The Smuggler's Curse (19 page)

I do not hear what the task is as he gathers the gun crew close to him. But whatever the Captain has planned, they seem happy enough about it as they head down the track and back to the ship, leaving six of us to visit the magistrate.

The magistrate's house, made of the same red stone as the courthouse, is impressive, but then most government officials live in impressive houses, even in one-horse towns like Cossack. It is surrounded by a low stone wall, bordering the church graveyard on one side and the courthouse on the other.

‘Briggs, to the back door, if you would be so kind,' says the Captain. ‘We don't need any surprises.'

An old gardener is digging in the vegetable patch. He ignores us and keeps on with his work. Which is odd, considering we are half-a-dozen disreputable looking strangers, all well-armed with pistols, rifles and daggers. In fact, we must look just like the characters of
Treasure Island
cast ashore.

I am surprised when the front door opens before we
get to it. The magistrate steps out of his doorway as we are filing through the gate. ‘Captain Bowen, I presume? Good morning, sir. Pray, why do I have the pleasure of greeting you this beautiful morning?'

He must have been a brave man coming outside to meet us like that. Me, I would have been out the back door and across the desert as fast as my legs could carry me. We look as fierce as Genghis' gang of pirates in the Straits.

‘Good morning to you too, sir,' replies the Captain. ‘I was wondering if you could enlighten me, Magistrate Wedgwood, as to what might have happened last night to cause your lighthouse to fail just when we needed it most?' The Captain looks up at the hill that looms over the town. ‘The lighthouse flame went out but was replaced by a fire on the beach just north of here. It could have led my helmsman straight onto the reef.'

Even from where we stand outside the house we can see, off in the distance, the spine-chilling reef of dark, jagged rocks lashed by wild white surf, looking like the foaming mouth of a rabid dog. Two old ship's masts, still with scraps of canvas flying from the spars, stick out above the boiling sea. The ribs of the ships remind me of skeletons stripped bare of flesh.

The magistrate's smile slowly fades. The Captain says
nothing else and looks unflinchingly into his face. The man has no real answer to give. No amount of denial or any degree of bluffing is going to work. The game is up and the magistrate knows it, just as he must know Captain Bowen's reputation. He gulps and his eyes flit about, desperately searching for a way to escape.

‘What is the Captain going to do?' I whisper.

‘Wait,' hisses Sam Chi. ‘And watch.'

‘Bowen!' someone behind us shouts. I turn to see a group of heavily armed men marching towards the house. There are about fifteen of them, so we are greatly outnumbered.

‘Bowen!' repeats the oldest one, his voice angry, as they near the stone wall. ‘Who do you think you are, invading our town like a band of scurvy pirates?'

In a single move, the Captain pulls his knife from his boot, grabs the magistrate by the arm and swings him before him, the blade to his throat. ‘One step further and you lose your magistrate, you bunch of bloodthirsty wreckers,' yells the Captain.

‘Send him to the Devil for all I care!' yells back the leader.

One of the townsmen, a taller man at the side, lifts his pistol and fires. The shot is loud but the bullet goes wide.

I instantly duck down and crawl up against the stone
wall. I glance about, trying not to panic. The rest of the crew are down as well, but the Captain and magistrate still stand in the doorway until suddenly the Captain pushes the magistrate away, dives forward and rolls behind the wall too, leaving the lawman looking confused. Another of the men fires our way and then a hail of deadly bullets whizzes over our heads.

Briggs appears around the side of the house. He glances at the gaggle of angry men, lifts his rifle and fires, hardly aiming. A wrecker cries out and falls backwards, clutching at his chest.

Briggs crouches down, but instead of reloading his rifle he calls to me. ‘Red, your pistol!'

I toss him my Colt. He catches it one-handed, cocks back the hammer with his thumb and fires several times in quick succession.

Suddenly, a man wielding an old-fashioned sword jumps up onto the wall directly above me. As he leaps over my head, I thrust my knife up. The blade catches him on the ankle, and as he lands on the injured leg, it buckles under him. He topples over and falls heavily with a loud thump. Yelling in pain, he lies on his side, winded.

‘Retreat! Fall back!' yells the Captain. ‘Into the graveyard.'

