“If the wind holds, Captain, we might need to shorten sail. We must alter course very soon now. We will sight a wreck to larboard.” Pecco even sounded as if he were smiling. “If some fool has not removed it!”
“By the mark, seven!”
Adam remembered other times, in other ships, when he had seen the vessel’s own shadow passing over the seabed. Not merely a warning but a threat. He could sense the others moving closer, even Murray, watching and recalling his own retort about loyalty and Culloden.
“By the mark, five!”
The leadsman was wasting no time. Skilled enough to make an underhand swing with his lead-and-line, he was feeling his way. Thirty feet beneath the keel. And the next cry …
“And now, Captain …” The wheel was turning steadily to larboard, as if they were steering headlong toward solid ground.
Adam tried to see the chart in his mind, and remember the sketches made by the man who was at the wheel beside him. He had nothing more to lose but his life. He swung round as the wheel began to turn faster. Pecco was using all his strength. There was a glint of light from the compass box, then, like a curtain being dragged aside, the sun was upon them.
Pecco shouted, “Now!” and Tozer joined him, adding his weight and experience as the spokes were dragged in the opposite direction. There in the sun, between mainland and islet, was the shining curve of the channel. The tall sails hardly appeared to shift; a square-rigger would have been hard aground by now.
Adam heard Jago urging more hands to trim the staysail and jib, and as they ran to obey some fell headlong over yet another unfamiliar obstacle.
Pecco steadied the wheel and looked up at the flag. “Never easy!” Then his eyes met Adam’s. “I know what you thought … It was in my heart.” He watched Tozer take over the wheel, and added simply, “Remember that, when the time comes.”
Adam trained his telescope on the widening stretch of water directly ahead. He did not recall having picked it up, and was disconcerted by the surprising heat of the metal and the dryness of his throat.
Pecco was clinging to a backstay, his face devoid of expression. Neither guilt nor triumph.
And there, fine on the larboard bow, was the wreck: it must have caught fire before running aground in the shallows. It lay like a blackened carcass, the timbers like charred ribs. Nobody spoke or moved as they glided past, and when the leadsman called from the forecastle it seemed an intrusion.
“An’ deep ten!”
They were through, undetected, and ahead was the sheltered inlet. It needed skill and strong nerves, but there always had to be a “first time.” Adam raised the telescope again and saw the nearest beach leap into focus in the lens, some ragged undergrowth almost to the water’s edge in places, elsewhere pebbles, washed white by sun and salt. His grip tightened. Two canoes pulled well clear of the water. Furrows in the sand where they had been dragged ashore. Recently.
“Seen them afore, Cap’n.” It was Jago, powerful arms crossed, but fingers still close to the cutlass.
The canoes were typical of those used to ferry wretched captives from stream or beach to the ship destined to carry them into slavery. Adam could never understand how so many survived. Slavers were known to sail from this coastline to destinations as far away as Cuba and Brazil. It was inhuman beyond belief.
Pecco said suddenly, “Another two miles. Maybe less.” He spread his hands. “There may be nothing to discover.”
Jago murmured, “Then pray, you bastard!”
Squire strode aft. “I have two good lookouts aloft, and both boats ready for lowering. There’s not much else-”
Adam’s expression silenced him. “If I should fall …” he said.
Squire said only, “Then I’ll be lying there beside you.”
They both looked in the direction of the forecastle as the leadsman completed another sounding.
“By the mark-” It was as far as he got.
The explosion was more like an echo than gunfire, and for a few seconds Adam was reminded of the early fog-warnings, the maroons he used to hear as a child in Cornwall. Local fishermen always claimed they did more harm than good.
Squire exclaimed, “So much for trust!” and was reaching for his pistol even as Adam stepped between him and Pecco, who was cupping his hands around his eyes and shaking his head in protest.
“No, no! Not us, Captain! Lookouts in the hills!” He gestured wildly. “If a trap was intended they would have been waiting in the channel!” Now his eyes were fixed on the barrel of Squire’s pistol. “I tell the truth!”
Adam said slowly, “Another ship. My guess is she’s Captain Tyacke’s brigantine.” A few more seconds while he groped for the name. “The Peterel.”
Squire uncocked his pistol and thrust it into his belt. He said, not looking at Pecco, “Your lucky day!”
Pecco said, “I have done all I can!” He pushed past two seamen and vomited in the scuppers.
Adam swallowed and looked away, forcing himself to concentrate on the strip of headland, which was tilting toward a widening expanse of water beyond the jib. “Warn all hands below.”
Jago said, “Done, Cap’n.” Aside to the gunner’s mate, he added softly, “Now or never, eh, Ted?”
After the slow and torturous passage past-and sometimes among-the offshore islets, their arrival was startling in its suddenness. From Delfim’s deck the anchorage was a lagoon as large as an enclosed lake, but from the yards and upper shrouds the keen-eyed lookouts could see the final outcroppings of land, and beyond, like a blue-grey barrier, the great ocean.
Once lying here, a ship would be invisible to any passing patrol or casual trader. In the strengthening sunlight the water seemed calm and unmoving, but the sails were taut and straining, and the tattered Portuguese flag was streaming.
Adam moved a few paces away from the wheel and trained his telescope across and ahead of their course. Individual faces stood out, gazing at the islets or beyond at the green mass of the mainland. One frowning in concentration or apprehension, another with lips pursed in a silent whistle. Men he had grown to know and understand. Who trusted him, because they had no choice.
And the doubts, which always remained in close company, the ambush when you least expected it. Like his own if I should fall. Who else would these men look to?
He thought again of his uncle, Sir Richard Bolitho, his last words on that fateful day. We always knew. His coxswain, John Allday, had heard him, and James Tyacke had written it in the flagship’s log immediately after the action. We always knew.
He wiped his smarting eye with the back of his hand and focused again, and for a moment imagined his mind was too strained to concentrate. A ship was almost broadside-on, filling and overlapping the field of view, stark against a backdrop of trees and a narrow strip of beach.
He held his breath and steadied the glass. He was not mistaken. Some of the trees merged with the ship: loose branches which were lashed to her yards and shrouds. A simple camouflage, but enough to confuse even the most experienced lookout aboard a passing man-of-war, or the brigantine Peterel, which Tyacke had sent to offer support if required.
He held out the telescope to Squire.
“We were right.”
He heard him adjusting the glass but held the image in his mind: the crude but effective disguise, some fronds and loose fragments in the water alongside drifting slowly clear, or already snared by her anchor cable.
She was preparing to get under way. To escape.
She was a big schooner, three-masted, unusual in these waters, and she looked almost cumbersome in this confined anchorage. But once out on the ocean and under full sail, she would soon show her paces.