Lawhead, Stephen - Bright Empires 04 - The Shadow Lamp by Lawhead Stephen

Author:Lawhead, Stephen [Lawhead, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2013-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

In Which Unwanted Attention Is Aroused

Half a league! Closing fast, Captain,” called First Mate Garland, his voice falling from the upper rigging in sharp staccato blasts.

Lord Burleigh cupped his hands around his eyes and gazed into the too-bright sky. He could make out the silhouette of a man high up in the dizzying tangle of ropes and cables that spread like a web from the top of the mast. The white expanse of canvas billowed, full-bellied, before a good wind driving them towards the dark eminence of land on the horizon. The course was set for the Gibraltar Strait, the mouth of which they had hoped to clear before the evening tide flow made navigating more dangerous.

Many ships, arriving too late to chance passage in the dark, chose to wait in the Atlantic overnight—which made the region a prime location for pirates to ply their vile vocation. This was what had Captain Farrell and his crew muttering oaths and maledictions under their beards.

The Percheron was a tight and ready ship, but fast she was not. She rode too heavily in the water and carried only one mast, which limited the amount of canvas she could raise. In short, she was a sturdy, well-bred workhorse, not a racer: robust, resilient, handsome in her own way, but no one would ever call her sleek or fleet of foot.

“This is most worrisome, sir,” Farrell told him when Burleigh joined the captain in the wheelhouse a few moments later. “I own that I am deeply concerned.”

“And the nature of your disquiet, Captain?” inquired Burleigh.

“I ween that schooner abaft is following us with malicious intent. That is my apprehension.”

“Is it not just as likely they are merchantmen making for the strait and just as eager to reach it before nightfall as are we ourselves?”

“Aye, the possibility has occurred to me,” allowed Farrell. He tapped his pipe against a wheel peg and then put it back into his mouth. “Indeed, sir, it is greatly to be wished. And if we were in friendlier waters, I would not feel that sentiment ill placed.”

Burleigh heard the unspoken qualification in the seaman’s voice. “However?” he asked.

“We best be on our guard, sir. That’s all as needs sayin’ as of this present moment.”

“Your concern is duly noted, Mr. Farrell.” The earl cast a last glance over his shoulder at the white speck that was the trailing schooner. “Unless you require my presence, I will be in my cabin. Please do not hesitate to summon me should the situation alter.”

The seaman raised his hand and touched his temple with a knuckle in the traditional seaman’s salute. Burleigh went down the steps of the aft companionway to his chamber where he pulled off his boots, stretched out on his bed, and was soon sleeping the sleep of the dead. When he awoke some hours later, he returned to the quarterdeck to see that the sun was lower in the west and the dark smudge off port side had grown to a sizable mass.

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