I swallowed. I could still see the inferno behind my eyelids, that last dart of Farthing’s glossy green scales.
I forced myself to look around me.
I was in a tunnel, one of the lava tubes Mr Darwin had warned me about. It stretched two ways, towards the sea and towards the volcano. I remembered what my master had said: ‘the lava tubes often run only inches beneath the surface above in places. So, we must be very cautious of falling into one.’
But my fall had been no accident. It had saved me.
Farthing had . . . I swallowed.
It was just a lizard. A plain ordinary creature . . .
‘No! Stop it! Stop . . .’ my voice echoed in the cave and I covered my ears, although I knew Scratch was in my head, as well as on my back.
I slapped my hand against the wall of the tunnel, hard enough to smart, and the pain helped to keep the tears behind my eyes from falling. Getting attached to a lizard, talking to a fiddle . . . I needed to come to my senses. But how could I? I was going to die here, either trapped inside the earth or burnt to ash outside.
I rubbed my face hard. It wasn’t over yet. I was thirteen years old and had been at sea for four years. I might not be a man, but I had some wits about me.
That’s more like it.
I clenched my teeth.
The hole was too high for me to climb back up and anyhow, I was certainly safer down here for now. I sat by the fire, warming my hands through force of habit, but after nearly being burnt to a crisp it wasn’t surprising it didn’t give me any comfort.
The tiny blaze soon burnt down and there was nothing more to add to it. I felt the fiddle case strap across my chest. Scratch, made of wood, all dried out.
Don’t you dare . . .
I shook my head. ‘Then I really would be alone,’ I said. My words echoed.
I stared up at the burnt black edges of the hole, and for a second a small green face blinked down at me. But it disappeared with a blink, because it had never been there at all.
Don’t even think about it. Nothing could survive a flame like that.
‘I wasn’t,’ I snapped, trying not to think at all, ‘but you don’t know for sure do you, you . . . didn’t see . . .’
My throat swelled. I waited in the heavy silence, then took the fiddle off my back. I opened the case, took out the instrument and played the two songs Farthing had seemed to listen to, her head on one side, her ruff of scales rising.
The floor trembled below me and the earth released a deep groan. Dust settled on me from the roof of the tunnel. I smelt sulphur and wondered if this was going to be my grave, but I played on.
I didn’t notice my tears start, just that my face was wet when I finished. I smudged my hand over my eyes and cheeks and drew a ragged breath. Even Scratch had nothing to say.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Some time later I stood, brushed myself off and put Scratch back in his case. I wound Mr Darwin’s eyeglass on its elastic around my wrist and gave one last glimpse up at the blue sky through the hole above, before I turned towards the darkness of the tunnel.
I had no clue which way I should go. Both directions were yawning black mouths. Farthing would have known. I stared into the darkness. The lizard was only with me for a day and a half, I needed to stop feeling so wretched about her being gone.
Quite right. After all, you’ve collected hundreds of animals just like that one. Many are now preserved in barrels . . .
‘None like Farthing,’ I snapped.
There was no way to climb out and the tunnel leading to the sea might fill with water if it went any deeper or if there were another storm. The other way, towards the volcano, might fill with lava.
I pressed my forehead with the heel of my hand. I didn’t even know for sure which way was which, not after my fall.
Then both are as good as each other.
‘Might be the best way of looking at it,’ I said.
When the light of the hole faded behind me, the path ahead was black as tar. I should have thought to make a torch of some kind when I’d had the fire, instead of just sitting there like a fool watching it burn. I fumbled along the uneven curve of the tunnel wall, stubbing my toes and grazing my feet on the rough floor. This was useless. But as I was preparing to turn back, there was a slice of light up ahead. I sped up in the gloom, which was about a hundred times better than pitch black, imagining the source of the light to be an exit back to the surface. I might be safe down here from the beast . . . I still couldn’t quite believe it – the dragon – but I was too well hidden. I would never be found by the crew . . . never. I peered up, and when light fell across my face I felt a burst of energy. The rays of sunlight came from a narrow crack in the ceiling. But it was way too high for me to reach, even if the gap had been big enough to wriggle through – which it was not.
