And he emphasized the word ‘moon’ in such a final sort of way that Jonathan was half afraid Dooly would never gather enough courage to speak again. But he merely grinned and nodded and said that he didn’t know this Piedmont, nor any of the rest of that stuff neither. Then he shrugged at the two of them and said simply, ‘Magic’
The Professor looked saddened, no doubt regretting having gotten into an argument with, of all people, Dooly.
Jonathan patted his shoulder. ‘Remember what you said, Professor, about science holding the key to the side door?’
‘That was stuff. I was under the influence of the rays of the moon. No, Jonathan, I much prefer scientific explanation.’
But the Professor’s preferred explanation never suggested itself. It’s the wondering and speculating that’s worthwhile in the end anyway – all the solved puzzles in the world aren’t worth the one that’s unsolved. Or at least that’s the way Jonathan looked at the whole thing. He often thought, in fact, that he’d like to be a scientist instead of a cheeser. It would be a grand thing indeed to have great rooms filled with bubbling this and thats and coiled apparatuses and devices. Scientists always seemed to have something stewing, some weighty problem to ponder and could jump and race off in the middle of a conversation without seeming rude in order to put to the test some vital new theory that had sprung upon them unawares. It wouldn’t be a bad thing at all if, when a friend called, his housekeeper could say simply, ‘The master is in the laboratory,’ and usher in a wide-eyed visitor goggling at the terrible equipment heaped roundabout. He’d have to buy a long, white coat and spectacles that made his eyes look like plums and talk like the Professor – all that stuff about whirlabouts and universal calculation charts.
But then, of course, he couldn’t take Dooly’s side anymore in learned conversations. And he’d be busy all evening constructing graphs and charts and reading about the mutability of duck feathers or the properties of frozen water. There’d be precious little time for G. Smithers and all his magical kings of Oceania. That would all start to look like ‘stuff’ to quote the Professor. Also he’d have to be perpetually doing something – a condition which, that afternoon in the thin sunlight of early November and from the perspective of one lying on his back and drifting pleasantly with a pipe in his mouth down the old Oriel, seemed like far too much work. Besides, there probably wasn’t enough science to go around, and if he horned in on the profession it would be that much more quickly used up. Then the Professor would have to turn out and maybe become a cheeser and it would all add up to the same thing anyway. Jonathan sailed along thinking about all this but keeping it all pretty much to himself. Somehow it was a bit too cool for a nap; it was just a good day for doing nothing. Jonathan remembered G. Smithers having said that doing nothing was the most tiring job in the world – simply because you can’t quit and rest. Maybe G. Smithers was a nincompoop.
That afternoon they lunched on more cheese. The bread was gone, but there were berries and pickles aplenty. With each mile that fell away behind them the sun seemed to lose some of its sharpness, some of its radiant heat. A cool breeze sprang up after lunch, a coastal onshore wind that blew straightaway upriver and likely did so almost every afternoon. It brought with it the smell of the ocean every now and then, a smell of salt spray and kelp and fog and fish – maybe the finest smell there could be. Jonathan, anyway, thought that such was pretty much the case. But it was a sort of cold and lonely smell at the same time, a smell that carried with it the vastness and depth of the sea and everything those depths conjured up somewhere at the base of his mind.
Around two o’clock they passed a dwarf outpost. They halloed at the closed door, but it wasn’t until Ahab barked once or twice that anyone appeared – a dwarf with a beard nearly to his toes who carried a fearful-looking axe. The rafters waved at him, and he raised his axe in the air by way of returning the greeting.
‘Rather short with us, wasn’t he?’ the Professor commented.
‘Well,’ said Jonathan, ‘he can’t answer for his size.’ Then he looked at the Professor out of the corner of his eye.
‘I was referring to the look on his face, although it’s hard to tell with that beard and all whether he was smiling or frowning. Looked rather like a frown though, to me. And that was a pretty halfhearted wave, too.’
‘He’s probably had visitors over the past weeks who didn’t agree with him.’
The Professor nodded. ‘Either that or he thought a pile of kindling wood was shouting to him from the river. I hope he’s more amenable to the idea of travelers by the time the Squire and Bufo and the others come along. They’ll be ready for a bit of a rest by the time they make it this far.’
