Captains Stupendous

by Rhys Hughes

  ‘Thank you for your consideration, Monsieur!’

  ‘We might be there in an hour.’

  ‘Will you be able to land in the darkness?’

  He made a dismissive gesture. ‘The moonlight is adequate. Plus I will recognise the lights of the village. I know the order they are arranged, and that will guide me to the harbour.’

  ‘You are an immensely resourceful man.’

  He accepted the compliment with good grace. I seemed to derive hope and strength from his presence, as if his aura was a field of force radiating these qualities to everyone else in his vicinity. I don’t wish to give a false impression: he wasn’t a supernatural being! But certainly he was touched with a special magic that most men never possess. I wondered if he might be the prototype of a new kind of human being, the first modern hero, and if this evolved breed was destined to stride effortlessly through the decades of the 20th Century like demigods. Probably I had read too much Nietzsche in my youth. The way things turned out, of course, was against the utopian needs of every dreamer.

  Our century became the bloodiest in history.

  But back then, in 1913, I was still naïve enough to hope for perfection, for paradise on Earth. With your privileged perspective, you wonder how so many millions of courageous men could sacrifice their lives so readily to foolish causes, how intelligent people swallowed and digested lies that left the cities of Europe in ruins. At the time, we hadn’t grown our cynical shells tough enough to withstand the perverted wishes of the monsters we had among us: we even lacked the perception to penetrate their disguises. I now believe that Scipio Faraway was a throwback to an earlier age, to the heroes of the Trojan Wars and beyond.

  While I was lost in my rambling thoughts, we had been approaching the shoreline of Portugal. ‘Here we are!’

  Scipio had used the last wisps of stored steam to float the submarine to the surface. We bobbed on the moonlit water and peered through grimy porthole glass at the breakers. Beyond them were the lights of a village. I marvelled at the colours: topaz, emerald, red; the lamps of homes, taverns and inns. I rejoiced. ‘Land again!’

  Scipio Faraway frowned and adjusted his cap. ‘The layout is exactly the same as I remember it, and yet—’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong, surely?’ I gasped.

  He climbed the iron ladder to the hatch, hurled it open, stood exposed in the cool night air and squinted at the shore. ‘Everything looks right. It’s Buarcos, I’m sure it is. But the—’

  Suddenly the hull of the submarine groaned.

  ‘A sandbank!’ I wailed.

  Scipio replied, ‘There shouldn’t be one at this spot. The village harbour is free of obstructions. We have beached ourselves! But how? Come here quickly, Mr Griffiths, if you value your existence! Our vessel is about to roll over. You’ll be trapped inside!’

  I scrambled up the ladder and joined him.

  ‘Into the waves!’ he cried.

  Not for the first time in my life I splashed and thrashed in brine. But it was only a few feet deep. I staggered to the beach, coughed water out of my aching lungs, collapsed to my blistered knees, crawled the remainder of the distance like a bewildered turtle. I was only dimly aware that Scipio was behind me. Pushed by the waves that were breaking on its spherical hull, the submarine rotated with a mighty splash, so that the hatch was at the bottom. An iron coffin indeed!

  I now saw that the lights of the village weren’t really lamps at all; and in fact there weren’t any houses. Small driftwood fires burned on the sand and panes of coloured glass stood in front of them to give the illusion of the windows of Buarcos. The whole thing was a villainous trick. We had been dazzled and caught by wreckers!

  As a Welshman I should have been less gullible in this respect, for the coasts of Wales, as well as those of nearby Cornwall, are infamous for the rogues who light false fires to lure ships to their doom. The idea is for the wreckers to profit by looting the stricken ship, kidnapping and ransoming the crews. I cursed myself loudly.

  Then I heard the beat of hooves. I looked up.

  ‘Anws blewog!’ I bellowed.

  I was staring into the face of a unicorn!

  The Bandit Queen

  For long moments I was unable to move, paralysed by surprise and alarm. I half suspected I had lost my sanity. Then I gradually realised that it was a fake unicorn: the horn was part of an elaborate headdress and the beast was a normal, if rather large, horse.

