by Paul Stewart
There was Mr Spicer, with his big hooped earrings and red beard. He was meant to teach geography, but all they ever seemed to study was caves and tunnels and ‘pot-holing for beginners’. Then there was Mrs Blood the science teacher who liked gunpowder and cannons, and didn't seem to wash very much. And Mr Woodhead, who taught gym, with his eye-patch and tattoos of mermaids on his arms.
Fergus was pretty sure the mermaid in the mortar-board on the school sign had been copied from Mr Woodhead's right forearm.
And then, in his filthy apron, there was Mr Gilroy. He had a wooden leg carved like a table leg, with notches – twelve in all – down one side. He was the school cook, although as everyone brought lunchboxes, he only ever cooked for the teachers – which was just as well, judging by the smells coming out of the galley of the Betty-Jeanne.
But perhaps the strangest teacher of them all was Captain Claw himself.
Fergus hung his backpack up on his hook in the cloakcabin, and struggled into his gym kit. He checked his watch. Fourteen minutes past. He rushed across the foredeck, past the headmaster's cabin and …
‘Uurghh!’ he croaked as a hooked hand shot out from the open doorway and snagged the back of his vest.
he next moment, Fergus found himself staring into the headmaster's angry red face.
‘Crane!’ he barked. ‘I might have known. Late again!’
‘It's … it's … only … b … been the once … s … s … sir,’ stammered Fergus, dangling by the back of his vest from Captain Claw's clawlike hook.
‘Don't bandy words with me, you lily-livered landlubber!’ roared Captain Claw.
The headmaster of the school ship Betty-Jeanne liked calling the children ‘landlubbers’ and ‘harbour-huggers’ and ‘scurvy dogs’. Fergus had no idea what these words meant, but he was sure they weren't good.
‘Keelhauling's too good for you, you undersized shark-bait!’ he growled. ‘I've half a mind to give you a day's semaphore practice, except you seemed to enjoy it last time!’
From up in the parrot's nest, there came a squawk. ‘Captain Claw! Captain Claw!’
‘That infernal bird!’ thundered the headmaster, releasing Fergus and striding to the door. ‘How many times do I have to tell you?’ he shouted up at Bolivia. ‘It's Headmaster Smollet, you squawking feather-duster!’
‘Wind in the east! Wind in the east!’ squawked the parrot.
Good old Bolivia, thought Fergus. Trying to distract the headmaster for me.
‘Storm on the horizon! Storm on the horizon!’
‘Nonsense,’ said Captain Claw who, despite his best efforts, was called Captain Claw by all the children behind his back. ‘I swear that bird is getting dafter by the day – not to mention plumper. Must cut down on its birdseed. Now, where's my telescope? Storm on the horizon indeed!’
‘In the corner, sir,’ said Fergus, trying to be helpful. ‘On your sea-chest.’
The captain's cabin (or Head- master's study, as he called it) was a jumble of oil lamps, tarp- aulins, nautical instruments and rusty harpoons. On the walls were strange stuffed fish from faraway oceans, and old, faded photographs of exotically dressed ladies, each with the name of a port written beneath them in the captain's scrawly handwriting. ‘North Harbour’ looked as if she needed a shave, and ‘West Port’ had only one tooth in her smile. Fergus's favourite was ‘Sweetwater Keys’. She had a large flower behind each ear and wore a long grass skirt.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Captain Claw, picking up the telescope distractedly.
Bolivia's ruse had worked. The headmaster seemed to have forgotten why Fergus was standing in his study. He loomed over the boy, tapping the tip of the telescope against the brim of his peaked cap.
Behind him, on his desk, was an enormous sea chart, weighed down at each corner by a heavy orange and grey speckled stone. When he wasn't bellowing orders at the teachers or telling the children off, Captain Claw would spend hours in his cabin, poring over the map, his clawlike hook tracing lines across it as he muttered to himself.
‘Very good, Crane,’ the captain said at last, striding out of the cabin and across the foredeck, telescope half-raised to his eye. ‘Dismissed!’
As he slipped from the cabin and the door swung shut behind him, Fergus let out a sigh of relief. He looked at his watch. It was twenty-nine minutes past eight. Mr Woodhead's gym lesson would be well underway in the school gym, which was actually the cargo hold of the Betty-Jeanne.
