The Silver Darlings Read Online Free Page B

them all. Alie the piper is watching us.” They laughed at that. The piper had done his part, full to overflowing . It was always the way he had done things whatever . No half-measures with Alie.
    “The ship is coming this way,” said Ian.
    “Let her come,” said Tormad, not even turning his head.
    But Ronnie looked over his shoulder. His face brightened . “She’ll be a big schooner come to take the barrels of herring away maybe.”
    “Of course,” said Tormad. “What else would she be?” And the vague fear that had touched them at first sight of the ship almost vanished.
    “Perhaps she’ll offer to buy our herrings,” suggested Torquil.
    “She might easily do that,” Tormad grunted out, the sweat now running. “But if she does—she’ll pay—the full price.”
    More than half the net was in and Torquil glittered with scales in the rising sun, when Ian said, “She’s coming very close.”
    She crossed their bow at a cable length, and then, slowly running up into the wind until her great sails shook, she came to a standstill so close that they could see the men moving about her decks.
    Fear touched them once more, because they had learned that everything that spoke of power and wealth had to be feared.
    “Pay no attention,” muttered Tormad. “The sea at least is free.”
    A voice as loud as a horn called to them, but they were not sure of the words, for what English they had was strange to them even in their own mouths. So they doggedly hauled away at the net.
    “There’s a boat coming,” said Ian.
    “Let it come,” said Tormad, giving it a quick glance.
    Four oars rose and fell smartly and the ship’s boat drew abreast. Two men sat in the stern, with long-nosed pistols.One man, standing, asked them in a loud voice if they heard the ship’s hail.
    “Careful, Torquil,” said Tormad softly. “Don’t lose the darlings.”
    Then the man with the loud voice expressed his anger in a terse oath which the four lads didn’t understand, though they gathered its intent. But they did not look at the man; they looked at the net whose back-rope Tormad contrived to haul steadily.
    Whereupon in the King’s name the man commanded them to drop the net and come alongside His Majesty’s ship of war and present themselves to the commander, and if they didn’t do this quietly and at once, things would happen to them of a bloody and astonishing nature.
    “There’s three crans in this net,” said Tormad to Ronnie, “if there’s a herring.”
    An order was whipped out. Smartly the visiting boat closed on Tormad’s bow and in no time a stout rope was passed through the ring-bolt in the stem. “Give way!” The four oars dug in, rose and dug in…. But Tormad, on the back-rope, held both boats stationary. “Let go there!” shouted the voice in stentorian wrath.
    Tormad, his face swelling with blood and anger, looked over his shoulder. “Let go yourself!” he cried in his best English.
    “Ease away!” As they stood down on the fishing-boat, the two near oars were smartly shipped and direct contact was made by Tormad’s feet. The man who was giving orders held a cutlass. He raised it above his head with intent to sever the back-rope of the net. Tormad dropped the rope and in a twinkling whipped his right fist to the jaw with such force that the man overbalanced against his own gunnel and went head first into the sea. With the lunge of the blow, Tormad’s boat had gone from under his feet and he, too, would have pitched into the sea if he had not grasped the gunnel of the other boat. In this straddled, helpless position, a pistol-stock hit him on the head withso solid a crack that the sound of it touched Torquil’s stomach.
    Tormad was pulled into the ship’s boat like a sack. From the sea they hauled a gasping, hawking, purple-faced man who doubled over his own knees in a writhing effort at vomit. In his surprise he had taken the water down both channels. Presently he lifted his head and glared with