Beyond the outpost, the river widened even more, and its pace slowed to such a leisurely crawl that Jonathan began to wonder whether they would beat the linkmen to Seaside. Presently an island sprang up ahead of them, a thickly wooded, hilly sort of island which was likely covered with all nature of grand caves and turtle ponds. A single log-house perched atop one of the hills, and a jolly plume of white smoke rose from a stone chimney. Beyond the first island were two more, splitting the Oriel into thirds. The river seemed to have lost most of its vigor by that time, and would submit without complaint to being partially dammed up by a family of beavers or a tangle of pond lilies and driftwood.
When night fell finally they were drifting lazily, almost in midriver. The Professor tasted the water and declared it to be brackish – a sure sign that they were nearing Seaside. They decided to draw straws and keep watch in two-hour shifts. Jonathan pulled the first watch and puffed away on his pipe until the Professor and Dooly were sleeping away, then he too dozed off. The gray dawn broke without incident, and the rafters awoke to find themselves wet with foggy morning dew and passing the scattered grove of an outlying farm.
Piles of prunings from apple, cherry, and peach trees were heaped here and there amid the wide orchard rows that crackled with smoky fires. A stalwart dwarf stomped about close by watching the stuff burn. Some of the groves were spindly and unpruned, and all were leafless above a carpet of lush grass.
Jonathan imagined the pancakes and syrup being tossed down inside the farmhouse, the fresh eggs being fried, and the strips of bacon sizzling on open griddles. If he’d been tempted, he likely would have traded away every bit of cheese on board for a cup of coffee. The farms, as the day wore on, became more numerous and generally smaller. Clusters of cottages began to pop up here and there – little villages surrounded by acres of orchards and cozy beneath the pleasant smoke puffs of pruning fires. Long, narrow canals wandered off into the lowlands around the Oriel, canals lined with reeds and cattail and marsh lily. Jonathan could see someone, now and then, with a fishing line cast into one of the waterways.
The raft seemed to Jonathan to be moving at a frightfully slow pace, and there was no real hint – aside from a sort of feeling in the air – that they were nearing the sea. About noon, however, their speed appeared to increase, a phenomenon which the Professor said indicated a receding tide. Within an hour, that certainly looked as if it were true, for the closest bank of the river showed great patches of mud, and parties of dwarfs slogged upon them harvesting oysters from broad beds and moon snails from sand flats.
All in all it was a pleasant day for the rafters. They considered, at first, asking a passing craft to tow them along to port, but finally decided against the notion, choosing instead to laze along toward the sea and enjoy themselves. Around four or five in the afternoon a fog began to blow in, first in little wisps and snatches, then in banks of cottony white which sailed away upriver to leave a clear space for a bit before another wandered through. A foghorn moaned somewhere in the distance, and it was apparent to the rafters that the boats out on the river were becoming few, and those still out were hurrying away toward port. It occurred to Jonathan and the Professor that they’d be wise to do the same.
The fog got thicker though. The three of them paddled away on the portside hopin
g to run up on the left bank somewhere since it seemed to be the most populated. But it was impossible to tell whether they were making toward the bank or just splashing aimlessly in the water. During one last gap in the mists Jonathan saw the bank – he supposed it was the left bank – directly ahead and about two or three hundred yards distant. Dooly shouted that they were ‘on course,’ but it seemed more likely to Jonathan that the raft was merely swinging about in slow circles, still adrift in midriver. When the fog closed in they had no more idea of their direction than a blind man. The Professor and Jonathan stopped paddling simultaneously, as further paddling didn’t make much sense. Dooly, however, paddled away, taking short deep strokes.
The foghorn sounded again, but they couldn’t agree on where. It seemed to come first from forward and a bit to starboard, then to port, then, strangely from aft. Jonathan took this as evidence that the raft was slowly spinning, but the Professor said that the phenomenon was due to the muffling effects of the fog.
‘What do we do?’ Jonathan asked. ‘We can’t be too far from the river mouth.’
‘Aye,’ said the Professor, shaking his head. ‘This is no good at all.’
