The Smugglers by Iain Lawrence Read Free Book Online Page A

could see that he knew what he was doing when it came to working a ship. He looked up at the sails, then down at the compass, and with the smallest turn of the wheel he gained half a knot. The wake stretched arrow-straight behind the
Dragons's
stern.
    “You can go,” he said again. “They're about to launch that little gent. That fancy friend of yours.”
    “A little fancy gent,”
the highwayman had called him. I watched Dasher as he steered the ship. I said, “Have you seen that man before?”
    “Don't ask me that,” he said, and laughed. “I'm a terrible one for faces. Even worse for names. I pass my veiy own mother on the street and think, 'Now, who's that Mrs. Hickenbothom?' Get along now or you'll miss the launching. The Haggis wants your help.”
    Up at the bows, Captain Crowe had a swath of sailcloth spread across the fo'c's'le deck. He was down on his hands and knees, cutting out a burial shroud. His knife ripped through the cloth, and he went along behind it. At the pinrail on the weather side, Mathew and the cook were coiling halyards. Side by side, they worked with their heads down, but now and then they lifted them, and I saw the worried looks they cast across the deck.
    “Ah, Mr. Spencer,” said Crowe. “Perhaps ye'11 lend a hand.”
    We spread out the shroud and laid Larson upon it; we lifted him there, with the captain at his heels and me at his head. He made a sorry sight, his tiny hands and face all ghastly pale. His eyes were not quite closed; his mouthhungopen. I said, “We need a cloth. A tie to put around his head.” 1
    “Och,” said Crowe, “we'll just wrap him in the shroud.”
    “No,” said I. “I'd like to do it right.”
    He tore a piece of cloth into a ribbon, which he gave to me. I tied it round the dead man's chin, and when I lifted his head I discovered that the bones were all broken. I felt them grinding in my fingers.
    “He didn't drown,” I said, looking up at Captain Crowe. “Someone smashed his skull.”
    The captain came and prodded Larson's head. “Aye, ye might be right. Or he might have had a fall.”
    “Whatever happened,” I said, “it wasn't long ago.” There was still a pinkish touch of blood in his mat of hair. “He was alive when he set out for the
Dragon.
”
    Crowe shrugged. He squinted at me. “Still, we canna keep him on the ship. Ye dinna want to keep him, do ye?”
    “No,” I said. To have a corpse on board was the worst of luck. “But we should tell someone about it.”
    “Oh, aye,” he said. “We'll do that, Mr. Spencer.”
    We folded the shroud over the body. The captain worked up from the feet, tucking and smoothing. Harry and Mathew crossed to the starboard pinrail, circling wide around the corpse, like cats past a sleeping dog. They went to work just yards away.
    I didn't want to be the one to cover Larson's face; I started at his chest. And my hands, as they pressed and tugged at the cloth, felt a bulk below it, a square thing hard and stiff.
    “There's something in his pockets,” I said.
    “I dinna see how that could be,” said Crowe. “Dasher had a look already. Aye, and Mathew too. Didn't ye, Mathew?”
    The sailor nodded, a quick and rapid gesture. He had prominent teeth, and the way his head moved made me think of a rabbit.
    Captain Crowe grunted when I opened the shroud. “Och, Mr. Spencer,” said he, “I'd like to get this done then.”
    I felt across Larson's wet clothes and found the thing, not within a pocket, but sewn behind the lining. The cloth was water-soaked and frayed from wear; I tore it with my fingers. And out came a little bundle, an envelope of oilskin.
    “Whit's that, then?” asked Captain Crowe.
    I opened the flap, and water poured out. It flowed down the side of the dead man's shroud, a rivulet tinged blue with ink. It streamed across the deck, then up, then down as the
Dragon
rolled to the south around the Goodwin Sands. The big curve of the jib threw shadows across us, and the wind ruffled cold at