William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

shouted across the water. Within moments a light boat, twelve or fourteen feet long, drew up to the steps with a single man aboard at the oars. His face was weather-beaten to the color of old wood, his gray beard little more than bristle, and his hat, jammed down over his ears, hid whatever hair he might have had. He gave a brief, half salute of recognition and waited for Louvain’s orders.
    “Take us out to the
Maude Idris
,” Louvain told him, stepping easily down into the boat, adjusting his weight to keep his balance as it tipped and jiggled. He offered no assistance to Monk behind him, either assuming he was accustomed to boats or uninterested in whether he made a fool of himself or not.
    A moment of fear rose in Monk, and embarrassment in case he did it clumsily. He stiffened, and then physical instinct told him that was wrong, and he dropped down loosely, bending his knees and adjusting with a grace that surprised both of them.
    The waterman wove between the barges with practiced skill, skirting around a three-masted schooner, its canvas lashed, timbers stained and peeling from long days of tropical sun and salt wind. Monk glanced down and saw the crusting of barnacles below the waterline. The river was too murky for him to see more than a foot or so below the surface.
    He looked up quickly as they passed under the shadow of a much larger ship and caught his breath with a sudden thrill as the sheer beauty of it gripped him. It towered into the air, three tremendous masts with yardarms eighty or ninety feet long and dark against the gray clouds, sails furled, rigging in fine lines like an etching on the sky. It was one of the great clippers that sailed around the world, probably racing from China to London with tea, silk, and spices of the Far East. First one to unload won the stupendous prices, second got only what was left. His imagination teemed with visions of roaring winds and seas, worlds of sky, billowing canvas, spars thrashing in a wild dance of the elements. And there would be calmer seas, flaming sunsets, clear water like glass teeming with creatures of myriad shapes, and windless days when time and space stretched into eternity.
    Monk jerked himself back to the present and the loud, busy river, the cold spray off the water whipping his face. Ahead of them was a four-masted schooner lying at anchor, rolling slightly on the wake from a string of barges. She was wide beamed and quite deep of draft, an oceangoing carrier of heavy cargo, swift under full sail, easy to maneuver, and this close, the gun ports on the foredeck were plain to see. She would be neither caught nor captured easily.
    Yet here in her home port she was a sitting target for two or three men creeping up over the black water by night, swarming up the sides to the deck and taking an inattentive guard by surprise.
    They were almost alongside, and Louvain rose to his feet, balancing with a slight swaying of his body to the motion of the river.
    “Ahoy!
Maude Idris!
Louvain coming aboard!”
    A man appeared at the rail, looking down at them. He was broad-shouldered, short-legged, powerful. “Right sir, Mr. Louvain!” he shouted back, and a moment later a rope ladder hurtled over from the deck and uncoiled down the side. The waterman maneuvered the boat underneath it, and Louvain caught the bottom rung in his hand. He hesitated an instant, as if to question whether Monk was capable of climbing up after him. Then he changed his mind and went without turning around, hand over hand with obvious practice, reaching the top to swing over the rail and stand up on the deck, waiting for Monk to follow.
    Monk steadied himself, grasped the rope ladder to hold it firm, then raised his foot as Louvain had done, putting his hand out to grip the third rung, and hoisted himself up. He hung suspended for a perilous instant, neither balanced on the boat nor on the ladder. The water churned beneath him. The schooner rolled, swinging him wide, then banging him back against the hull, bruising his knuckles. He threw his weight upwards and took the next rung, and the next, until he too went over the rail and stood up beside Louvain. They had neither of them made any sound.
    He controlled the breath rasping in his lungs with an effort. “And how would they do that if no one let down the ladder for them?” he asked.
    “The thieves?” Louvain said. “It must have been more than one, with an accomplice to stay in the boat, possibly hired for the job.” He