baskerville Inn. Sober as a rock, cheerful to a fault, he went to work with a fever that shamed me for ever doubting him. Before a day had passed, the
Dragon
was moored alongside a jetty and the cargo of wool was coming aboard. Enormous bales arrived, and a swarm of men carried them up, each bent under his awkward load. They staggered up one plank and scampered down another, a long line going round and round, making me think of ants at a sugar bowl. Slowly the holds came full.

I stood with my lists, now and then taking them into my mouth to haul on a line and help a barrel or box aboard. I worked from sunup to sundown, until my head reeled with figures; I dreamt of numbers in my sleep that night.

Captain Crowe was here, there, and everywhere. He did a great deal of fussing down in the holds, a great deal of
shouting up on the deck. At one point he took me aside and asked me to sit by the starboard rail.

He'd cast off his cloak, replacing it with a big cravat that hid his neck from shoulders to ears. His face, so reddened by the wind, seemed to bulge from it, as though he'd tied the cloth too tightly.

“Ye're doing well, Mr. Spencer,” he said. “Your father would be proud to see ye.”

“Thank you,” said I.

“But there's the matter of–” He started, then stopped, and finally just laid it out. “Och, we havena got a crew.”

So I had failed after all. I had somehow assumed that the crew would simply be there–though how or why, I couldn't imagine. With a sigh, I got out my lists and spread them on the deck. “How many do we need?”

He scratched his head. “A handful is plenty. A man and a boy can handle a schooner, Mr. Spencer. But I would think, say, three's a nice number.”

I wrote that down, then said, “How do I find them?”

“Och, ye've been put over your head,” said he, and smiled in a kindly manner. “I'll tell ye, John. The usual way is that ye ask the captain to do it.”

This I knew was not true. Finding the hands who'd work a ship was a task that Father would never have left to the captain. Yet neither had he assigned it to me.

“But o' course,” said Crowe, seeing my hesitation, “if ye'd rather tak' it upon yoursel' …” He shrugged and started to go. “No matter to me. I was only trying to dae ye a wee kindness.”

This he said gruffly, with that same edge of anger I'd heard at the Baskerville, as though he'd taken offense at my doubts. I watched him lumber off, and I remembered what Father had said:
“The man's a devil, but a harmless one. Proud as Punch, and that's his failing.”

“Wait,” I called after him. He turned back to face me. “I would like that, Captain Crowe, if you'd do that favor for me.”

“Aye, aye,” he said, and smiled. But his smile was a troubling one, one that reminded me how thin was my thread of authority. Only that thread, I saw, kept him from giving me the back of his hand instead of his kindness.

But Crowe took up the task with great efficiency, and in a single trip to shore he found a crew for the
Dragon.
It was as though the men were there and waiting, so quickly did they come aboard. Captain Crowe brought them up the plank like sheep that he was herding. He put them straight to work lashing down the hatches.

“Three good men,” he told me. “Twa to reef and steer, anither to dae the cooking and the whatnot. There's only one I canna vouch for. But I hear he's good at his work, with eyes like a hawk in the dark.”

Why this was a virtue, I didn't bother asking. It was enough for me simply to have them aboard. They seemed neither young nor old, just three sailors, one long and thin, one as broad as an ox. And the third wore a thing so bulky and huge that he could scarcely get his arms in front of him to tighten up his knots. Curious, I walked up to him and saw that it was a strange sort of jerkin he wore, every inch
of it covered with corks that he must have sewn in place one at a time, in layers and layers. It reminded me of nothing less than a huge and hollow pinecone.

He looked up from his work with the widest grin I'd ever seen. “And here he is,” said he.“ Here's the boy that tamed the Haggis.”

“The what?” I asked.

“The Haggis! Captain Crowe,” he said. “The man's a bloated old gut stuffed full of pudding and blood. But I've never seen the old gaffer so meek, bobbing like a pigeon, hopping to your orders.” He pecked with his nose at the air, so comical an imitation that I threw back my head and laughed.

He was pleased with his cleverness. “You'll get along fine, I think,” said he. “But don't cross him, you hear? Oh, he gets in a fit when he's mad.”

“I've seen that already,” I said.

“And you'll see it again if he catches you here.” The corks squeaked against each other as he stretched to look past me. Then he spoke in a warbling Scottish brogue, a mockery of the captain: “Aff ye go, ye sleekit beastie!”

I returned to my lists as the sailors finished their lashings and went on to work at the sails. And when the captain came up from below, I stopped him at the mainmast.