I continued on, but soon the darkness was too much for me. No further cracks in the tunnel roof meant I could see nothing, no difference when my eyes were open or closed. Sakes alive! If the captain and Mr Darwin thought the land here was hellish, these tunnels had to be purgatory. A place of darkness and waiting and not knowing what would happen next, and that awful not knowing lasting for ever and ever.
I couldn’t believe I’d ever been excited at the idea of these lava tubes, or desperate to explore them. Even the sound of my own breath seemed ragged and frightening. Shapes formed deep in the dark, shadows followed me although I knew there was nothing there. Time to turn back before I lost my mind. I stumbled on a rock, and stopped. A rock? I felt around on my hands and knees. There were a few, scattered around the floor of the tunnel. I picked it up. If I could find enough of them and build them into a pile, I could climb out of the same hole I’d fallen in. I smiled for the first time, and the surge of excitement and relief at having a plan pounded in my ears.
I stood. That sound wasn’t my breath or my pounding heart. It was whispering, hissing, swishing, and getting closer . . . now there were high squeaks, like a herd of panicked mice.
My heart seemed to batter its way up to my throat. I’d thought myself already scared, but when something soft brushed against my ear I lost any sense I had left, and screamed.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I charged headlong down the tunnel, taking huge strides, crashing into the walls, my only thought to get away – away – from the squeaking, flapping, fluttering mass that surrounded me, that filled my mouth and nose with a choking sour stench, and set my eyes streaming.
Bats. Only bats.
I knew Scratch was right; we’d seen bat caves in South America, vast clouds bursting out from the mountains at sunset. Of course there would be bats in the lava tubes, it was the perfect home for them. But reason couldn’t stop me running, couldn’t stop my body believing it was being chased by an army of murderous squealing demons of the dark. There were so many of them, all around me. Some part of me said I should stop and just let the colony fly on past, but the rest of me was determined to run for my life. So I kept on, arms wrapped over my head covering my ears against their piping squeals, their bodies and sharp wings brushing against my legs, arms, face, until it seemed I must have run too far, missed the light of the crack in the ceiling and the hole I had fallen through. But still I raced on, until the cloud of tiny bodies thinned out and I staggered to a stop and collapsed to the floor, arms still shielding my head. The last stragglers fluttered past and I flinched until there was finally silence and the pounding in my ears began to fade. Except it didn’t, quite. There was still pounding, but it was from outside. The sea?
I unfolded myself and found I was no longer in total darkness. The black had become grey.
I shook my head as one solitary bat squeak remained, piping like the nest of sparrows in the chimney at my aunt’s place, before she got at them with a broom.
I scanned around the tunnel, goosebumps rising. Maybe the sound was lodged in my ears now, because I couldn’t see the source of it . . .
Movement by my feet made me start back, still jumpy. A flut
ter. I crouched and saw it was a lone bat, and very tiny, with a body half the size of a house mouse, covered in red-brown fur, with a flattened little face.
‘Minutes ago, I’d been terrified . . . of you. But you’re just a helpless little scrap,’ I whispered.
Well, I couldn’t just leave it there. I scooped it up and it squeaked more loudly and wriggled, then fell silent. Had I scared it to death? I shifted it to the palm of one hand. Its black wings were rumpled and I gently spread them – there didn’t seem to be any injury. It might be a new species that only lived in these tunnels, one of the animals that made Mr Darwin so interested in the Galapagos.
Without warning, the bat sprung from my hands, fluttered haphazardly around my head, then flew into the tunnel beyond, disappearing where the passage began to widen.
I stared after it, then began to walk. After a few paces I stopped. Ahead of me the tunnel opened into a cave – and beyond that must be where the light was coming from. A way out! But my eye was drawn to something else.
