couldn't imagine. With a sigh, I got out my lists and spread them on the deck. “How many do we need?”
He scratched his head. “A handful is plenty. A man and a boy can handle a schooner, Mr. Spencer. But I would think, say, three's a nice number.”
I wrote that down, then said, “How do I find them?”
“Och, ye've been put over your head,” said he, and smiled in a kindly manner. “I'll tell ye, John. The usual way is that ye ask the captain to do it.”
This I knew was not true. Finding the hands who'd work a ship was a task that Father would never have left to the captain. Yet neither had he assigned it to me.
“But o' course,” said Crowe, seeing my hesitation, “if ye'd rather tak' it upon yoursel' …” He shrugged and started to go. “No matter to me. I was only trying to dae ye a wee kindness.”
This he said gruffly, with that same edge of anger I'd heard at the Baskerville, as though he'd taken offense at my doubts. I watched him lumber off, and I remembered what Father had said:
“The man's a devil, but a harmless one. Proud as Punch, and that's his failing.”
“Wait,” I called after him. He turned back to face me. “I would like that, Captain Crowe, if you'd do that favor for me.”
“Aye, aye,” he said, and smiled. But his smile was a troubling one, one that reminded me how thin was my thread of authority. Only that thread, I saw, kept him from giving me the back of his hand instead of his kindness.
But Crowe took up the task with great efficiency, and in a single trip to shore he found a crew for the
Dragon.
It was as though the men were there and waiting, so quickly did they come aboard. Captain Crowe brought them up the plank like sheep that he was herding. He put them straight to work lashing down the hatches.
“Three good men,” he told me. “Twa to reef and steer, anither to dae the cooking and the whatnot. There's only one I canna vouch for. But I hear he's good at his work, with eyes like a hawk in the dark.”
Why this was a virtue, I didn't bother asking. It was enough for me simply to have them aboard. They seemed neither young nor old, just three sailors, one long and thin, one as broad as an ox. And the third wore a thing so bulky and huge that he could scarcely get his arms in front of him to tighten up his knots. Curious, I walked up to him and saw that it was a strange sort of jerkin he wore, every inchof it covered with corks that he must have sewn in place one at a time, in layers and layers. It reminded me of nothing less than a huge and hollow pinecone.
He looked up from his work with the widest grin I'd ever seen. “And here he is,” said he.“ Here's the boy that tamed the Haggis.”
“The what?” I asked.
“The Haggis! Captain Crowe,” he said. “The man's a bloated old gut stuffed full of pudding and blood. But I've never seen the old gaffer so meek, bobbing like a pigeon, hopping to your orders.” He pecked with his nose at the air, so comical an imitation that I threw back my head and laughed.
He was pleased with his cleverness. “You'll get along fine, I think,” said he. “But don't cross him, you hear? Oh, he gets in a fit when he's mad.”
“I've seen that already,” I said.
“And you'll see it again if he catches you here.” The corks squeaked against each other as he stretched to look past me. Then he spoke in a warbling Scottish brogue, a mockery of the captain: “Aff ye go, ye sleekit beastie!”
I returned to my lists as the sailors finished their lashings and went on to work at the sails. And when the captain came up from below, I stopped him at the mainmast.
“Captain Crowe?” said I, pointing to the sailors. “Who is that man?”
“Eh?” he asked. “Which man's that?”
“The one with all the corks.”
“Och, that's only Tommy Dusker.” The captain laughed. “They call him Dasher.”
It was a good name for him. His hair was loose and flowing, not tarred in the usual fashion. He had a thin little