The old man looked at it as if he did not know what it was for. Then he took it, very carefully, in his huge one.
"Mr. Polgrave," she said, "where does the captain keep his papers?"
"Inside his coat, my lady. Day and night. And a round shot in his desk to send them down with." He let go of her hand. "But there's a thing you'll want to know, and it's this. The men in the Brothers tonight—it's Nance and Penrose and two of the Rowse boys. Nance has a pistol. He's a fool, and he's frightened since this morning, and frightened fools shoot." He put his hat on. "I'll be at the brig's side when the galley comes. If I can do anything to keep the rest of them below, I'll do it."
He went out the way he had come, through the scullery and the yard, and Jory, watching from the window, saw the old man's broad back go down Fore Street toward the steps and disappear into the dark.
IX.
In the dark he was deaf twice over.
Jory had not thought of that until they were out under the point, with the galley's oars muffled in rags and her lanterns shuttered and the town lights behind them sunk to a smear of yellow on the black water. All day his eyes had been his ears. Now there was nothing to see. The men at the oars were shapes. Madoc in the stern was a shape. Lady Ormerod, wrapped once more in her long dark cloak with the hood drawn up, sitting on the thwart beside the Tide Surveyor, was only a deeper patch of darkness against the dark. If anyone spoke he would not know it. If anyone shouted a warning he would not know that either.
He crouched in the bow with his hand on the gunwale, and felt the boat. That, at least, he had. He felt the stroke of the oars come up through the wood into his palm, long and even, and then stop when Madoc lifted his hand. He felt the swell coming round the headland, and the wind cold on his cheek, and smelled weed and wet stone and, faintly, tar.
They waited a long time. The stars came and went behind ragged cloud.
Then the boat under his hand gave a tiny shiver, and another, and he understood that the men were moving, leaning forward, all looking the same way; and he looked too, and saw, low on the water against the paler dark of the sky, the brown lugsail of a fishing boat coming round the point with no light showing.
Madoc's hand came down. The oars bit. The galley leapt.
What happened in the next minutes Jory knew only in pieces, the way he knew a conversation in a crowded taproom: a face here, a gesture there, and the rest guessed. He felt the galley drive forward under him, hard. He saw the lugsail swing as her steersman saw them and put his helm over—too late; the wind was light and fluky under the land, and the lugger lost way and wallowed. He felt Madoc stand up behind him, and felt, through the boards, the bellow the Welshman must have given, because two of the oarsmen ducked their heads as if from a blow. Then the shutters came off the lanterns all at once, and the night was full of yellow light and black shadows, and the lugger was ten yards off and closing, and Jory could see.