The Castaways

by Iain Lawrence

  “Where’s the cook? Where’s the carpenter?” said the man. “Where’s everyone gone, boy?”

  Weedle raised his shoulders in a huge, elaborate shrug. “We searched the ship, sir, and there weren’t no one here—”

  “The whole ship?”

  “The whole bleeding ship, sir.” Weedle drew a cross above his heart. “From top to bottom and end to end, and there weren’t no one but the helmsman, who went off his nut and threw himself to the fishes. Tell him if that ain’t true, Penny.”

  “I see.” The man’s tattoos were like rings on his fingers, bands of blue between his knuckles. When he stroked his beard, the painted rings seemed to tangle in his hairs. He studied Weedle for a while longer, then looked at each of our faces in turn, until he was staring into mine. “Your name’s Tin, is it? Would you be the son of Redman?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Do you know of him?”

  “Who doesn’t?” he asked. “I heard he was searching for you in the islands.”

  “Yes, he found me,” said I. “But the cannibals took him.”

  There was no change in the fellow’s expression, no sign at all of surprise at the news, not a hint of sadness nor pleasure. His hand kept running through his beard, stretching it down from his chin. “Did he mention a man called Beezley?”

  “No, sir.”

  “We met only once.” The man’s hand fell from his beard. At last there came to his eyes a little gleam of light to show they were made of more than glass. It was a look of amusement, perhaps of satisfaction. “I’m Beezley,” he said. “Mister Beezley. And this is Mr. Moyle. So if you’re Redman’s son, you can hand and steer, can you?”

  “Him?” Weedle laughed loudly. “Tom’s no sailor, sir. He was seasick at Chatham! He’s afraid of the water.”

  “No matter,” said Mr. Beezley, in his wooden way. “Mr. Moyle will teach him the ropes. He’ll teach all of you, and you’ll be wise to listen. When he says ‘Jump,’ you say, ‘How high, sir.’ And mind him well, if you’re wise. Mr. Moyle eats children.”

  With this, Mr. Moyle opened his mouth and gnashed his brown teeth. It was a gruesome thing to see. But we weren’t infants, not so easily frightened as that.

  Round the feet of both men were puddles of reddish water. Their sodden clothes were dripping. Mr. Beezley loosened his coat. “Do as you’re told and there’ll be no trouble. That’s all you need to know for now.” He turned his back and walked away.

  “Wait,” I said. “Won’t you tell me of my father, how you know him and—”

  “No,” he said flatly. “I’ve nothing to say to you, boy. We’re not shipmates. And we’re not chums. You’ll do as you’re told and ask no more questions.”

  “You’ve come to our ship, Mr. Beezley Not the other way around.” I spoke boldly, though in my innards I quivered. “I’d like to know where it is you’ve come from, Mr. Beezley.”

  “England,” he said, and kept walking. The pair went straight to the water barrel. Mr. Moyle flicked the lid aside, and Mr. Beezley lifted the pannikin from its peg.

  “You’ve sailed all the way from England on your iceberg?” I said.

  Weedle snickered, then quickly clamped his mouth shut.

  “Only a lubber would call that a berg,” said Mr. Beezley. “It was barely a splinter.” He dipped the pannikin into the water and stirred it about. Then he took a long drink before he spoke. “There was a sealing ship, boy. It was crushed in the ice down south. We took to the boats, but one by one they foundered. Mr. Moyle and myself would have drowned with the rest if we hadn’t found that ‘iceberg’ of yours. There; now you know. And bear in mind that curiosity kills the cat.”

  He drank again, and again after that, taking in so much water that it gurgled inside him. Then he passed the pannikin to Mr. Moyle, who tried to pour his share straight down his throat, without shocking his rotted teeth. But still he twitched at the cold touch of the water. He twitched all over, from head to toe, as if a giant had shaken him like a dishcloth. He closed his eyes from the pain, and like that, with no sight, reached down and replaced the pannikin on its peg. It was as though he’d done it many times before.

  Of course it came to my mind that these were the castaways set adrift from this very same ship. But if they were, why were they claiming to be sealers? What had happened to the others who had been cast away with them?

  “How long were you adrift, Mr. Beezley?” I asked. “How many were in your company?”

  “We didn’t count the days, boy.”

  “Did you count each other?”

  His glassy eyes suddenly glazed. There was such a look of anger that I had to turn away in a show of studying the sea.

  “You’re going to be trouble,” he said. “I see that already. You like to think you’re running the roost, don’t you?”

  Weedle spoke up. “That’s true, sir; he does.”

  “It’s as plain as the nose on his face,” said Mr. Beezley. “But look where he’s led you, boys. To a ship he can’t steer, in a world where he’s lost. He has no idea where he is, I wager.”

  Little Midge tried to answer, but was drowned out by Weedle and Penny. “No, sir, he don’t!” they both said.

  “Does he know where he’s going?”

  “No, sir!”

