Halting, she dropped a hand on Will’s shoulder and answered the question he hadn’t asked. “It was safe to move him if he was already on the planks.”

Shifting her gaze from Will’s face, she got her first look at their survivor. He was lying on his stomach on the section of planking, a wet tangle of black hair screening his face.

He was large. Big. Not a giant, but in any company he would rank as impressive. Broad shoulders, long, heavy limbs. Running her gaze down his spine, she frowned at the bulge distorting his sodden coat. Bending, she reached out and touched it, felt the hardness, traced the odd shape.

“It’s a wooden cylinder in oilskins,” Will told her. “It’s slung in a leather holder with a loop around his belt. We think his arms must go through other loops to hold it in place.”

Linnet nodded. “Curious.” Had he been carrying the cylinder secretly? With it nestled between the muscles bracketing his spine, if he’d been upright, the fall of his coat would have concealed it.

Straightening, she ran her gaze down his legs, but saw no evidence of breaks or wounds. He was wearing breeches and a loose coat, the sort many sailors wore. His right arm was extended, the fingers of his large hand curled around the front edge of a plank. His other hand, however, lay level with his face, fingers locked in a death grip about the hilt of a dagger.

That seemed a trifle odd for a shipwreck.

Conscious of her pulse thudding-the run to the cliffs shouldn’t have made her heart beat so rapidly-she bent to look at the dagger. Not just a dagger, she realized-a dirk. The fine scrollwork on the blade was exquisite, the hilt larger than that of most knives, with a rounded stone set in the crosspiece. Reaching down, she pried long, hard, ice-cold fingers away from the hilt, then handed the dirk to Will. “Hold that for me.”