Galapagos Regained

by James Morrow

  The portal of the keep flew open, disgorging a mass of convicts clad in burlap, attended by a corps of twenty guards. Goaded by the rifle butts of Capitán Machado’s men, the ninety English prisoners and their Ecuadorian counterparts marched across the yard towards the gallows, blinking and wincing in the morning light. Though lacking their customary fetters, the prisoners could hardly be entertaining thoughts of escape—especially when they considered the pair of sentries manning the watchtower and the other two guards patrolling the wall. Ordered to attention by Machado, the convicts stiffened into the required pose. Malcolm directed his enhanced gaze across the assembled wretches, noting to his relief that their ranks included Ben the horse thief and his five fellow conspirators.

  Whilst the prisoners sweated and thirsted, a solemn throng of Duntopians flowed into the yard, including Orrin Eggwort, Jethro Tappert, and Linus Hatch, dressed in their Sunday finest and supervising their respective concubines. No sons or daughters accompanied the cleavewives. Evidently all three harems had dissuaded their masters from allowing the children to see two English citizens hanged for no particularly good reason. The emperors installed their rumps in high-backed throne chairs, even as the concubines and the other spectators occupied a grid of stools. Now Governor Stopsack made his entrance, smartly attired in his white linen suit. Strolling past the Duntopian royalty, he appropriated the remaining throne chair, then pulled a fat cigar from his vest pocket and bit off the end.

  Riding crop tucked under his arm, Kommandant Hengstenberg emerged from the keep leading a blindfolded and trembling Miss Kirsop by her manacles. An instant later a red-bearded guard appeared, dragging Dartworthy, likewise shackled and blindfolded, followed by a dusky boy of perhaps eleven, banging out a funereal cadence on a snare drum. Bringing up the rear of the parade was Executioner Ordoñez, a hulking man with shaggy arms, his features obscured by a black cloth hood.

  As Stopsack lit his cigar, Malcolm set the seismic chicanery in motion, distributing the matchboxes amongst the Indians and ordering them to set the tinder aflame. Cuniche, Nitopari, Pirohua, and Ascumiche crept along the lip of the crater, igniting the twenty stacks of kelp-topped kindling. Flecked with sparks, a billowing mass of smoke soon filled the skies above Minor Zion, giving Ben the horse thief a credible reason to point towards the mountain and scream, with feigned dismay, “Look! The volcano! Look! Look!”

  Shocked by Ben’s discovery, the inmates chattered excitedly amongst themselves, as did the guards, emperors, concubines, and ordinary Duntopians. Act one, “The Smoldering Summit,” had begun.

  “It’s alive!” cried Joe the poacher, clearly relishing his part in the diversionary strategy. “Alive! Alive!”

  The crater released more deceptive vapors. Lurching free of his throne chair, Stopsack strode up to Eggwort and issued a gubernatorial decree, his words echoing across the yard and up the face of Mount Pajas—“Tell Hengstenberg to postpone the execution!”—to which the Supreme Emperor replied, “I’ll give that order at the good Lord’s urgin’ but not yours!”

  “The volcano will kill us!” yelled Pete the highwayman, impersonating panic.

  “As when God squashed Gomorrah!” added Harry the panderer.

  The time had come to raise the curtain on act two, “The Exploding Pumice.” After collecting the matchboxes from the Indians, Malcolm climbed to the summit, passed through the ring of smoldering kelp, and, descending into the crater, ignited the master fuse. He returned to daylight, then made his way back to the field of boulders and hunkered down, commanding Cuniche, Nitopari, Pirohua, and Ascumiche to do likewise.

  With a monstrous roar, like the cough of a consumptive troll, a skyrocket shot out of the crater, arced towards the penal colony, and exploded, releasing a blossom of embers above the exercise yard.

  “These are the last days of Duntopia!” declared Amos the sodomite.

  A second rocket took flight and exploded.

  “The last days of Galápagos!” yelled Tim the anarchist.

  Three more rockets flew heavenward and detonated.

  “Proceed with the execution!” shouted Eggwort, addressing Ordoñez.

  “Halt the execution!” cried Stopsack, not so much speaking the syllables as hurling them in Eggwort’s face like birdshot.

  “Governor, your jurisdiction ends on these shores!” the Supreme Emperor asserted.