‘I for one would rather swim to shore from here than from a half mile out to sea. Why don’t I just swim in, find some help, and try to head the raft off at the river mouth?’
‘You’d never find us,’ the Professor replied wisely. ‘You’d no more be able to see the raft in this fog than we can see the shore now. Besides, how do you know, absolutely, where the shore is? How do you know we’re not already at sea?’ The Professor pushed a thatch of wet hair out of his eyes, paused, and held up a finger for silence. A creaking and groaning sounded behind them. Jonathan leaned out beneath the canopy, peered into the mists astern, and saw the hull and bowsprit light of what appeared, in the few seconds he had to consider, to be the ghost of a small schooner cutting in upon them out of the fog at such a rate that he hadn’t time to do more than shout.
There was a tearing of wood as the deck plunged beneath him and he tumbled backward into the water. He rose to the surface sputtering and gasping and was immediately conked on the back of the head by a floating section of the raft with the forepaws of a wet and amazed Ahab hanging onto the edge. Ahab pretty much looked like Jonathan felt – cold – and was beginning to think that having one’s raft smashed to bits and being flung into rivers and bays were simply a rafter’s unfortunate lot in life. ‘Hello!’ Jonathan shouted, grabbing Ahab’s ruined piece of raft and squinting off into the fog. ‘Hello! Professor! Dooly!’
From somewhere behind him Professor Wurzle replied, ‘What-ho, Jonathan. Out for a swim, are you?’
Jonathan thrashed around and encountered the Professor and Dooly both clinging to the redwood wall of the lean-to, the only piece of the raft that bore any real resemblance to anything but a stick of wood. Laying atop it were the oboe weapon and, of all things, Mayor Bastable’s hat. Kicking his feet, Dooly propelled the thing along gleefully and shouted, ‘Look at old Ahab! Ain’t he wet!’ Jonathan had to admit that he was.
A voice in the mists, however, silenced them. The slap of oars on the surface of the water preceded the arrival of a long rowboat in which sat two grizzled dwarfs, one rowing and one craning his neck to see into the fog. ‘Who’s there?’ one shouted.
Jonathan feared at first that they were all to be run over a second time, so he yelled, ‘It’s us!’ in reply to the dwarf’s question.
‘I see it is,’ the dwarf said as his partner shipped the oars. ‘Is this all of you?’
‘Quite,’ replied Jonathan.
Without further discussion, the two in the rowboat set about hoisting the three rafters and the dog Ahab aboard without submerging everybody involved. The task was finally accomplished with much joggling and shouting and leaping to this side and that. Jonathan kept a sharp eye out for floating kegs. It would be a rotten thing indeed to suppose his cheeses were at the bottom of the Oriel or that the kegs, roped together, would drift oceanward on the tide and never be seen again. The Professor insisted he’d seen the kegs drifting off together and that they seemed fairly well intact. Sure enough, as they rowed slowly through the muffling fog – the dwarves whistling, then listening for a returning whistle from the schooner – Dooly spied a phantom keg bobbing along on the waters of the bay. Tied to it were all its fellow kegs, some empty, most filled with raisin cheeses, and all, apparently, sound as tubs. They tied the keg line to a ring in the sternpost and towed it along behind.
Jonathan found he was shaking with cold in the few minutes it took them to whistle themselves into sight of the schooner. Untying wet knots with cold fingers was proved an impossibility – one which, no doubt, the Professor could have easily explained. Explanations would have done the Cheeser precious little good though, for not only could he not untie the keg line in order for the dwarfs to haul the thing aboard, he could barely grasp the ladder and haul himself aboard. It was a numbing shaky cold which was a product not only of the waters of the bay, but even more so of the onshore wind which blew straight in off the open sea.
The dwarfs, mindful of the shivering rafters, brought out a heap of blankets and slickers and dry socks, most of which were too small by far to fit any of the rafters. But just getting in out of the wind seemed to do the trick – that and a blanket or two. Even so, everyone was thankful when the ship finally rounded an island with a lighthouse perched atop it in the mouth of the bay, and they could see harbor lights and the tip of a long pier fifty yards off the port bow.