  “A fine leader. Humbug!” Mr. Beezley slammed the lid on the barrel. “Well, my lads, what do you say we steer to the north?” His voice was rising. “What do you say I make sailors of you all?”

  eight

  I VENTURE ALOFT

  Mr. Beezley extended his arms, and Weedle and Penny went to his side like monkeys to an organ grinder. Boggis didn’t join them, and little Midge just turned away and wandered off. He sat by the mainmast, not quite facing us.

  “You can steer where you like, Mr. Beezley,” he said. “But it won’t do you no good. This ship, she’s a phantom.”

  I could see the gray crescents of his eyes, like old stones in his skull.

  “She’s the Flying Dutchman. That’s why everyone’s gone,” he said. “The captain beat too long against the storms. The face of God appeared in the clouds on Christmas day, and the carpenter fell to his knees.”

  Beezley and Moyle might have frozen back into ice. They stood staring.

  “What humbug!” said Mr. Beezley.

  “It ain’t humbug! The captain put four men in a boat and cast them away,” said Midge. “They begged to be taken back, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  “Who’s been telling you this?” said Mr. Moyle. “You says you weren’t on the ship, but—”

  “It’s in a book,” cried Midgely “Tom, he read it to me.”

  “Where’s the book, Tom?” asked Mr. Beezley.

  “In a box by the stove,” I said.

  Boggis had not yet lit a fire that morning, so there was no trace of smoke from the metal chimney. Yet Mr. Moyle shifted his gaze directly toward the cookhouse. Mr. Beezley said, “Go fetch it, boy.”

  I didn’t like to be called boy, or to be sent on an errand by this thankless man. So I doddered along, looking up at the topsails, hoping that Mr. Beezley would shout at me to hurry. But he didn’t.

  I went into the cookhouse, pulled the book from the box, and shook out the list of all hands. Up and down I read that list before admitting there was neither a Beezley nor a Moyle among the names. But I was so certain that the men were our castaways that I kept the list—as if believing their names might somehow appear. I didn’t mind giving up the book. Both Midge and I knew it by heart.

  By the time I got back, the men had shifted to the side of the hatch. They had shed their heavy outer clothes, and now—in sailors’ woolen shirts—looked like a pair of ragged Robinson Crusoes. Mr. Moyle was on his knees, closing the iron dogs.

  “Did you open the hatch, boy?” asked Mr. Beezley

  “We searched the ship,” I said. “We told you that.”

  “What did you find down there?”

  The question took me by surprise. If he knew the ship and ever
ything about it, why would he ask?

  “There was coconuts, sir,” said Weedle, who stood dutifully at his side. “And breadfruit and flies. That was the lot, and it weren’t worth the bother of looking.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have looked,” said Mr. Moyle.

  I asked him why, but it was Mr. Beezley who answered. He stood straight and stiff as the deck tilted. “An open hatch can sink a ship,” he said. “I would have thought any fool could see that.”

  He held out his hand for the book, snapping his fingers when I wasn’t fast enough. Then he snatched it away and let the pages flutter apart. “Where’s the rest?”

  “We used it to start the fire,” I said.

  With a grunt he started reading at the middle of the book. I watched his eyes shift back and forth, his fingers flip the pages.

  “Claptrap,” he said. “Nothing but humbug.” He closed the book. “It’s the ramblings of a lunatic. Someone off his head with fever.”

  Midgely spoke up from his seat at the mast. “If you don’t believe it, try turning the ship.”

  “Well, now that’s what I mean to do,” said Mr. Beezley. He looked up at the sails, squinting against the sun in the canvas. “We’ll come about and go north. We’ll make for warm waters. The Indies and Hispaniola and—”

  “We’ll make for England,” I said. “That’s where we want to go, Mr. Beezley.”

  “Is it?” He looked not at me, but to Weedle and the others. “You want to go back to the hulks; to the hangman perhaps?”

  Weedle shook his head.

  “Who would, but a fool?” Mr. Beezley held the book like a Bible, and spoke like a priest. “Follow me, my lads, and I’ll make sailors of you all. Sailors and more, I promise you. We can all be rich beyond our dreams.” His teeth showed in a white row through the tangle of his beard. “What do you say we go looking for gold?”

  Just as the fellow had written in his book, the very word put a fever into Weedle and Penny and Boggis. They were like dogs who’d picked up a scent, their heads lifting, their whole bodies tensing.

  Now, I had watched Mr. Beezley most closely, and I knew for a fact that he hadn’t read the first pages of the book. I said, “Mr. Beezley, how do you know about the gold?”

  “Doesn’t all the world know by now?” he asked. “Only maroons on godforsaken islands haven’t heard of the gold in Georgia.”

  This “took the wind from my sails,” as my poor father would have said. Godforsaken islands were exactly where we had been, and we’d had not a shred of news in months.

  Mr. Beezley walked to the rail and chucked the book out on the sea. It fluttered from his hand like a wounded bird. “Now, my lads, we’ve work to do,” he said. “A ship to tend; a course to steer. We’re sailing for gold!”

