“Where did ye get it, anyway?” he asked, turning the pistol over in his hand. “Already primed, too. I knew I smelt gunpowder. Lucky ye didna blow your cock off, carrying it in your breeches.”
Before Young Ian could answer, I interrupted, pointing out to sea.
“Look!”
The French ship was little more than a blot on the face of the sea, but its sails shone pale in the glimmer of starlight. A two-masted ketch, it glided slowly past the cliff and stood off, silent as one of the scattered clouds behind it.
Jamie was not watching the ship, but looking downward, toward a point where the rock face broke in a tumble of boulders, just above the sand. Looking where he was looking, I could just make out a tiny prickle of light. Mr. Willoughby, with the lantern.
There was a brief flash of light that glistened across the wet rocks and was gone. Young Ian’s hand was tense on my arm. We waited, breaths held, to the count of thirty. Ian’s hand squeezed my arm, just as another flash lit the foam on the sand.
“What was that?” I said.
“What?” Jamie wasn’t looking at me, but out at the ship.
“On the shore; when the light flashed, I thought I saw something half-buried in the sand. It looked like—”
The third flash came, and a moment later, an answering light shone from the ship—a blue lantern, an eerie dot that hung from the mast, doubling itself in reflection in the dark water below.
I forgot the glimpse of what appeared to be a rumpled heap of clothing, carelessly buried in the sand, in the excitement of watching the ship. Some movement was evident now, and a faint splash reached our ears as something was thrown over the side.
“The tide’s coming in,” Jamie muttered in my ear. “The ankers float; the current will carry them ashore in a few minutes.”
That solved the problem of the ship’s anchorage—it didn’t need one. But how then was the payment made? I was about to ask when there was a sudden shout, and all hell broke loose below.
Jamie thrust his way at once through the gorse bushes, followed in short order by me and Young Ian. Little could be seen distinctly, but there was a considerable turmoil taking place on the sandy beach. Dark shapes were stumbling and rolling over the sand, to the accompaniment of shouting. I caught the words “Halt, in the King’s name!” and my blood froze.
“Excisemen!” Young Ian had caught it, too.
Jamie said something crude in Gaelic, then threw back his head and shouted himself, his voice carrying easily across the beach below.
Then he turned to Young Ian and me. “Go!” he said.
The noise suddenly increased as the clatter of falling rocks joined the shouting. Suddenly a dark figure shot out of the gorse by my feet and made off through the dark at high speed. Another followed, a few feet away.
A high-pitched scream came from the dark below, high enough to be heard over the other noises.
“That’s Willoughby!” Young Ian exclaimed. “They’ve got him!”
Ignoring Jamie’s order to go, we both crowded forward to peer through the screen of gorse. The dark-lantern had fallen atilt and the slide had come open, shooting a beam of light like a spotlight over the beach, where the shallow graves in which the Customs men had buried themselves gaped in the sand. Black figures swayed and struggled and shouted through the wet heaps of seaweed. A dim glow of light around the lantern was sufficient to show two figures clasped together, the smaller kicking wildly as it was lifted off its feet.
“I’ll get him!” Young Ian sprang forward, only to be pulled up with a jerk as Jamie caught him by the collar.
“Do as you’re told and see my wife safe!”
Gasping for breath, Young Ian turned to me, but I wasn’t going anywhere, and set my feet firmly in the dirt, resisting his tug on my arm.
Ignoring us both, Jamie turned and ran along the clifftop, stopping several yards away. I could see him clearly in silhouette against the sky, as he dropped to one knee and readied the pistol, bracing it on his forearm to sight downward.
The sound of the shot was no more than a small cracking noise, lost amid the tumult. The result of it, though, was spectacular. The lantern exploded in a shower of burning oil, abruptly darkening the beach and silencing the shouting.
The silence was broken within seconds by a howl of mingled pain and indignation. My eyes, momentarily blinded by the flash of the lantern, adapted quickly, and I saw another glow—the light of several small flames, which seemed to be moving erratically up and down. As my night vision cleared, I saw that the flames rose from the coat sleeve of a man, who was dancing up and down as he howled, beating ineffectually at the fire started by the burning oil that had splashed him.
The gorse bushes quivered violently as Jamie plunged over the cliffside and was lost to view below.
“Jamie!”
Roused by my cry, Young Ian yanked harder, pulling me half off my feet and forcibly dragging me away from the cliff.
