The Devil to Pay by David Donachie Read Free Book Online Page B

willing to lay a finger on the difference. The doomsayers were making ground afore, made even more on your resolve to sail when we was in no fit state to cast off, predicting tempests and the like with all of us drowning.’
    ‘While the sight of those sails,’ Pearce shrugged; it was not necessary to elaborate. ‘Who can I trust?’
    ‘The warrants, maybe, seeing them as a breed have a speck more sense than most.’
    ‘Maybe?’
    ‘Can’t say better than that an’ it would do you no good if I did.’
    ‘Dorling is one and I am not sure I would place much faith in him right now. Charlie and Rufus?’
    That got a sharp nod from Michael and a grim smile, Pearce not even bothering to enquire further; the Pelicans would stay together as they had in the past. ‘Mind, it wouldhelp to get Mrs Barclay out of plain sight, she on deck being something of a red rag right now.’
    ‘Make it so,’ Pearce said, grabbing his hat and standing up so abruptly that Michael winced, fearing for his crown on the low beams. But he had been aboard a long time now, had cracked his head too many times and so stopped before his hair made contact. ‘Be so good as to fetch her, Michael, while I go below.’
    ‘Is that a good notion?’
    The smile was a grim one. ‘If there is a devil, then he is best faced.’
    Emily was by the stern again, hands resting on the taffrail, looking aft, able to see when they rose on the swell the tip of the sails of an enemy that might be their nemesis, they too having changed course. He declined to call to her, leaving Michael to do as he had requested, making straight for the companionway that led below, aware that the act came as a surprise to the few men on deck.
    As usual the smell of packed humanity and bilge, so very obvious when set against the clean tang of the sea, made his nostrils twitch but that was not the only thing that made an impression on him; what rose up was an almost palpable feeling of resentment made even more manifest as he met the looks of men who seemed to think his presence an intrusion. True, he rarely went below, except on Sundays for his weekly inspection after he had read the Articles of War, which under his command was what the men got in place of a biblical sermon, their captain being neither religious nor a hypocrite.
    It took a real effort to meet every eye with a cold stare, especially bent over near double, for his height was againsthim, even harder to try to discern the varying levels of anything that could range from mistrust to downright loathing. How had he let matters come to this, the feeling he had one of utter inadequacy? To traverse from the companionway to the manger was no great distance, the whole lower deck only a few paces more and it being crowded meant actual physical contact was unavoidable.
    Normally the crew made every effort to get out of his way; not now so that if he was never actually jostled, then he was made aware that his passage was lacking in the kind of respect he had come to expect and was in truth, even if he felt something of a fraud in receipt of it, his due. Did they see his eye take in the spirit store, to make sure the padlock was in place and secure?
    Pearce was thinking what to do about that, for it was a commonplace tale that faced with certain doom, especially drowning, sailors wanted to meet that fate utterly insensible from drink.
    The safest way to secure against that was to put an armed man in front of the padlock, yet he was conscious of how that would look. It might so infuriate the men that it would produce the very reaction he was desperate to avoid and then he would be dealing with men too drunk to reason with. Three sheets to the wind, who knew what they would do and it was not beyond the bounds of his imagination to think of them casting Emily over the side and him with her.
    It was a real relief to get back on deck and to walk to the now vacant stern, his gaze centred on the towed boats. Could he put Emily in the cutter