  The rider who sat astride it was a woman!

  Her long, wavy black hair streamed in the breeze and her eyes glittered in the moonlight. I didn’t miss the fact that she held a carbine in one hand, an anachronistic wheel-lock model.

  Behind me I heard Scipio Faraway say, ‘Hello again, Senhorita Luísa! I am delighted by this chance encounter.’

  She smiled. ‘Chance or destiny, Dom Scipio?’

  He bowed. ‘Perhaps both.’

  I stumbled to one of the driftwood fires, warmed myself with its merry flames and said, ‘You know her?’

  Scipio nodded with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Allow me to introduce you to Luísa Ferreira, the Bandit Queen!’

  He approached the horse and kissed the extended hand of the mounted beauty, who murmured something in Portuguese to him, perhaps the lines of a poem. He responded in a similar manner. I was clearly the witness of a story far too secret to be written down in full, but I had entered midway through the tale, at a late chapter.

  That’s how I felt at that moment; but the mere fact that Scipio knew her didn’t mean my own skin was safe, for how could I be confident that even the smallest part of the affection toward the wandering hero she failed to conceal in her expression would be extended to me? In truth I was merely a sidekick, for want of a better word.

  My clothes steamed as the heat bathed them. I felt the life return to my weary, sodden bones. I took an interest in my surroundings and saw armed men crouching in the dunes, obviously her followers. The beach stretched to the north in a straight line as far as the eye could see, but to the south it soon terminated in a rocky headland.

  ‘Ask her where the real Buarcos is,’ I said.

  Scipio said nothing in reply.

  She flared her nostrils indignantly. ‘Ask me yourself! I speak English, French, Spanish, Catalan, Latin and a dozen other languages! The answer to your question is that the village is on the other side of the headland, but it can’t be reached along the beach. You first have to climb into those hills and descend again. An arduous trek.’

  Scipio removed his hat, smoothed his hair and said to me, ‘This beach extends all the way to Aveiro and is extremely isolated, so it’s the perfect location for Luísa’s profession.’

  ‘What does she intend to do with us?’

  Luísa looked at Scipio; a spark flashed between them. They smiled in a manner that was both wistful and wise. I understood at once that no pale imitation of passion had once existed between them, but only the deepest and truest mutual desire. I had already come to the conclusion that Scipio wasn’t a man who treated affairs of the heart casually, and yet neither was he gullible enough to believe that love really was the ultimate truth. I felt the fields of magnetic force between these two, and a pang of envy jarred my own heart, like an elbow striking the corner of a desk. Then I cleared my throat with a contrived cough, breaking the spell and returning us all to the same sombre, dim reality.

  ‘She has different plans for us,’ Scipio said.

  I puffed out my cheeks. Bandits traditionally keep hostages and try to ransom them. If no ransom is forthcoming, the hostage is dispatched out of the world. Was it my fate to be martyred thus? I doubted anyone would pay for my release; my prudent editor, Ben Gordon, wouldn’t ransack his pockets on my behalf: that was certain. I wondered how my end would be arranged. To be tied to a stake for the rising tide to drown occurred to me as one option, and I grimaced.

  Luísa whistled, and her men swarmed down from the dunes. I counted 20 ruffians, the optimum number for a bandit outfit,
too few to create logistical problems but too many to encourage bounty hunters. I expected rude leers and obscene comments, but they were polite and deferential. It seemed that Luísa Ferreira was the more civilised sort of bandit and hated boorishness in her followers. They crowded around me but none offered a threat or even a menacing look.

  ‘You shall be guests at my camp!’ Luísa announced.

  ‘For how many months?’ I cried.

  She frowned, and even in the uncertain glow of the spluttering fires I saw the appeal of her clashing eyebrows as they arched together, dark and alluring, as were her liquid eyes.

  ‘One night only, I’m afraid. Or do you plan to enrol as one of my men? The initiation ceremony is somewhat uncomfortable, and in fact we don’t require any extra help at present.’

