He moved the kettle as quietly as possible to the full heat of the fire and slipped into the parlour. He lay in the cool air on the high-backed settle and closed his eyes a moment while he waited for the water to boil.
The Beothuk had watched the white men loading their boat for two days from a sentinel tree on a hill overlooking the cove on Burnt Island. On the second night of their vigil, when the ship was packed to the gunnels and ready for departure, seven men and a woman in two canoes paddled under the cover of darkness into the sheltered water of the cove. The voices of the fishermen on watch carried across to them as they mirrored the uneven curve of the shoreline, moving slowly towards the dock. Their paddles worked soundlessly through the lap of salt water, each stroke perfectly synchronized, perfectly silent. They slipped beneath the spruce timbers of the wharf and sat there while the sporadic talk and farting and laughter of the white men went on into the late hours of the evening. Each breath they took was as measured and subtle as the paddle strokes that had carried them into the harbour and they waited until only the footsteps of a single white man echoed on the wharf lungers overhead. And some time later they heard the sound of the door to the house opening and closing up the hill.
They hacked the vessel free of its moorings and then leaned into their paddles, the boat sheering around with the silent grace of the moon travelling through cloud overhead. A fever of euphoria crept through them as they made for open water but no word was spoken, all their energies poured into hauling the weight of the ship that followed behind them like a well-trained dog.
Peyton came to himself on the settle when he heard the eruption of garbled shouting in the kitchen. And Cassie’s voice then trying to wake his father from his nightmare. He jumped to his feet and ran past them through the front door. He pulled out his watch and tried to read the time by the moonlight as he ran down the path towards the dock. He was halfway along the hill before he looked ahead to the water and stopped where he was. His breath came in shallow gasps and steamed in the night air. He looked around wildly, as if he expected to see the boat being carried up the hill on the backs of Indians. His father shouted after him from the door of the house. He looked down at his watch. It was one-thirty in the morning.
The occupants of the house straggled down to the dock behind him in unfastened boots and holding their trousers up with their hands. They stood together at the edge of the wharf and stared into the blackness of the water and off across the harbour where the vastness of the sea was just beginning to run away from them on the new tide. The Susan’s mooring ropes still noosed the stage timbers.
“Red Indians,” Tom Taylor said.
“They can’t have got far,” Peyton offered.
“No bloody sense going after them in the dark,” Richmond said. “We couldn’t tell an Indian from our own arses in this.”
John Senior said, “Father’s watch was on that boat.”
“As soon as there’s a hint of light we’ll get after them,” Richmond promised.
The group turned and made their way back up to the house. Cassie set out tea and raisin cake for them all and they sat around the table to eat in silence.
John Senior emptied his cup and stood to go upstairs to his room. “They could have dragged her anywhere between Leading Tickles and Gander Bay. Let’s try not to sleep through the morning.” He looked across at his son, but said nothing more.
The next day was fair with a brisk wind. A perfect day to sail. Peyton shook his head. He and Taylor were sculling among dozens of islands that crowded the mainland like a flock of ducklings trying to keep close to their mother. The coastline offered enough coves, bays and tickles to hide a stolen sloop somewhere different every day of the year. “Needle in a haystack, Tom Taylor,” Peyton said every thirty minutes or so, like a clock striking the half-hour.
Taylor said, “For all we know, the buggers might have dragged her out somewhere and scuttled her.”
By early afternoon they had reached Chapel Island and stopped in at Boyd’s Cove for a boil-up on the beach.
“Not much sense to go beyond here, I don’t expect,” Peyton said. “It would have taken the British navy to haul it much further than this.”
Taylor nodded. “If we turn back now, we might get in before its too far gone to dark.”
“All right,” Peyton said. He tossed the dregs of his tea into the sand and looked slowly around himself. Grey ocean, grey sand beach. Low cliffs up the shore behind them.
Taylor stood beside him and kicked sand over the embers of the fire they’d made. He said, “Maybe the others have had more luck than we.”