The Cannibals

by Iain Lawrence

  If there was drumming that night we didn't hear it. We had only the birds, and the lap of waves on this lee side of the island, a soft sort of sound like many dogs drinking. We had the moon to light our way, and we plodded north across hard sand.

  I carried the axe again, and made sure that Mr. Mullock was in front of me. When he stopped, so did I.

  “Tom, look,” he said. “This island's too small for 'ard feelings. I'm sorry that Early's gone, but I'm sorrier still that you think I 'ad a 'and in it.”

  “If you're asking for this,” I said, lifting the axe, “you can forget it, Mr. Mullock.”

  “Farthest thing from my mind.” He smiled, in the way that had seemed charming when we'd first met.

  “Keep away from me, Mr. Mullock,” I said.

  “Hah! Count on it, son,” said he. “I've said my bit, and it's off my chest.”

  We walked very far that day. When Midgely tired, I carried him on my back. And when I began to stumble, Boggis said, “I'll take him, Tom. He's so little, it ain't nothing to me.”

  The shoreline turned toward the east. The jungle above the beach began to thin, and soon there was nothing but bare rock and sand above us. “It's a spit we're on,” said Mr. Mullock. “We could cut across here.”

  “No,” said Midge. He'd almost fallen asleep on Gaskin's back, but was now wide awake. “We have to follow the shore all the way. We might go right past Sunny Wheeler if we don't.”

  For half a mile we trudged toward the moon. It almost seemed that we'd come to a different island, for palm trees took the place of the jungle, and a breeze coming down from the island made their long fronds rustle. Against the stars, they looked to me like giant hands waving at the end of pipestem arms.

  As we neared the end of the spit, I heard a thud behind us, like a heavy footfall in the sand. When another came soon after, I stopped and looked back. But the moonlit beach was empty, and nothing moved in the black shadows above it. So we carried on, and stopped at the very end of the spit.

  “Did you find the hut?” asked Midgely.

  I shook my head, but of course he didn't see that. The tip of land stretched into the sea, and one was as empty as the other. Mr. Mullock said it was a goose chase we were on. He sat on the sand, in the moonlight. The breeze gusted; the palm trees swayed. There was another thud, and this time I wasn't the only one to hear it. Mr. Mullock looked around, his beard shining darkly. “Who's there?” he asked.

  We held our breaths. I listened to the rustling fronds, to the buzz of flies in the grasses, until my ears rang with the quiet. I peered into the blackness along the shore.

  “Oh!” I gasped. “Look.”

  There was a figure there, leaning on a tree. He was tall and thin, dark as old wood. But he didn't move; he didn't so much as nod, only leaned at a peculiar slant with his arms stiff at his sides. When my heart slowed down I saw that it was a wooden man, a carving propped among the trees. The more I looked, the more I saw: three peeled logs planted in a row; a glint of starlight moving; the triangular shape of a roof.

  “It's the hut,” I said. “Midge, you're right.”

  “Hah! By George, 'e is,” said Mr. Mullock. “Or it's the luck of the devil 'e's got.”

  We moved toward it, all together. The hut stood on the land, but hung over the beach; the logs were stilts supporting it. The wall was woven grass; the roof was thatched; the glint of light shone from the broken pane of a small window. And a buzzing of flies came out from there.

  “Why, it's chock-full of bugs,” said Mr. Mullock. “Hah! Poor old Foxy; wouldn't he like to be 'ere?”

  It was the first he'd spoken of his little bat, the only sign he'd missed it. In a fashion, it was the first hint that Mr. Mullock had a heart.

  We stood below the pilings, beside the wooden man. A furious expression was carved on his face, but a split had opened across the mouth, and now the man looked a lot like Walter Weedle. I touched its cheek, and my fingers came away covered in termites.

  “Is the trader here?” asked Midgely.

  “Wal-ker!” said Mr. Mullock. “It's as empty as a tomb.”

  “Then he must be off trading,” said Midge. “He paddles from island to island in a little canoe, buying oysters and pearls.”

  “Maybe he's sleeping,” said Boggis.

