The Cannibals

by Iain Lawrence

  I swallowed. It was as though he were talking of different islands from those in Midgely's book. The reverend had written of friendly natives, of whole villages turning out to greet him with dances and lavish feasts.

  “Have you ever seen cannibals, Captain Tin?” asked Midgely.

  Father shook his head.

  “Have you seen headhunters? Or pirates?”

  “No, William, but…”

  “Then maybe they ain't there,” said Midge. “Maybe that's the travelers' tales, and what the reverend said is the truth. He wouldn't lie, would he, Captain Tin?”

  “You're willing to wager your life on it?” asked Father.

  To my surprise, Midgely nodded. “We'd rather take our chance than be put in chains, and ain't that the truth, Tom?”

  It seemed no choice at all. Seven years in chains would surely kill me. It would only be a slower, more miserable death.

  “I admire your spirit,” said Father. “But the problem remains. How can I set you off in a boat with nobody knowing?” He turned away from the table to stand again at his windows. The sea bubbled up from the stern, boiling into white streaks that faded away as we traveled on. “That's the crux of it, boys. Find an answer, and I'll do as you wish.”

  Midge and I went up to the deck and joined the convicts. As he always did when we left the cabin, Midgley winced and groaned and limped along, hoping the others would think he'd been punished. He thought he was awfully clever, but there wasn't a soul who believed him. Though none really knew why we were called every fortnight to the captain's cabin, it was clear to all that Redman Tin would never lay a hand on anyone, and least of all on Midgely.

  The sailors rounded up the convicts and marched us below. I stepped over the hatch with my usual sense of dread and despair. For all my father did to make the voyage bearable—with plenty of food and water, with a fiddler playing as we danced now and then—the ship was still a traveling prison, steaming hot or cold as frost. It stank of sweat and waste, and seethed with a simmering violence, like a cage overfilled with wild beasts. Among the sixty boys I had no friends but Midgely.

  As we settled into our place, I watched Walter Weedle send a boy fleeing from his own spot near the hatch. His scarsplit face made his grin seem huge. He sat like a little king, flanked by the other nobs who were his muscles and his bravery. That horrid Benjamin Penny was on his right, and the dim giant Gaskin Boggis on his left. Behind him was Carrots, and another called Early Discall.

  Penny and Boggis and Carrots had belonged to the Darkey's gang. They had roamed through the streets of London together with my twin. After all our months at sea, it must have been plain to them that I was not the Smasher they had known, no matter how much I looked like him, and talked like him. We differed in nature so greatly that Father might have severed good from evil when he cut us apart on the stormy night of our birth. Yet Benjamin Penny, more than any other, would sit and stare at me—bewildered—as though trying to decide how a boy who had loved him could now despise him so deeply. Ugly and freakish he was, but at times I nearly pitied him. Then I'd see him go at other boys, suddenly, with feet and fists and teeth. I'd hear the shrieks of his victims, and the soft thuds as Weedle sneaked in his cowardly blows, and then the bright shine in Benjamin Penny's eyes would turn me cold.

  I watched them as they watched me, while the brig ran steadily east. Chased by storm and gale, we flew nothing but topsails for half a week, then no sails at all. We scudded bare-masted through a raging ocean, and then I trembled in the darkness. I hated the storms as much as Midgely loved them, and I was glad to have thoughts of escape to keep my mind from dwelling on the groans of the timbers, and the shaking of the masts.

  When we were nine days from Australia, I still had no answer to the problem. Then the fates that had dogged me took a very strange turn.

  There was a storm more vicious than any. It howled from dark to dawn, and down below we heard the lumber shifting on the deck, the mizzenmast being carried away. It left the decks in such a ruin that we were kept below through a full day and a night and a morning, then found the sailors still repairing damage.

  Weedle and Carrots climbed up on the stacks of lumber. Benjamin Penny tried to go with them, but his twisted spine and wretched arms wouldn't let him scale the lumber. He tore shreds from the ancient, sun-rotted tarpaulins as he scuttled round and through the stacks, disappearing at one spot to emerge at another.

