Free The Wreckers by Iain Lawrence Page A

stays, the swell of the topsail—glared with a golden glow. The shutters clicked shut, opened again, and when I hooded the lamp for the last time, I could still see the ropes and the rigging burning and moving in my eyes. “Let go!” called a voice, and the anchor fell with a splash, the chain rumbling out. The sound echoed back from a shore I couldn’t see as the
Isle of Skye
turned slowly, head to wind. And the topmen—poor Danny Riggins leading them all—came swarming up to furl the sails. Then the boats were swung out and lowered, and I watched them carry my father into the night.
    “Did you hear voices?” asked Mawgan. “Any sounds from shore?”
    “No,” I said. “We must have been at least half a mile off. It took the boats nearly an hour to come back.”
    We’d listened for them. Every man remaining on the ship stood at the rail, watching and waiting. We were a little world in the darkness, the ship silent, the foresails lying in heaps at the foot of the stays. Old Cridge judged his time by the stars; he kept glancing up. Then we heardit, very faint, the creaking of oars. “Show your light,” said Cridge, and I cracked open the shutters. The boats came sliding out of the gloom, each weighted to the gunwales with a stack of barrels. The men in them were grim and quiet, not at all the usual thing when sailors and wine are sitting so close. The barrels came aboard; the boats went off again. And they made four trips before the work was done.
    Mawgan nodded. “Forty barrels in all. More or less.”
    Each in its turn, the boats were hooked onto the tackles and brought aboard. The topsails were unfurled and sheeted home, the foresails raised. They flapped in the wind, and the topsails bellied back against the masts. In silence, the men tramped round the capstan; no chanteys were sung as we left that place. The anchor came up streaming mud and weeds. We made sternway with the helm over; then Cridge ordered the topsail yards braced around, the jibs sheeted home, and we slewed off onto a starboard tack. At the first sign of dawn, we were farther off than we’d been at dusk.
    “Is that all that happened?” asked Mawgan.
    “It is.”
    He took a breath. It reminded me of the way the wind lulled before a furious gust. He rapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. They sounded like soldiers marching.
    “Now I’ll ask you again,” he said. “And for the very last time. What exactly did you bring in those barrels, boy?”
    “Wine,” said I.
    Mawgan snorted. “Oh, there was wine in them, trueenough. Yes, and nothing but wine in a third of them. Maybe a flagon or two in each of the rest!”
    “A flagon?” I said.
    “Aye. Quite enough to satisfy any curious guardsman who tapped a bung, wasn’t it? And under the false bottom, packed in sawdust so it wouldn’t knock about, was a bar of gold, perhaps? A packet of diamonds?”
    “No!” I said.
    Simon Mawgan leapt to his feet. He toppled that big, heavy chair as easily as a bottle. He meant to hit me—I was sure of it—but Mary ran between us.
    “Look at him,” she said, her hands on his chest. “Just look at him, Uncle. You can see he edn’t lying.”
    I must have stood there ghastly white, my fingers fiddling with the little glass match that Mawgan had given me. Suddenly it all made sense: a mysterious night on a dark shore; sawdust in the bilge of the
Skye;
the wreckers’ obsession with a few broken barrels. There seemed to be only one explanation, and Mawgan had led me to it step by step. But still I couldn’t believe it.
    I shook my head. “It’s not true. You’re wrong about this.”
    “I think not,” said Mawgan, a grim smile on his lips. “It is true. And I’m afraid there’s no help for you anywhere now.”
    Mary whirled around to face me, then just as abruptly turned back to her uncle. “What’s true?” she said. “I don’t understand!”
    “The barrels,” said Mawgan. He was talking not to herbut to me. “He was hiding