  Mr. Mullock grunted. “Nip in and have a look, Tom. Or give me the axe if you're scared, and I'll go myself.”

  There was no reason to be frightened; it was only an empty house. But I heard the wind in the palms, and then the footfalls again, the sounds of men who weren't there. I gripped the axe and clambered to the back of the house.

  There was a crude ladder leaning against it, a log with steps chopped along its length. It moved when I touched it. When I climbed it, the whole hut trembled and shook, and the drone of flies grew louder.

  The door at the top hung open. I stepped into a room that wasn't quite as black as I'd thought it would be. In the small window was the glow of the stars and the moon. In the middle of the floor was a red glint of embers where a fire had collapsed on itself.

  I knew then that the hut hadn't been empty for long. I had a strong sensation that it wasn't empty even now.

  The air was thick with a musty old smell, a peculiar odor that made me think of old Worms the body snatcher. I heard the flies buzzing around me, and a shiver of wind through the thatching. Then there came such a bang that I nearly bolted from my skin, and down from the roof came a thing—a black thing. It landed on the floor and leapt to the fire. It seemed to burrow into the ashes, and it stirred the embers so that a red light filled the room.

  I saw what it was then, this thing that had come at me. The sight made me laugh, for it was only a coconut that had pierced right through the roof, leaving a small oval of stars above me. I knew that all my imagined footfalls on the beach had been only so many coconuts knocked free by the wind.

  In the red glow I looked around, into each dark space. I saw a broad shelf above the floor, and what looked like a person sleeping there, but was only a mat rolled into a fat tube. I saw pots and bowls and a heap of wood, a spear propped against a wall. There was a wooden box, a basket and a painted shield, and I kept turning and saw a table in the corner, where a man was sitting in a chair.

  His back was toward me. He had fallen forward, so that his chest rested on the table, and all I could see of him was the hump of his shoulders. It was there the flies were gathered—a seething mass of flies that reflected the stars and the firelight in their thousands of flashing wings.

  I cried out to him—“Hallo!”—but he neither moved nor answered.

  I was certain what I would find, but I still stepped closer. The hut shifted on its stilts, the table creaked, and the man seemed to shrug his shoulders. His right arm had been resting on the table's edge, but now it fell from there and swung back and forth in the space beside the chair. It was a horrible hand, a hacked-away lump reduced to the thumb and one finger.

  “Hallo?” I said again. There was still no answer.

  I moved forward quickly. I didn't stop until I stood behind him. His other hand lay squarely in the light from the little window. As disfigured as the first, it was a hand with only three fingers and no thumb. I reached out and touched his shoulder, and all the many flies rose up like a great seething boil. They ticked and tapped against me, colliding with my face and arms. There were so many that I was blinded for a moment, and when they cleared away—like a black fog thinning—I saw that the man had no head.

  fifteen

  THE FATE OF CROC ADAMS

  I fled from the house and ran to the beach. In my fear and shock, I could hardly speak. But the others pressed around, asking questions, and I stammered out that I had seen a dead man at a table.

  “Do you think it was Sunny Wheeler?” asked Midge.

  “He didn't give his name,” I said, still shivering.

  “But you'd know him,” said Midge. “They call him Sunny 'cause his hair's as yellow as the sun.”

>   I heard my own laugh, a crazy sound. “He didn't have any hair. He didn't have any head.”

  “Oh, Lord!” said Mr. Mullock.

  We were all standing on the beach, looking up at the walls and roof of the hut. The flies were buzzing again, and I couldn't get warm, no matter how I held myself. “He had terrible hands,” I said. “He had claws for hands.”

  “He did?” asked Midge. “Like this, you mean?” He curled and twisted his own hands, tucking fingers and thumb out of sight. “Like they was eaten away, Tom?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Holy jumping mother of Moses. You know who that is?” Midge gaped up at me. “That's old Croc Adams, ain't it? And don't that explain it all? Croc Adams, he traps the crocodiles and sells them to make purses for ladies. It was a crocodile trap what caught Mr. Mullock.”

  I couldn't understand Midgely's excitement. “So where's Sunny Wheeler?”