  Midgely and I made our way to the stern. A new mast had been fitted, and sailors were splicing the rigging. The carpenter was hammering away at the longboat, so we sat down to watch him, and were soon greeted by my father when he came up with his sextant. It was the first time he'd ever taken the deck when the convicts were free, and he was careful not to look down toward them. The sight of the boys, he'd said before, was enough to break his heart.

  But he was happy to find Midgely and me. “Rotten weather, wasn't it?” he said. “Nearly tore the old ship apart, I tell you.” He fiddled with the sextant, then held it to his eye. “We've been blown many leagues to the north. Do you see the clouds there on the horizon?”

  I looked out and saw them in the north, flat clouds floating on the skyline.

  “There's always land below clouds like that,” said Father. “You may get to see your islands after all.”

  He squinted through the eyepiece as he worked the sliding arm. “Here, I was thinking of a dance,” he said. “The boys enjoy a dance, don't they?”

  “Very much,” I said.

  We watched him take the sight. Then he went below to work out the position, and we stayed with the carpenter. An old German, he muttered to himself as he drove strands of cotton rope between the longboat's planks.

  “The fair battering she's tooken,” said he. “The trouble she's made. But ach!” He rapped the hull. “Look, boys, fit as the fiddle again. Ve put her in the vater, and then you see, huh?”

  “You're going to launch it now?” I asked.

  “How else you sveeten planks?” said the carpenter. “Vood, boy, it must to drink. Vood and men—ach!—they both the same.”

  He called for a crew, and the tackles were rigged, a towline attached. Then the longboat—with two pairs of oars lashed to its seats—was heaved over the side.

  Midge squinted as he tried to see it all, then grinned at me. “All's Bob now,” he said. “Ain't it, Tom?”

  We went that day to my father with a plan. He would hold his dance, we said, when we were closer to the islands. And that night Midge and I would hide on deck instead of going below. “The sailors never count the convicts anymore,” I said. “We'll hide in the stacks of lumber until you can bring us to your cabin. In the morning someone will say we're missing, and you'll say we must have drowned.”

  “Tom, they'll search the ship,” said Father.

  Midgely giggled. “High and low, but not in here 'cause you'll look here yourself. That's why it's rummy, Captain Tin.”

  “We can get out through your windows,” I said. “The next night, or maybe the one after. We'll get into the longboat, and you can pass us food and water and charts of the island. We'll untie the rope, and everyone will think the boat got loose.”

  My father looked out through those windows. Just yards from where he stood, the longboat surged through the wake of the ship. “It's rather clever, by George,” he said. “I could see to it that you'll steer due north to make landfall.”

  “Then we'll go on to the elephant island,” said Midge. “We'll wait for you there.”

  “Yes.” Father smiled. “What a happy accident, hmm? I'll stop for water, and—good Lord!—there you'll be. You'll have to come aboard in chains, of course.”

  “I don't mind,” said Midgely.

  “Chains until we get to England,” added Father. “Then we'll confront Mr. Goodfellow. Show him up for what he is.”

  Our plan seemed settled. But Midgely changed it all. “Wouldn't it be better if we hid aloft?” he said. “Instead of in the lumber, Captain Tin?”
/>
  I didn't like heights. I didn't want to climb the rigging, especially not in the dark. But Father agreed with Midge. “You're quite right, William. The maintop's a safer place.”

  And with those words, fate turned again.

  three

  A GHOSTLY VISIT

  There were times I thought I'd been cursed. It seemed that, along with the wonderful diamond I had pulled from the Thames, I had picked up a devil as well. Midgely had told me once that my jewel might have been the famous Jolly Stone, the ruin of all who'd touched it. I had been plagued by such terrible luck, all my plans thwarted, that I dreaded the same would happen again.

  But in the morning it seemed I had nothing to fear. From Father came word that a dance would be held that night, and the boys took off their caps and hurrahed.

  All through the day the sea was flat, the wind a warm breeze. At noon a tower of rock appeared beyond the bowsprit, as though at the edge of the world. It looked like a bewitched bit of land, or a fabulous castle rising from the ocean. In the sunlight it shimmered.