Most of the wreckers stand back, reloading their guns,

so we have a minute or so until they finish.

I scramble over the sidewall, keeping as low as I can, and run between the weathered gravestones and duck down in some long dry grass behind a solid looking slab of smooth granite.

The wreckers are swarming into the garden and heading our way when the main window of the magistrate's house suddenly shatters and the front door flies from its hinges and cartwheels across the garden. A cannon roars massively from the sea. A wrecker yells in alarm as the solid door slams into him, knocking him to the ground. He lies still. Rocks explode in the house walls and dust fills the air. Before I can work out what has happened, more booms sound from across the water. The Black Dragon has arrived and the gun crew has fired all her cannons. Seconds later, another window shatters and the distinctive crack of the stern-chaser sounds. The gun crew is obviously in excellent reloading form as, within seconds, another salvo of shots tears into the magistrate's house, leaving gaping holes. One more and the building will be blown into destruction.

‘Had enough?' yells Captain Bowen. ‘Next it will be your boats. Then your houses, so help me!'

‘Enough!' someone yells. The wreckers stand slowly, one at a time, dropping their guns and holding up their
hands in surrender, utterly defeated.

The Captain waves his hat. Out on the Dragon, through the gun smoke haze, we can see Bosun Stevenson at the helm. He waves back. Mr Smith, standing at the rail beside Long Tom, also lifts his hand and waves.

In the shattered doorway, the magistrate, what is left of him, slumps over a pile of rubble. I stare dumbfounded. His head is missing, completely blown off. I can't take my eyes from the ghastly sight, not quite believing what I am looking at. Blood pours from the top of his collar where his head should be. I look away. In the months since I joined the Dragon, I have seen all manner of death and destruction, and enough blood to fill Roebuck Bay, but I have never seen a man with his head blasted completely off. I wonder too, about myself. Only a few months ago I would have probably thrown up seeing a dreadful sight like that, but now I feel okay, just a little shocked, and even a quiet sense of satisfaction fills me. I feel a bit guilty at that.

The wreckers must be a hard lot. Not one of them seems the least bit concerned that their local lawman lies dead, shattered and headless only yards away.

‘You all know who I am?' asks the Captain when the wreckers gather at the gate, bewildered, bloodied and dazed by the sudden turn.

The leader nods, sullenly. ‘Of course.'

‘Well, listen and listen well,' says the Captain. ‘We are on our way from here, but be assured, if I ever hear of another ship coming to grief here, be it your fault, be it bad seamanship, or even an act of God, I don't care. I will bring the Dragon back and I will level Cossack so that not even a single blade of grass is left alive. I am a man of my word and this is my solemn promise to you. Stick to fishing and you might live long, but one more wreck hereabouts and you all die. Believe me.'

With that, the Captain turns and leads us towards the beach. I look back once or twice, but they just stand there staring, almost in disbelief, until the dinghy arrives and we are rowed back to our boat. Unbelievably, the gardener is still digging away as if nothing at all has happened.

‘Captain,' I ask later. ‘That magistrate? Were you going to kill him if Mr Smith hadn't shot his head off with a cannon?'

‘Heavens no, Red. Haven't you noticed I hardly ever kill anybody?'

‘But Magistrate Wedgwood deserved it,' I reply. ‘He led the wreckers and must have killed lots of sailors.'

‘Indeed. It'll be good and warm where he's heading. I'm just glad we helped him along on his way down there, just a little sooner than he might have wanted. He
can roast his chestnuts over a hot fire for all eternity. Not that he'll be able to find them without a head.'

I nod happily. ‘And the other wreckers will be having sleepless nights every time there is a storm brewing, bringing ships close to the reef,' I say.

‘Yes, they will,' he agrees. ‘Though I was sorely tempted to let Mr Smith keep on blasting away all day and send them all to Hell. No one calls me a scurvy pirate. The nerve of them. Cheeky swine.

At sunrise five days later, the Captain and I are rowed ashore to a windswept, sandy beach, well out of sight of any coastal settlements. We make our way through sand hills covered with beach grass and pig-face and up to a sandy track about two hundred yards back from the water. We watch the dinghy head back to the Dragon and then start walking south along the narrow gap in the vegetation.

