“Little lady,” said Al, “you’ve a kind heart, and he can stop when he’s caught a fish. You hear that?” he said to Mitt. “She’s a nice girl—considerate. All her kind are like that. They can afford to be nice, and frank, open, and generous, too. They’ve got the means behind them, see, where your kind and mine can’t afford it. It’s a high-priced luxury, being nice is.”
Mitt humped his shoulders bitterly. He was sure Al was right. Al could not have chosen any better way of describing the way Ynen and Hildy had treated him all along. It hit the nail on the head.
Ynen said to Hildy as Al talked on, “Who is he? I’ve seen him before somewhere.”
Hildy knew Ynen had a far better memory for faces than she had. “I don’t care who he is,” she said. “I’m going to push him in the sea.” She meant it.
But Al was too old a hand to let any of them have a chance to harm him. Having divided them from one another, he talked until he had bored them into numbness. Then he demanded food. Then he talked until nightfall, and still no land was in sight. By now they all thought of land as the thing which would rescue them from Al.
“Well,” said Al, as soon as supper was over, “I think I’ll be turning in.”
They made an effort to suggest he took a watch during the night.
“Who, me?” said Al. “I don’t know the first thing about this game. I’m a landsman.”
“You had a sail up in that boat,” Ynen said. “And you’re a Holander. I’ve seen you. Holanders aren’t landsmen.”
“I never denied it, guvnor. But that was all years back, before your time. Good night, then.” And, since none of them could stop him, Al went into the cabin and fell asleep with the gun hidden under his body where nobody could get it.
While Mitt was dourly stowing the fishing tackle back in the locker, Hildy looked vengefully into the cabin. “He’s just like the cousins, Ynen, only I hate him more.”
“I hate him harder every time he calls me guvnor,” said Ynen.
“He’s bound to,” Mitt said, kicking the locker to vent some of his feelings. “He’s respectful of you.” It was on the tip of his tongue to ask them if he had been as bad as Al, but he had not the heart to. He knew he had been. Instead he found himself arranging the night’s watches, in a constrained and businesslike way, and taking the dawn watch himself again. Mitt felt in his bones it would be dawn when they sighted land.
In fact, the numb hatred they all felt for Al was very different from the way Ynen and Hildy had felt about Mitt. Ynen pondered about this while he steered Wind’s Road into darkness. Mitt had scared them horribly at first. But Ynen had never felt unequal to him, the way he felt with Al. As soon as Mitt had started to argue, Ynen had stopped being scared. There were things they had in common with Mitt, but with Al there was nothing. You could not trust him or argue with him. Ynen hoped the wind would be fresh tomorrow, because if it was and if Al stayed on the cabin roof, he was fairly sure he could bring himself to give the tiller a quick shove and sweep Al off the roof with Wind’s Road’s boom.
Hildy spent her watch thinking wretchedly of Uncle Harl. Ye gods! It was as if she, or Ynen, had paid Al to shoot Navis. Hildy felt so sickened that she was truly thankful Mitt had forced them to sail North, out of that horrible situation. Only now they had Al on board. Hildy knew they were going to need all their cunning, and Mitt’s, too, to escape from Al once they did reach land. And she had quarreled with Mitt. Of all the stupid things to lose her temper over! After what Al had said, Mitt was not going to believe in anything friendly Hildy said. Hildy hated Al for the way he had treated Mitt. It was like Uncle Harchad and the Earl of Hannart’s son, except that Al had used words instead of kicks.
She tried to show Mitt she was friendly by being very pleasant when she woke him up for his watch. Mitt hardly spoke to her. He pretended to be very sleepy and stumbled past her into the well, mumbling. When he took the tiller and set Wind’s Road heeling away into the faintly silvering sea, he was too perplexed and miserable to notice what he was doing. The awful similarity between himself and Al was all he could think of. “He did it for money, and I did it for a cause—that’s all the difference I can see,” he said to himself. “But what cause?”
He felt a sharp nudge on his back. He looked up to find Wind’s Road yawing about in a white sea, against a white sky. The wind had dropped and changed. It was quite a bit colder. Mitt set Wind’s Road to rights, buttoned his coat, and turned to have a good look at Libby Beer. She was a tiny, dark figure, too far away to have nudged him. Yet she had.
“See here, lady,” Mitt said to her, in his misery, “can I talk to you? Will you answer?” The little dark knobby shape did not move or make any sign. “What I want to know,” said Mitt, “is: Am I going to end up worse than Al if I started so young?” Libby Beer gave no sign of having heard. “All right,” said Mitt. “I promise to leave murdering alone in future. Will you help me now?” There was silence, except for the fitful rilling of water. “I can’t seem to think things in my head without talking them,” Mitt explained. “I went through life thinking I was on the right side—one of the good ones, you know—and now I can see I’m as bad as Al. So I got it all to think about again. I want to know what I thought I was doing there in Holand.” There was still no sign from Libby Beer. She sat at the end of the tiller among her twine lashing, and the faded colors began to come back to her because the sun was rising. Mitt did not dare talk anymore, in case someone in the cabin heard him. He stared round the welling yellow waves. There was still no land in sight.
No land came in sight all that day. The wind sank to a light, fitful breeze, in which they all buttoned their coats and shivered. It was so much colder that they were sure they must be in Northern waters. That was their one comfort. The pies were smelling strange, the water was low, and got lower still when Al refused to shave in seawater—and there was Al.
Al announced he was bored. “You must have brought a pack of cards or some dice with you,” he told Mitt, evidently thinking he was the most likely one.
Since Libby Beer had nudged him in the dawn, Mitt felt just a little more equal to Al. “Me?” he said. “People in my station can’t afford games.”
Al roamed about grumbling for a while. Then he suddenly went below and came up with the bottle of arris. “Thi
s’ll have to do then,” he said. “Should just be enough. Mind you, little lady, I’m not grumbling, but you should be sure your bottles are full before you sail.”
He settled himself on the cabin roof and got drunk. They could all see Hobin’s gun stuck in his belt, but Al’s hand was never far off it, and he patted it lovingly from time to time. Al sang a little. Ynen looked yearningly at the sail. But the wind was so light that he knew the boom would only give Al a gentle bump if he did swing it over. He sighed and handed the tiller over to Hildy, hoping she would have better luck.
When Al had drunk half the arris, he began to talk again. They all closed their ears. It was easy to do. They were all half asleep after their night watches. For an hour not one of them heard a word Al said. Then he began to laugh uproariously and shout at them.
“I tell you, I’ve been around all right! And my advice to you is two games at once! Rich against rich—they pay better—but rich against poor, if you can’t have that. I’ll tell you—I’ll tell you—Come here and look, the lot of you!”
Hildy was steering, but Ynen and Mitt did not dare disobey. Reluctantly they went toward the cabin roof, where Al was fumbling and pawing at his jacket and staring at them with angry, unfocused eyes. As they reached him, he managed to turn the top of his jacket inside out, to show the drab strip of tape in the lining. Fixed to the tape was a tiny round piece of gold with a wheatsheaf crest on it.
“There. Know what that is?”
“Yes,” said Ynen. “You’re one of Harchad’s spies.”
Al slapped himself with triumph. “Right!” he said. “Right, right, right! Been Harchad’s man for seven years now. So you see what I done?” he asked shrewdly, and became earnest and confiding before either of them could answer. “Rich against rich is the best way. Harl pays me to shoot old Haddock. Harchad gives me a bounty to shoot old Haddock. Offers of safety from both. Al’s all right whatever happens, see.”