  Then slowly it collapsed. It settled into the water, and I realized that we'd seen a strange mirage, a twist and shatter of sunlight that had raised to our sights an island beyond the horizon.

  I wondered what sort of omen this was.

  The breeze faded away, and the ship—in a flap of sails and a groan of rope—wallowed on a bright, hot sea. The longboat lay motionless behind us. With no wind to hold them aloft, the albatrosses sat on the water. They looked like chickens laid out to fry on a white-hot griddle. The boys lay on their backs as though dead, looking up at the bleached canvas.

  Late in the forenoon, clouds came riding from the east. They came in streaks and masses, like a cavalry of enormous yellow horses. Then a sailor arrived to take Midgely and me to the cabin.

  We thought it was to settle our last plans. But we found Father by the windows, pacing back and forth. He told us straight out, “I've had a change of heart.”

  It was partly because of the weather. He didn't care for the calm and the clouds. “There's a storm brewing up,” said he. “If it holds off till night, there's no fear. But if the wind picks up before sunset, it will blow like the very dickens.”

  “We ain't afraid,” said Midgely.

  “Of course you're not, William,” said Father. “But…” He faltered and sighed. “Tom, I feel that I've been visited by your mother. I saw her as clear as day.”

  “Oh, Father,” I said.

  “She was in her veils and her shawls; she was right over there.” He raised an arm and pointed. His finger was shaking. “There on my berth. She lay flat on her back.”

  “Well, that was Mother all right,” I said dryly. For half my life I had known her to do little more than that. She had gone mad when my sister drowned. She had taken to her bed, and only rarely gotten up.

  “She drew back her veils as I watched,” said Father. “Her face was like ash. Even her lips were white. ‘Keep him safe,’ she told me. ‘Keep the boy safe.’ Then she faded away into nothing.”

  “Holy jumping mother of Moses. You're giving me the shivers,” said Midgely. “She's on her deathbed, ain't she, Captain Tin? She's calling from her deathbed, she is.”

  I saw him do something he had never done before. He raised his little hand and crossed himself, touching his forehead, his lips, his breast, and shoulders.

  I sat down then, though not on the bed. I fell into the chair by the table, feeling as though I were dropping into a bottomless pit. I found that I cared more for my mother than I'd ever thought, and the notion that she was now dying in her bed in England made me tremble through and through.

  “Tom!” said my father. “Listen to me, Tom.” He came beside me and lifted my chin. “She's not here, not in spirit nor in body. I was thinking of her, that was all. I know fully well—the both of us do—what she would say about you leaving the ship. Tom, I didn't see her; I saw my own thoughts.”

  “You're not going to let us escape, are you?” asked Midgely.

  “No,” said Father. “I'm not. I'll take you to Australia as I wanted. I'll explain it all to the governor, and I'll take you home again. That's what I've decided.”

  “Because of what you saw?” I asked.

  “Because of what I know,” said he. “You haven't got it in you, Tom. You're…well—dash it!—I'm sorry to say this, but you're too soft.”

  He turned away. He didn't go to the windows, but sat on the bed. He placed his elbows on his thighs, then settled his head in his hands. “It's not your fault, Tom; you've been coddled. Your mother worried too much.”

  His words stung more than he could know. It was true that I had been that way. I had been spoiled and selfish. But I believed I had changed, and it hurt me to think that my father couldn't see it.

  Shadows spilled through the doorway. In crept old Bede, his long nose arriving first. “Would the young convicts …,” he started.

  But Father's head snapped up, and he roared, “Get out, man! Leave us alone, you toad-eating fool.”

  Such anger I had never known from him. I saw the dismay on Bede's long face and—in that moment—I didn't believe he was a spy for Mr. Goodfellow. He couldn't have looked more injured if my father had taken a lash to him. Out he went, as stealthily as he'd arrived.

  “Oh, Bede,” Father called after him. “I'm sorry.”

  But it was too late. The man hadn't heard—or had chosen not to.

  My father stood up. He moved behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Good Lord, I don't know what's wrong with me. I feel that I'm lying ahull today, beset by squalls. But, dear Tom, don't worry. I'll look after you.”

