Buffing, Midge had called it, long ago, when he'd told me of his crimes. “You sell their skins,” he'd said, and I suddenly smelled the stench of our prison ship; I saw him in its fetid darkness. “You stick a wire in them. It goes right to their heart and does them in as gentle as you please.”
I grabbed a wire and tried to wrench it from the parasol. “Midge,” I said. “Would it work on a man? Could you kill a man like that?”
“Golly, Tom,” he said. “I don't think so.”
The wire wouldn't come loose from the hub. I wrapped my fist around it as the cannibals suddenly whooped and cheered. I didn't look toward the fires.
“Why not?” I asked. “If it could kill a dog, why not a man?”
“Oh, it could,” he said. “But, Tom, I can't do it. I can't see.”
The wire heated in my fist as it bent and twisted. “Then show me,” I said. “I'll do it.”
Midgely's small hands felt across my shirt, then his finger poked at my ribs. “There. That's where you stick it, Tom. That's where.”
The wire snapped. It sprang from my hand and flew against the cage. I thought it passed right between the bars, but with a tiny tick it bounced from the wood and fell across my leg. I took it up and held it tightly.
“Push hard,” said Midge. “Push harder than you ever pushed.”
Here came the savage, striding from the fires with his forked stick and its noose. I imagined myself jabbing the wire at his chest, driving it through his ribs. A cold sweat broke out on my back and my face and my hands. I said, “I can't. Oh, Midge, I…”
“You can,” he said. “In your heart ain't you really the Smasher?”
“That was never me,” I said. But was it really true? I had been born a twin, and I shared the cruel blood of my murderous brother. It had pulsed me into rages before.
“Just do it, Tom,” said Midge.
The savage tugged at his noose. If he kept to his order, he would take my father next, then Weedle and Penny and all the others. Midge and I would be last, with no one to save but ourselves.
I shook the cage. “Take me!” I shouted.
“No!” cried Father.
But I shouted again, “Take me!” The savage came right to the cage as I cried out with every curse and oath I'd ever heard. Then he turned, and stepped toward my father.
I picked up the parasol and rattled at the bars. I worked it in between them and, clumsily, threw it at the man. He turned again. He came back to the door of my cage, bent down, and worked the latch.
His nose was pierced by a white bone. His earlobes had been slit and stretched, so that they dangled now—grotesquely—nearly to his shoulders. His dark tattoos were like patterns of little black rivets set into his skin. His hands were huge, and they fumbled with the latch.
I held the wire in my fists. I flexed it back and forth. My heart was pounding, but not with anger and rage. I felt nothing more than a sickening fear as the latch opened. The savage wrenched the door aside. He picked up his forked stick and thrust it into the cage.
I grabbed it. I pulled hard, and the savage toppled forward. His chest banged against the cage, and the strings of bones and shells swayed across the doorway.
I brought up the wire. I saw just where to aim it, just where to drive it in. But even then I knew I could never do it. I was not my twin after all; I had none of his cold fury. When my father had cut us apart, in the minute of my birth, he had made me very different.
The cannibal hauled me out and threw me to the ground. Before I could move, the noose encircled my neck.
“Tom!” my father shouted. “Oh, my dear son!”
The noose drew tight at my neck. I tried to work my fingers underneath the cord, but it was all I could do to keep my balance as the savage hauled me from the ground and marched me to the stake.
twenty-six
THE THIRD DANGER
I saw the crowd of cannibals turn toward me. A path opened between them, leading right to the stake. The warriors stood with their knives and spears. The drummers sat drumming, and the women danced. The children laughed and shouted.
The savage pushed me ahead. Around my neck, the noose drew so tight that I could scarcely breathe. I stumbled forward and the fires raged, sparks soaring high.
I could see a pool of blood around the stake, streaks along the wood. The savage turned me round.
As my back slammed against the stake, I heard a roar of sound, a whistle, and a crashing in the jungle. It all came nearly at once, and I didn't know what was happening. There was another boom, another shriek and crash.
