They were slicing through the water now. The ferryman was skilled. He did not look very strong—he was wiry rather than powerful—but he steered a course that cut yards off their distance. Monk admired his skill.
“There!” Coulter pointed at a lighter ahead, which was slowing a little to make way for a string of barges going downriver. There was a figure crouching low to the deck. It could be Phillips; it was impossible to tell at this distance.
Cooperation. That was why in the end Runcorn had been promoted rather than Monk. Runcorn knew how to keep silent about his own opinions, even when he was right. He knew how to please the men with power. Monk despised that, and had said so.
But Runcorn had been right: Monk was not easy to work with. He had not allowed himself to be.
The barges had passed and the lighter was picking up speed again, but they were far closer to it now. He could see Phillips clearly. This time they were in the open river and he could not hide. The space between them was narrowing: fifty feet, forty feet, thirty feet.
Suddenly Phillips was on his feet, his left arm clasped around the lighterman, his right hand with a long knife in it across the lighterman’s throat. He was smiling.
There were only twenty feet between them now, and the lighter was losing speed rapidly as both men stood frozen. More barges were heading for them, already altering course to avoid ramming them.
With pounding rage Monk realized what Phillips was going to do, and there was no way to prevent it. He felt completely helpless, cold inside.
Ten feet now and still closing. The barges were bearing down on them.
Phillips whipped the knife from the man’s throat and drove it hard into the side of his belly. Blood gushed out, and the lighterman collapsed just as Coulter leapt at him. Phillips scrambled beyond his reach, hesitated a moment, then leapt for the lead barge. He fell short and landed in the water, throwing up a huge splash. But after the first shock, he struggled to the surface, mouth open as he gulped frantically at the air, arms and legs thrashing.
Coulter did what any decent man would. He swore a string of curses at Phillips, and bent to help the wounded lighterman, gathering as much cloth as he could into his fist and holding it on the wound while Orme—who had followed Coulter—took off his jacket, then his shirt, folded the shirt into a pad, and held it, stopping the blood as much as possible.
The bargees had pulled Phillips out of the water, already opening the distance between them and the drifting lighter with the ferry alongside it. Whether they meant to or not, their weight and speed meant that they could not stop easily. Phillips would be around the curve of the river beyond the Isle of Dogs in fifteen or twenty minutes.
Monk looked at the lighterman. His face was ashen, but if he reached medical help he might still be saved. That was what Phillips was counting on. He had never intended to kill him.
The ferryman was stunned, not knowing what to do.
“Take him to the nearest doctor,” Monk ordered. “You, get rowing as fast as you can. Coulter, look after him. Orme, put your jacket on and come with me.”
“Yes, sir!” Orme snatched up his jacket, and stood ready.
The ferryman took up the oars.
Orme and Coulter very gently and awkwardly picked up the injured man and laid him in the bottom of the ferry, Coulter holding the pad over his wound all the time.
Monk went to the fallen oar of the low, flat-bottomed lighter, and gripped it with both hands, balancing his weight. The moment Orme was on board Monk began to pull away. It came to him more naturally than he had expected. He knew, from flashes of memory and things he had been told, that he had grown up in Northumberland around boats, mostly fishing and in bad weather lifeboats. The way of the sea was ingrained in his experience, some inner sense of discipline. One can rebel against man and laws, but only a fool rebels against the sea, and he does it only once.
“We’ll not catch up with him!” Orme said desperately. “I’d tie the noose around his neck with my own hands, and pull the trapdoor.”
Monk did not answer. He was getting the weight and movement of the long oar right, and learning how to turn it to gain the greatest purchase against the water. At last they were going with the tide now, but then so were the barges, fifty yards ahead of them at least.
There was nothing Orme could do to help; it was a one-man job. He sat a little way over to the other side to balance Monk’s weight, staring ahead, his uniform jacket fastened to hide as much as possible the fact that he now had no shirt. Certainly he would never wear that one again.
“They’re longer than we are,” Monk said with determined optimism. “They can’t weave through the anchored shipping, but we can. They’ll have to go around.”
“If we go in between those ships we’ll lose sight of them,” Orme warned grimly. “God knows where he could get to!”
“If we don’t, we’ll lose them anyway,” Monk replied. “They’re fifty yards ahead now, and gaining.” He threw his weight onto the oar, and pulled it the wrong way. He knew the moment he felt the resistance that he had made a mistake. It took him more than a minute to get into the rhythm again.
Orme deliberately looked the other way, as if he had not noticed.
The barges swung wide around an East Indiaman anchored ahead of them, stevedores working on deck with chests of spices, silks, and probably tea.
Monk took the chance, veering to the port to pass between the East Indiaman and a Spanish schooner off- loading pottery and oranges. He concentrated on the regularity of his strokes and keeping his balance exactly right, and trying not to think that the barges were going over to the far shore now that they were out of sight. If they did, he might lose them, but if he did not take the chance to catch up, he certainly would.
He passed as close as he dared to the East Indiaman, almost under the shadow of her hull. He could hear the water slapping against her and the faint hum and rattle of the wind in the shrouds.
