The fog had not lifted the next morning, and the only indication that it was day lay in the fact that the air was a lighter grey. It pressed close, as though to suffocate the ship, and even I started to feel the creeping gloom that possessed the sailors. They had taken refuge in rum, and first they were cheerful. Then they were gloomier than ever, the drink having that effect on them, and finally they were insensible. It astounded me that the Captain made no more than a half-hearted attempt to stop them, but he too seemed infected by the general despondency, and I swiftly realised how shallow was his grip on the crew and how fragile his authority. When he forbade them more rum they simply defied him, taking the keys to the locker from Mr Riach, who was himself so cast away that he seemed not to notice.
It had not occurred to me at first that I might turn this to my advantage, but as the sailors grew more inebriated and the Captain shut himself in his cabin, and Mr Struan pored over his maps and Mr Riach started quoting the psalms, I had an idea. I liberated a bottle of rum from the hand of a sailor who had slumped on the deck, snoring, and wandered innocently away down the corridor towards where Neil’s guard stood.
The man was in a foul humour. I saw it as I approached, for his face in the lamplight was scowling and hard. I quickly realised the cause. Whilst his comrades were all sitting around in various states of drunken stupor, he had kept to his post here, and they had forgotten to share the rum rations with him. When he saw me, the suspicious expression on his face started to change to one of faint hope. I smiled winsomely and held out the bottle to him. He snatched it from my hand and gulped down the spirit, the excess running off his chin and dripping onto the floor.
It was my bad luck that he had the hardest head of all the fellows on the ship. Twice I checked back to see if he had drunk himself into unconsciousness and there he was, still standing at his post above that damned trap door. It seemed the drink had left him completely unaffected.
Matters were now getting desperate. I made one final sortie along to see how Neil’s guard progressed, and bless me if the man was not still fully upright, dirk in hand, as though he were expecting an attack. Then I noticed his eyes. They were glazed and unfocussed and he was swaying a little. I walked right up to him. He did not raise the dirk. He did not even seem to know I was there. He was, to all intents and purposes, asleep with his eyes open. I placed one hand on his chest and pushed very gently. He crumpled up without a sound. I took the dirk from his hand, opened the trap door—with much puffing and blowing for breath, for the catch was stiff and the door heavy—and pushed his body swiftly and silently through the space into the hold below.
Once the sound of his fall had died away there was an absolute silence from below. Fear gripped me that within the space of two days Neil had died—from starvation, from wounds that I had not realised he had suffered, from fever, from any number of dire causes. Then I realised that there was no point in my standing there wondering. I had to go and find out. I set my foot on the first rung of the ladder, grasped the lantern in one hand and started to descend into the dark.
I had taken no more than two steps down the ladder into the hold when someone grabbed me about the waist and pulled me down into the darkness. I felt the prick of a dagger at my throat.
Chapter Eleven
In which we are shipwrecked.
‘No!’
The lantern had gone out and it was pitch-black. I was a second away from death. I knew it was Neil who held me. Some deep instinct within me recognised his touch, but I recognised also, and with terror, that he was utterly ruthless and determined to survive. There was no mercy in the hands that held me.
I felt the shock go through him at the sound of my voice, and then he had loosed me and I sensed him pull back.
‘Catriona?’ He sounded angry and incredulous. ‘What the hell—?’
‘I thought that you needed rescuing,’ I said crossly, teeth chattering with a mixture of reaction and fear. ‘I did not realise you could do it all on your own, or I would have left you to your own devices.’
There was a hairsbreadth of silence and then he laughed.
‘You came to rescue me,’ he said, and there was a tone in his voice I could not place. ‘You really are the most extraordinary girl.’
My spirits soared, but I did not tell him that he was worth fighting for. I had my pride.
‘Someone fell,’ he said. ‘Before you came down the steps.’
‘The guard,’ I said. ‘I made him drunk and then I…I pushed him. I had his knife, but I dropped it when you grabbed me.’
‘Damnation.’ Neil sighed sharply. ‘We need all the weapons we can get.’
‘But where did you get the dirk?’ I asked. ‘I thought that they disarmed you before they threw you in here.’