“Cannons!” my father shouted. “Those are navy guns; six pounders. They're shelling the village.”
So I had a seen a ship out there. Now, through the rain and darkness, came flares of light as the cannons fired. The balls smashed through huts, through trees and bushes.
The women fled. The warriors ran toward the beach. The children raced in both directions, and the clearing was suddenly empty. But the savage who held me didn't let go. With a shove on his stick he drove me to the ground, pinning me in its forked end. He put all his weight on it, pressing my face down in the red mud. I heard the cannonballs whistle. And suddenly the man was gone, and his stick thumped to the ground at my side.
From the beach came sounds of a battle—yells and screams, gunshots, and the clash of wood and metal. Of the savage there was no sign. He had simply disappeared.
I ran to the cages. I had to struggle at first with the latches, but each opened more quickly than the last. Out came the sailors, who fled from the clearing and vanished in the jungle's darkness. Out came Weedle and Penny, out came my father. But poor blind Midgely cowered in the cage. When I reached in, he screamed.
I said, “Midge, it's me.”
My father and others were trying to free Gaskin. He wasn't moving. They pulled at his arms. “Come on!” they told him.
I hurried to help. But Gaskin had been beaten so badly, so crammed in the small box that I feared his bones might have been broken. “It ain't no use,” he said. “I can't move my legs. I can't even feel them, Tom.”
“Leave him!” shouted Weedle. But Benjamin Penny had an even crueler mind. “Kill him, Weedle,” said he, with a mad look. “Throttle him quick, and have done with it.”
I refused to abandon Boggis. If I couldn't drag him out, I'd destroy the cage itself. So I went at it with fists and feet, flailing away at the wooden bars. My father attacked them too, and I heard them crack and splinter. A wall came away. The roof collapsed.
“Here they come again,” said Weedle.
I turned and saw the cannibals swarming up from the beach. But now they ran all helter-skelter, scattering through the clearing. Behind them came a crowd of men more wild than any. In clothes of red and yellow, with long knives that flashed like streaks of flame, they might have sprung right out from the fires.
“Pirates!” shouted Father. “It's not the navy at all. God help us, it's pirates, Tom.”
Together we got Boggis to his feet. But as soon as the giant tried to move, his legs buckled and he collapsed again.
“Oh, Tom,” said Father. He put his arms around me for the first time since we'd been together on the ship. “We might as well stay with him and see the end right here. There's nowhere to go at any rate.”
“But, Captain Tin,” said Midgely. “We've got a steamboat on the beach.”
My father made a grunting sound that might have been a laugh. “A steamboat?” he said. “Why, you're a wonder, the pair of you.”
We held Boggis between us, his arms resting on our shoulders. We staggered past the huts and down to the beach, then along the soft sand.
“You go ahead,” said Father. “Get your fire stoked, your steam up. I won't come without the boy; don't worry.”
Weedle and Penny needed no urging. They ran on into the rain and dark, that horrible Penny shuffling over the sand. But I stayed to help.
“Please go, Tom,” said Father, puffing loudly now. “I be
g you; do as I say.”
The huts along the beach burst into fire one by one. The pirates were taking torches to them, and the flames leapt high and hot and bright. There was a clamor of high-pitched voices, and a score of pirates—maybe more—came along the beach behind us.
“Tom, go!” said Father, and I saw that he was right. I could help best by having the boat ready for him. So I led Midgely by the hand, as fast as we could move along the beach.
We found Benjamin Penny working at the knots that tied the boat to a tree. He was pulling and biting the rope. Weedle had known enough—or guessed enough—to open the firebox and was filling it now with wood. They toiled in such a frenzy that I had no doubt they would have left without us.
Penny was cursing most foully. “It's all a tangle. A terrible quiz,” he said.
“Pull on the end, you stupid,” said Midgely. He elbowed Weedle aside, found the tail end of the rope, and gave it a tug. The whole long knot unraveled. “You see? It's a chain knot. Now haul it in,” he said.
