The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [618]
Marsali was restive, too.
“Where might they go, then? If they’ve gone to another port? Germain, stop! Ye’ll fall in, next thing!” She bent to retrieve her offspring, who had been hanging over the edge of the wharf, peacefully exploring its underside, and hoicked him up onto one hip.
“Bonnet?” Jamie raised his brows, contriving to look simultaneously encouraging and menacing.
“They gone see da whale or don’t they?” yelled the gentleman in the boat, impatient to be off on more profitable ventures.
Duff seemed somewhat at a loss as to whom to reply to first. His small eyes blinked, shifting to and fro between Jamie, Marsali, and his increasingly vociferous partner below. I stepped in to break the impasse.
“What’s all this about a whale?”
Compelled to focus on this straightforward question, Duff looked relieved.
“Why, the dead whale, Missus. A big ’un, gone aground on the Island. I thought sure as ye’d all come down to see.”
I looked out across the water, and for the first time realized that the boat traffic was not entirely random. While a few large canoes and barges were headed toward the mouth of Cape Fear, most of the smaller craft were plying to and fro, disappearing into the distant haze, or returning from it, bearing small groups of passengers. Linen parasols sprouted like pastel mushrooms from the boats, and there was a sprinkling of what were obviously townspeople on the dock, standing as we were, looking expectantly across the harbor.
“Two shillin’s the boatload,” Duff suggested ingratiatingly. “Over and back.”
Roger, Brianna, and Marsali looked interested. Jamie looked uneasy.
“In that?” he asked, with a skeptical glance at the piretta, bobbing gently below. Duff’s partner—a gentleman of indeterminate race and language—seemed inclined to take offense at this implied criticism of his craft, but Duff was reassuring.
“Oh, it’s dead calm today, sir, dead calm. Why, ’twould be like sittin’ on a tavern bench. Congenial, aye? Verra suitable to conversation.” He blinked, innocently affable.
Jamie drew a deep breath in through his nose, and I saw him glance once more at the piretta. Jamie hated boats. On the other hand, he would do far more desperate things than get into a boat in pursuit of Stephen Bonnet. The only question was whether Mr. Duff actually had information to that end, or was only inveigling passengers. Jamie swallowed hard and braced his shoulders, steeling himself to it.
Not waiting, Duff reinforced his position by turning craftily to Marsali.
“There’s a lighthouse on the Island, ma’am. Ye can see a good ways out to sea from the top o’ that. See if any ships should be lyin’ off.”
Marsali’s hand dropped at once to her pocket, fumbling for the strings. I observed Germain solicitously poking a dead mussel over her shoulder toward Jemmy’s eagerly open mouth, like a mother bird feeding her offspring a nice juicy worm, and tactfully intervened, taking Jemmy into my own arms.
“No, sweetheart,” I said, dropping the mussel off the dock. “You don’t want that nasty thing. Wouldn’t you like to go see a nice dead whale, instead?”
Jamie sighed in resignation, and reached for his sporran. “Ye’d best call for another boat, then, so as we’ll not all drown together.”
IT WAS LOVELY out on the water, with the sun covered by a hazy layer of cloud, and a cool breeze that made me take my hat off for the pleasure of feeling the wind in my hair. While not quite flat calm, the rise and fall of the surf was peacefully lulling—to those of us not afflicted by seasickness.
I glanced at Jamie’s back, but his head was bent, shoulders moving in an easy, powerful rhythm as he rowed.
Resigned to the inevitable, he had taken brisk charge of the situation, summoning a second boat and herding Bree, Marsali, and the boys into it. Thereupon Jamie had unfastened his brooch and announced that he and Roger would row the remaining piretta, in order that Duff might put himself at ease