Free The Smugglers by Iain Lawrence Page A

running in circles out in theChannel, like a lot of dogs with their tongues hanging out. The revenue? Oh, they live in dread of Dashing Tommy Dusker.”
    “I'm sure they do,” said I, just as sure they didn't.
    He strutted like a peacock. “You're a lucky lad to be sailing with me. The stories you'll have for your father!” He slapped me on the shoulder, then pointed across the bay. “Now, that other one,” he said. “That brig there.”
    “She looks too small to carry anything,” I said.
    “False bottoms,” said he, with a wink. “They'll load her when the tide is out. Stuff her full of barrels that you'd have to be a fish to see.”
    “And then beach her on the other side to get them out again.”
    “Why, yes,” he said. “Oh, you're quick, you are. Born to this, I think.”
    I should have been angry, but Dasher's comment – oddly–left me feeling proud. Certainly Father gave me small praise, and I suppose it was merely pleasant to hear Dasher's words, no matter how ill meant they were. I leaned against the rail, feeling inflated and light, as we sailed across the harbor.
    On the southern shore, the buildings rose above a quay. They were tall and thin – so narrow that the row of them might have been squashed together in a giant's vise. Built from brick of different colors, from wood and stone, they seemed to tilt and lean, like tramps in tattered clothes once too often patched.
    Crowe steered us toward a wharf crowded with piles of barrels, with stacks of bales and boxes. Cranes and hoistsstood among them, their slender arms held high and crossed in every way. Wagons came and went, drawn by plodding horses. And in the bustle, like a rock that the tide flows around, was a small old man, frail and dressed in rags. From his nose and ears grew clumps of white hair. He watched us from the barrels, on a perch among the stacks, now leaning forward and now back, now holding his hands to his head like blinkers.
    We glided toward the quay. The old man stood up on the barrels. “Turner Crowe!” he shouted, and his voice was strange and otherworldly. It was a haunting voice. “Turner Crowe,” he said again. “Do you remember me, you butcher?”
    Crowe's head snapped round. “By the saints!” he breathed.
    “You didn't kill us all,” the old man wailed. “There's one alive. There's one to tell the tale.” Then down he got and scuttled off, moving like an old white beetle in among the wagons and the bundles.
    “Wait!” shouted Crowe. His face was bloodless. “Heave to, ye old bodach!” His hands shook at the spokes so hard, the rudder rattled.
    I looked at Dasher. “Who was that?”
    “Don't know,” said he. And then, suddenly, “I have to get forward. Stand by to lower the jib; strike the halyard; get a lashing on.” And off he went, with a flick of his hair, leaving me alone at the rail.
    The quay was slung with enormous fenders of woven rope. But Captain Crowe brought the
Dragon
alongside soperfectly that they made no sound at all. If they'd been eggs, he wouldn't even have cracked them.
    Crowe
called me to the wheel, then took my arm in his fist. “Ye're to watch for that white-haired man. Watch for him, hear? And if ye see him, ye fetch me.”
    “Who is he?” I asked.
    His hand tightened fiercely. “Do ye have to question everything I say? I've telt ye to watch for him, and that's a' ye need to know.”
    “Yes, sir,” I said. I was used to his anger; again I saw it engulf him completely, then vanish in a moment.
    “Good lad,” he said, and smiled. “Ye're a credit to the ship, and I'll be telling your father as much.”
    Already the
Dragon
was tied to the wharf, her bowsprit overhanging the quay. Mathew and Harry broke open the hatches and dropped down to the hold. Then the cargo came across, barrel after barrel. Two and three at once, hung in slings of net, they were swung across and lowered through the hatches. The Frenchmen worked with a fever that I'd never seen at any dock in