Behind him, the noises had diminished. There were no more cries, no howling from the dogs. The night was strangely quiet, save for the squelching of Sark's laborious passage through the mud. Curious, Sark looked around and his blood froze.
They were ranged along the edge of the bank and they were watching him; a line of men, the shadows cast by the torches playing across their unsmiling faces. At their feet, secured by leashes, the hounds stood silently to heel.
The dogs were huge mastiffs, with broad heads and muscular bodies; each one the size of a small calf. As still as statues, they regarded the solitary figure below them with rapt attention. Their only movement was an occasional backward glance at the faces of the men who controlled them.
It was the moment that Sark knew he had nowhere to run.
But it didn't stop him trying.
Sark estimated he still had about fifty paces to go before he reached the boat. His legs felt as heavy as lead, while the pain behind his ribs suggested his heart was about to burst from his chest. Gamely, he tried to pick up speed but while the spirit was willing, his body was telling him it had reached the point of exhaustion.
Sark did not hear the command to release the dogs, but a sixth sense told him it had been given. He turned. A close observer might have witnessed the look of weary resignation that stole across his face.
The handlers had not followed the hounds down on to the foreshore, but were holding to firmer ground, following the line of the river bank, the flames from their torches flaring like comet trails behind them. They ran in silence.
For the second time that night, Sark dropped to his knees.
The dogs were loping rather than sprinting towards him. With their agility, and their weight distributed between four legs instead of two, making them less susceptible to sinking into the mud, it was as if they knew they had all the time in the world.
All thoughts of escape stifled, Sark gripped the pistol firmly and watched the dogs approach.
He glanced to his side. He saw that the men were now parallel to him, torches raised. They were close enough for him to make out their expressions by the light from the flames. Four of them had faces as hard as rock. The other two were grinning.
Sark's chest rose and fell. He looked back towards the dogs and raised his pistol. He aimed the barrel at the leading beast and tracked it with the gun's muzzle.
He heard one of the men on the bank curse and saw that they had all drawn weapons of their own.
Sark could hear the dogs' paws scampering across the mud. They were coming in very fast; close enough for him to see the light of anticipation in their eyes.
The lead hound was less than a dozen paces away when Sark thrust the barrel of the pistol under his own chin and pulled the trigger.
The back of Sark's head blew apart. The powder smoke barely had time to dissipate before the still kneeling body was engulfed in a frenzy of snapping jaws and thrashing limbs. As the men on the bank ran towards the melee, the snarling of the hounds rose into the night and carried, like the devil's chorus, down the muddy, bloodstained foreshore.
CHAPTER 1
Outlined against the gunmetal sky, the ship's blackened hull towered above the men in the longboat like some enormous Hebridean cliff face.
The men were silent, wrapped in their thoughts and awed by the grim sight confronting them. Only occasionally was the silence broken, by the dull clink of manacles, the splash and creak of oars and the wash of the waves against the side of the boat as it was pulled through the cold grey water.
Someone was sobbing. At the sound, several men crossed themselves. Others bowed their heads and, in whispers, began to pray.
There were fifteen men in the boat, excluding the oarsmen and the two marine guards. With few exceptions their clothes were ragged, their faces pale, unshaven and etched with fear; fear caused not only by the ship's forbidding appearance, but also by the smell coming off her.
It had been with them even before they had embarked, carried across the river by the light easterly breeze. At first, the men had paid little mind, assuming the odour was rising from their own unwashed bodies, but then understanding had dawned. As the longboat had pushed away from the harbour wall they had become transfixed by the grim nature of the fate that was about to befall them. As if to emphasize their passengers' rising sense of horror, the marine guards traded knowing looks and raised their neck scarves over their lower faces.
The longboat approached the rear of the ship. High above, embedded beneath the stern windows, a nameplate that once had been embossed in gold but which was now tarnished beyond repair proclaimed the vessel to be the Rapacious.
Close to, the ship looked even more intimidating. The dark- hulled vessel had all the appearance of a massive smoke-stained sarcophagus rather than a former ship of the line. There was no mizzen mast and the main mast and the foremast had been cut down to a third of their original size. Only the lower yards remained. Between them, festooned from a web of washing lines running fore and aft, was an array of what, from a distance, might have been taken for signal flags but which, on closer inspection, turned out to be a selection of tattered stockings, shirts and breeches. Age, wear and constant washing had turned every visible scrap of clothing a universal shade of grey, with the majority of the garments exhibiting more holes than material.
These were not the only refurbishments that had been inflicted upon the once proud ship. Her bowsprit had been removed, and where the poop deck had been, there now stood a clinker- built, soot-engrained shack, complete with sloping roof and chimney stack, from which grey smoke was billowing. A similar construction adorned the ship's forecastle. It was obvious from her appearance that a great many years had passed since Rapacious last experienced the roar and thunder of battle in her search for prey. This was further confirmed by the lack of heavy ordnance; her open gun ports revealed that cannon muzzles had been replaced by immovable cast-iron grilles.
The truncation of her masts and the lack of armament had lightened the ship's weight considerably. As a result, she was riding much higher out of the water than was normal for a vessel her size. A walkway formed from metal gratings followed the line of the orlop deck. From it a series of wooden stairs rose towards a small platform, similar to a church pulpit, affixed adjacent to the boarding gap in the ship's handrail.
Huge chains at bow and stern secured Rapacious to the riverbed. Beyond the ship, four more vessels in a similar state of disrepair sat moored in mid-stream, line astern and a cable's length apart, their blunted bows facing downriver.
All around, a bewildering variety of other vessels lay at anchor, from brigs to cutters and from frigates to flush-decked sloops, their yellow and black hulls gleaming, masts rising tall and straight, while pennants, not grubby pantaloons, fluttered gaily from their yardarms. They were Britain's pride and they were ready for war.
By comparison, isolated from the rest of the fleet, Rapacious and her four sister ships looked as if they had been discarded and left to rot; victims of a terrible and terminal disease.
Seated in the waist of the longboat, one man ignored the lamentations of his companions and gazed at the ship with what could have been interpreted as interest rather than dread. Two scars were visible on the left side of his face. The first followed the curve of his cheekbone, an inch below his left eye. The second scar, less livid, ran an inch below the first. His long hair was dark save for a few streaks of grey above the temple. His jacket and breeches were severely worn and faded, though in a better state of repair than the clothes of many of the men huddled around him, some of whom were clad in little more than rags. And while the bulk of his companions were either barefooted or else wearing poorly fitting shoes, his feet were shod in what appeared to be a pair of stout but well-scuffed military boots.