Shapes, in the gloom. A dull glint. The cave was not empty.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I scanned around the cave in the gloom. A coil of rope. A pile of wood. A jumble of rags and leather. A chest. The glint I’d first spotted was from old metal.
Humans had been here, in this cave.
The metallic gleam came from a knife. I picked it up, unable to believe my eyes or my luck. It was ancient, mostly tarnished to black, but with this I would be able to eat as many prickly pears as I wanted. I stopped still, remembering how Farthing had plucked them with her claw, then shook my head, trying not to think about it. Other items had mouldered away and I couldn’t make out what they had once been. My eyes lingered on a heavy timber chest, coated in pitch with tarnished brass clasps.
Could I really have come across a buccaneer’s treasure hoard? After all, no dragon story was complete without gold. I found a sturdy rock and tapped against the catches to loosen them, visions of the glowing coins filling my head.
And what exactly are you going to do with gold?
‘What does anyone do with gold?’ I said. My voice didn’t echo here, as if the ancient items were sucking in the sound.
I wiped my brow on my ragged neckerchief, and prised the knife into the edge of one of the clasps. Flakes of rust fell away. I worked at the other fastening and threw it open. The lid of the chest slammed back on its hinges – it was as empty as my stomach and my hope of rescue. I sighed, then ran my hand around the smooth dry interior of the box.
The floor shook again, and this time the tremors continued on, and on. I crouched and covered my head with my hands as dust rained down on me. I didn’t know enough about volcanoes; I hadn’t listened hard enough when Mr Darwin and the other gents had discussed the geology of these islands.
The earth gave a last shaky belch, then the rumbling stopped. The ceiling seemed intact at least, although how much longer it would hold in these earthquakes I didn’t want to think about.
I needed to be above ground.
Behind the chest something caught my eye.
What now? Stay here any longer and we’ll be sharing a grave.
‘I just need to look . . .’ I muttered.
It was a mound, covered in rags, dust rising from it. I stepped over the mouldering ropes and shifted aside canvas, stiff and blackened in places, to reveal wooden planks. No, not planks, curved wooden slats. It took a long moment to make sense of what I was seeing.
It was a better find than any treasure.
A boat.
A tiny boat, face down, resting against the wall of the cave. I pushed the canvas completely to the floor. There were no obvious holes in the wood, although it was crumbling in places. Some of the pitch that must once have coated it was worn away, but it looked remarkably sound, considering.
A boat. On this island there was a fire-breathing dragon, an active volcano and no fresh water supply. Sending a fire or smoke signal wasn’t going to be enough, or even possible, what with the dragon having me in its sights.
What I really needed was to escape. And now I could.
What was I waiting for? The light meant there must be a way out and now I had a boat. I grinned. I lifted the chest – how I’d ever thought it could contain gold I did not know, it was far too light – then slung the coil of rope over my shoulder, releasing clouds of spinning dust motes. I turned the boat over and felt my grin widen. It did seem to be whole. A little scrap of a thing, more like the rowboat a child would use to go fishing than the solid craft we used for our shore excursions from the Beagle. How had a boat so small ended up here—
My eyes tracked back into the space against the wall where it had been. My heart froze and I backed away, hand over my mouth.
A seated figure wearing a tricorn hat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The head of the buccaneer was tipped forward, his tricorn hat thick with dust, his body wrapped in more of the stained canvas, like a shawl. I let out an awkward squeak of shock, as I imagined an undead swashbuckler leaping up to ambush me, cutlass waving, before my good sense won the battle and my heart slowed.
I edged forward slowly, passing around the boat to get a closer look. I did not touch, simply bent to peer beneath the rim of the hat and then ducked back gasping after catching a glimpse of his jaw.
Whether it were skin or bone, it looked like tanned leather. He’d been dead a very long time. Maybe he had been sealed in here and the earthquakes had only recently created a way out. That would be why the animals hadn’t got to him, and he’d mouldered away. Shivers ran up and done my spine and I made a sign of the cross.