Midge and I climbed into the boat. I dug out the matches and the oil can, and squirted the wood in the firebox. But it was too wet to catch a flame, and my matches fizzled one by one. The rain came down in torrents.
“Midge, where's that caul?” I said.
“It only works for drowning, Tom,” he told me. “It don't save a man from pirates.”
“We'll see about that,” I said.
He fetched the box from its place and shoved it in my hands. I looked back and saw my father and Boggis staggering down the beach. The pirates seemed right at their heels.
“Hurry, Penny!” shouted Weedle.
I opened the wooden box. I sprayed oil inside it, all over the shriveled skin. I struck a match, then touched it to the oil, and flames leapt up in a greasy smoke. The old box—tinder dry—nearly exploded into fire. I shoved it on top of Weedle's wood, and slammed the door of the firebox.
There wasn't time to build pressure in the boiler. I pulled out the sculling oar and rammed it in its socket.
“Help me push!” cried Benjamin Penny. He had his bent shoulder pressed against the boat's bow.
“Wait!” I told him.
“Wal-ker!” said Weedle. “We ain't waiting for nothing.” He jumped out to help Penny.
My father came wading through the water. All the light of the fires glowed on the surface, so that he seemed to be waist-deep in flames. He helped Boggis into the boat. He told Penny to get aboard, and even made a ladder of his hands to help him. The pirates were splashing through the sea, their swords and jewelry all aglow.
My father put his hands on the gunwale. But he made no effort to haul himself into the boat. He pushed instead. Though breathless and nearly done, he put all of his last strength into helping us escape.
“No!” I shouted. I tried to clutch his hands, but they moved away along the gunwale as the boat went sliding back.
“Do what's right by me, Tom,” he said. “Do the handsome thing, my boy.”
He pushed hard, and the effort unbalanced him. Facefirst, he fell in the water, and he was half drowned when he rose. But once more he lunged at the boat. His weight sent it moving faster.
“No!” I cried again. “Oh, Father, please, I need you!”
Everyone was shouting—the boys in the boat, and the pirates rushing. It was a mad babble of voices, but through it came my father's steady tones. He alone seemed sure and confident.
“You're all brandy, Tom,” he said. “You're square aloft and trim below.”
Benjamin Penny laughed. “Seasick at Chatham, that's your son. Seasick in a river, he was.” The firelight glowed on his horrid face, and he grinned at me while the pirates fell upon my father.
They grabbed his arms, his shoulders, and his hair. Four of them held him, and the others waded out toward the boat. But my father somehow struggled free. He shook off the men; he pulled away. And in the moment before they were on him again, he gave the passing bow a mighty shove that drove us clear.
“Godspeed, Tom,” he said. “You've done me proud, my son.”
“Proud?” shrieked Penny. “Why, he said he hated his father, that's what he said. Couldn't wait for the day—”
“You shut up!” I knocked him down, and he cackled his wicked laugh even as he crumpled. I couldn't believe he'd say such a thing. There was no rhyme nor reason to it. And his words may have been the last my father ever heard, for I saw a sword lifted high, a fabulous sword that glinted with a hundred jewels. It made a streak of light across the sky, and it felled my father in the water.
It was the hardest thing I'd ever done to turn the boat and scull it from the beach. I could see my father being hauled from the sea with his heels dragging in the sand. I knew there wasn't a hope in the world I could save him. But as I pushed the boat into the rain, as he faded away behind, I felt as though I'd betrayed my father.
“There ain't no one as brave as Redman Tin,” said Midgely. “Ain't that true, Tom?”
“It is,” I said.
Midgely nodded. “At least you know he won't be killed. Them pirates would never kill a man like him. They'll sell him for a king's ransom, won't they, Tom?”
“He'd rather be a dead man,” I said. “He told us so himself.”
“But if anyone can get away, it's Redman Tin,” said Midge.
A whistle came from the steam engine as the pressure built up. I put away the oar and worked the wheel and levers. With a shudder, the paddle wheels turned. The pistons moved, the cranks went round, and I heard the sound that always made me think of a little girl, that chuckatee-chickadee of the engine working.