  To the anxious cadence of the miserable drummer boy, Kommandant Hengstenberg began shoving the sightless Miss Kirsop up the warped steps of the gallows. She tripped on the last riser, sprawling across the planks. The Kommandant forced his prisoner to stand, then positioned her atop the nearer trapdoor, the noose caressing her shoulder. He returned to the ground. The red-bearded guard hauled Dartworthy onto the gallows, propelled him past Miss Kirsop, and aligned him with the second noose.

  The guard abandoned the scaffold. A sixth rocket transmuted into a fiery bouquet. The boy stopped drumming.

  “Don’t leave my men here to die!” the capitán implored Hengstenberg.

  “Your Excellency, you must cancel the execution!” the Kommandant in turn beseeched Eggwort.

  A seventh explosion, a seventh celestial blossom.

  Ordoñez mounted the gallows and, as if awarding her a medal on a neckband, dropped Miss Kirsop’s noose over her head, then provided Dartworthy with his own mortal cravat.

  “I beg you—spare me!” screamed Miss Kirsop as the masked hangman took hold of the lever beside her trapdoor.

  “A pox on Duntopia and all its dictators!” cried Dartworthy.

  “Perfessor Cabot, Miss Quinn, you will now confess your sins before our Savior!” shouted the Supreme Emperor, leaping up from his throne chair. “You must beg Christ’s fergiveness fer torchin’ the holy ark!”

  “No, you must beg Christ’s forgiveness for murdering innocent people!” yelled Dartworthy.

  An eighth explosion.

  “Gotta save the children!” shouted Rebecca Eggwort, rolling off her stool. “We’ll take ’em to Albemarle on the Cumorah!”

  “Thou shalt not abduct my sons!” cried the Supreme Emperor.

  “Go kiss a squid!” retorted his eldest wife.

  Mrs. Eggwort’s declaration inspired her sorority of concubines to rise in a body and collect about her considerable frame. Hips swaying, elbows swinging, the nine rushed across the exercise yard, headed for the main gate.

  “Wives, come ye back!” insisted Eggwort, dancing in irate circles about his throne chair.

  “Husband, go to Hell!” replied Hagar.

  Inflating like a puffer-fish, the Governor rushed towards the gallows, screaming, “No executions during eruptions! It isn’t done! Hangman, remove the nooses!”

  Ordoñez obeyed, detaching the ropes from Dartworthy and Miss Kirsop.

  “Hangman, do your duty!” demanded Eggwort. “Stopsack’s got no authority here! Ferget the volcano!”

  Ordoñez restored the nooses to the prisoners’ necks and then, seized by a fit of insubordination, jammed both hands in his pockets.

  “Open the traps!” yelled Eggwort.

  “Keep ’em closed!” shouted Stopsack.

  “God sent this cataclysm to test our faith!” averred Eggwort.

  “God sent this cataclysm to test your faith!” retorted Ordoñez, his words muffled only slightly by the cloth hood. “You heard the Governor! No executions during eruptions!”

  Now Mr. Tappert’s harem joined the exodus, followed shortly thereafter by Mr. Hatch’s six concubines.

  “Halt!” cried the Associate Emperor.

  “Not another step!” screamed the Assistant Emperor.

  The ninth rocket exploded. The revolt of the concubines continued.

  “Pull the lady arsonist’s lever!” shrieked Eggwort, hopping up and down to gain Ordoñez’s attention. “Render her unto Satan! Obey me now! I’m the Supreme Emperor!”

  “Not anymore you aren’t!” declared Stopsack. “This prison complex belongs to the Crown, which makes Charles Isle a Br
itish possession as well!”

  “We’re all gonna die!” shouted Clarence the usurer.

  “I don’t wanna die!” yelled Jake the fornicator.

  “Your Excellency, allow us to flee!” pleaded Hengstenberg.

  “Open the woman’s trap!” ordered Eggwort. “Punish her blaspheming flesh!”

  The hangman tore off his hood and cried, “Es imposible, Your Excellency!”

  Were it not for the ropes about the necks of Dartworthy and Miss Kirsop, Malcolm would have regarded the diversionary strategy as an unequivocal success. But the nooses could not be denied. Fixing on the array of cactus bombs, he struck a match and ignited the axis of the interconnected fuses, thereby inaugurating act three, “The Flying Stones.” The combustible cords sizzled and hissed as a dozen flames ate their way towards the explosive fruits. He faced east, scanning the skies for Chloe and the Frenchman, but he saw only the rising sun, a herd of cumulus clouds, and a flock of vicious frigate birds, searching for prey.