I felt his self-satisfaction and knew he was smiling.
‘You had not hidden it in your stocking?’ I questioned. ‘For pity’s sake, that is a trick they teach us in childhood!’
‘Not if you are not a Highlander,’ Neil said, ‘and Hoseason’s crew are a ragbag mix who do not know such ruses. They took my sword but did not even think to look for a dirk. It took me a long time to work myself free of those bonds you saw, but when Ransome came down with his pitiful tin of water this last time he was drunk and easy to overpower, even though he had a pistol.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said. I had quite liked Ransome. ‘Is he dead?’
‘No,’ Neil said. ‘Not yet. So that is two of them out of the way, and a dirk and a pistol between us.’
‘And thirteen crew left,’ I said. ‘All as drunk as lords at present. The Captain’s discipline fell apart when the fog came down.’
‘Fog,’ Neil repeated. He shifted a little. ‘I thought so when we stopped moving. The weather in these parts in early autumn can be very treacherous. Where are we?’
‘Just west of the Isle of Barra,’ I said. ‘Or at least that was our location when we were becalmed.’
He sucked in his breath. ‘A bad place to be. Even with no wind the swell will take us eastward and there are some nasty reefs. I don’t like this.’
‘Neither does the Captain,’ I said. ‘Neither does Mr Struan, the navigator. And now that the crew are blind drunk there is no one on watch either.’
‘We had better get out of here,’ Neil said.
I looked up at the small patch of light above our heads. We had been talking urgently, in fragments, to exchange all the most important information that we needed as quickly as possible. We could not have been there longer than a few minutes, but suddenly it seemed imperative to get out of this trap and for Neil to hide before his absence was discovered. I shuddered with a mixture of fear and panic as the wooden walls of the ship pressed in on me, and Neil put out a hand and clasped mine. His was warm and rough and reassuring and his grip tightened on mine, more eloquent than any words.
He pulled me to my feet.
‘I’ll go first,’ he said. ‘In case there is anyone in the passageway.’
There was no one. Neil leaned down to give me his hand and pull me up through the hatch, and we stood in the passage, looking at one another. He looked terrible, filthy and battered. The bruising to his face was livid, and the gash on his forehead stood out angry and red. There was three days of stubble on his chin.
I bit my lip to smother an unexpected smile. ‘Oh, dear. Not so handsome now, Mr Sinclair.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘if it comes to that, your coat smells of seaweed, Miss Balfour, the rats have made nests in your hair and you have cobwebs on your cheek. But—’ The expression in his eyes changed and suddenly he grabbed me, seaweed-smelling coat and all. His mouth crushed mine, hard, fierce and utterly demanding.
‘With thanks for your aid,’ he said, as he let me go.
‘There’s no time for that,’ I said, pushing him away to cover my confusion and the dizzying emotions that threatened to swamp me.
He grinned at me with all the blazing charm I remembered. He was alive and in control now, and I s
ensed the hard, masculine force that was driving him. He looked dangerous. I felt my love for him race through my body in an irresistible tide.
‘If not now, later,’ he said, and smoothed the tumbled hair back from my face in a gesture so tender I felt my heart turn over.
‘I hope you do not thank all your colleagues that way,’ I said, and he laughed.
‘Only the pretty ones, so you need have no concerns.’
The Cormorant had become like a ghost ship. Even when we dropped the trap door back into place, and the thud seemed to echo through the whole ship, no one stirred. It was as though the fog had brought a sickness with it that had infected all the men. We straightened up, and Neil took my hand and drew me softly, carefully, along the side of the corridor. When we reached the doorway through to the deck I caught a flash of movement away to my right and cried out. Neil turned and hit the man who was coming through before the poor fellow even knew what had happened. It was Mr Riach, drunk and unsteady on his feet even before Neil’s ministrations. We dragged him to the nearest storeroom and locked him in.
‘Twelve men left,’ Neil said.
‘Poor Mr Riach,’ I said. ‘He was kind to me. He gave me his cabin—’ I patted my jacket ‘—and his smelly coat.’
Neil looked at me, and there was a possessive glint in his eyes that suggested that if he had the chance he would hit Mr Riach all over again. I trembled to see it.