There was plenty of real danger here – from the fire-breathing dragon and any other poisonous biter, to the groaning earth and spitting volcano.
This fellow is the least of your worries.
‘Well forgive a boy for being a bit shaken, finding a corpse in a dark cave and all,’ I said.
I crouched down in front of the buccaneer and whispered, ‘I don’t suppose you are going to be needing this boat any time soon, sir?’
The dead buccaneer said nothing. Thankfully.
The boat might need a few repairs, and I wouldn’t know if it was watertight until I tried it in the sea. As I scrambled around the cave floor for anything else that might be useful, I wondered what had happened to the dead man. Had he been set adrift from a ship of buccaneers as a mutineer, left to fend for himself on an island with no source of water? Why would a sailor be marooned with an empty chest – one so sturdy, expensive in its day. Maybe he had become ill – the smallpox? – and been left by his crewmates so as not to contaminate the whole ship. I didn’t fancy investigating him further, he had curled up in peace beneath his boat, hat over his eyes, to die, and it wasn’t my place to disturb him now.
I found a green-black copper pan among the buccaneer’s belongings. Aside from the knife and the coil of rope, there didn’t seem to be anything else of use, and I stowed them in the base of the boat along with a tiny oar.
This man had died down here alone. I was suddenly very keen to get out of these hellish tunnels, dragon or not. But I lingered, wondering how long he’d survived here before—
What are you waiting for? Nothing you can do for him.
‘There is one thing,’ I said.
Once more I lifted my fiddle from its case and played the hymn I had played at Da’s funeral. I wondered how old this man had been. My da hadn’t yet been thirty when the consumption took him. I sang the words in my mind as I drew the bow across the strings, gripping Scratch tight to my chin.
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
The words rang in my head as the last note faded.
‘Not found yet,’ I said firmly, and packed Scratch away.
I slid the boat back into the darkness and rushed along the rest of the tunnel towards the light.
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The passageway grew narrow, sloping uphill, the sound of the sea was louder and amber sunlight soaked into me, filling me with energy. It must be nearing sunset. I stood before the cave exit, a wide crack leading to the outside. I remembered how the dragon fire had billowed into the hole.
I couldn’t take any chances. I had a boat now, but I needed to live long enough to use it.
I ducked out, peered upwards first, scanning the sky for signs of the dragon. The sun was setting, and high strips of clouds caught the rosy rays like cheerful pennants. I gazed around me, only daring to dip the top of my head out of the hole. In front, I couldn’t see an awful lot, as black boulders blocked my view. I heard the sweep of the sea from that direction. Behind me, the volcano was spurting lazy gouts of liquid and I imagined lava bubbling in a great pool at its summit, like jam left too long on the stove. Da was good with jam, I remembered – he used my ma’s own recipe. My ma had fallen ill in the autumn just after I was born, and making the jam always made Da twist his wedding ring even more than usual. I sighed. Not the perfect time for memories.
Despite the spitting volcano, the earth was quiet . . . but probably not for long.
I scrambled across the rocks to find a dark gravel beach laid out with glossy brown and grey mounds, many laying still, others lumbering slowly or rolling, sometimes over the top of one another. We’d seen these animals on every island we’d been to – sea lions. One noticed me and looked up. It had beady black eyes and a dog-like muzzle with a spiky moustache of white whiskers.
‘Huh. Will you look at that?’ I said beneath my breath.
An almighty bellow made me almost leap out of my skin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I spun around to come face to face with a sea lion, much bigger than any of the others, rising high on his front flippers, a mound of gleaming muscular bulk. He had a lump in the middle of his forehead and his whiskered snout was drawn back in a snarl, baring a fearful set of sharp orange teeth. An ugly cut striped across his muzzle and clouded one eye.
Darwin's Dragons Page 5