  “Gone native,” said Mr. Mullock. “Hah! That's what 'appens on these islands. You come out from England and start living the good life, picking your food from the trees. You lie on the beach and swim in the surf, and the next thing you know you're out collecting 'eads.”

  I wondered if he wasn't describing himself. But then he shrugged and said, “That's what I've 'eard.”

  “No, no!” cried Midgely. “Sunny Wheeler weren't never here. I thought this was his island, but it ain't. It's old Croc Adams what lives here. And you know what, Tom? Now I know where we are.”

  Mr. Mullock groaned. I said, “Oh, Midge. You keep telling us that, and you're always wrong.”

  “But I do know now,” he said. “Them little islands what looked like ships? That galleon island, remember? They weren't what I thought, but I see it now. The reverend called them the Pastry Places, 'cause his daughter said they was like fancy cakes, them little islands. You remember that from the book don't you, Tom?”

  “No,” I said. Midge had spent years with the book. He'd learned every word. But there wasn't a lot I remembered myself.

  “You know where old Croc Adams lives?” said Midgely. “Not five miles from the reverend's mission, that's where he lives, Tom Tin.” Midge was nearly shaking with excitement. “It's on that other island. The very next island.”

  “Then it might as well be on the moon,” said Mr. Mullock. “Since we 'aven't a boat anymore.”

  “You stupids,” said Midge. “Don't you think old Croc Adams has a boat?”

  He was right, and it was Boggis who found it. We all blundered through the bushes and round about the house, but Boggis went down to the water and found it floating on a mooring. He called out, “Here it is.” Then he added, “Least I think it's a boat.”

  I could see right away why he wondered. It was a canoe that had been hollowed from a log. But it had no front or back; it was more like a trough than a boat. And it was a tiny thing, too. “I've seen bathtubs bigger than that,” said Mr. Mullock.

  But we piled aboard. Midgely sat in the middle, and I at the back, while Boggis and Mr. Mullock straddled the thing like riders on a little wooden horse. Their shins and their feet were in the water, and they kicked us over the shallows and out to the sea.

  We used branches for paddles, as we'd found none of the real ones, and we rode the canoe from night into dawn, poling and paddling along. There was little talk, for all of us were worried. We were heading for the island where the drums had been beating.

  Mr. Mullock wanted to fetch it in the darkness, and kept nagging us to paddle harder. Whenever the water grew shallow, he made Boggis hop out and pull us along. But the sun rose while we still had a mile to go, and we saw the island loom ahead. It was dark and gloomy on the sea.

  From its tangled shores, a mountain towered up. A black cliff soared from the jungle in jagged shards and runs of green. It was a most foreboding place, and Mr. Mullock might have been speaking for me when he said, “I'd rather pass it by.”

  But there was nowhere else to go. The two large islands, and the little islets between, formed a group as lonely as stars in the sky. Miles of sea surrounded them.

  “You'll like it when we get there,” Midgely said. He was squinting between his fingers, trying to see the place for himself. “The reverend calls it Pig Island, but that ain't its real name. There's no one can say the proper name, it's got so many letters. But it means Place of the Pigs. Them hills is thick with wild pigs.”

  “Porkers you say?” said Mr. Mullock. “There's porkers running about?”

  Midgely nodded. “There's the village, too. A hundred people maybe.”

  “Hah! Cannibals, you mean.”

  “No,” said Midge. “They're uncommon friendly here.”

  The thought of all the pork and pigs' feet must have been too much for Mr. Mullock. He applied himself to his paddle, and the little canoe doubled its speed.

  Midgely said he knew exactly where the mission was. He said we could paddle along the shore and land right below it. “The reverend keeps his own boat there,” he said. “It's a steamboat, Tom, and won't that be splendid? He'll take us straight to the elephant island.”

  Mr. Mullock said nothing. I saw his back stiffen, though, and wondered what he was thinking. We hadn't talked of where we would go since the day in the longboat when he'd steered north to Shanghai. Now, I imagined, he was only waiting his chance to head there again.

