The Wreckers: Chapters 1–3

We ran toward England under topsails and jib, in a brig called the Isle of Skye.

And this rare voyage—Father had called it a ride—was meant to teach me that a scribbling of ledgers was better than a life at sea.

But the Isle of Skye was a good strong ship, and she flung herself round on a crest.

A wave as high as the maintop shattered on the weather side and pushed the brig down in the trough.

Then the wind slammed against her, and she heeled so far that the mainsail yard tore a furrow from the water.

Spray swept over the deck like a series of rainstorms, blinding the men at the helm.

“Lights," I cried, and tugged my father's billowing cape.

“I haven't liked this voyage from the start. Loading cargo in the dead of night. Skulking like thieves. I don't know what you're up to, Mr. Spencer, but—"

My jacket had been torn away, and two slats from a chicken coop were bound on my wrist like a flimsy manacle.

There were scraps of wood all round, and heaps of barrel staves from our cargo of wine.

The beach formed a half circle of glistening sand, a cove broken by reefs and backed by precipitous cliffs.

And beyond that, the hull of the Isle of Skye lay upon a shelf of twisted rocks that jutted up like rows of gravestones.

Then he turned and lay supine, fixing me with a horrid, toothy grin.

It was a sailor I'd known as Tom, and he'd taught me how to splice.

When the next breaker came in, up he went again, arms waving as though he were beckoning me to join him.

They were kicking at the wreckage, bending down sometimes to pick up bits of flotsam, nudging at the bodies as though looking for survivors.

They stopped at the body of a sailor lying sprawled on the sand.

Old Cridge flailed and splashed in the shallow pool, his motions growing frantic, and then subsiding.

He took a pipe from his pocket, tamped the bowl with his thumb, and then shook the stem toward the wreck of the Isle of Skye.

"Still, with this sea running, she'll be down to splinters and chips by nightfall," he said. "Won't be nothing left but the ballast stones."

They dropped their things in haphazard piles, and at each stack a child sat guarding the treasures, as though these men who plundered the wreck might also steal from each other.

They dropped their things in haphazard piles, and at each stack a child sat guarding the treasures, as though these men who plundered the wreck might also steal from each other.

The wind pulled me and pushed me; it swept like a scythe through the yellowed grass and on from there—forever, it seemed—across a desolate moor.

Wave after wave of low, barren hills marched to the sky, and not a single tree stood among them.

I raced across that narrow ridge, up toward the moor, on toward the ponies.

These men had carefully, willfully, led our ship to its doom.

The wagon careened around a bend and came straight toward me.

I had to shield my eyes from the sun to see the men there, gaunt silhouettes.

A boat lay prow to the wall, and I stumbled across it.

I had little choice; I ducked through the door of the blockhouse, into a darkness cold and dank.

Through the door I saw a horse hurtle past, saw it from the withers down, dark hair gleaming, a man's boots kicking at the flanks.

“Are you scared?'' he asked.
"No," said I, though my voice quavered like a bird's.

And when I opened them, I could see gray mortar around the stones, wooden beams above.

In this last year of the century, 1799, after years of war against the French, the docks were haunted by sailors maimed or crippled in hideous ways.

But none had filled me with the dread I felt as this man came lurching and skidding toward me.

I could see, against the wall, a pile of moldy straw and a threadbare blanket, a few narrow shelves propped on sea-worn stones.

They held a candle stub and a sad collection of baubles: a bottle cracked at the neck, a whale bone and a seashell, a cutlass handle with holes where the jewels had been picked away—the sort of things a child might collect.

"For seven years I've lived like a dog, hand to mouth in this squalid hole of a house. They call me Stumps, old Stumps the beggar man. And now I'm that close"—he rapped his fist on his cart—"to having more gold than I've ever dreamed of. A passage up the coast, one night at sea, and—"

There was a look in Stumps's eyes—deep and smoldering—that kept me quiet.

The nervous one's face was riddled with smallpox.