‘The Halfway House is a fair trek inland to the main road south. It's a hotel where the coaches change horses,' says the Captain, after he sees me looking about bewildered. There is absolutely nothing but low scrub ahead.

‘Halfway House? Halfway to where?' I ask.

‘I've never thought about it. Nowhere, I'd say. Or
halfway to Hell. There's not a lot out here, is there?'

I nod my head in agreement.

A chilly, drizzly morning has me shivering. I turn my collar up to help keep the cold from seeping into my bones as we trudge along the road and then down the slope towards a grey timber building in the distance. The collar is of little use and I am soon aching from the cold. I am not accustomed to this sort of southern weather.

When we finally arrive at Halfway House, a dusty-looking coach is standing ready in front of the hotel. A red Royal Mail symbol on its door has all but faded away. Four horses are snorting and stamping their hooves and pulling against the harnesses. Mist from their warm bodies rises in the morning air and the familiar smell of horseflesh, oiled leather harness and manure fills my nostrils.

‘Wait here, Red,' says the Captain. ‘I'll go and buy our fares.'

I am grateful the Captain has paid for us to ride inside the coach, unlike the half-a-dozen men who have tickets to ride clinging to the outside roof. Several men are shivering before we even leave, and although it isn't cold enough to freeze, it will be a seriously miserable ride for them.

There are two ladies ready to climb aboard, so
the Captain and I will have to share the inside of the coach.

‘Ma'am, if you would allow me to introduce myself,' says the Captain, holding out his hand to the older woman wearing a pale yellow hat. ‘I am Captain James Bowen, of Ravenscroft, in Broome,' he says, smiling widely.

I see the woman's eyes brighten considerably at the word ‘Captain.' She too extends her hand. ‘Miss Jane Boston, of Mount Martin Station, and my ward, Miss Elizabeth Barnett.'

‘Delighted,' he says. ‘And may I introduce Mr Red Read, my secretary.'

The women both smile sweetly at me but do not seem that interested, after which the Captain helps them aboard while I hold the coach door open.

‘Settle in for a long, bumpy ride, Red,' says the Captain, as I climb up a small metal step and sit on the hard horsehair seat beside him. ‘This stretch should take all day but will feel like a week. And in a few minutes, you will see why I prefer riding on water and not land.'

The driver yells, snaps the brake off, and the groom leads the horses in a big wheel out onto the road, the coach jerking against the harnesses. Less than a minute later, the driver cracks his whip and the horses pick up a steady trot. The sound of their hooves striking the packed
earth of the road is loud and relentless. After weeks at sea, I think I have become more used to the quieter sounds of the wind, the creak of the hull and the swish of the Dragon's oak timbers sliding effortlessly through the water.

My feet only just reach the floor. After a mile or so the Captain notices me squirming uncomfortably in my seat, as every pothole and every rock in the road sends a shock up through my bum.

‘Here, Red, this might help a little,' he says. He places his leather satchel on the floor between us so I have a footrest. It does help, but by the time we stop to change horses, I can hardly walk. I notice too, the Captain stretching his legs and rubbing the seat of his pants.

‘Remind me, boy, never to do this again. I think I'd rather face a whole fleet of Chang Pao's pirates than another hour of this infernal misery,' he says as we climb back on board for the next leg of the journey. ‘My back will never be the same again, so help me.'

In the afternoon, as the shadows of the spindly trees grow longer and darker across the road, and we pass the fifteen-mile marker carved into a stump at the road's edge, a gunshot sounds. Someone on the roof curses and the horses whinny as the coach driver pulls them to a halt.

‘Stand and deliver!' a voice shouts.

‘Surely he jests. A bushranger? In this day and age?' says the Captain, with a pronounced sigh. He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘You only have to stand outside Fremantle Prison for a short while to see the fate of most road agents. Let me tell you, Red, a few years on the wrong end of a government pick and shovel is a good way to shorten your days.'

We can see the man through the coach window. He sits astride a chestnut horse and is dressed not unlike the Captain, all in black and wearing high riding boots. His hat is pulled down low and a scarf wraps around his face so only his eyes show. Although he wears the clothes of a wealthy gentleman, they don't seem to fit him at all. His coat is several sizes too big and his trousers are loose and baggy.