The Smugglers by Iain Lawrence Page A

dilemma.”
    Captain Crowe drew out his knife and flicked it open. “Then I'll have to cut ye into pieces,” he said calmly. “Your fingers and your toes, then your ears and eyes and lips. And what's left o' ye will tell me where it is, a' right.”
    “I won't,” I said, though I feared the quaver in my voice gave away the lie.
    “Oh, ye will,” said he. Crowe took my hand and slapped it on the rail. He pressed the knife against the knuckle of my little finger. The blade rocked across my skin. “Tell me, son,” he said. “Where is it?”
    In the silver of his knife, I saw two hugely staring eyes, horror-struck: my own face reflecting back at me. I saw the blade cut through the skin and the blood ooze out with a shocking, awful redness. And worst of all was Captain Crowe, hunched above me, calmly slicing through my finger.
That
was the thing that brought a scream to my lips. Captain Crowe was smiling.
    “You bloodthirsty pirate!” shouted Dasher. He came in a whirl across the deck and kicked the knife from the captain's hand. It flew off the rail and went spinning into the fog, glistening like a fallen star. “I'm not going to watch youcut up a boy. Not a lad and a shipmate. I'm not going to stand for that.”
    “Och, I'd never hae done it,” said Captain Crowe. He had turned in an instant into a madman, in an instant back again. Now he stood and brushed his trouser knees. “You didna have to kick awa' my best knife, Dasher. That was my favorite knife.”
    “Just leave him to think,” said Dasher. “He'll see the sense in the end.” Then he went to the wheel and brought the
Dragon
back to her course. “Steady as she goes,” he said. “By and large, that is.”
    Captain Crowe tugged at his jacket; he straightened his cravat. “Harry, come with me,” he said, and the two went down below.
    The
Dragon
sailed on, north toward England, through a fog that grew thick and then thin. I put my finger to my mouth and sucked away the blood, watching Dasher at the wheel, his jaunty self again. I hated to see him happy there, as though he had no other care at all, and hated even more to hear him start to sing.
    “Stop that,” I said.
    He looked wounded.
    “You're a dog in a doublet,” I said.
    He laughed. “What a thing to say! Didn't I save your bacon there? Didn't I risk my life and limb – ”
    “You knew it all along!” I cried. “As soon as you saw that cutter you knew she was a revenue ship. There
is
no other smuggler, and there never was. It's the
Dragon
that Larson wrote about. Right from the start it was the
Dragon
that was going to France.”
    “That's true enough,” said Dasher. He grinned at the binnacle, then cocked up his chin and shook his hair. He had caught his own reflection in the compass glass.
    “You must think me young and foolish,” I said.
    “Not at all,” said Dasher, staring straight ahead. “You're too quick by half, and that's your trouble.”
    I didn't feel clever at all. The truth, I saw, had been right in front of me from the very first day. “Captain Crowe told me that Father had sent him new orders,” I said. “But he can't read, can he? He told me that when I opened Larson's pouch.”
    “Are you still bleeding?” asked Dasher.
    I looked at my finger. “No,” said I.
    Only then did he look toward me. “What's done is done,” he said. “There's no comfort in a misery. But if you'd kept to yourself and asked no questions, we'd be running into Dover with the spirits, then on to London with the wool. You'd be going home the hero, and guineas richer for your troubles.”
    “Is that the way you planned it? You and Captain Crowe?”
    “More me than him,” said Dasher, beaming proudly. “He's a madman, Captain Haggis is. I'm the one what does the thinking for him. A fortnight to take the
Dragon
round to London? Why, that was plenty of time, I told him, to make a run to France and back. And then that Larson chap, that little gent, stumbled on it, didn't he? Lord