  I left the cabin nearly brokenhearted. Midge held my sleeve as we climbed up to the deck. “It's over now,” I said. “I'll never get home.”

  “You might,” said he. “You're the captain's son, ain't you? If he stands up for you, they might let you stay with him. He can do what he likes, a captain can.”

  What he said made sense, and—with that—my spirits lifted. We walked to the steps and down to the waist of the ship.

  “I think he will get you home,” said Midge. “But he can't help me. Not for spit.”

  I saw that he was crying. Down each cheek a tear was rolling, and the corners of his mouth were shaking. It broke my heart to see him so, for even when Benjamin Penny had punctured his eyes, Midge had never wept. He'd gone bravely on as a darkness engulfed him. But now it seemed his stuffing had been pulled away, and all that was left was a frightened boy. I wanted to tell him that if he had to stay in Australia that I would stay with him. But could I really do it? Would I pass up a chance to go home?

  He sniffed. “At least I'll get to Australia. That's good, Tom; I'm glad for that. But I don't want to be there without you.”

  The strange calm lasted into evening. The air grew clammy hot, the sky full of clouds that looked torn and shredded, bleeding crimson through their wounds. My father had the topgallants furled, and reefs put in the topsails. He ordered a sailor to double the length of the longboat's towline. But he kept to his word and let the convicts dance.

  The fiddler sat where he always did, bobbing his black bush of a head as he squealed out cheerful songs. Boy danced with boy, convict with convict, in a wild confusion of stamping feet and swirling bodies. I saw the giant Gaskin Boggis whirling Penny by his webbed hands. The red hair of young Carrots was like a fire leaping through the crowd.

  I had always loved our dances. They were moments of joy in months of misery. But now the music failed to stir me, and I sat with Midge at the foot of the mainmast shrouds.

  The deck vibrated. The rigging trembled. Round went the boys in a lively reel, and their bare feet sent a drumroll over the sea and up to the sky, and it seemed to marshal the clouds. A breath of wind put a curl in the topsail; then the ship groaned from end to end.

  “Here comes that storm,” said Midge. “By cracky, don't your father know the sea?”

  The next puff filled the mainsail.
With a creak in her timbers, the ship started moving.

  “It's Australia for me,” said Midge. “If the wind pipes up they'll hoist the boat. They'd never tow it in a storm.”

  I heard the laughter of the sailors, the thumps as pairs of boys collided.

  Midgely touched my arm. “Will you promise me something, Tom?” he asked. “When you get home, will you see if me mum's alive? And if she is, will you tell her I ain't angry that she didn't want me?”

  “Oh, Midge,” I said.

  “Tell her this,” said he. “Tell her, ‘He got to go to sea, missus. Your boy went all the way to halfway round the world.’ Will you say that to her?”

  The ship was sailing now. The yards were braced, the deck aslant. Like sixty spinning tops, the convict boys massed along the lower rail.

  I leapt up and grabbed Midgely. I pulled him to his feet; I danced him down the deck. We swirled among the boys and out again, past the lumber, past the fiddler. I pushed him against the mainmast shrouds. “Climb!” I told him.

  He didn't question me. In a flash he was gone, scurrying up the ratlines. I followed him, but not so quickly. It alarmed me to feel the rope closing round my feet, the steep tilt of the ship. Before I was halfway up, the deck seemed impossibly distant. But I struggled on, and finally Midge reached down from the maintop and helped me through the lubber's hole. I collapsed on the broad, curved surface.

  “Good for you, Tom,” he said.

  The top was more exposed than I'd thought it would be, nor as secure as I'd hoped. There was no rail or hoop to keep me there. I lay flat on my stomach, my hands wedged in the gap of the doubled mast. The big maincourse hung on its great yard, creaking as it shifted in the iron truss. I could look above it to the sails of the foremast, down to the dancing convicts. From side to side was empty sea.

  The fiddler's song came to an end, and the dancing petered out. I looked for Boggis and Weedle and Benjamin Penny, but couldn't find them on the bit of deck that I could see. When the sailors marched the boys below, not one of the three, nor Carrots, was anywhere in the line.