Voyage to the Volcano

by Tom Banks

  In their cubbyhole, Stanley and Rasmussen looked at each other in shock – this was more serious than they had thought.

  ‘We shouldn’t be watching this,’ whispered Stanley. ‘We should stop him!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rasmussen. ‘But you saw him in the ballroom – he’s too fast and skilful for us tackle him head on. We must think of another plan.’

  They put their heads to the hole again while they thought. Stanley watched as Fassbinder took a piece of paper from his pocket, and held it up to the light from the small fire, which was still burning in the grate. Stanley squinted and, next to him, he heard Rasmussen say, ‘What is that?’

  What was on the paper was a picture – something the shape of a half-moon, and the size of a side plate. Drawn in charcoal, in a style that could be described as ‘scruffy’. But then Stanley slapped himself on the forehead, carefully avoiding his blunt little horn, which was quite capable of giving him a bruise. He turned to Rasmussen, and made the sign in their secret sign language for ‘lost love token’.

  ‘Lost love token!’ said Rasmussen aloud.

  ‘Yes!’ signed Stanley.

  ‘Pardon?’ signed Rasmussen.

  ‘Yes!’ signed Stanley, more clearly.

  ‘Pardon?’ signed Rasmussen.

  ‘Yes!’ Stanley signed again. ‘Lost love token.’

  ‘I get the “lost love token” bit, but what was the other thing you were saying?’ whispered Rasmussen.

  ‘It was just “yes”!’ said Stanley.

  ‘No, this is “yes”,’ said Rasmussen impatiently.

  ‘No, that’s “Zombie Pirate King”,’ said Stanley. ‘This is “yes”.’

  ‘Oh. I thought that was “excuse me please, which way to the post office?”,’ said Rasmussen.

  ‘Well, it’s not,’ said Stanley. ‘Please can we concentrate – look!’

  They looked back down the hole, and Stanley saw to his dismay that Fassbinder was now walking – lurching almost, for some reason – towards the mantelpiece. He still had the piece of paper in his hand, and it was clear now that this was a rubbing, a direct copy, of Isabella’s half of the love token the Captain had once given her. Fassbinder was looking for the Captain’s half!

  ‘He dropped it down a chimney,’ said Stanley. ‘I mean a volcano! In the Chimney Islands!’

  ‘Ssshhh!’ said Rasmussen.

  Fassbinder looked up, almost as if he had heard something. Stanley’s heart was in his mouth, as the man below them cocked an ear, but then he went back to walking towards the mantelpiece.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ said Rasmussen, who couldn’t quite see through the hole as well as Stanley.

  ‘He’s picking up the portrait of the Captain’s bride!’ said Stanley, in awe.

  Rasmussen gasped, and tried to stand, before remembering where they were and lying down again.

  ‘We have to stop him! Let’s go in there!’ she said.

  ‘Yes!’ said Stanley. ‘We’ll go in and … and …’

  At a loss, he put his eye to the hole again.

  ‘What’s happening?’ said Rasmussen by his ear.

  ‘He’s got Isabella in his hand. He’s turning the picture over, looking for something on the back. He’s … he’s breaking it! He’s taking the back off! He’s smashed the glass and the frame onto the floor! He’s found … a piece of paper! He’s opening it up. It’s a map! Hidden in the back of the frame! It says … It says …’

  ‘What does it say? What does it say?’ shouted Rasmussen, all pretence at quietness gone.

  ‘It says “The Kraken’s Lair!” next to a picture of a big volcano amongst lots of islands. I think that’s it; I think that’s where the love token is!’

  ‘What love token?’ yelped Rasmussen, who hated not being in the know.

  ‘The one the Captain split in half and gave one bit of to Isabella as a token of undying love but then dropped down a volcano by accident.’

  ‘Tsk. Boys.’ Rasmussen rolled her eyes. Stanley ignored her.

  ‘And now he’s … he’s taking his eye out!’

  There was a moment of silence.

  ‘He’s what now?’ said Rasmussen calmly.

  ‘He’s taken it right out and he’s pointing it at the map!’ Stanley heard a click and saw a brief flash of light as he said this. ‘It’s not an eye, it’s some sort of device like a little camera or something.’

