The Tides of Avarice

by John Dahlgren

  What a strange coincidence, thought Sylvester with one part of his mind – one very small part, because all the rest was panicking at the prospect of being cooked and eaten. At least, he assumed cannibals cooked the people they ate first. Maybe they ate them raw? Maybe they didn’t even kill them first? What a strange coincidence that we were talking about cannibalism less than an hour ago. Only then, of course, we were thinking of it as the last resort of desperate, starving people, not as a way of life.

  “So what are we going to do?” he asked Cheesefang. His voice hardly trembled at all, he was sure of it.

  “Whatever the skipper tells us to do, o’ course.”

  “Even if that means getting killed and eaten?”

  Cheesefang leered. “Even if that means getting killed and eaten?” he said in a cruel lampoon of Sylvester’s tones. Then his expression changed and he beckoned the two lemmings closer to him.

  Sylvester noticed, not for the first time, that the sea rat smelled powerfully of grog, as if he took regular baths in the stuff. But that wasn’t the only aroma that hung around Cheesefang. It was obvious the pirate didn’t take regular baths in anything at all.

  “See, this skipper of ours ain’t as muttonbrained as you might be a thinkin’ ’e is,” said Cheesefang in a low voice. “I knowed Jeopord for many a long year, I ’ave, and he’s a bright ’un and a bold ’un. He ain’t a patch on the last skipper we ’ad, but then there ain’t a pirate on the ’ole wide Seven Seas is ever goin’ to be a patch on Cap’n Rustbane. ’E was somethin’ special, ’e was, but Jeopord’s somethin’ special too in ’is own way. ’E might let us walk into the gaping jaws of death, ’e might, but ’e wouldn’t let them jaws come closin’ down on top of us. ’E’d be bound to find some way of rescuin’ us before it’s too late.”

  “Are you sure of that?” said Sylvester.

  “Not very,” said Cheesefang, “but what I think ain’t all that important, is it? The cap’n’s goin’ to carry on and do exactly what ’e wants anyway. So we might as well look on the bright side, doncher think?”

  This wasn’t, Sylvester reflected, very reassuring, but he suspected it was the cheeriest news they were likely to get out of the old sea rat. Might as well grab ahold of it and hope for the best, the way they say drowning lemmings grasp at straws.

  Cheesefang’s attention had shifted. “Where’s Three Pins?” he asked Viola.

  “She went below for something,” Viola told him. “I don’t know what.”

  All this while, Jeopord and Kabalore had been carrying on negotiations about how the crew were going to get to the island of Vendros. Up and down the deck Sylvester could see burly pirates slowly relaxing, with swords being put back in scabbards and maces being hung once more from belts.

  “To the longboats!” cried Jeopord at last. He’d already selected a dozen crew to stay behind with him. He gestured everyone else toward where the longboats hung. The pirates closest to them began stripping off the tarpaulins with a practiced dexterity. The atmosphere among them was becoming almost cheerful now, as if they’d been told they could have an unexpected vacation, starting now. If any of them recognized the islanders as cannibals, the way Cheesefang and presumably Jeopord had done, it wasn’t obvious in their attitude.

  Sylvester hung back a little and looked around for Mrs. Pickleberry.

  “Where is she?” he said vexedly to Viola.

  “Don’t ask.”

  “But—”

  “Hush. She’s no fool, my mom. If she wants to stay behind she wants to stay behind, and there’s no use you worrying about it. She’ll have a plan of some kind in that hard little head of hers, you’ll see.”

  Sylvester looked at her dubiously. “You’re sure about that?”

  “Sure as sure.”

  “Well, okay then.”

  ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

  The night sky was dark and cloudless and filled with a million stars. Some of those weren’t really stars, Sylvester knew, but red sparks floating upwards from the eagerly blazing fire that had been built by Kabalore’s people on the beach. The crackling of the flames and the chanting and yelling of the islanders almost completely drowned the continual noise of the waves breaking against the shore, as if the ocean were breathing deeply as it slept through the ruckus of the celebrations.

  So far nothing had happened to threaten the visitors, but Sylvester was fairly sure it was only a matter of time. Cheesefang obviously thought the same. The rat had circulated among the other pirates begging the loan of a cutlass here and a dagger there, which he’d passed to Sylvester and Viola with strict instructions they should use them if there was the slightest pretext. As an additional safeguard, he stuck close to the two lemmings, keeping an eye on them in an almost paternal way. If he was worried by the absence of Mrs. Pickleberry, he didn’t show it; after asking Viola once or twice if she knew where her mother was, he abandoned the subject.

  The odd thing was, Sylvester ruminated, that none of the pirates seemed to have gotten to know any of the islanders. In the ordinary way, if you mixed two groups of people like this for a feast, there’d have been temporary friendships forming, perhaps a few congenial arguments starting. At the very least, people would have been telling each other their names, but there was nothing like that going on. The pirates sat on the sands on one side of the giant bonfire, the islanders on the other. The only intermingling going on was when islander serving wenches went round among the pirates with great tubs of a fiery green liquor and heaped plates of steaming viands.

  Sylvester and Viola, without consultation, stuck to the vegetables.

