Read Online The Devil's Mask by Christopher Wakling - Free Book Online

my face to the sun and felt the weight of another shadow pass across it: the crane boom swung from ship to shore where the crate it carried was swiftly unhooked.
    â€˜They’re making short work of it,’ Addison said with satisfaction. ‘Mind you, they need to. The Venturers took five years to erect proper lifting gear when it was needed two decades ago. As with the lock, too little, too late. Still, they’re not entirely stupid. With just the one crane they can command an exorbitant price for its use.’
    â€˜I’m sure.’
    The Captain’s face seemed too mobile again in the bright sunshine. ‘Yes, well,’ he said. ‘If you’ll wait here I’ll fetch the necessary.’ He turned on his heel and made for his cabin.
    The chain drifted back high above the deck trailing its empty hook. That Addison had volunteered to give me a guided tour of his ship was clearly an aberration; his hotfooted errand to retrieve the ship’s log seemed so out of character as to be faintly absurd. Now that I was on deck again and feeling better, I suspected I’d made a mistake in not accepting the invitation to enter the Captain’s cabin; I might have spotted something in it, something useful. I watched a stevedore catch the hook as it swung to the deck and stab itnonchalantly into the tangle of ropes above a pallet stacked with casks. Still, if there had been anything untoward in his cabin, Addison would hardly have offered to take me there. The chain rattled itself straight and took the strain and jerked the casks up off the deck to swing immediately sideways in an arc that again cut the air above my head. I stepped back instinctively, before the hook tore through the webbing and one half of the pallet dropped and the casks slid sideways and fell the thirty feet to the deck. One of the barrels smashed a section of the ship’s rail; another – filled with rum – exploded as it punched a dent in the ship’s deck. And a third cask hit the man who had attached the hook in the first place. He was bent double over a block and tackle when the barrel struck him. In snapping the man’s back as it fell, the cask’s route to the deck was softened: it did not break open but rolled away lazily across the planks, and as the sound of its rolling died, I realised that the deck-hand had been whistling before he was struck.
    One minute a tune, the next nothing.
    Instantly, the hot smell of rum swam up from the deck.
    I ran forward to the man’s side. I had never seen a dead body before, much less a man killed, but I had seen both now, I knew that for sure. There was no blood, and the colour beneath the man’s skin had not faded, but the ugly awkwardness of the accident was reflected in the utter stillness of his face. It hadn’t even had time to register surprise, much less pain. The blow had been fatal: there was nothing anyone could do. Why then was I working with another of the deck hands to straighten the corpse into a more natural position? Who was I trying to comfort?
    Addison was swiftly back up on deck. He broke in uponthe circle and his barked questions sounded like accusations. He swore at the stevedores and summoned the crane driver and cursed the ship’s surgeon, Waring, for not being there, though the Captain, too, appeared to understand at once that the man was beyond medical help. I retreated a few paces. The crisis, either in itself or because it had eclipsed me, seemed to have given Addison back some of his authority. Within minutes the body had been removed from the deck and the work of unloading the ship began again. A boy – of no more than twelve – set to work clearing the broken casks away.
    When Addison turned to me again, his voice was gruffer than it had been before.
    â€˜It’s all in here,’ he said, thrusting a leather satchel into my chest.
    I took the bag.
    â€˜The log, the ship’s documentation.