The jibe brought blood to Owen’s face. ‘I would very much prefer it. That way we might at least know what is happening!’
‘Arrest her and you will see them.’
‘Provided the captain doesn’t drop them over the side first.’
Thornton stroked his thin jaw. ‘’e might, at that.’ The pale eyes studied Owen searchingly. ‘Tell me, Captain, what does tha want afore tha’s willing to board?’
‘Evidence.’
‘Of what?’
‘That Centaur is sailing for London and not Canton or the Cape or anywhere else!’
Thornton’s clenched fist struck the desk top. ‘I’ve told thee there’s no evidence to be had!’
‘I must be able to justify boarding her.’
‘If tha gets a letter of complaint, formal like,’ Thornton asked, ‘summat to show thy bosses in Bengal? Would that be enough to cover thy arse?’
Owen looked down his nose. ‘That is not my concern …’
‘’appen tha’s daft, then.’ Thornton returned contempt for contempt. ‘I’m asking thee straight, Captain, would it serve? Yes or no?’
Owen hesitated. ‘It might.’
‘’cause we can fix that up, no problem, if that’s all it takes.’
‘I think it would be sufficient. Yes.’ Agreement drawn from him like teeth.
Thornton said, ‘One thing, though. This colony’s a small place. Hard enough at best o’ times, livin’ with each other. People hear we’ve tipped you off about yon ship, it’ll be fifty times worse.’
‘It is your duty, sir.’ Owen was never happier than when pointing out other people’s duty.
Thornton’s reaction was hot. ‘Don’ start talkin’ to me ’bout duty, Captain! We owes thy Company nowt, tha hears me? Nowt.’
Jonathan intervened. ‘If you don’t go after her immediately, Captain, it’ll be too late in any case. Your best chance of apprehending her will be as she is loading. Take her by surprise and board her, you’ll probably get your hands on her papers before Pike can dispose of them. Then you’ll know, one way or the other.’
‘And if her papers say Canton?’
‘You’ve acted within your powers. You’ve caused her no delay and little inconvenience. What harm have you done?’
‘Tha knows as well as I do, Captain, she’s not headed for Canton,’ Thornton said. ‘Not loadin’ down the coast the way she is. She’s got summat to hide, you can bet on it.’
‘But if that’s what her papers say …’
‘Put crew aboard ’er,’ Thornton said. ‘Tha’s got that right. Her papers say Canton, make sure she goes there. Or take her to Calcutta on suspicion and let ’em fight it.’
Which will take the Tremains out of the game, he thought. To say nothing of Silas Pike.
Owen walked slowly to the window. Down the harbour, he could just make out Centaur’s sails in the failing light. He turned briskly, mind made up. ‘Very well. Give me the letter of complaint, I’ll go after her.’
‘Tonight?’ Jonathan asked.
‘Immediately.’
Thornton said, ‘And no one sees our letter?’
‘No one outside Bengal.’
‘When can you sail?’ Jonathan asked.
‘Within the hour.’
*
Shortly before midnight, three men walked softly along the track that led from the convict area to the officers’ quarters on the other side of the Tank Stream. The strengthening wind made the night cool. As they crossed by the stepping stones the leaves of the trees that lined the banks hissed and plunged against the stars. A sudden movement in the undergrowth froze them into instant stillness, then they heard the thump, thump, as a kangaroo bounded away from them. They relaxed and went on.
The men did not speak but moved with the economy of purpose of men who knew exactly where they were going and why. There was no one about; at that hour all they might encounter was a military patrol and they were untroubled by that possibility.
They reached the line of brick cottages that overlooked the harbour. Startled by the men, a roosting bird flew screeching off the ridge of a roof as they passed, its wings batting the silence.
Startled, one of the men cursed beneath his breath.
The leader turned on him. ‘Shut it!’
*
It had been later than usual when Cuddy made ready for bed. She had built a fire in the living room, put together a bite of supper, sat in Cash’s chair, shoes kicked off and toes extended to the blaze, and pretended the house was hers.
