Page 59 of The Cornish Widow

Her dilemma also forgotten, Harriet scrambled up and stared in the same direction as everyone else. Sure enough, there, on the hazy, early-evening horizon, was the distinct shape of a ship with many sails up.

From down below came the sound of running feet, and in a moment the rest of the crew were on deck, rubbing sleep from their eyes. One of them took the tiller from Will, who then joined Jack.

Jack passed him the telescope. “That’s a revenue sloop if ever I saw one.”

A revenue sloop? Wasn’t that like seaborne Bow Street runners? Heading their way? Wasn’t Fitz Carlyon in charge of them? And The Fly had a hold full of contraband.

Will peered through the telescope. “Aye, it is that. I’d say it’s The Dolphin, out of St Ives, by the cut of her.”

“The Dolphin?” Harriet echoed. A nice name but for a ship with something not so nice on the minds of its captain and crew.

Will passed her the telescope. “She’s a seventy-five-foot sloop with fourteen guns on her, heading our way. Here. Take a look.”

She’d never used a telescope before but set it to her eye and peered through it. A moment or so later she found the ship, a little blurry in the gathering dusk and difficult to keep in focus as their own vessel bobbed up and down. How they could tell her name and intent from such a distance and in such poor light escaped her.

Theo appeared at her side, quivering with excitement. “Can I look?”

She handed him the telescope.

“With those fourteen guns, she’s bloody dangerous,” Will said. “We’d best hoist the spare sails and hope she don’t reach us before full darkness falls. We’ve a head start and a good chance of outrunning her if we’re lucky. It’s the only chance we’ve got.”

Harriet’s heart did a little leap of fear. No, a large one. The authorities were on their tail.

“Sit here on the hatch and keep out of everyone’s way,” Jack said to Harriet. “We need the spare sails now. Theo, sit with your mother and make sure she stays there.”

Harriet did as she was told. Sixteen years of marriage to a bully had inculcated obedience into her and it came in useful now. She put an arm around Theo’s shoulders and pulled him as close as she could. “You stay with me, you hear? I don’t want you getting in anyone’s way. We have to do as we’re told by the captain.”

He nodded, somewhat overawed by the whole incident and forgetting that it was he who’d been asked to look after her and not the other way around.

The crew hauled up the extra sails with amazing speed and dexterity and the little ship cut through the darkening water, heading like an arrow towards the Cornish coast, as yet not visible on the horizon.

To their right, which Harriet had worked out by now must be the starboard side, the revenue sloop inched closer, growing steadily larger but no clearer as the gloom of evening drew in. That Jack and Will wanted to use nightfall to hide themselves from her was obvious, but did they have enough time to get far enough away?

She glanced about The Fly’s open deck in anxiety. Only the hold and cabin offered any sort of hiding place and those would be searched by the revenue men if they caught up with the ship. Nowhere for even Theo to hide. If the sloop’s crew boarded them, they’d assume she and Theo were smugglers too, and she’d be slapped in jail, or worse, transported to Botany Bay, or worst of all, hung in Truro and left in an iron cage to rot and put off other would-be smugglers. And Theo would be treated the same way. Age was no barrier to punishment.

The newly raised sails filled with wind and the little ship strained on as the sun sank towards the western horizon, blazing a golden path across the top of the waves and no doubt silhouetting them as a target for their pursuers. Harriet hadn’t prayed since before she was married, but she did now, muttering under her breath and holding Theo fast against her. He must have picked up on the urgency of the situation, because he didn’t wriggle.

At last, the sun sank out of sight, just the few clouds above where it had vanished tinged still with pink, suggestive of a fine day to come. When she looked to starboard, their pursuer was all but invisible, just a dark blob on the sea, much closer than it had been and sporting a light fore and aft. Needless to say, neither Jack nor Will had ordered the lighting of any lamps on board The Fly.