The Smuggler's Curse Read Free Page B

laughs lightly at my discomfort. ‘But the real savages are the Dutch soldiers. For every man they lose they burn down avillage and kill everyone they find. Everyone. Then they leave their bodies to rot in the sun, as a warning.’
    Without another word, Teuku turns and leaves, bounding up the steps to the deck.
    Had my mother any idea when she sold me that those shiny golden coins meant my probable death? A deep sense of unease settles on me. I have never been away from home before, and now I am expected to look after myself. I somehow know no one is going to help me out. And I have to share a cabin with a bunch of smelly men who all hate me and couldn’t care if I died in my sleep. They’d just throw my body overboard and get in on with it.
    How can my life have changed so much in such a short time? Only last week my biggest worry was keeping out of Ma’s way, or wondering if Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were was about to be killed by Injun Joe in Chapter Twenty - eight . Now though, my outlook is decidedly bleak, to say the least. And what’s worse, we could be heading into the middle of the Aceh Independence War between the Sumatrans and the Dutch.
    I sit on the edge of Markham’s hammock and swing my legs in, and very nearly upend the hammock and topple straight out again. The hammock swings wildly from side to side while I clutch on tightly. Luckily, Teuku is not there to see me.
    I close my eyes, but it is no use. I’ve never been able to sleep in the middle of the afternoon at the best of times, let alone here, in a hammock, with everything that’s happened. I open them again to find someone standing over me.
    â€˜Red, it’s me. I made a brew. Youse want one?’
    I almost cry in relief. Mr Smith is easy to recognise, with the right side of his face scarred and blackened from an old misfired musket wound. He stands shorter than most of the crew, but he has the look of a house brick, square and solid. His skin is like old leather and his arms are strong and scarred. He has several tattoos, including a picture of a woman wearing no clothes across his chest. I know Mr Smith, but I don’t know much about his life. He does not seem to have a family, at least not in Broome. But then Broome is often where men go to get away from their families.
    He is a regular at the Curse and a decent bloke. The pleasure of seeing a friendly face after all the scowls and teasing feels good.
    He smiles at my efforts struggling to get out of the hammock. ‘I’m the gunner on this here scow,’ he says, handing me a battered enamel mug.
    I take a sip of the hot liquid and look at him gratefully. ‘I don’t fit in here, Mr Smith. On the Black Dragon. Notat all. Not one bit. The Captain hates me, and the men think I’m a raw fool. They look at me like something the cat dragged in. Worse, like something the cat did.’
    â€˜Youse sticks with me, boy, and I’ll watch ya back,’ he says. ‘I started as ship’s boy, back well a’fore you was born. On the Pandora, it were, a four-masted square-rigger out of Southampton, in England, when I was about your age, maybe a bit younger. Back before those damn smelly steam ships clogged up all the ’arbours. I know the ropes right enough. I’m still alive, and I’ll stay that way. I’ll try and learn ya’ right.’
    â€˜There’s a lot to learn.’
    â€˜Don’t you worry none. The crew’ll do alright by youse too, once they get to know youse. Youse’ll see. They’re not a bad lot. Not as ’ard as they pretend. We all ’ave to get along. The Cap’n demands it, ’e do. ’e don’t hold with malingerers and lead swingers and sea lawyers. And ’e don’t tolerate no bullies. ’e reckons ’e’s the only one allowed to bully. ’e keeps on about us being a few, a ’appy few, we band of brothers — for whoever sheds