She sat and dreamed, watching the flames as they devoured the logs, seeing the castles and faces looking out at her from the heart of the fire. Before she knew it, she had fallen asleep in the chair.
The sound of a shifting log woke her.
She opened her eyes, wondering for a moment where she was. The fire had died down. The two candles she had left burning had gone out. The only light came from the embers. She stood up, stretching. She thought for a moment of going to sleep in Cash’s bed. She would have liked that but in the end didn’t dare.
She checked the front door to make sure it was locked and went out back to the outhouse, yawning and scratching herself as she went. The air was chilly, a bit of moon floating high amid puffs of white cloud. The wind was strong and rising.
She put her hand on the rough brick wall of the cottage and looked down at the harbour, the occasional yellow blink of light. Apart from the wind, everything was still.
She turned to go in. A man’s voice came to her on the breeze. Startled, she looked up. She saw a movement between the cottages and froze, nerves screaming. Another movement. Eyes narrowed, heart pumping, she stared into the darkness. There was some light although the moon wasn’t big enough to cast shadows.
Another flicker of movement. Three figures. What were they doing here at this time of night?
She remembered how the man in the dark clothes had threatened her. These three strangers might have nothing to do with her but she wasn’t going to wait to find out. She pulled the door of the outhouse shut behind her and slipped around the corner of the building.
There were bushes and stands of tall grass, grey in the wan moonlight. She looked about her apprehensively. She was frightened half to death, not so much of the men heading her way but of the unknown terrors of the night. She had never been out on the hillside before, not in darkness. She thought of the savages, their long spears and black skins. She thought of snakes, of the vast unknown all around her. For a moment fear paralysed her, then she heard a click as the gate opened at the front of the house and she fled into the bush.
*
Towards midnight, Cash arrived at the mouth of the inlet in the cutter that he had sailed down the coast from Sydney Cove. He had brought with him half a dozen members of Pelican’s crew to give a hand with the loading.
The cliffs of the inlet loomed black against the stars as the cutter, close-hauled against the offshore wind, sailed through the entrance. Glimmers of light shone faintly from the crests of the breakers and on either hand birds called restlessly from the rocks.
Within the inlet the cliffs turned south to run for half a mile parallel with the coast before ending at a steeply shelving beach of shingle and coarse sand. To one side of the beach, a jumble of huge boulders masked the entrance to a stream that ran out over the sand. The crying of the birds, louder here, intensified the profound stillness.
They took storm lanterns and went ashore. Wavelets lurched and sucked along the beach as the men stepped out of the boats, their boots crunching on the sand.
The two huts that Gough had built to accommodate his first cargo stood within a shallow cave at the foot of the high cliffs. They would never have found them if they had not known they were there. Cash unlocked the door of the first one and pulled it open. The stench of the piled skins was very strong but neither they nor the tubs of seal oil had been disturbed. No one had been here.
Cash was relieved but not surprised. Few people knew of t
he inlet which was in any case inaccessible from the land, but he felt exasperated that this kind of thing was necessary in order to carry out a perfectly legitimate commercial operation. With luck, he thought, the present voyage would change all that.
He turned to the men and gave orders to begin moving the skins out of the huts and down the beach to the edge of the water.
He bent his back alongside them, lifting the heavy bales, stiff as boards, and carrying them down the awkwardly-sloping beach to the sea. It was difficult, heavy work. Fortunately there was no hurry. Centaur would not be here before daybreak and they would be ready well before then. When it was done, they could make a fire and rest until the ship arrived.
*
Cuddy was barefoot. Rough stones cut and bruised her feet as she ran. A patch of tall grass loomed and she threw herself into its shelter, feeling the night and its terrors pressing about her, gazing back apprehensively at the house she had just left.