  * * *

  Boiler roaring, propellers swirling, the Jean-Baptiste Lamarck pursued a steady course towards Mephistropolis. Whilst Capitaine Léourier manned the helm, Chloe, dressed in her buccaneer regalia, pushed back the starboard hatch and fixed it open by wedging a maul between the door and the jamb. In a gesture not unlike the dropping of a death-egg, she unfurled the rope ladder into the turbulent air, so that the threaded rungs dangled from the gondola like the tail of a stupendous kite.

  Oddly enough, the aeronaut was exhibiting greater anxiety now than he had when attacking Castillo Bracamoros, even though the impending escapade would involve far fewer armed adversaries. As the Lamarck traversed the range of cinder cones, Léourier revealed the source of his distress, a madness of the very strain that had affected Mr. Chadwick.

  “Chère mademoiselle, I realize I have not selected le moment parfait for you to consider a proposal of marriage.”

  “Marriage?” said Chloe. “What are you talking about?”

  “C’est-à-dire, these are hardly ideal circumstances under which we might pledge our troth. Nevertheless, I’m hoping—”

  “Hoping? Hoping? I’m hoping to save my friends, mon Capitaine! Troth—bosh! Bosh and double bosh! Have you taken leave of your senses?”

  “I have not lost my mind but rather my heart. Je vous aime, mademoiselle. For you I would walk on burning coals, tie a knot in the Devil’s tail, insult a Bonaparte to his face. Oh, such glorious adventures we shall have as we sail the skies of Amazonia in search of El Dorado—and after we find our golden utopia, we shall seek out other treasure cities: Quivira, La Canela, Cibola!”

  “Do me a favor, s’il vous plaît.”

  “Anything.”

  “Say not one word more of burning coals or golden cities until Ralph and Solange are safely on board.”

  “D’accord.”

  Placing the glass to her eye and leaning out the larboard window, Chloe observed the harems of Eggwort, Tappert, and Hatch racing through the main gate towards Minor Zion, doubtless intending to collect their children and bear them away from the angry mountain. Act two was now in progress, a skyrocket taking flight every thirty seconds. Throttle wide open, the Lamarck cruised over the brick wall, its shadow slithering across the ground like a devil-ray gliding through a mangrove glade.

  An instant later the airship arrived in the exercise yard, site of an unnerving tableau: Ralph and Solange, poised on the gallows, bound and blindfolded, necks encircled by nooses. Gripping his black hood, a bare-headed Executioner Ordoñez leaned over the scaffold rail, alternating his gaze between Kommandant Hengstenberg and Orrin Eggwort, the former using his monocled eye to scan a tattered tract printed on yellow paper, the latter standing on his throne chair as if seeking to evade Amazonian fire ants. Stopsack, meanwhile, charged back and forth between the scaffold and the Supreme Emperor like a cricket batsman scoring runs.

  “For the last time, Señor Ordoñez, pull the woman’s lever!” cried Eggwort.

  “For the last time, Your Excellency, I shall not!”

  Abruptly the curtain rose on act three. A tremendous ka-boom echoed off the mountain slopes, followed by the abrupt arrival of a boulder in the exercise yard. The projectile landed with a reverberant thud not twenty feet from the ranks of inmates, sending up a plume of dust. In a single clockwork motion scores of human heads, some belonging to frightened convicts, others to stupefied guards, still others to bewildered Duntopians, turned towards the fallen rock.

  “Every man for himself!” screamed Ben the horse thief.

  “Merde!” cried Léourier. “We put too much guano in the bombs!”

  A second ka-boom rattled the vale. Another boulder crashed into the yard. Stationed at the base of the scaffold, a petrified drummer boy began to cry.

  “The mountain’s coming apart!” yelled Joe the poacher.

  “The whole world’s coming apart!” shrieked Tim the anarchist.

  “I shall never underestimate excrement again!” declared Léourier.

  Eggwort jumped off his throne chair and scuttled towards the corps of guards. “Shoot any man who attempts to flee!” he instructed Capitán Machado.

  “Spoken like the depraved bourgeois pig you are!” shouted Kommandant Hengstenberg.

  “Pig?” said Eggwort, perplexed. “What?”