  Midgely looked back at me. I saw—for the first time, really—how his skin was blistered by the sun, peeling from his nose and cheeks. But he was smiling away like a boy on a picnic. “We'll paddle right up to the mission, won't we?” he said.

  “We'll not do that,” said Mullock.

  Midgely's face fell. I was about to speak up and say we'd go where we pleased. But Mr. Mullock said, “Look, Midgely. I've taken something of a fancy to you I 'ave. You're a fine boy. But the truth is you're as spoony as they come, and you 'aven't yet been right about that book of yours.”

  “That's true,” said Boggis.

  “Where you say there's a mission, as like as not we'll find a cannibal village,” said Mr. Mullock. “And, frankly, if we see a single porker I'll be surprised. We'll land right ahead and foot it from there.” He raised his voice to be sure that Midgely would hear. “Provising that suits our young Captain Blind.”

  “Go ahead,” said Midge. “Do what you please, and you'll see for yourself.”

  It was plain to all that he was hurt, though he tried not to show it. He gave me a smile that was comically sad, and said, “What a welcome we'll get, when we get there.”

  Within the hour we reached the island. We hid the canoe in what looked like a mulberry bush, and went on by foot to the north. We kept the water in sight, though it meant we had to clamber up and down the slopes.

  The jungle was thicker than any we had seen. The trees soared up to a solid mass of leaves and branches. Much higher than the masts of my father's ship, they seemed to hold up a whole new world above our own. The small patches of sky were like pools of blue water, in and out of which flashed gaudy birds and mysterious, chattering creatures. I saw a monkey leap across that world, then a huge green frog glide like a bird from tree to tree. I saw snakes that looked like branches, and branches that looked like monsters.

  We descended to a gully, then climbed again—and kept climbing—up a slope as steep as stairs. For half a year we had been no higher than a house is tall, and now the air felt thin, the height dizzying. Midgely's nose began to bleed, a redness on his lip.

  Boggis kept looking back. “There's someone behind us,” he said. “There's savages there.”

  But we saw no one. Nothing moved except the branches and the ferns we'd passed, closing again to hide our trail. Yet I too became convinced there were savages behind us. It was all the more frightening that I could neither hear nor see them.

  We hurried our pace. Over rocks, under fallen trees, we staggered and stumbled. We followed a stream that ran swiftly at first, then slowed to a brown sludge—as though it, like us, grew weary. We paused more often, look
ing back as the monkeys hooted and the parrots whistled.

  On we went, in spurts and dashes. We waded through mud like molasses, past dangling vines and enormous nests of termites. What seemed at first to be a fallen tree suddenly curled upon itself as we went toward it. It slithered and oozed through the mud, a snake as thick as barrels.

  The river twisted amongst the trees. In a long bend it curled from north to south, nearly to its own banks, and we were suddenly looking back where we had been. And there we saw the savages.

  Three of them, they came in single file, splashing down the stream. They wore breastplates made of bone and wood, and sashes round their waists. One wore feathers on his head, a waving tuft of scarlet, and all three were draped in strings of shells and bones that hung about their necks. They strode steadily but slowly, as though they had no need to hurry.

  “It's all right,” said Midge when I told him about them. “They're friendly.”

  But Boggis snatched him up, and we ran like frightened deer. We hurdled logs; we bounded down the river. But every time we paused—breathless and afraid—we heard the steady sloshing of the savages, and on we went again.

  The river flattened near the sea. The ground grew soft and swampy. A buzz and whine of insects grew louder every moment, and didn't that put a fear inside me?

  Then we shouldered through a wall of bushes. And there was Midgely's mission.

  It sat in a clearing where grass—once cut—now grew wild. The house was wooden, two stories tall, surrounded by a wall of logs set into the earth like pickets. “A mission?” said Mr. Mullock. “Hah! It's a fort.” We could see only the roof and a bit of wall, a small window where a red flower grew in a clay pot.

  We crossed the clearing quickly. Half hidden in the grass lay a child's pull toy—a big-eared mouse with its bright paint falling away. There was a little pail and a tiny shovel, and a bassinet tipped on its side, full of spiderwebs and brown coccoons.