Heading back along the corridor, Fergus turned right, then right again onto a wooden staircase. He hurried below deck, down one rickety flight of stairs after the other, into the interior of the ship.
As he went past the staffroom, his nose crinkled up at the stale odour of smelly socks, mixed up with Mrs Blood's pipe-smoke and Mr Gilroy's pilchard stew. Down past the gun deck he continued, where Mrs Blood took the science class next to the old cannons and barrels of gunpowder. He turned left at the galley, holding his nose, and down a final ladder to the gym.
Fergus paused, pressed his ear to the double-doors, and listened closely. He couldn't hear anything. Perhaps gym was over, or better still, cancelled …
All at once, the doors slid open. Fergus tumbled inside and fell heavily to the floor. He looked up to see Mr Woodhead towering above him, his hands on his hips and a thin smile playing on his lips.
‘Well, if it isn't Fergus Crane!’ he said, his nasal voice rasping unpleasantly. ‘So good of you to join us. Catching up on your beauty sleep perhaps?’
‘I … I'm sorry, sir,’ said Fergus.
‘As you're on your belly already, Mister Crane,’ sneered Mr Woodhead, his one good eye glinting malevolently, ‘you can give me ten!’ Fergus began to do push-ups while Mr Woodhead turned to the rest of the class, who were standing, red-faced and panting, behind him. ‘And that goes for the rest of you fine ladies and gentlemen,’ he barked. ‘Give me ten!’
The class groaned and got down on the dusty floor.
‘And when you've finished that,’ Mr Woodhead shouted, ‘it's everybody's favourite, the Tunnel Exercise!’
The class groaned again.
‘And in honour of our latecomer this morning,’ Mr Woodhead added nastily. ‘We'll do it twice!’
tand by your tunnels!’ bellowed Mr Woodhead. The class did as they were told. They were standing facing the four corners of the gym beside four trapdoors, each with a name chalked onto it. Horace stood next to a trapdoor marked The Glory Hole, Mouse was next to one called The Big Dipper, while Sylvie Smith, looking as if she was about to burst into tears, stood next to one called The Corkscrew. Spike Thompson shot her a reassuring look from his corner where he stood next to a trapdoor marked The Devil's Pot. Each one of them had a whistle on a ribbon round their neck.
Fergus stood in the middle of the gym looking miserable. Nobody liked the Tunnel Exercise, but Fergus liked it least of all. That was because he was ‘the Spare’. Fergus didn't like being ‘the Spare’, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Mr Woodhead blew his whistle and the four children opened the trapdoors and crawled through them into the ship's ballast below.
Ballast, as Fergus now knew all too well, was the name given to the boulders, stones and rubble in the very depths of a vessel that weigh it down in the water and keep a ship with masts as tall and heavy as the Betty-Jeanne's from toppling over.
In the Tunnel Exercise, the children had to crawl along their own individual tunnels through the ballast, each one of which came up in a different place in the ship. The Big Dipper zigzagged up and down, and was perfect for Mouse, who was nimble and quick-witted. It came out in the rope store. The Corkscrew, which went in an awkward spiral to the fo'c'sle, was given to lithe, double-jointed Sylvie. The Devil's Pot – a particularly testing tunnel which needed all of Spike's strength and endurance to complete – emerged just below the anchor chain. As for The Glory Hole, this was Fergus's least favourite, as it came up in Mr Gilroy's galley, in the corner where he threw his old fish heads. Horace, who
was best at holding his breath, was given this one to tackle.
Everyone was familiar with his or her own tunnel, since they did the Tunnel Exercise every day. But as ‘the Spare’, Fergus had to know all four tunnels equally well. It was a good thing he was especially good at squeezing through very small places, he thought to himself, because …
A whistle sounded. It came from the trapdoor marked The Corkscrew.
‘Not again!’ said Mr Woodhead crossly. He nodded at Fergus. ‘Do your job, Crane!’
Fergus jumped to it. He shot down The Corkscrew trapdoor and snaked round and round in the dark. He could feel the wooden struts that held the tunnel walls in place, although here and there, a loose pebble pattered onto his shoulders. Round the fourth bend he found Sylvie, who was weeping so much she could no longer blow her whistle.