  “Schwein! Porco! Cerdo! Cochon!” Holding his tract aloft like a centurion brandishing a sword, Hengstenberg faced the capitán and yelled, “Hear me, Comrade Machado!” Enlarged by the glass, the pamphlet proved to be the ubiquitous Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. “All men are brothers!” Hengstenberg’s intended audience, Chloe realized, included not only Machado but also his soldiers, the disgruntled executioner, and the weeping drummer boy. “We must acknowledge our universal humanity, make common cause with our prisoners, and together escape the volcano!”

  “Let’s start with the escape!” suggested Machado.

  “Una idea excelente!” added Ordoñez.

  Now Hengstenberg addressed the assembled convicts. “I offer you complete and total amnesty, as do Comrade Machado and Comrade Ordoñez! With the help of Comrade Jesus, we shall flee this doomed island! Unite with your former oppressors! You have nothing to lose but your chains!”

  “If we’re losin’ our chains,” cried Ben the horse thief, “let’s have Machado’s men lose their guns!”

  “The guards must remain armed!” insisted Hengstenberg. “What say you, prisoners? Are you with us?”

  “We’re with you!” shouted Pete the highwayman.

  “All for one and one for all!” cried Tim the anarchist.

  “Kommandant, this is an outrage!” exclaimed Eggwort.

  “No, it’s a revolution!” retorted Hengstenberg. “Under the tyranny of the bourgeoisie, all that is solid melts into air! All that is holy is profaned!” He thrust his riding crop in the direction of Post Office Bay. “To the wharf, comrades!”

  A third rock came screaming into the yard, landing at the base of the watchtower.

  “The Hippolyta is ours!” shouted Harry the panderer.

  Before Chloe’s astonished eyes the guards and their charges fused into a collective entity, Hengstenberg in command. The sentries in the watchtower, their compatriots on the wall, and the trembling drummer boy abandoned their posts and joined the insurrection, even as Ordoñez fled the gallows and merged with the revolutionaries. Although Machado’s men retained their weapons, they truly seemed to regard the convicts—Englishmen and Ecuadorians alike—in a fraternal light, just as Marx and Engels would have wished. It was a remarkably harmonious mob that now streamed through the gate, trampled down the perimeter fence, and surged towards the bay, taking care to avoid the falling chunks of Mount Pajas. For an instant Chloe imagined the late Padre Valverde peering down from Heaven and smiling to behold the inexorable Wheel of History turn once again.

  “Come back here!” screamed a livid Eggwort at the Marxians in general and Ordoñez in particular.

  Whilst the gu
ards were busily forging bonds of brotherhood with their former prisoners, Léourier had deftly maneuvered the Lamarck so that it now hovered above the scaffold like a hummingbird poised to siphon nectar from an orchid. Léourier dropped his anchor, catching one prong on the rail. Drawing forth her bayonet, Chloe exited the gondola and descended the rope ladder rung by rung even as Eggwort turned his attentions to the stalled executions.

  “Reckon I’ll have to do it myself!” he declared, charging up the scaffold steps, Stopsack at his heels.

  As Chloe jumped from the ladder to the platform, she recalled her final appearance at the Adelphi Theatre. Evidently her tropical adventure would end as it had begun: the headstrong Miss Bathurst, standing on a scaffold, determined to strike a blow against the status quo—only this time she needn’t make a speech denouncing the prevailing economic order, Hengstenberg having already done that for her. Instead she yanked off Solange’s blindfold and lifted the noose over her head.

  “My darling she-devil!” cried Solange.

  A boulder landed squarely atop the brick wall, gouging a breach worthy of a cannonball.

  Arriving on the platform and noting to his dismay that Solange was no longer tethered to the crossbeam, Eggwort undertook to facilitate Ralph’s execution. The Supreme Emperor grabbed the far lever, pulling it with murderous intent, abandoning the endeavor when Stopsack kicked him soundly in the shins.

  Chloe plucked off Ralph’s blindfold and, extending her bayonet arm, brought the blade to rest midway between his noose and the crossbeam.

  “‘O little, fragile, laughing soul that sings’!” he cried, giddy with his deliverance.

  Frantically Chloe sawed, the hemp fibers parting like flesh under a surgeon’s knife, even as Eggwort retaliated against Stopsack, punching him repeatedly in the face. The Governor was soon supine on the planks, stunned and spread-eagled. Eggwort finished pulling the lever. The trapdoor opened, hurtling Ralph into the void. From the thumps and coughs that followed, Chloe surmised that the shredded rope had snapped beneath his weight, depositing him, abused but alive, under the platform.

  “My precious sea-witch!” she cried, slicing the thongs from Solange’s wrists.