  The green grog was a different matter. Having checked that the goblet he’d been given was made out of a coconut shell rather than what he’d at first thought, Sylvester was happy enough to watch it being replenished more than once. He was going to regret this in the morning, he suspected, but he barely cared. The hooch was building up his courage, readying him for the confrontation with the islanders he was certain would materialize sooner or later. Besides, Cheesefang was drinking at least three times as much as Sylvester was.

  Viola took one sip of it, gagged, and refused to touch another drop.

  Something had been puzzling Sylvester, and he wormed closer to Cheesefang to let himself be heard above the hubbub.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Cheesefang.”

  “Huh?”

  “I said, ‘Excuse me.’”

  “I knows. That’s why I said, ‘Huh.’ Ain’t no one said ‘excuse me’ to this ol’ sea rat since ’e was an infant in ’is mother’s arms. Not that I can remember being in me mother’s arms, o’ course. She kicked me out of the ’ouse before I could walk, before I could barely toddle.”

  “How dreadful.”

  “Not really. I’d discovered I could get a good price for the family silverware down the market and I’d been sellin’ it off one piece at a—”

  Sylvester coughed pointedly. “I’d like to ask you a question, Mr. Cheesefang.”

  “An’ I’d go easy on the ‘Mr.’ as well, you young sprout. Makes me nervous, it does. Ain’t no one called me ‘Mr.’ since—”

  “Quite so,” said Sylvester. “But I’d like to say—”

  “What’s stoppin’ ye?”

  “Well, you are.”

  “Sorry I spoke, I’m sure. Fancy another tankard o’ this excellen’ grog?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Sylvester!” hissed Viola. “You’ve had quite enough. You’ve had more than quite enough.”

  “Aw . . .”

  Cheesefang ended the discussion by grabbing a passing serving wench, this time a chipmunk, and directing her to fill Sylvester’s goblet and his own.

  “Now, what’s this question of yers?” said the sea rat with a genteel hiccup.

  Sylvester floundered around for his question.

  “Oh,
yes. You say these people are cannibals?”

  “Sure as eggs is eggs.”

  “But cannibals are people who eat people of their own kind, aren’t they? If you ate another sea rat you’d be a cannibal.”

  “I would?”

  “But if you ate a” – it was really irritating, but the only animal that came to mind was a lemming – “if you ate a lemming, for example, just for example, I’m not really suggesting you should, heh heh, but if you ate a lemming you might be a vile murderer and very, very sick because the flesh of lemmings is poisonous to sea rats as I’m sure you know, but, er, where was I?”

  “You were tellin’ me I’d be better off not eatin’ lemmings.”

  “Ah, yes. If you ate a lemming, it wouldn’t be cannibalism, would it? So how can these people be cannibals when they’re of every species under the sun and, to judge by the skulls they wear, the people they eat are of every species too?”

  From where Sylvester was sitting, the sea rat was silhouetted by the leaping flames of the bonfire. He could see Cheesefang scratching his head as if amused, but he couldn’t see if there was a grin on the old pirate’s face.

  He suspected there was.

  “Sylvester, me old chum?”

  “Cheesefang.”

  “You seen much of the world?”

  “Not really.”

  “Wot? A womanizer like you? Perish the thought you is a innocent!”

  Sylvester glanced sideways at Viola. She was lapping up every word. He was likely to regret this later. Womanizer, indeed!

  Although he did rather like the idea.

  He stared down into the depths of the grog in his goblet, suspecting it might have betrayed him.

  Did I speak those words out loud?

  “You didn’t,” Viola assured him.

  That wasn’t as reassuring as it might have been.

  “Thing is,” Cheesefang was saying, “what cannibalism is, it ain’t the actual species that is important.”

  “It ain’t—isn’t?”

  “It’s the intellect.”

  Keeping the words “intellect” and “Cheesefang” in his mind at the same time was one of the more difficult tasks Sylvester had ever accomplished.

  “The intellect?”

  “Yes,” said Cheesefang as he tried to assume a superior expression, then giving up he took another gulp from his goblet instead. “See, cannibals ain’t really interested in what the meat o’ their victims tastes like. What they want to do is eat the brains, so they can add the wisdom an’ intellect an’ courage an’ all o’ their fodder to themselves.”

  “They think they can make themselves cleverer and braver, you mean?”

  “’Xactly. And ‘oo’s to say they ain’t right? Splendid good grog this is, ye ’ad some?”

  “Er, yes.”

  “So,” said Cheesefang as if the word were a treasure he’d discovered after a long search, “these Vendrosians, like any other cannibals, they don’t care if yer lemmings or sea rats or raccoons or ground’ogs or badgers. All they care about is if ye can think.”

  “Oh.”

  “An’ if yer a good fighter.”

  “Ah.”

  “Leastwise, that’s what it’s been like with all the other cannibals I tripped over.”

  “So when do you think they’re likely to pounce?”

  “Pounce?” The sea rat shrugged, looking at Sylvester through reddened eyes.

  “Attack us. Try to make us their supper.”