‘It's all right, Sylvie,’ Fergus whispered. ‘I'll get you out, don't worry.’
‘I'm stuck, Fergus!’ wailed Sylvie. ‘I'm always getting stuck. I'm useless, pathetic. I'm always letting everyone down.’
‘Relax,’ said Fergus, crawling up behind her. ‘You'll be fine. You're the best of all of us at the Tunnel Exercise when you put your mind to it, and as for Practical Pot-holing for Beginners, I bet you can recite the whole book by heart now.’
Sylvie smiled. ‘It's my head, Fergus. I can't move it …’
‘Look,’ said Fergus, reaching out. ‘Your plaits. They're snagged on this timber strut … There you go,’ he announced a moment later as he tugged them free.
‘Ouch!’ yelped Sylvie, then smiled. ‘Thank you, Fergus. You're so kind and brave.’
‘Only doing my job,’ said Fergus. ‘Now hurry up. Woodenhead said we had to do this twice, remember!’
By the time they'd got to the fo'c'sle, turned round and come back, the others had already completed their second journeys.
‘Come on, come on!’ said Mr Woodhead testily as Sylvie and Fergus crawled out of The Corkscrew trapdoor. ‘I should make you do it again five times.’
Sylvie looked ready to burst into tears again, and Spike stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder.
‘But luckily for you,’ Mr Woodhead continued, giving him a nasty look, ‘it's almost lunchtime, and goodness knows why, considering Short John's … I mean, Mr Gilroy's cooking, but I'm hungry. Class dismissed!’
he class gathered round the prow to eat their packed lunches as they always did. The foredeck was what passed for a playground on board the Betty-Jeanne. There was a rather wonky hopscotch game painted on the deck, and several barrels to sit on.
The carved prow of Betty-Jeanne herself stuck out in front of them. It was a painted figure of a plump lady with a rather ample bosom covered by two large scallop shells. Horace had nicknamed her ‘the big mermaid’. Once, for a dare, he'd leaned over and painted a large curling moustache on her in the black tar meant for painting the Betty-Jeanne's hull. The teachers had yet to notice.
Right now, nobody was paying Betty-Jeanne any notice. Everyone was clustered round Fergus admiring his new lunchbox.
‘Press that button again,’ Mouse was saying.
Fergus pressed the button and a bottle shaped like a penguin popped up.
‘Now try that one,’ Spike joined in.
Fergus pressed the second button and a tray shot out that, a few minutes earlier, had contained cheese and tomato sandwiches, but now held nothing but a few crumbs. Fergus pushed it back in.
‘The Lunchomatic,’ read Sylvie Smith. ‘The Fateful Voyage Trading Company. What a curious name.’
‘My mum does some part-time work for them,’ said Fergus. ‘They always seem to be sending parcels full of strange stuff.’
‘Like what?’ asked Mouse.
‘Well,’ said Fergus, ‘last week they sent a batch of cocktail shakers with instructions that each one had to be shaken vigorously to check for rattles. And yesterday a parcel arrived full of paper horses and paper wings, with instructions on how to fit them together.’
‘That sounds easy,’ said Sylvie.
‘That's what my mum thought,’ said Fergus. ‘And the best bit is that they pay in advance – and quite a lot, my mum said.’
‘My mum could do with work like that,’ said Spike. ‘What's the address of this Fateful Voyage Trading Company?’
‘I don't know,’ said Fergus. ‘And nor does my mum. She said that just after she baked that cake for Dr Fassbinder's faculty party – you know, the one with the icing-sugar penguins – and her picture appeared next to it in the Montmorency Gazette …’
‘Yes, I remember that!’ said Sylvie excitedly.
‘Well,’ said Fergus, turning the lunchbox over in his hands, ‘just after that, a card came offering my mum work. And soon after that, the parcels started arriving. When she's finished one, she leaves it at the Post Office in the harbour square, and another one arrives.’
‘What does this one do?’ said Horace, who'd been busy feeding his luncheon-meat sandwiches to the seagulls, but had just joined the others. He jabbed a finger at a small button on the underside of the box.