The deck was even more of a shambles than it had been the last time I passed that way. There were men slumped insensible against the mast, and some even prone on the deck. Neil stirred one of them with his foot, but the man just groaned and rolled over. There were ropes uncoiled untidily, waiting to trip the unwary or the drunk. There were empty bottles rolling in the slight swell. I saw Neil look around and his expression set with disgust. I could not imagine the Navy running such a ramshackle ship as this.
There was no one on watch.
The wind was starting to rise again, stirring the mist so that it eddied and whirled about the mast. A gust caught the topsail, so that it filled for a moment before hanging limp again. I was no trained sailor but I knew what that meant. Soon the fog would clear and we would see just how far the Cormorant had drifted towards the treacherous reefs of the Western Isles.
‘The Captain is in the roundhouse with Mr Struan,’ I whispered in Neil’s ear. I had seen the two of them moving about in there, still studying the charts, it seemed, impotent in the face of their crew’s drunkenness. ‘What are you going to do?’
Neil took the pistol from his belt and smiled. ‘I’m going to talk to them,’ he said. ‘Watch my back, Catriona. If anyone approaches—’
‘I’ll push them over,’ I said.
‘It is a pity we do not have another pistol,’ Neil said.
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I am a schoolmaster’s daughter. I did not learn to shoot. And my papa disapproved of violence.’
‘I hope you were thinking of him when you pushed that fellow down into the hold,’ Neil said dryly.
Neither the Captain nor the first officer saw us coming. The Captain had his back to the door, and Mr Struan was poring over the maps on the table as though they held the answer to the secrets of the universe. Neil walked in through the open door of the roundhouse.
‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ he said, cool as you please.
The Captain swung around so quickly he almost tripped himself up. ‘Sinclair!’ he said. ‘How the devil—?’ His gaze fell on me. ‘I should have guessed,’ he said. ‘I knew you had a fondness for him.’
I felt Neil look at me quickly, but it was hardly the moment for protestations of undying affection.
‘I told you he was my cousin four times removed,’ I said. ‘Blood counts for something in the Highlands, Captain Hoseason.’
Neil went over to the rack of cutlasses on the wall and tossed one to me. ‘I remember your aversion to violence,’ he said, ‘but take this just in case, and cover the door.’
I grasped it in my hand. It would, I supposed, deter a drunken sailor from launching an ill-advised attack, but I prayed I did not need to use it. I stood with my back to the roundhouse, my gaze searching the decks. There was still no movement other than from the wind, which was strengthening now. The fog was slipping away across the water.
‘Now, Captain,’ I heard Neil say, ‘I want you to set a southerly course and put in at Oban, where Miss Balfour and I will go ashore.’
‘I’ll put you ashore wherever you wish, sir,’ the Captain said with weary courtesy, ‘as long as it is deep enough for the ship’s draught. But for the present I have no notion of our whereabouts and no hands to sail, so we are all in the same predicament.’
‘You run a disorderly ship, Captain,’ Neil said coldly, ‘and have no one but yourself to blame for that.’
It was at this moment that Mr Struan, who had remained silent and motionless, crouched over his maps and charts, decided to try to disarm Neil. Perhaps Neil’s description of the ramshackle crew had offended him, even though it was no more than the truth. At any rate, he lunged forward with a sudden roar, reaching for Neil’s throat. Neil shot him in the shoulder—a flesh wound that barely grazed him and was meant more as a warning than anything else. There was the smell of singed cloth and Struan went down with a bellow of fear and surprise, fainting dead away. The Captain took advantage of the mêlée to reach for a cutlass from the rack, and I cried out a warning to Neil and tossed my sword to him. He caught it one-handed and spun around to face the Captain’s attack.