The three men came silently around the side of the building. There was a pause, then they disappeared into the outhouse. After a minute they came out again and stood there, looking about them. Cuddy held her breath, praying that they wouldn’t walk in this direction.
A faint murmur of voices. One of the shadowed figures took a step towards her and her heart cried out in her breast. Terror saved her, freezing her to the ground so that she could not leap to her feet and run from them. She shut her eyes tight, not daring to move, not daring to breathe.
Nothing happened.
After what seemed minutes she opened her eyes, the barest crack. The men had gone.
Or had they?
She stayed where she was for a long time, feeling the damp, the cold striking into her through her thin shift. Had they gone? Or were they watching, waiting for her to make a move? If they were Thornton’s dogs – and they had to be – they wouldn’t give up easily.
So she waited and watched and waited some more while the stars moved overhead and her half-naked body shuddered and shook with the cold. At last, fearful, eyes watching the shadows, she moved, nerves tight as wire, but nothing stirred.
She had gone perhaps ten yards towards the house when a sudden thought made her stop, breath in her throat, fear like ice in her stomach. What if they were waiting inside the outhouse? Or the cottage itself? Would they dare? Yes, she thought. They had been willing to come here, to this row of officers’ houses, something she had told Maud Clark they would never do. If they dared do that, they would dare do anything.
Now the thought had occurred to her, she would never risk going back to the house before daylight but she would freeze to death if she stayed out here all night. She thought of the wooden box and the old blanket she had used when she first arrived at the captain’s cottage. Would they still be there? Not likely. But the outhouse itself might be open. It would be better than waiting out here, alone, in the cold and dark.
Her mind made up, she walked swiftly along the backs of the houses until she came to the cottage where the Captain stayed with Maud Clark. Cautiously, she tried the outhouse door. It creaked softly but opened. She went into the dark interior and closed the door behind her. It was very dark but, for the first time, she felt safe. Fumbling, hands outstretched, she found the corner of the room where she had slept. The box was still there. In it, miracle of miracles, the blanket. Her bare feet cut and bruised by the stones, she crawled under the blanket, shivered for a few minutes and fell asleep.
TWENTY-THREE
Silas Pike brought Centaur in past the rocks and shoals of the entrance half an hour after first light. The wind had strengthened steadily during the night and was now gusting up to thirty knots and tending to back towards the east. Pike looked at the slate-grey sky. The overcast extended unbroken to a horizon clouded by haze.
‘Mr Reilly!’
‘Sorr?’
‘All hands lively to take the boats ashore as soon as we anchor. I want the cargo loaded and us out of here, quick as we can make it. I don’t like the look of that sky.’
It was a tricky entrance at any time with only half a cable’s width between the heads, and the mounting wind made it still harder, but Pike managed it. He squinted up at the cliffs as they passed between them. Black slabs of rock, gleaming with moisture, rose three hundred feet or higher above the waves fretting at their base. Nothing grew on them, neither grass nor plants of any kind. Seabirds wheeled in screaming clouds.
Centaur followed the inlet as it curved, picking up just enough breeze to keep way on her, until she reached the shingle beach where Tremain’s cutter was moored. The anchor splashed down.
‘Crew ashore, Mr Reilly! Quick as you can!’
‘Aye, aye, sorr!’
The blocks screeched as the boats crashed into the water, spray flying. The men scrambled like monkeys down Centaur’s sides, cast off and headed for the beach.
Pike was pleased to see that the shore party was ready for them. Stacks of sealskins lined the beach above the tide line. He could see Cash Tremain’s tall figure standing amongst a group of several other men, his long black hair blowing around his face.
Pike cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘Morning, Mr Tremain!’
Cash waved. ‘Morning, Captain.’ His voice came faintly across the water.
‘I want everything aboard and us out of here quick as we can make it. There’s a storm coming.’
Cash lifted his arm in acknowledgment and turned to his men, issuing orders, pointing at the piles of skins.
