It would have been easy to have gotten Colgrave. He was so vulnerable. Crippled as he was, he was no infighter. But I did not try. None of us ever did, though we all thought about it. I could see the speculation on a dozen faces then.
So easy. Kill the crazy bastard, run Dragon aground, and forget hunting spook ships.
You'll never do it, never do it, echoed through my mind.
Any other crew on any other ship would have strangled the insane sonofabitch ages earlier.
III
"I can see her mainsail," said Little Mica. "She's shifting sail again."
"Speed it up, Barley," said the Old Man. He put that cold eye on me as I tried to sneak my cup in again. A half pint was barely enough to warm the throat.
Better be hogsheads full on that three-master, I thought.
"Looks like she's trying for the squall," Tor called down. "I make her a Freylander. She was showing personal colors but got them in before I could read them."
Ah. That meant there was someone important aboard. They thought maybe we would not try as hard if we did not know.
Freyland lay west of Cape Blood, a dozen leagues to seaward where it came nearest the mainland. The caravel must have been making the run from Portsmouth to Songer or Ringerike, an overnight journey.
We seldom prowled the coasts of the island kingdom because the ghost ship seldom appeared there. We left Freyland to our competitors, the Trolledyngjans.
Colgrave's expression - what could be read through the scars - was deflated. Not The One. Again. Then he reconsidered. The flight and flirting with colors could be a ploy. He had done the same himself, to lull a Red Islander or Itaskian.
"Shift your heading another point to starboard," he ordered. "Bosun, come down and prepare the decks."
Lank Tor descended as agilely as an ape. Only the Kid scrambled through the rigging more quickly. But Kid sometimes fell.