  Down in the room, a puff of smoke and a flash had emitted from Fassbinder’s disconnected eye, and he held it in his hand for a moment before putting it back in place. This meant he had a momentary blind spot on his left side, so he didn’t see what Stanley saw, which was that the suit of armour in the corner of the room had begun to move. At first just one glove, as if to shield the eyes from the flash of light, but then, as Fassbinder went to throw the little canvas portrait of Isabella Croucher into the fire, the whole suit moved more quickly than would have seemed possible a moment before.

  The great metal thing appeared to bend at the knees, and Stanley heard a guttural roar, amplified and distorted by the metal, as the suit leapt forward and over the desk towards Fassbinder. He noticed a second too late, and despite his cat-like reflexes, the suit of armour got to him before he could move out of the way.

  Stanley was now too gobsmacked to give a running commentary, and Rasmussen had her eye back at the spy hole. Together they gawped as the suit of armour thrust a fist into the fire and caught the little portrait just as it landed on the hot coals. Another roar came from the visor, and Stanley was yet more amazed to see the other glove go to the suit’s visor, and raise it with a clang. For inside the suit of armour was the Captain! His face was twisted with anger and pain, but he had saved the portrait from the flames. He stood up quickly, and wrenched the scorched glove from his hand.

  Fassbinder seemed to be frozen to the spot – but only for a second. Tucking the map into a pocket, he ran for the door. The Captain lunged for him, but he was already away, so it was all the Captain could do to fling the metal gauntlet in his direction.

  ‘Zebediah is behind this!’ he roared, and began to heave and tug at the suit of armour, trying to get out of it so he could give proper chase to the spy.

  Behind Stanley, Rasmussen peeped over the edge of the little cubbyhole, and Stanley heard her say, ‘He’s heading for the main deck!’ Then she began to clamber down. Stanley followed her, swinging down from the beam just as the Captain noticed Rasmussen entering his office.

  ‘What the …?’ he shouted, then, more quietly. ‘Are you hurt, girl?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Rasmussen. ‘He’s heading for the deck.’

  ‘Help me with me boots, damn them. Stanley! You too. By gad, you two have your fingers in every pie.’

  ‘He’s got …’

  ‘I know, lad! He belongs to my brother, curse his liver and lights! I’m making chase. Warn the others!’

  ‘Can’t we use the speaking tubes, sir?’ said Stanley, as they left the office, the suit of armour now lying on the floor by the fire.

  ‘Only from the quarterdeck, Stanley. No tannoy down here, though perhaps there should be. But if I can’t beat an interloper in a race against time onboard me own ship, I don’t deserve to. You coming?’

  Stanley observed, as he had been lucky enough to observe in the past, that the Captain’s face seemed to come alive at times like this – his eyes twinkled, his laughter lines crinkled, and he seemed to be truly himself, despite the grim set to his face. He also, Stanley knew from experience, showed a healthy disregard for the usual rules of responsible adult behaviour. He had been happy in the past for Stanley to risk his life in the name of adventure, and he seemed to be happy to do so again as he swept away, down the corridor that led back towards the deck.

  ‘Yup!’ shouted Rasmussen, sweeping after him, though unable to produce quite the same effect, as she was a young girl in a ripped pink ball gown, rather than a huge and imposing man in a greatcoat and a tricorn hat. Stanley stopped for a moment to marve
l at the fact that the Captain had had these things with him even when hiding inside a suit of armour, before running after them. He was just in time to see them disappearing round a corner, and to hear the Captain shouting, ‘For the Galloon!’ and Rasmussen replying with the traditional, ‘And for the Captain!’ He put on a burst of speed, and found them standing in a corridor, with the Captain kicking at the skirting board.

  ‘Did we lose him?’ he asked breathlessly.

  ‘Not likely!’ said the Captain, and began to heave and wrench at a wall panel.

  ‘Are any of these walls real?’ said Rasmussen, impressed.

  ‘Of course!’ said the Captain. ‘About half, I’d say. Follow me!’

  And he disappeared up the spiral staircase that had been revealed behind the false panel. Stanley was surprised to see that it was made of stone.