We moved faster. I steered to keep the burning village behind us, and we steamed through the rain. The black ship appeared ahead, a monstrous thing with many masts and great soaring cabins on the stern. It was the biggest ship I'd ever seen, so black and evil that I took one glance and turned away. I steered for the open sea.
Benjamin Penny was scuttling away toward Weedle, who had opened the firebox to put in more wood. The flames lit that horrid boy, glowing in the webs between his fingers. I despised him more than ever, and moved to hurry him on with a kick.
But there was a sudden flash, a roar and shriek, and the sea exploded into spray beside us. Weedle screamed. “What was that?”
“A cannon!” I shouted at him to close the firebox. “They're aiming for the light!”
He slammed the door. I hauled on the tiller. Another ball went shrieking past, and others followed. But the rest fell farther and farther astern, and soon the boat rose on the swells as we left the island behind us.
I sent Midgely to sit with Boggis. “How is he?” I asked.
It was Boggis himself who answered. “I'm better now, Tom,” he said. “I'll start tending the fire in a minute.”
“No, you rest,” I told him. “Weedle and Penny will do that.”
“Wal-ker!” said Weedle. “Why should we be the ones to work?”
“Because if you don't we'll strand you on the next island,” I said.
He cursed. “Here, look, I didn't know you were the cap-tain's boy. It's true, ain't it; you were never the Smasher?”
“No, he ain't old Smashy,” said Benjamin Penny.
Weedle ignored him. “Tom, listen. It weren't my idea to take the boat and leave you. Mr. Mullock, he thought of that. ‘Leave 'em behind,’ he said. Well, where is he now, the old grub?”
“We left him behind,” said Midgely.
Weedle grunted. “That's justice, ain't it?”
“No, it ain't, 'cause he ain't alone, is he?” said Midge. “We left him with Lucy Beans, but you don't know her, and more's the pity for you. She's a peach, ain't she, Tom? She's a plum, that Lucy Beans.”
“By now he's bleeding all over from henpecks,” said Weedle. “They'll be living the cat and dog life, him and the old bloss.”
“She ain't an old bloss,” said Midge. “Tell him, Tom. Tell him about Lucy Beans.”
I didn't answer. I sat at the tiller, s
teering east into darkness and rain. The others squabbled and fought. “I'll give you a grueller,” threatened Penny, and it seemed suddenly that little had changed since our first day together. We were fewer in number, and our boat was bigger and better, but we were still half a world from home, and no closer than when we'd started.
I shifted on the seat and made myself comfortable. I steered by the feel of the waves, listening to the chuckateechickadee of the engine. I sat and thought of my father.
“Do the handsome thing,” he had told me. But what had he meant by that? “Do what's right by me, Tom.”
He had left me with a riddle. One that I wasn't sure I'd ever solve.
epilogue
The rain stopped in the morning, and the sun beat down. Midgely wished for his parasol, as though it were the finest thing he had ever owned. His face was as red as a strawberry, and brown welts were forming on his lips. The tropics, I thought, were rotting him away, and I feared to look toward the shining boiler of the steam engine, lest I see the same tortured face reflected in the metal.
No one argued again over who would command the boat. I believed that Weedle thought I had a right to it, as the son of a captain. But Benjamin Penny seemed only to accept that he was powerless to change things. Or else he was waiting for just the right time to change them.
Not he, nor Weedle, nor even Boggis had any desire to go home to England. For now, they rode along on the same river of fate. There were many miles, and many days before us for that river to twist and turn.
We made only one more stop in the cannibal islands. I chose a place so small and flat that we could see right across it, from one end to the other. We reached it through a ring of reefs, and the steamboat sat in a stillness while the sea burst and broke all around.
Over the course of four days, we felled every tree on the island. We collected every coconut, every mollusk and every turtle that crawled on the beach. We left that island nearly as barren as the lonely rock where we'd found Mr. Mullock.
The Cannibals Page 17