  Scipio guffawed; he couldn’t help but enjoy my discomfort, and yet his pity would have been worse, and I’m sure he honoured me by refusing to take me seriously at that point, by showing more solidarity and empathy with the bandits than with me. It meant he was treating me as an equal, a fellow man, not as a weakling too sensitive for prolonged exposure to the harsh realities of the human cosmos.

  I smiled at my own folly. He was a good role model and his presence gave me the strength I needed to act in a manner closer to my own notion of what a hero should be in word and deed. I took a deep breath, adopted a nonchalant tone and said, ‘One night is sufficient for me, Senhorita, and if it turns out to be my last on Earth, I will insist that it couldn’t have been spent in more agreeable company.’

  Scipio nodded at this; I had proved myself.

  ‘Very nicely spoken,’ said Luísa, ‘but I don’t intend to kill you; unless you are suffering from some advanced medical condition, I see no reason why this night should be your last.’

  She flicked the reins of her horse and the fake unicorn began trotting toward the dunes. Her men extinguished the fires, hefted the glass panes onto their shoulders and followed her at a brisk pace. Scipio and I strode side by side in their wake, and I had absolutely no desire to escape whatever awaited me in those hills of sand. We undulated our way down the tortuous paths, skirting a large crater and passing into a wood of cork trees. In a large glade we found the camp, a scattering of huts and cotton hammocks around a large fire pit.

  There was also a stout long table that could easily sit a ravenous tribe in comfort, and it was laden with tankards and jugs of wine. A man with glasses who looked nothing like a bandit stirred cauldrons, pots and pans over the fire with a selection of wooden spoons. He wiped his brow with his apron and muttered a greeting.

  Luísa said, ‘This is João Seixas, our cook. He used to be a lawyer but decided that becoming a real bandit was more moral. Yet he’s not built for strenuous activity, so we gave him the culinary duties! Sometimes I think that cooking for our entire band is more physically demanding than going forth with pistol, musket and knife!’

  João called out his agreement with this sentiment.

  Luísa dismounted and tethered her horse to a stake. It browsed without complaint the tough marram grass.

  ‘Sit down, my guests! Partake of our hospitality!’

  I sat next to Scipio, poured myself a goblet of wine, while my stomach rumbled in response to the cooking smells. Scipio drank with less abandon to the dictates of appetite and asked, ‘What was that crater we passed just now in the dunes? A meteorite?’

  I grew excited at these words and said:

  ‘One of those damn rocks from the sky holed my ship! There must be an entire storm of them up there.’

  Luísa took her place opposite Scipio.

  ‘No, it wasn’t a meteorite. A weird aircraft passed overhead and one of the more impatient bandits fired at it. To take revenge, it circled back and dropped an unusual bomb on us.’

  ‘A crater that large? An enormous bomb, surely!’ Scipio glanced up at the sky, as if able to read the invisible spoor of the aeroplane in the chilly night air. ‘Too heavy for a plane!’

  Luísa nodded. ‘Normally, yes, but this device was small and strangely shaped. Clearly it’s a new kind of weapon, more powerful than anything seen before. It missed our camp, of course, but we weren’t able to bring it down with our bullets. I didn’t blame the man who fired the first shot. It’s understandable that when a vulgar pilot disturbs the peace by buzzing like a gigantic wasp directly overhead, we’ll try to silence it. In fact the fellow in question gets an extra ration of wine. Pedro, where are you? Come and introduce yourself! Pedro Marques!’

  A tall man with wavy hair that was the colour of the moon approached the table and bowed. He had been stood at the fire pit, joking with João Seixas. ‘At your service, Dona Luísa.’

  ‘Tell Scipio and his friend what the plane was like.’

  Pedro rubbed his chin. ‘It was a monoplane that had floats and wheels under it. The bomb was released from the right wing; the left wing didn’t have a bomb under it, but some struts revealed that one had hung there at some point. The colours were—’

  I jumped up. ‘That must have been what struck the ship I was on! So it wasn’t a meteorite after all! Some scoundrel of an aviator dropped a bomb on me! If I ever catch hold of him!’