The two boats ran their prows up the beach and the sailors rushed to help the shore party. They, too, knew the signs of wind and weather and liked what they were seeing no better than the captain. Within a minute they were staggering back down the beach, slipping and sliding on the shingle, piles of the heavy skins in their arms.
As soon as the first boat was full, the men ran it off the beach and rowed it quickly back to the ship. Reilly and the remaining crew members had rigged a hoist – a wooden gantry secured by swivels to the mizzen mast, a wooden platform with ropes running through multiple blocks – and the first load was soon swinging up on to the deck where a team waited to lower it through the hungrily gaping hatchways into the empty holds. Below, more men waited to tear the cargo from the pallets and stow it, working with frantic haste to complete the loading and get the ship away from what would be a dangerous lee shore if a storm arrived from the east. However, it was not a job that could be rushed. Fifteen thousand skins and three hundred tons of oil took up all the available space and had to be loaded with care if everything was to be fitted in. More important still, the stability of the craft in heavy seas depended on correct loading – an unbalanced cargo could capsize a ship in rough weather.
As soon as a boat was empty it returned to the beach, its place taken immediately by another one. It was not a silent process: the grunts and curses of the men were punctuated by the bawled exhortations of the mate, but everyone knew what they were doing, so haste never became frenzy. Even so, it was impossible to work under this sort of pressure and have no problems at all. Loading was interrupted once when the platform slipped and a stack of skins fell into the water.
‘Watch what you’re bloody doing, you cripples!’
Reilly’s voice rose to a new height but there was nothing to be done – the weight of the skins had sunk them in twenty feet of water. They were gone for good.
Pike leant over the poop deck rail. ‘Anyone does that again, Mr Reilly, they’re beached!’
It was no idle threat and the men knew it. Pike paid well and punctually – something unheard of in most ships – so he could afford to demand the highest standards from his men.
‘Aye aye, sorr!’
The loading frenzy continued. Outside the inlet, the wind gathered strength. The horizon was closed by mist under a dark and threatening sky.
*
Offshore, dawn had come in with scowling skies and a wind with iron in its gusts. Spray as hard and cold as hail flew across the decks as Captain Owen a
nd Lieutenant Luke, his second in command, stood at the rail, shielding their eyes from the wind, trying to make out the entrance to the inlet through the line of cliffs that was now less than a mile to windward of them.
‘I’ll not risk it unless we’re absolutely certain,’ Owen said. He looked anxiously at the sky. ‘This wind’ll go round any time. I’m not being caught on a lee shore for all the smugglers in creation.’
Luke stabbed a gnarled finger at the pyramid-shaped wedge of rock that showed momentarily as the wind shredded the curtain of spray. He turned an excited face to the captain. ‘There it is!’
Owen whipped out a telescope. Balancing easily on the tossing deck, he focused on the cliffs. There it was, sure enough. The dark shadow on the northern side of the distinctive pillar of rock would be the entrance into the concealed inlet.
He turned to Luke. ‘We’ll send in a boarding party.’
The mate ran down the deck, shouting orders.
The yards came around. Yard by yard, Pluto closed the shore. The boarding party assembled on the main deck under the command of one of the ensigns and was issued with arms – cutlasses for the hands, a couple of muskets.
‘Mr Matthieson!’ Owen summoned the young officer to his side.
‘Sir!’
‘Take your party into the inlet when I give the word. Our information is that you’ll find Centaur in there, picking up a load of sealskins and oil. She has every right to do that but only if she’s not headed for London with them. It’s essential you see her sailing orders before anyone has a chance to get rid of them. Get hold of them any way you can. Read them. If she’s for London, tell the master his ship is under arrest. If they’re for anywhere else, thank Captain Pike and come back here, quick as you can. Waste no time about it. I don’t like the look of the weather.’
‘If Centaur offers resistance?’
‘I’m not taking Pluto in there with a storm brewing. Warn Pike I’m blockading the entrance. If he tries to resist arrest I’ll sink him when he comes out.’
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