The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [140]
‘I’ve laid some other bets. I break even either way, if you’ll help me.’
‘But I might lose.’
‘Yes. But I can’t calculate the probabilities. When I can’t do that, I don’t bet.’
Seagull chuckled. The coolness of the merchant amused him. And to think he’d been wondering whether to drown young Jonathan. Not only was that pointless now but the lad, by confusing Totton’s calculations, was actually making him another pound. ‘All right, then,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll do it.’
But as Henry Totton sat in his hall now, staring ahead and remembering this transaction, he could only curse himself. He had settled his stupid bet. But what about his son? Why had he let him go with the mariner? Because the boy had hurt him and he was angry. Angry with a mere child who had only been thinking of the adventure of going with his friend. He had let him go; he had acted coldly towards him. And now he had probably sent him to his death.
‘Don’t despair yet, Henry,’ he heard Burrard’s gruff voice. ‘They’ll probably turn up in the morning.’
If the men Burrard sent out had failed to find any sign of Seagull and his boat it was not surprising. At the moment when they reached Keyhaven in the late afternoon he was just over a mile away at the end of the long gravel spit and had been there for some time. But he had made no attempt to get to Keyhaven, nor did he particularly want anyone to see him.
He had been lucky not to lose the boys. It had been very close. At the instant when he saw them rolling towards the side, he had let go of the tiller and lunged after them, grabbing one with each hand as the boat yawed. They had almost gone over, all three of them. ‘Hold him,’ he had cried to Willie as he released his grip on Jonathan and grabbed the rail with his free hand; and if Willie hadn’t clung on to his friend like a limpet, young Jonathan would surely have been lost.
The next quarter of an hour had been like a nightmare. They had dropped the sail and rowed; but each time they had seemed to make progress the current, with an awful dreamlike logic, had carried them further towards the long shadow of the galleass, which mysteriously hovered, sometimes hidden in the shrouds of the storm, sometimes glimpsed, yet never moving. At last, pulling for all they were worth, the men had managed, as the tide still swept them remorselessly, to touch the gravel edge of the spit and get the boat grounded almost on the very lip of the channel that rushed by, out to sea.
But now Seagull had other things on his mind. He cupped his hands over his eyes and stared intently across the water.
The storm had not slackened; but seen from the shore the downpour had resolved itself into trailing curtains of grey clouds that swept past remorselessly. Through these, nothing could be seen at more than a hundred yards; but in the brief intervals between, Seagull could see some way into the foaming channel.
At last he turned. The crew and the boys were doing their best to shelter from the rain in the lee of the boat, which they had pulled up on to the beach.
‘What are we going to do, Alan?’ one of them called now. ‘We going to Keyhaven?’
‘Nope.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of that.’ And as he turned and pointed they saw once more the long, tall shape of the galleass appear faintly out in the channel. ‘She ain’t moved,’ he said. ‘Know what that means?’ The man nodded. ‘I don’t reckon anyone but us has seen her,’ Seagull continued.
‘She may get off all right.’
‘And then she may not. So we’ll wait and see.’
And with that he returned to his position, watching.
The gravel banks in the west mouth of the Solent were not usually a hazard. Firstly, they were well known. Every pilot knew how to approach them. Secondly, the channel between them was deep and necessitated only a single turn as one came near the tip of the Isle of Wight. In spring storms, however, it was not unknown for vessels to run aground and shipwrecks to occur.
Clearly the galleass had run aground. With the tide running out, she would be left stranded, buffeted by the