  ‘Took it from a castle I was laying siege to,’ called the Captain, as if reading his mind. ‘Thought I might as well make use of it. Leads straight up to the deck now.’

  And with a hearty laugh that made Stanley’s heart glad, he rushed on up the stairs, after the mysterious interloper.

  A following wind has helped my progress, while blowing the flesh from my bones, it seems. I am cold down to my very soul, and only Clamdigger’s flask is keeping me from freezing up like a block of ice, I’m sure. The fog has blown off now, as I approach the sea. The tang of salt is in the air. And something else – sulphur? Usually I would attribute this to Fishbane and his pongy poos, but he is nowhere around. Perhaps it is a sign that I will soon be over the Chimney Isles.

  And then what?

  I will find the token, of course. A small thing I have never seen, lost in a landscape of fire-belching volcanoes, while piloting a hot air balloon, in sub-zero temperatures, over an unknown sea.

  Cloudier suddenly felt very small and young. She peeped over the edge of the balloon, at the line of the islands, now visible as a grey shadow on the horizon. She saw that at that very moment she was passing over the coastline, from the mountainous wilds of the Countship of Eisberg, to the Great Northern Ocean. She was past the point of no return. She couldn’t land, and the wind would not let her turn back.

  Squinting at the sea, she was surprised to see that the ice was not solid – currents must have kept it moving, for it was a heaving mixture of ice and slush, whipped up in parts to a froth by the fast winds. Ice floes, varying in size from dining table to football pitch, were dotted around. The occasional berg – mountains of ice that she knew would shine blue in the sun, but which now looked like forbidding shadows – floated by below.

  She passed a few moments by picking out bergs that looked familiar. There was one that had a look of Mr Wouldbegood about it. Another looked a little like Claude, his great wings outstretched. And that one there, a long, low shape, quite unlike the others, could almost be … well, it looked like it even had a small human shape on its back … and a periscope … it really did look uncannily like …

  The Grand Sumbaroon of Zebediah Anstruther!

  Cloudier goggled. She squinted. She looked at it askance.

  There could be no doubt. Now her eyes were becoming accustomed to the distance and the darkness, there could be no doubt whatsoever. There, moored to the only rock that broke the surface, half submerged in the slushy sea, was the dread conveyance of the Captain’s no-good brother. A kind of lumpy sausage of rivets and metal panels, it had none of the grace of the Galloon, and was a fraction of the size, but nevertheless it was a fearsome machine, and nobody knew exactly what it was capable of.

  Cloudier watched as a tiny figure, risking its life in these conditions, clambered about on the top of the Sumbaroon, apparently erecting some kind of flagpole or mast. Cloudier understood this was important – she had to let the Captain know of this development, and luckily she had a way of doing so. With unwilling fingers, she fumbled about under the little table in her balloon, and pulled out one of the message-shaped capsules she had used so often before. But this one was slightly different. Clamdigger had been fiddling with it, and instead of a clip to attach the capsule to a rope, there was a small pair of wings, made of thin canvas stretched over a wire frame. Struggling to even hold the pen now, Cloudier managed to scratch out a desperate message on a page of her journal.

  The Sumbaroon is here. I am watching and will follow. Three hours west, in a bay of ice, by a rock that looks like Abel’s hat. Come if you can.

  C

  P.S. Tell Mum I’ve still got my gloves on.

  She managed to scrumple the note up, and stuff it into the capsule. The key for the clockwork mechanism had iced up, but by breathing on it she managed to free it enough to wind it. She counted ten turns – a wild guess, but the best she could do. Holding the wings still, she held the capsule up into the wind, and then she let go. The wing beats were surprisingly strong, and with only a little trouble, the thing began making headway, back the way they had come, like a crazed butterfly on migration.

  Clamdigger had assured her that it would fly straight and true, and as far as she could work out she had travelled more or less due west from the Galloon. But it seemed like a hopeless shot in the dark to think that it would find its way home. In desperation, she managed to scribble out a copy of the note, stuff it into another capsule, the only other one modified in this way, and then she released that one too.