There was a loud click, followed by a short buzzing sound, and six stubby mechanical legs appeared along its sides. Everyone gasped, including Fergus, who jumped off the barrel he'd been sitting on with surprise. Before anyone could stop it, the lunchbox clattered onto the deck and scuttled off, past the hopscotch markings and towards Captain Claw's cabin.
Just then, the bell rang for afternoon lessons. Mr Spicer appeared on the foredeck. ‘Come along now, class,’ he droned as he fiddled with one of his gold earrings. ‘I hope you've all been studying your Practical Pot-holing for Beginners, because today we've got a test.’
‘A test?’ said Fergus as the rest of the class traipsed after Mr Spicer. ‘Nobody told me.’
‘Cool lunchbox, by the way,’ said Horace, smiling. ‘Hope you get it back.’
he classroom seemed stuffier than ever that afternoon and, following the morning's Tunnel Exercise, the entire class had trouble staying awake. Not that Mr Spicer seemed to notice. He just handed out the test papers and sat in his swivel chair, feet up on the desk, idly playing with the gold hoop in his left ear.
‘No talking,’ he said lazily, and began humming a tune from the new production of The Cycling Fish entitled ‘Daisy's Lament’.
Fergus looked at the test paper.
How might one traverse a lateral tunnel, and how many easy steps might this take? Please number them clearly in your answer.
Fergus looked round at the rest of the class. Sylvie was writing furiously, already on her second sheet of paper. Horace was looking out of the window, smiling to himself. Spike and Mouse were both sucking their pencils, deep in thought. Perhaps it was because none of them had been able to go to school before now that they all, except maybe Horace, took their studies seriously. Nobody wanted to let their parents down.
Fergus sighed. The previous night, he'd only got to the second step in the book before nodding off. ‘Secure your crampon to the rock face and proceed to the lip of the transverse tunnel …’ he remembered, but then what?
Fergus had absolutely no idea.
Instead of studying his copy of Practical Pot-holing for Beginners, he'd spent the whole evening waiting for a flying box from someone claiming to be his long-lost Uncle Theo. What had it said again? Oh, yes. You are in great danger!
‘Danger of failing this test,’ Fergus muttered unhappily.
I am sending help!
I could do with some help right now, thought Fergus drowsily. His head began to nod, his eyes closed and …
‘Time's up!’ bellowed Mr Spicer. ‘Class dismissed! Hand in your test papers on your way out.’
Fergus looked down at his paper. It was blank except for a thumb-mark and an ink blot resembling a fat rabbit. He handed it in anyway and hurried to the cloakcabin, where the others were picking up their bags and saying their goodbyes. Fergus went to his hook and stopped in surprise.
‘Look at that!’ said Horace o
ver his shoulder. ‘Fergus's lunchbox has climbed back into his backpack. How cool is that?’
Calling his goodbyes, Fergus headed down the gangplank and was just about to head off along the canal side, when Bolivia swooped down and fluttered, screeching, inches above his head.
‘Don't come to school tomorrow! Don't come to school tomorrow!’
‘News travels fast,’ said Fergus bitterly. ‘So you've heard about my test paper already. Don't worry, Bolivia.’ He waved the parrot away. ‘I promise I'll do better tomorrow!’
hat with the Tunnel Exercise and the previous night's lack of sleep, Fergus was exhausted. The walk home took him nearly twice as long as usual.
He turned left at the statue of General Montmorency and trudged through the narrow alleys. Turning right, he pushed past a queue of schoolgirls from Harbour Heights clustered round Old Mother Bleeny's bagel-stand, giggling and gossiping excitedly, and walked slowly along Boulevard Archduke Ferdinand.
‘Afternoon, Fergus,’ Ned the sandwich-board man called out.
Fergus trudged past in a daze. Further along the road, he didn't seem to hear the mournful music of Antonio the hurdy-gurdy man, and he completely ignored Pepe the monkey when it held out its tasselled fez to him.
Past the familiar shops he went, head down. Madame Aimee's Wedding Gowns. H.H. Luscombe's Umbrellas. Le Café Rondel. Joshua Berwick: Bespoke Tailor … He didn't acknowledge a single nod or wave.
