“Oh, aye, I suppose so. Besides, it would be a shame to cheat Young Ian of his adventure. Come on, then, let’s get out of the wind.”
We moved inland a bit, away from the crumbling edge of the cliff, and sat down to wait, using the horses’ bodies as shelter. Rough, shaggy Highland ponies, they appeared unmoved by the unpleasant weather, merely standing together, heads down, tails turned against the wind.
The wind was too high for easy conversation. We sat quietly, leaning together like the horses, with our backs to the windy shore.
“What’s that?” Jamie raised his head, listening.
“What?”
“I thought I heard shouting.”
“I expect it’s the seals,” I said, but before the words were out of my mouth, he was up and striding toward the cliff’s edge.
The cove was still full of curling mist, but the wind had uncovered the seals’ island, and it was clearly visible, at least for the moment. There were no seals on it now, though.
A small boat was drawn up on a sloping rock shelf at one side of the island. Not a fisherman’s boat; this one was longer and more pointed at the prow, with one set of oars.
As I stared, a man appeared from the center of the island. He carried something under one arm, the size and shape of the box Jamie had described. I didn’t have long to speculate as to the nature of this object, though, for just then a second man came up the far slope of the island and into sight.
This one was carrying Young Ian. He had the boy’s half-naked body slung carelessly over one shoulder. It swung head down, arms dangling with a limpness that made it clear the boy was unconscious or dead.
“Ian!” Jamie’s hand clamped over my mouth before I could shout again.
“Hush!” He dragged me to my knees to keep me out of sight. We watched, helpless, as the second man heaved Ian carelessly into the boat, then took hold of the gunwales to run it back into the water. There wasn’t a chance of making the descent down the chimney and the swim to the island before they succeeded in making their escape. But escape to where?
“Where did they come from?” I gasped. Nothing else stirred in the cove below, save the mist and the shifting kelp-beds, turning in the tide.
“A ship. It’s a ship’s boat.” Jamie added something low and heartfelt in Gaelic, and then was gone. I turned to see him fling himself on one of the horses and wrench its head around. Then he was off, riding hell-for-leather across the headland, away from the cove.
Rough as the footing across the headland was, the horses were shod for it better than I was. I hastily mounted and followed Jamie, a high-pitched whinny of protest from Ian’s hobbled mount ringing in my ears.
It was less than a quarter of a mile to the ocean side of the headland, but it seemed to take forever to reach it. I saw Jamie ahead of me, his hair flying loose in the wind, and beyond him, the ship, lying to offshore.
The ground broke away in a tumble of rock that fell down to the ocean, not so steep as the cliffs of the cove, but much too rough to take a horse down. By the time I had reined up, Jamie was off his horse, and picking his way down the rubble toward the water.
To the left, I could see the longboat from the island, pulling round the curve of the headland. Someone on the ship must have been looking out for them, for I heard a faint hail from the direction of the ship, and saw small figures suddenly appear in the rigging.
One of these must also have seen us, for there was a sudden agitation aboard, with heads popping up above the rail and more yelling. The ship was blue, with a broad black band painted all around it. There was a line of gunports set in this band, and as I watched, the forward one opened, and the round black eye of the gun peeked out.
“Jamie!” I shrieked, as loudly as I could. He looked up from the rocks at his feet, saw where I was pointing, and hurled himself flat in the rubble as the gun went off.
The report wasn’t terribly loud, but there was a sort of whistling noise past my head that made me duck instinctively. Several of the rocks around me exploded in puffs of flying rock chips, and it occurred to me, rather belatedly, that the horses and I were a great deal more visible there at the top of the headland than Jamie was on the cliff below.
The horses, having grasped this essential fact long before I did, were on their way back to where we had left their hobbled fellow well before the dust had settled. I flung myself bodily over the edge of the headland, slid several feet in a shower of gravel, and wedged myself into a deep crevice in the cliff.
There was another explosion somewhere above my head, and I pressed myself even closer into the rock. Evidently the people on board the ship were satisfied with the effect of their last shot, for relative silence now descended.
My heart was hammering against my ribs, and the air around my face was full of a fine gray dust that gave me an irresistible urge to cough. I risked a look over my shoulder, and was in time to see the longboat being hoisted aboard ship. Of Ian and his two captors, there was no sign.
The gunport closed silently as I watched, and the rope that held the anchor slithered up, streaming water. The ship turned slowly, seeking wind. The air was light and the sails barely puffed, but even that was enough. Slowly, then faster, she was moving toward the open sea. By the time Jamie had reached my roosting place, the ship had all but vanished in the thick cloudbank that obscured the horizon.
“Jesus” was all he said when he reached me, but he clutched me hard for a moment. “Jesus.”
He let go then, and turned to look out over the sea. Nothing moved save a few tendrils of slow-floating mist. The whole world seemed stricken with silence; even the occasional cries of the murres and shearwaters had been cut off by the cannon’s boom.
The gray rock near my foot showed a fresh patch of lighter gray, where shot had struck off a wide flake of stone. It was no more than three feet above the crevice where I had taken refuge.