  Her fingers aching with the effort, and every sensible part of her brain screaming at her to lie down in the bottom of the basket with a blanket over her head, she nevertheless managed to force herself to face front again. She began to seek out a safe place to moor the balloon – she couldn’t risk being blown straight past, and losing sight of it forever. She let warm air out of the top of it, making it drop towards the ocean, and then gave it a burst of the burner, just in case she had let out too much.

  She felt fairly assured that the Sumbaroon would not have seen her, dark against the night sky and unlooked for, but she knew that she had to be very careful indeed. So she piloted the balloon towards one of the larger ice floes, that would allow her to see about half of the Sumbaroon sticking out from behind the distinctive Abel-hat rock, without itself being visible to the Sumbaroon’s periscope. That way she would know if it moved off, and be able to take off again, without risking her own safety too much.

  She chuckled wryly to herself as she realised that ‘not risking her own safety too much’ meant, in this context, landing a hot air balloon on an ice floe within sight of a mortal enemy. She had been flying quite low over the ocean, and so it was only a matter of a few moments before the little balloon crunched down onto the ice, rocking dangerously as it did so.

  Cloudier heaved the small iron anchor overboard, and was satisfied to see that it stuck fast in the ice without going through. She had to stay alert – keeping just enough hot air in the balloon to stop it deflating and flopping down onto the ice, from where it would be difficult to refill, but not so much that she actually took off or put any strain on the anchor.

  With this delicate balancing act underway, she squinted through the gloom, to where the Sumbaroon’s nose was just visible poking out from behind Abel’s Hat Rock, as she had decided to name it. The periscope was indeed out of sight behind the rock, but to her dismay the man who she had seen climbing about on top of the vessel was now directly in her line of vision, and so she in his. He seemed preoccupied, however.

  His bulbous shape, no doubt wrapped in furs and cloaks against the battering winds, appeared to be wrestling with a contraption of some kind. Was he setting up a flagpole? A windsock? Some long thin article, constantly caught by the wind and almost whipped from his hands, was causing him trouble as he tried to manhandle it into an unseen post hole on the deck. Cloudier wished she’d brought her binoculars. Was it an aerial? A mast of some kind? Impossible to know. All she could do was watch, and stay alert, and hope that at least one of her messages made it to the Captain in time …

  The Captain, Stanley and Rasmussen had burst out onto the dec
k, to find the night had drawn in, and every square inch of sky visible beyond and around the great sails and balloons was filled with stars. The winds appeared to have seen the fog off completely, and Stanley saw that the Galloon was indeed underway, no longer moored up to Castle Eisberg.

  ‘I had them weigh anchor!’ yelled the Captain over his shoulder, as he ran along the deck with great strides that Stanley and Rasmussen couldn’t hope to match. ‘I may not exactly have permission to search, but now I have the Count on my side, I feel our time is best used in making for the Chimney Isles. With this wind, we’ll be over the coast in no time. And then we make for the Kraken’s Lair!’

  As he said this, he was loping along the deck, occasionally leaping a kennel or dodging round a rainwater barrel. Stanley and Rasmussen were beginning to fall behind, but they knew there was no way the Captain could slow down. Ahead of them, running just as quickly, and with his now customary litheness, Fassbinder was keeping his distance.

  Many of the ball-goers had come out on deck to see the stars, and to marvel at the Galloon’s stately progress, only to find themselves goggling as the chase unfolded. Gallooniers amongst them, and a few game guests, made attempts to stop Fassbinder in his tracks, but he was so well practised that even the famed skill and speed of the crew was not enough.

  They watched as he leapt clean over Snivens, a man who was himself no mean opponent. Fassbinder then jinked round a huge crewman called Brassic, and leapt from a storage trunk over the head of a bewildered earl. Ahead of him, more and more people were emerging from the main hatch, and becoming aware of the furore. Stanley and Rasmussen, realising that this was the Captain’s chase now, began to fall back, until a rattling and howling behind them caused them to turn round. Just as they did so, Clamdigger’s dog cart, with four slobbering hounds out front, shot past them, and clattered to a halt.

  ‘Onboard!’ cried the cabin boy. ‘He may need our help!’