He reached up into the shrouds and swung himself to the rail, searching the dark sea.
Nothing. ‘Where away?’ he called.
‘Right on the quarter. Maybe half a point off now. Pulling like hell, three of a thide.’
He caught sight of her as she crossed the path of the moon. About a mile away: very long, very low, very narrow, more like a line on the water: travelling fast towards the land. This was not his boat – wrong shape, wrong time, wrong direction.
‘What do you make of her, Mr Goodridge?’ he asked.
‘Why, sir, she’s one of those Deal shells – death-or-money boats, they call ’em, or guinea-boats as some say; and by the look of her, she’s got a main heavy cargo aboard. They must have seen a revenue cutter or a cruiser early on, for now they’ve got to pull against the ebb, and it runs cruel hard off the point. Do you mean to snap her up, sir? It’s now or never with the race off the headland. What a bit of luck.’
He had not seen one before, but he knew them by reputation, of course: they were more like racing-craft for a quiet river than anything built to face a sea – every notion of safety sacrificed to speed; but the profit on smuggling gold was so great that the Deal men would take them clean across the Channel. They could run away from anything, pulling into the eye of the wind, and although the men were sometimes drowned, they were very rarely caught. Unless, as it might fall out, they chanced to be right under the lee of a pursuer, hampered by a swift tide, and tired out by their long pull. Or if they ran straight into a waiting man-of-war.
Gold packed very small: there might be five or six hundred pounds for him in that frail shell, as well as seven prime hands, the best seamen on the coast – lawful prize, for their protections would be of no sort of use to
them whatsoever now. He had the weather-gage. He had but to fill his foretopsail, pay round, set everything she could carry, and bear down. To run from him she would have to pull dead against the tide, and they would not be able to keep that up for long. Twenty minutes: perhaps half an hour. Yes, but then he would have to beat back again to his station; and he knew the Polychrest’s powers in that direction, alas.
‘There’s the best part of an hour to go before three, sir,’ said the master at his side. Jack held up his watch again; the master-at-arms held his lantern to light it; the listening quarterdeck fell unnaturally silent. They were all seamen aft, but by now even the framework-knitter in the waist knew what was afoot.
‘I only make it seven minutes past, sir,’ said the master.
No. It would not do. ‘Mind your helm.’ snapped Jack as the Polychrest yawed a full point to starboard. ‘Mr Pullings, check the blue lights,’ he said, and resumed his pacing. For the first five minutes it was hard to bear: every time he reached the taffrail there was that boat, drawing in nearer and nearer to the land, but still in extreme danger. After his twentieth turn she had crossed the invisible line into safety: the sloop could no longer cut her off – he could no longer change his mind.
Five bells: he checked their position, bringing the bearing-compass on to the steeple and the tower. The dirty weather in the north-west was skirting the Great Bear now. Six bells, and the blue light soared up, burst, and drifted away to leeward, lighting all their upturned faces with an unnatural emphasis – open mouths, mindless wonder.
‘Mr Pullings, be so good as to send a reliable man into the top with a night-glass,’ said Jack. And five minutes later, ‘Maintop, there. What do you see? Any boat pulling from under the land?’
A pause. ‘Nothing, sir. I got the line of surf in my glass, and nothing ain’t pulled off yet.’
Seven bells. Three well-lit ships passed out at sea,
running down the Channel – neutrals, of course. Eight bells, and the changing watch found the Polychrest still there. ‘Take her out into the offing, Mr Parker,’ said Jack. ‘Sink the land entirely, making as little southing as ever you can. We must be here again tomorrow night.’
But the Polychrest spent tomorrow night on the other side of the Channel, lying to under Dungeness, shipping such seas that Jack thought he should have to run for the shelter of the Isle of Wight, and report back to the admiral with his tail between his legs, his mission unaccomplished; but the wind chopped round westwards at dawn, and the sloop, pumping hard, began to creep back under close-reefed topsails across the angry water – a sea so short and steep that she proceeded by sickening and often unpredictable jerks, and in the gun-room no amount of fiddles or ingenuity on the parts of the diners would keep their food on the table.
The purser’s place was empty, as it usually was as soon as the first reef was taken in; and Pullings was dozing as he sat.
‘You do not suffer from the sea-sickness, sir?’ said Stephen to Macdonald.
‘Why, no, sir. But then I come from the Western Isles, and we are in boats as soon as we are breeched.’
‘The Western Isles . . . The Western Isles. There was a Lord of the Isles – of your family, I presume, sir?’ -Macdonald bowed. ‘And that always seemed to me the most romantic title that ever was. We, indeed, have our White Knight, and the Knight of the Glen, the O’Connor Don, the McCarthy Mor, O’Sionnach the Fox, and so on; but the Lord of the Isles. . . it gives a feeling of indeterminate magnificence. That reminds me: I had the strangest impression today – an impression of time recovered. Two of your men, both by the name of Macrea, I believe, were speaking privately, furbishing their equipment with one piece of pipeclay between them as I stood near them -nothing of any consequence, you understand, just small
disagreement about the pipeclay, the first desiring the second to kiss his arse and the second wishing the soul of the first to the Devil and a good deal more to the same effect.
And I understood directly, without the least thought or conscious effort of will!’
‘You have the Gaelic, sir?’ cried Macdonald.
‘No, sir,’ said Stephen, ‘and that is what is so curious. I no longer speak it; I thought I no longer understood it. And yet there at once, with no volition on my part, there was complete understanding. I had no idea the Erse and the Irish were so close; I had imagined the dialects had moved far apart. Pray, is there a mutual understanding between your Hebrideans and the Highlanders on the one, and let us say the native Ulstermen on the other?’
‘Why, yes, sir; there is. They converse tolerably well, on general subjects, on boats, fishing, and bawdy. There are some different words, to be sure, and great differences of
intonation, but with perseverance and repetition they can make themselves understood very well – a tolerably free communication. There are some Irishmen among the pressed hands, and I have heard them and my marines speaking together.’
‘If I had heard them, they would be on the defaulters’ list,’ said Parker, who had come below, dripping like a Newfoundland dog.
‘Why is this?’ asked Stephen.
‘Irish is forbidden in the Navy,’ said Parker. ‘It is prejudicial to discipline; a secret language is calculated to foment mutiny.’
‘Another roll like that, and we shall have no masts,’ said Pullings, as the remaining crockery, the glasses and the inhabitants of the gun-room all shot over to the lee. ‘We’ll lose the mizen first, Doctor,’ – picking Stephen tenderly out of the wreckage – ‘and so we’ll be a brig; then we’ll lose the foremast, so we’ll be a right little old sloop; then we’ll lose the main, and we’ll be a raft, which is what we ought to have begun as.’
By some miracle of dexterity Macdonald had seized, and preserved, the decanter; holding it up he said, ‘If you can find a whole glass, Doctor, I should be happy to drink a wee doodly of wine with you, and to lead your mind back to the subject of Ossian. From the obliging way in which you spoke of my ancestor, it is clear that you have a fine delicate notion of the sublime; and sublimity, sir, is the greatest internal evidence of Ossian’s authenticity. Allow me to recite you a short description of the dawn.’
Once again the blue light shone down on the deck of the Polychrest and the uplifted faces of the watch; but this time it drifted off to the north-east, for the wind had come right round, bringing a thin rain and the promise of more, and this time it was almost instantly answered by musketry on the shore – red points of flame and a remote pop-pop-pop.