  Cheesefang looked around the scene. The flames were illuminating everything on this side of the fire, but what might be going on on the other side was impossible to tell, now that the night had deepened. Every now and then the fire would give an especially bright eruption, and for a moment the pirates could catch a glimpse of the islanders further up the beach, but those moments were short and long between.

  “Any second now, I should think,” said the sea rat. He sniffed knowledgeably.

  As if they’d heard him, the islanders suddenly raised the intensity of their chanting. Off to the left, behind the line where the trees met the sand, heavy drums began to beat.

  “What’re they singing?” said Viola.

  “Who can tell?” Sylvester replied.

  “They’s singing an ’ymn,” said Cheesefang. “An ’ymn to one o’ the many gods they worships. They’s askin’ for divine blessin’s on their, well, tell the truth, on their menu.”

  “On us, you mean?” said Sylvester.

  “True ’nuff.”

  “Don’t you think we ought to be doing something about it?”

  “What makes you think we ain’t?”

  Despite Cheesefang’s words, it didn’t look as if any of the pirates were in any condition to fight off attackers. Some of them were definitely asleep. Others were very nearly so. The green grog had not been without its efficacy.

  It had worked on Sylvester too, as he was discovering far too late. He managed to get to his feet, but only just. The borrowed cutlass he’d succeeded in pulling out from his belt looked alarmingly like rubber in the firelight. He supposed this might be useful. If the blade were made of cold steel he’d be likely to hesitate before plunging it into another sentient creature. A rubber blade, on the other paw …

  He didn’t have a chance to complete the thought. The islanders, who’d obviously spent the past few minutes organizing themselves, suddenly came charging in two troops around the sides of the blinding bonfire. Even if he hadn’t been able to see them, Sylvester would have known their evil intent. Their scream was wordless, but it was understandable in any language.

  Kiiillll!

  Suddenly, the sea of drunken pirates changed entirely.

  Sylvester could have sworn that most of the buccaneers were as near comatose. The cannibals should have been able to saunter among them slaughtering at will.

  Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  A wall sprang up between the advancing islanders and the nearest pirates. It was a wall of shining, finely honed steel.

  Suddenly aware of what he should do, Sylvester stared at the cutlass Cheesefang had given him. Holding it in a grip that felt as if it had been formed before time began, he switched it from one side to the other, enjoying the way it felt so under his control. A moment ago it had seemed like a rubber blade. Now it was a killing machine. All the wooziness from the green grog had strangely vanished. He knew Cheesefang was standing on his one side, Viola on the other, each of them likewise brandishing a weapon. Somehow, he felt distanced from what they were doing.

  He might never feel this way again, but at this moment, Sylvester Lemmington was a pirate.

  And he gloried in that status.

  He wanted to kill himself a few cannibals.

  The cannibals obligingly charged.

  17 There Are Ways and There Are Ways

  For a while, it seemed as if the pirates might prevail. They were outnumbered more than two to one by the islanders, but they were skilled and vicious fighters every one, even under the influence of the green grog. Sylvester, Viola and Cheesefang fought back to back, forming a triangle of whistling lethality as their swords flashed in the fitful red light from the bonfire. Sylvester learned not to shut his eyes in revulsion whenever his blade notched into the flesh of an islander; he was unable, though, to train himself to stop saying “oops, terribly sorry” each time.

  The night was filled with the clash of metal upon metal, and with the screams of the dying.

  The islanders were beaten back once, but then renewed the attack in a second wave.

  Casualties on both sides were horrendous.

  Cheesefang took an ax blow in his side and blood spurted. The rat screamed in agony, then resumed fighting with a terrible grin on his face. The islander who’d wielded the ax, another rat, was the first person Ch
eesefang slew after sustaining his wound.

  Slowly, slowly the attackers were driven back a second time.

  But then, from the thick jungle at the top of the sands, there poured another host of islanders, a reserve force that had remained in hiding so long as it looked as if the cannibals on the beach might conquer unaided. The newcomers were mainly older people, but they were armed as well as any and, while they might not have the same strength as the younger fighters, they more than made up for it in guile.

  The pirates didn’t stand a chance.

  It was all over soon after that.

  ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

  Far out to sea, Sylvester could see the lights of the Shadeblaze. Surely the pirates aboard the ship must have been able to hear what was going on. If Jeopord had thought to turn his telescope toward the shore, he would have been able to watch the cannibals’ treacherous attack on his comrades. Sylvester recalled Cheesefang’s reassuring words to him before they’d come on this doomed trip ashore: He might let us walk into the gaping jaws of death, he might, but he wouldn’t let them jaws come closin’ down on top of us. He be bound to find some way of rescuin’ us before it’s too late. It was surely long past time for Jeopord to be coming to their rescue …

  He said something of this over his shoulder to Viola, who was tied with him, back to back.

  “It’s hard to see how he could come to the rescue,” she observed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Shadeblaze’s presumably still firmly lodged on the reef. I didn’t actually check, but I don’t think he has any longboats left out there, so he and his men would have to swim to reach us, and true pirates don’t swim, remember? Besides, even if he had the means to get here, he’s got only a dozen pirates, not much of an army against a host of cannibals. I think we’re done for, darling.”