The roundhouse was too small for a proper fight, for there was not enough space to use a sword to full effect, and soon both men had tumbled out through the door and were fighting on the deck, the clash of steel on steel sharp and vicious. The Captain was desperate and determined, but his anger made him careless, and Neil was by far the better swordsman. I stood watching in a frenzy of anxiety, my nails digging into my palms, but I knew better than to try to interfere in a sword fight. Suddenly there was a movement beside me, and I saw Mr Struan struggling to his feet.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ I said, which, I suppose, shows that I had no real stomach for fighting. ‘If you will let me wash and bind your shoulder wound—’
His only reply was a grunted obscenity as he stumbled towards the rack of pistols. I doubted they were loaded, but I did not really have the time to check, so with an inner sigh at succumbing to the lure of violence once again, I grabbed one of the enormous books on navigation that were on the table, raised it in both hands and brought it down on the back of Mr Struan’s head. He crumpled up again.
‘Nice work,’ Neil said from beside me, and I saw that he had disarmed Captain Hoseason, who was sitting on the deck, head bent, chest heaving so hard that I was afraid he would expire before our very eyes. His face was a greyish colour and he looked ill. He had had neither youth nor fitness on his side. Neil leaned on his sword. He was barely out of breath. ‘Come, Captain,’ he said. ‘This is downright madness. We may carry on like this until you have no crew left, but that is a foolish way to conduct business.’
Captain Hoseason had no breath to reply, but he did not look as though he was going to argue. He sat on his deck, with his snoring crew all about, and he looked old and broken. And all the while the mist was lifting like a curtain, and now I saw the sun setting away to the west in a pool of pink and gold, and the wind filled the sails, snapping and cracking like a live thing.
‘Neil, look!’
I ran across to the rail. As the mist vanished land came in sight on the larboard bow, so close it made my heart jump to see it. Before the fog had come down we had been many miles west of the Outer Hebrides, heading for the open Atlantic. It seemed impossible that we had drifted so far east on a calm sea. And yet there was no doubt, for a mountain rose high above us from a barren and rocky shore, with a wisp of mist still upon its peak.
Neil had joined me at the rail and now he swore. ‘That’s Ben Tangoval, to the south west of the Isle of Barra,’
he said.
‘But how can we be so close?’ I questioned. ‘When the fog came down we were twenty miles to the west!’
‘Treacherous weather, treacherous currents,’ Neil said. He looked away to the west, where the sky was clear and the moon was rising. ‘There’s a gale brewing,’ he said. ‘Captain!’ He turned abruptly. ‘Wake your men. The brig is in danger.’
If there were any words that could rouse Captain Hoseason from his torpor these were the ones, for he was on his feet within seconds, shaking the men, overturning buckets of seawater over their heads, so that they emerged rubbing the water from their eyes and blinking in the fading daylight. Suddenly the deck was bustling with activity.
Neil despatched a man to free Mr Riach and his colleagues from the hold, then strode to the roundhouse to check the navigation charts. The Captain took the wheel and sent a man up to the foretop to keep watch for reefs. I hoped he was sober enough to climb the rigging. The wind was strengthening even as I watched, and now the Cormorant was suddenly tearing through the seas, pitching and straining, rising on the swell and thundering down. Away on the lee bow I saw what looked like a fountain rise up from the sea, and I called out at the same time as the man in the topmast shouted.
‘Rocks!’
Almost immediately another plume of water spouted to the south, accompanied by a roar.
‘Reefs,’ Captain Hoseason said bitterly. ‘If only the fog had not come down, and the men had not got so drunk and Mr Struan were not still pretending to be injured because he is too damned afraid.’
‘I can navigate,’ Neil said, ‘but you do not need a navigator to tell you that the brig is in trouble, Captain. These reefs stretch for near ten miles to the south and west. The only way through is to stay close to the land.’
‘The wind is blowing us in to land anyway,’ Hoseason said. ‘We’ll all be fortunate to come out of this in one piece, Mr Sinclair.’
As we got closer to the southern tip of the land the reefs began to appear more frequently, sometimes directly in our path. The man on watch would shout to direct us to change course, and sometimes we were so close to the breaking water that it would spray across the deck. I was cold and wet by now, but something kept me up on the deck, for I could not bear to go below, where the ship’s wooden walls would close about me like a coffin. I knew we were in deep trouble indeed, for the mist and the crew between them had done for us, and unless we could pick our way between these rocks we would all end our days here and now in the sea.
Kidnapped: His Innocent Mistress Page 12