The deck was nearly empty by now, a stillness as shocking as the abrupt outbreak of pitched battle.
Wallace caught them both by the arm, tugging at them.“This way, this way!The boats are going up the coast to let everybody off in some remote cove.”
“How in heaven did you come to be here?”Solomon demanded.
“Clear the deck, clear the deck!”a man in a fisherman’s cap was shouting from his position on the gunwale.“Look lively there!We’re leaving.”
“I’ll tell you later,” Wallace said in answer to Solomon’s question.“Let’s go.”
They turned to dash across the deck and ran headlong into a man coming up through the hatchway.Jed recognised him as one of the longshoremen who’d been in the cellar with him, a short, grey-bearded man.
“Have you seen the register?”the man demanded.“It’s got all our names in it.We have to destroy it before we go.”
“Especially if someone’s been killed,” Jed said, a chill running down his spine.“Have they?”
“I don’t know.I don’t think so.We’ve locked the officers and men in the hold.”
One of the younger longshoremen came running up, carrying a ledger.“I have it!I have it!”
“There’s a copy back at the Blacksmith’s Arms, I make sure,” Jed pointed out, as the man tore the most recent pages from the ledger, crumpled them up around a holystone, and dropped them over the side.
“Yes, dammit, you’re right,” the first man said.
The two longshoremen exchanged glances.“Think you can find your way there through the town, Godfrey?”the older one said doubtfully.They were from Ilfracombe, Jed remembered, a village a good thirty-five miles away along the coast.
“I’ll go,” Jed said.“I know Minehead well.”
“It’s too risky,” Solomon said instantly.“And your name’s not even on the register.”
“No.But yours is.”
“We’re leaving!”the man by the gunwale shouted again.
They settled quickly that Jed, Solomon, and the younger longshoreman—his name was Godfrey—should go to the Blacksmith’s Arms.Wallace would come ashore with them—“Emma’s in Minehead,” he said.Understandably, he didn’t want to enter the inn or any other place where Vaughan might be.Jed thought it was damned courageous of him to have come this far.
They hurried to the boats, and soon the schooner, silent now, was receding into the distance behind them.
One of the boats put Jed and the three others ashore near the hamlet of Warren, a mile east of the harbour.Looking along the beach, Jed saw a cluster of bobbing, moving lights near the harbour—townsfolk drawn by the commotion on the schooner.With any bit of luck, Lieutenant Vaughan was there commandeering a force to take out to the schooner, leaving the Rondy deserted.He wouldn’t have an easy task of it, for the tide was out and the boats in the harbour all aground.
“Follow me,” Jed said, leading the way in the short scramble up from the beach to the low-lying fields.He meant to take them into town from the east, staying well clear of the harbour.
The moon was veiled behind clouds now, and the sleeping streets were shrouded in darkness.Only the occasional light shone through a mullioned window.Jed had to stop every so often to get his bearings on the way to the Blacksmith’s Arms.
While in the boat, Wallace had explained how he and the rescuers came to be there.When he fled the Rose and Crown, almost two days ago now, he had gone directly to Barnstaple and found some fishermen he knew who drank at the Boar on market day.They had already heard of the pressing at Ilfracombe, and brought him around the coast to that village, where friends of the pressed men were planning a rescue.
“They got a message into the cellar to warn us,” Solomon said.“We were to be ready to break out at eight bells in the first watch.That’s what I was trying to tell you.”
Jed met his eye, reliving those moments when he’d been in the gig on the way to theOssoryand feared he had missed his chance.
Now, the four of them hurried through the dark and silent town, Jed leading the way.Their footsteps were deadened by the hard-packed mud of the unpaved streets, and the only sound was the distant hooting of an owl, somewhere in the inland woods.
Wallace fell into step beside Jed, speaking breathlessly as they hurried along.
“Emma spoke to your sister yesterday.A Mrs Penwick, I collect?”
Jed was too surprised to do more than nod.
“Emma came with us in the lugger from Barnstaple—we put into Ledcombe to let her ashore there.She said your sister lives there and is married to a man who’s friendly with the local magistrate and might have been willing to intervene on your behalf, somehow.”
