The light-keeper moaned. There was a round-pommelled dirk in his back, O’Bryan’s.
“By Jupiter, O’Bryan,” said Tinkler, blowing on his gloved hands, “won’t you finish off that poor devil?”
“Why should I?” O’Bryan spoke reasonably. “The longer he lives, the warmer he stays. In this weather a man must make use of everything possible to keep him from freezing. That’s the trick of survival, Tink, look you.”
Quire put his spyglass to his eye. As he lifted his arms, the wind caught his cloak and blew it back from his shoulders. He tucked the glass in his belt and recovered the cloak, fixing it at the throat by the silver clasp he sometimes wore. He repositioned the spyglass and thought he sighted the galleon. The brim of his hat was bent back against the crown, his hair was blown like weed in a whirlpool, and the spray from the sea below, a curling steamer of foam, pricked that part of his face not protected by the cloak’s collar.
“A perfect night for a wreck.” O’Bryan re-lit his long clay pipe and shifted his rump a moment, to give the keeper a few extra breaths. O’Bryan wore a huge fur hat, after the Ukrainian fashion, and had on a bearskin coat made from the whole pelt, so that the claws hung about his hands and the beast’s head acted as a high collar. His square, ruddy features bore the drinker’s mark and his eyes revealed his character even if his smile and easy manner did not. He looked up at the tower, a scaffold set above the watchman’s two-roomed cottage, where a red light gleamed to warn ships to hold off approaching the channel until morning. At the sides of this were two unlit lanterns, one yellow and one blue, to indicate, in good weather, which side of the light the ship should go, for the warning beacon was positioned on this small island at the centre of the sandbar; the waters here ran very erratically, sometimes deep, sometimes shallow, depending on the position of the shifting, unstable sands.
Tinkler stared down to the beach where the rest of their men stood, close to the horses they had ridden here while the tide was out. “If it’s more than half an hour those ruffians’ll be too stiff to act and the plan’s wasted, and all this work.”
“The plan can’t be wasted,” Quire told him. “It’s the only one.”
“And a mad scheme.” O’Bryan was approving. “A Polish noble will fetch a good price. They’re rich, the Poles. Probably richer, head for head, than Albion. I was in Goddansjik for a few months and saw more gold than I’ll ever see in London. But they have strange laws, made by commoners, and it’s hard for a free spirit to earn a living there, save as a soldier in the East, where it’s poorer.”
Quire had decided not to give O’Bryan the full story and intended to betray him as soon as he had served his turn: he knew O’Bryan for a fool with more greed than intelligence who could not be controlled as the others were controlled. “We’ll all be rich within the month, O’Bryan. It’ll be your task to carry our message to Poland.”
O’Bryan had agreed to this and, since Quire had already been generous, had seen no snags to the scheme. The Irishman warmed his hands over the bowl of his pipe and kicked with his heel at the ribs of his victim, as another man might stir the embers of a fire.
Quire now had the ship in focus. He thought he heard a trumpet sound, as the ship signalled. It was rolling in rapidly, borne by the notorious quicksilver tide. Quire could make out figures-the pilot in conference with one who was doubtless the captain, pointing in their direction. And on the high deck, astern, the untidy figure he had had pictured for him, the Polish King.
Quire began to climb the ladder of the tower, while Tinkler took up the trumpet and blew a deep blast to answer the ship’s.
Thus, as the shaggy King of Poland looked shoreward from his sterncastle, did Captain Quire put lips to lamp and extinguish the red signal, lighting instead, with casual fingers, the green. Next, he leaned to light the blue lantern on the left, to guide the ship directly onto the sands where his men waited. He could see the Mikolaj Kopernik with his naked eye. She had most of her sails reefed and her oarsmen were backing water. A few moments, while the signal was interpreted, and then the galleon advanced more swiftly, heading, to Quire’s relief, in exactly the direction he had anticipated. Hastily he swung down from the tower, tapped O’Bryan on the shoulder, winked at Tinkler, and began to run, his spurs silvery and jingling, down to the beach to await his lumbering prey.
“She’s on her way, lads.” Quire stooped to pull up the folded-down flaps of his jack-boots, lacing them tight at the thigh. The wind made so many scarecrows of his men, all wild rags and hunched figures, and gave the horses halos of their own manes. Some distance away the sea slithered over the sands or struck flat and wet against the smooth stones; Quire could smell it. He could taste its salt on his lips. He had no liking for the sea. It was too large.
“Guns, Captain?” One of the hirelings spoke, half-muffled, from his cloak.
“That’s what we brought ‘em for, Hogge. More for the noise than anything. The trouble with a task of this kind is that unless you advertise your presence like mummers at the fair you’ll not be noticed. And unless you’re noticed, nobody’s afraid. And if nobody’s afraid they can all get away from us without ever knowing we were here!” Quire enjoyed this speech, but he left his men bewildered. “Guns, yes. Fire ‘em willy-nilly-into the air until we’ve got our man at least. We don’t want to put a ball through his head and have no ransom. I’ve told you who to look for.”
O’Bryan came stiff-legged down the sands. He rubbed at his bottom and farted. He drew two great horse pistols from the pockets of his bearskin coat and held them close to his face in the gloom, inspecting the locks.
“And careful with those pistols, O’Bryan.” Quire patted the Erin man on the arm. “If you let ‘em off too soon the ship’ll think she’s attacked by a man-o’-war and fire a broadside to destroy the whole island.”
O’Bryan appreciated this compliment to his weapons and laughed loudly.
Quire detected a different note to the tide and turned, taken unawares, to see the jigging lights of the Mikolaj Kopernik as her keel shuddered into sand and her oars began to smash, cracking one by one; so many whiplashes. The wind droned like an organ around the huge ship and the cries and shrieks from the decks were like the sound of gulls. Quire and Tinkler began to run towards her.
As Quire made out the ship’s bulk he saw that she yawed markedly to starboard, seeming to lean on her broken oars like a monstrous wounded crayfish. The wind found her staysails and moved her intermittently, adding to the impression of a helplessly landed seabeast. From above came the sound of every sort of human distress. The oarsmen had doubtless been the worst hurt and from the rowing ports issued wailing screams that had an extra eeriness in conjunction with the notes of the wind.
Tinkler shuddered as they got closer. “Ugh! It’s like banshees. Are you sure we haven’t taken some ghost ship, Captain? There’s so many have gone down in these waters…”
Quire ignored him, pointing to the ornamental stair built into the ship’s side. “We can climb that easily enough. Quickly now, Tink-while they’re confused.”
They were knee-deep in the surf, creeping under the splintered shafts of the huge sweeps, when they reached their goal, to see that it was further from the ship’s bottom than Quire had originally judged. Weed tangled itself about his boots and caught in his spurs. The ship creaked and groaned and sank a little deeper on its side so that for an instant Quire thought they would be crushed, but it brought the gilded stair a little closer.