The wharves were nearly empty, almost no one being foolish enough to want to have anything to do with the ocean in such a fog. Two frazzled-looking dwarfs fished from the pier, never even moving their lines when the schooner was hauled in and tied up. They shared a steaming cup of coffee between them and continually looked over the edge of the pier at their dangling bait which hung a foot or so above the gray water.
‘They’re looking for fogfish,’ the Professor explained, nodding at the two. ‘It’s a good night for fogfish, if you like them. I tasted them once, years ago, fried up with mushrooms. Too many bones for my taste. There’s always one going down your throat. Taste like trout, though, actually.’
Dooly was so cold he couldn’t speak. He could barely revolve his eyes in order to glance at the three fish that lay in a heap on the pier. The fish were fat-headed foolish things with fins like wings and spiny crenelations which shone phosphorescently in the fog. Jonathan wasn’t any more interested in the Professor’s observations than was Dooly, until a bloated, glowing fogfish, swimming through the mists as if underwater, came flapping out of the fog making a sort of whooshing sound and goggling roundabout. One of the fishermen cast his pole to the deck and grasped a net, pursuing the fogfish across the wooden boards on tiptoe. The thing apparently grew suspicious, however, for it flew – or swam, as the case may be – zigzagging away into the murk. The dwarf returned with an empty net only to hear some rough words from his companion. Moments later a muffled splash sounded off the end of the pier as the fogfish returned to the sea.
It occurred to Jonathan that fishermen often seem oblivious to the weather, a condition he could never entirely figure out. He could remember Mayor Bastable on more than one occasion, crunching out through a snowy December morning, fishing pole in hand, toward the icy banks of the Oriel. It bespoke inexplicable enthusiasm and heartiness; but in his numbed condition, heartiness of any sort struck him as worse than tiresome – perhaps even criminal.
At the end of the wharf they were met by an elf, puffing along up the road for the sole purpose, it seemed, of taking charge of them. He introduced himself as Twickenham, shook their hand a time or two, and led them off to the inn half a block from the ocean and within the confines of a tremendous rock wall. A wooden sign, darkened with age, swung on hooks outside the door of the inn – a sign which read ‘Cap’n Mooneye’ and depicted a carved piratical dwarf, his beard knotted and his eyes wide and wild. It was altogether the most romantic inn Jon
athan had seen, like something out of G. Smithers.
The inn was warm as a goblin pot, due to a great fire burning in a fireplace big enough to set up housekeeping. A wide clock sat atop a deep wooden mantel over the mouth of the fireplace, its hands pointing to nine o’clock. On its face a grinning gibbous moon was rising, a moon with two long, thin arms, one of which was placing a star in the dark blue night sky. The clock chimed the hour almost as soon as the troupe walked in and hurried across to the fireside.
‘This is the ticket!’ Jonathan told the Professor. ‘This makes the whole lot of it worthwhile.’
‘I quite agree.’ The Professor smiled.
Dooly, still too cold to show much enthusiasm merely nodded. Ahab stood smack in front of them on the hearth and shook so much water out of his coat that the embers in the fireplace hissed. Then he lay down in front of it and almost immediately fell asleep and started to snore. Dooly livened up fairly quickly and even noted that Ahab was ‘dog tired’, laughing at his own joke. Jonathan and the Professor smiled, although probably not so much in approval of Dooly’s humor as at the mugs of mulled ale and the beef joint that Twickenham and Monroe, the jolly, fat innkeeper were lugging forth from the kitchen.
The three rafters set upon the fare as if they’d been fasting for a week, and even Ahab woke up and got his share. He, of course, drank warm buttermilk rather than ale, but then he didn’t care a great deal for ale and probably didn’t see much purpose in it.
Twickenham spoke little that night aside from assuring Jonathan that the cheeses had been taken to Ackroyd’s bakery where the casks would be checked for leaks. Having been dipped in wax before packing, the cheeses, would no doubt have survived, leaks or no. If the rafters would condescend, he said, to stay at the old Mooneye for a day or two to rest up, then no one would worry about business of any sort until the day after tomorrow.
Jonathan assured his host that he would probably sleep until the day after tomorrow and didn’t want to hear about business until after he had.
The Elfin Ship Page 15