  Pedro waited for me to calm down, then he resumed his description of the aerial intruder. ‘The fuselage was painted red with a wide green stripe and the emblem of a rising sun.’

  Scipio said, ‘They sound like the national colours of Bessarabia, which I believe has just declared itself independent, or rather part of the country has done so, the east bank of the Dniester River in fact. I wonder what the Bessarabian air force is doing here?’

  ‘Surely such a rogue state doesn’t possess a fleet of aircraft? That’s an absurdity worthy of Jules Verne!’

  ‘Ah yes, the famous essayist and historian…’

  ‘The writer of fiction,’ I said.

  But Scipio was smiling gently, and a strange chill went through me as I realised he was at least half serious. So was the world filled with wonders that had previously escaped my attention? Eccentric inventors creating an array of bizarre machines, explorers travelling by airship across forbidden lands, men firing themselves out of the mouths of giant guns into space? I could scarcely credit this scenario!

  I felt something press against the back of my chair. A long head rested itself on my shoulder. The Bandit Queen’s horse had wandered over, tired of nibbling tough grass. Then João Seixas used a ladle to beat time on the cauldron as a substitute dinner gong and Luísa brandished her own spoon like a weapon and winked at us.

  ‘Time for supper at last, gentlemen!’

  The Morning After

  I recall a feast of prodigious proportions; then with reeling brain and my stomach full I collapsed into the nearest hammock. Scipio had imbibed far less alcohol than me; he disappeared into Luísa’s hut. I remained outside, swatting mosquitoes, too tired and drunk to be jealous of his luck. Luísa Ferreira was every man’s dream girl.

  I woke with a headache that soon vanished.

  We said goodbye before noon and began walking across the dunes at a diagonal calculated to bring us back to the beach. Then it would be a nice walk northwards to Aveiro, and from that town we could catch a train to Oporto — a city the praises of which Monsieur Faraway still frequently sang. I was looking forward to seeing the old quarter, the Ribeira, on the edge of the river, and wandering the alleys.

  But it was not to be. I still haven’t visited that city.

  It took us until late afternoon to reach the lagoons south of Aveiro. The beach became a narrow sandspit at the end of which was an iron bridge to take us into the outskirts of the town.

  But something in the lagoon distracted us.

  It was an aeroplane on floats.

  The fuselage was painted in the colours of Bessarabia.

  It bobbed peacefully at anchor.

  ‘That’s the plane of the rascal who bombed me!’ I fumed.

  Scipio nodded. ‘Indeed, Mr Griffiths, and the pilot seems to be dozi
ng on the shore. Shall we say hello?’

  We stood above the sleeping villain and I was sorely tempted to wake him with a kick in the belly, but Scipio dissuaded me; simply casting our shadows over him and lowering the temperature on his peaceful face was enough to rouse him from dreams.

  He blinked at us. ‘Who the devil are you?’

  ‘Never mind about that,’ said Scipio. ‘The important thing is that you are going to kindly explain to my friend here exactly why you dropped a very powerful bomb on his ship.’

  The sleeping man raised himself to a seated position. ‘My own sailing vessel was raided by pirates. They stole it and left their own behind. I was so furious I destroyed the derelict.’

  ‘That schooner wasn’t a derelict,’ I spat through gritted teeth, ‘for the simple reason that I was still on it!’

  The fellow shrugged. ‘I didn’t know. And I don’t care.’

  But Scipio was rubbing his chin.

  ‘What do you mean by saying it was your own ship that was taken by the pirates?’ he demanded. ‘You didn’t have any ship; you had the plane over there. You can’t control both!’

  The pilot laughed. ‘The clipper was a new kind of ship, developed for the use of the Bessarabian navy; there’s none other like it in the world, but I’m sure the idea will catch on. The deck has been modified so that planes can take off and land on it while at sea. It’s called an aircraft carrier and it’ll revolutionise warfare! I took off on a practice flight, but when it was time to return I discovered that the clipper no longer belonged to my side. I could hardly land on a deck full of pirates! So I vented my frustration on the schooner and obliterated it—’

  ‘Then you flew here? After dropping your other bomb?’