when they broke for freedom anything might be waiting for them out there in the night.
The lantern had sputtered and died from lack of oil, and they had only the shadows of men and terse orders to assure them that deliverance was at hand. They emerged from their refuge, stepping warily behind the unknown emissary, past shuttered and silent buildings, sinister by their very quiet.
In the open, noises, of disorder and signs of a gathering tumult were much clearer on the night air, sounds that were both distant and near, chilling in their portent of chaos to come. They hurried along the claustrophobic streets in a tight group, this way and that, until they reached yet another of the small humped bridges.
On the other side was a rich gondola, its varnished black sides glittering in the illumination of a single street-light. A pair of gondoliers stood tense and ready. The party tumbled in, and packed into the cabin, falling against each other in their haste. The gondoliers poled off, but not before Renzi, raising the slats of the cabin window to catch a last sight, noticed a figure detach itself from the shadows and a gloved hand lift in silent farewell.
The motion of the craft was purposeful and steady, the men in the cabin having no difficulty in visualising its track along the narrow canals, then the straight course and lively movement of the open lagoon.
The regular creak and thrust of the gondoliers ceased unexpectedly, leaving the gondola to an aimless bobbing. Renzi peered out. 'We're in the lagoon, more to the south, and off the Arsenale — I can see the entrance.' This would be where the xebec would break out, through the twin towers of the gate from the internal basin and through the channel to open waters — if the rising were successful.
Few craft were abroad that could be seen in the rising moon, and a motionless gondola was a dangerous curiosity. It couldn't be helped: if attention was diverted to the water by some incident their fate would be sealed. This was the Carradini gondola and Lucrezia would have paid the gondoliers well for their night's work — but enough?
Renzi checked the flint and steel he had been given. It was essential that they attract the attention of the xebec at the right time or they would be left behind in its desperate flight. It was time, but there was no sign of insurrection or riot in the brighdy lit dockyard.
Lifting more of the slats, he scanned the lagoon. At night there was no reason to sail about, the wharves had no men to work cargo and no one to account for its movement. A couple of other gondolas, far off, moving at speed, and some anonymous low river-boats were all that were in sight.
Then from round the northern point of Venice came a larger vessel, a lugger. It altered course directly towards them.
'Trouble,' he muttered, and alerted the others. Their die was cast: there was no way they could make it back into the maze of canals before the lugger closed with them.
'Somethin' happenin'.' Kydd had been watching the dockyard. Renzi snatched a look. They could not see into the basin, but he could have sworn that a gunflash briefly lit up the front of one of the buildings.
The lugger came on purposefully. But there were men at the Arsenale entrance — and then the bows of a vessel emerged into the channel, indistinct and with no sail hoisted. Renzi hesitated; if this was not the xebec, their one chance . . . but he could just make out the three counter-raked masts of such a vessel — and not only that: there was musket firing.
This was their salvation — if he got the light going. Kydd held the wooden tube close, the grainy fuse close to Renzi's flint. Renzi struck it once, twice. No fat spark leaped across. Again — this time a faint orange speck.
The xebec won through to open water; it was under oars, but a triangular sail was jerking up from the deck. It angled over.
'For Christ's sake!' The strangled oath had come from Griffith. The flint must have got wet, and there was nothing for it but to keep trying, hard, vicious hits. A bigger spark, but it missed the fuse. Renzi steadied and struck again. The spark leaped, and landed squarely on the fuse with an instant orange fizz. Kydd stepped out into the well of the gondola, and the light caught, a pretty golden shower.
The xebec immediately lay over towards them, but the lugger would reach them well before it could. But then the lugger unexpectedly abandoned its pursuit and resumed its course along the foreshore of St Mark's.
As the xebec slashed towards them, Kydd laughed. 'It thinks th' shebek is takin' us in!'
It was the work of moments for the sailors to tumble over the low gunwale and on to the narrow deck, then turn to
