Free The Devil's Eye by Ian Townsend Page A

me up too fast.’
    Sam looked into Willie’s face with concern now. He and Charley dragged Willie, dripping, across the deck and propped him up against the hatch.
    ‘Don’t move.’
    The crew had dropped the main anchor to stop the lugger drifting away from the patch as the tide rushed north.
    Sam returned with coffee.
    It scalded Willie’s throat, but couldn’t warm his bones.
    The pain in his legs, though, subsided and he noticed that the sea around them was full of sails, as other luggers and cutters dashed for some vantage point in the dying afternoon breeze.
    ‘Let’s make another pass,’ said Willie.
    ‘Too late,’ said Sam, who looked worn from worry. ‘Let’s give it a rest.’
    ‘There’s more shell and it’ll be light enough for another half-hour on the bottom.’
    Sam looked around and scratched his head.
    Far to the east, on the horizon, there was a line of cloud or thick haze with a slight crimp in it.
    Willie did go over the side again, after Sam swore that if the crocodile came back he’d pop it with the carbine. He made a show of putting the rifle against the mast.
    Willie told him not to shoot anything at all while he was down—blood in the water was sure to attract crocodiles, or sharks, or Joe Harry.
    ‘I’m not scared of Joe Harry,’ said Sam.
    ‘I’m the one in the water,’ said Willie, and the face plate went on. Back he plunged.

CHAPTER 10
Bathurst Bay, Wednesday 1 March 1899
    Maggie had never been separated from Alice by more than a ship’s length, even when they lived ashore.
    Now, she sat beside her husband in the whaleboat, watching the thin thread of their phosphorescent wake detach itself from the Crest of the Wave. Already halfway to the Sagitta , the night seemed full of deadly potential. The over-ripe moon couldn’t reveal anything more than the outline of those black mountains behind the bay.
    ‘Alice snores like a sailor,’ said Porter. ‘I can hear her from here.’
    ‘You cannot.’
    ‘Poor bloody Tommy’s on watch,’ said Porter, and then added quickly, ‘and Daniel will be back there in fifteen minutes, won’t you, Daniel?’
    At the oars Daniel Jones, a South American negro as black as the mountains, said, ‘Nothing can happen to little Miss Alice.’
    ‘The crew adores her,’ said Porter.
    ‘I know.’
    What was the source of her fear? She searched her heart, and found the unborn child, and Alice, her father, and Hope. The threads of these lives had somehow become entangled and Maggie felt she was the only one who could pick her way through. Her plan to bring Hope home would unravel the knot.
    Maggie could hear voices, the concertina again from the Admiral , a night bird on the land, an islander singing.
    ‘It’s so still,’ she said.
    ‘Flat as the pond at Mangatangi,’ said Porter. He rapped his knuckle twice against the gunwale. Porter had nearly drowned as a boy trying to sail a bathtub, and this was what passed as a joke with him.
    Maggie had heard the story many times and said again, ritually, ‘Bathtubs are for baths.’
    ‘Damned right.’
    They watched the Sagitta loom above them, a carnival of light.
    ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘What are they thinking?’
    She saw the now-dark outline of the Crest of the Wave far away, knowing but not believing that Alice was safely surrounded by an armed crew and a benign sea. She tucked an arm under Porter’s, though, reassuring him that she’d been reassured.
    And she was happy. Really. How could she not be happy now that she had her husband, with a tropical night encasing her and the lights of the Sagitta dancing around them above and below the water?
    Porter then leaned close and said in her ear, ‘But what do you think of Tommy’s news, Maggie?’
    ‘The pearl?’
    ‘Oh, damn those pearls. No, I mean his father drowned in New Guinea. Poor bloody Tommy.’
    A hand reached down to her, she took it and was pulled through the air to land standing on the deck. Robert Murray, captain of the