  To this echo of the sailor’s journal, Weedle and Penny gave three cheers, and we set about to turn the ship. Mr. Beezley took command, of course. He sent Benjamin Penny to the wheel, and Boggis to one of the many ropes at the side of the ship. He looked at Weedle’s pirate clothes and said, “Go stand by the sheets there, Captain Kiddy.” Even blind Midge was given a task. Mr. Beezley led him to a row of belaying pins, put his hands on a rope, and said, “When I give the word, you let that go. Understand?”

  “It’s the weather brace, is it?” said Midgely.

  Mr. Beezley smiled for the first time. “Why, Mary’s my mother!” he said in surprise. “That’s just what it is. At least there’s one of you with his wits about him.”

  Last of all he came to me. “You’ll go aloft,” he said.

  I didn’t have to obey, and I knew it. I could sit on the deck, refusing to work, but the ship would still be sailed where Mr. Beezley chose to sail it. He had taken it over, just as Mr. Mullock had taken over the longboat, as men would always do to boys. So I went to my chore, though not eagerly. I had been up in the rigging of a ship only once, and that time I had fallen from the maintop, straight into the sea. The thought of going again made jelly of my legs.

  I looked up where Mr. Beezley pointed, at the high stick of the topsail yard, and let him think I understood his sailor’s babble. “The brace is fouled with the Flemish horse,” he said. “Mind it doesn’t pitch you from the yard when you free it.”

  I began to climb the ratlines. I told myself that it was better to go north than do nothing, that there was much I could learn from Mr. Beezley. But I was only putting on a brave face, and that fell away as soon as I felt the roll of the ship, the sway and tremble of the ropes. My old fears got the better of me. I would have gone no higher if Mr. Moyle hadn’t chased me. With a cry he came crawling up the rigging, nimble as a spider, shaking the ropes like a web. I looked down at him, and all I saw were his horrid teeth as he opened his mouth and shouted.

  “Get up there, you trollop!” He came in a quick dart, hand over hand. “Get up or I’ll bite you!”

  It was no game he was playing. Mr. Moyle seemed furious, and I feared that if he caught me he would do just what he threatened, or worse. So up I went, and he chased me higher. I moved from fear, and from shame as well, for I heard the others laughing. Mr. Moyle chased me to the wooden top, through the lubber’s hole and up again. Each time I looked down it was to see his piglike face a little closer. I scrambled up the topsail shrouds, and at last I reached the slender yard where the canvas hung.

  I was then many feet above the sea, clinging to a teeter-totter mast. Sails flapped all around me, and the tangle of ropes writhed like so many snakes. Buntlines and braces and halyards and footropes were all wrapped around each other. I would have to shinny out along the yard to free them, and that stick of wood was swaying and plunging in the most alarming fashion.

  Far below, the deck planks made a pattern of black seams and white wood. I saw Weedle’s red sash, and the gray water coursing past the ship. Everything was moving three ways at once—up or down, back or forth, and side to side—and it all began to swim and blur as dizziness overtook me.

  “Move yourself!” shouted Mr. Moyle, clawing his way up the rigging. He opened his mouth and gnashed his broken teeth.

  In a flash I was out on the yard. I knelt astride it and inched my way along the wood. With the sail pressing at my legs, and the ropes pulling at my arms, it was all I could do to hold on. I stretched out along the end of the yard and pulled at the tangle of rope.

  Without warning, it came loose. Something whipped at my shoulders, then all fell away with a great groan and a snap.

  The yard twisted. The canvas opened with a shuddering crack. The whole ship leaned to the side, and with a small shout I tumbled from the yard.

  nine

  HOW I PLUCKED THE DUTCHMAN’S FLAG

  It was Mr. Moyle who saved me. He was there as quick as a wink, one arm at my waist, a hand on my sleeve. He caught me in the moment that I fell, and swung me round so that my chest settled on the solid yard, and I stood in the bend of the footrope.

  But there was nothing tender about him. As soon as his hand was free, he gave me a clout on the head. “Clumsy boy.” He breathed his foul breaths into my face. “Hang on. She’s coming about.”

  Then Mr. Beezley—his voice faint from the deck—called orders one after the other. The mast swung us high above the deck as the ship began to turn. Sails flopped across, and the yards shifted, creaking in their metal gear. The topsail shuddered and the whole mast shook, and I thought Mr. Moyle and I would be flung together out across the sea. But he held me tight—more tightly than I cared for—and the ship settled onto a new course. The sun came slanting through the sails now, making patches of gray and dazzling white, and the shadows of the ropes lay across them. Everything was moving, but slowly and grandly, like the soft rippling of albatross wings. My heart beat quickly, giving an extra shudder at the beauty of the wide sea all around, and the white curl thickening at the bow as the ship gathered speed.

  “You saved my life,” I said to Mr. Moyle. “Thank you.”

  He eyed me very strangely. “If you save a fellow’s life, hi
s life is yours. You know that, don’t you? But no worry, lad.” He smiled with the most gruesome leer. “I won’t collect just yet, my boy. Collect I will, only not just yet.”

  He pinched my arm, but not from friendliness. With a push and a curse he sent me down again, and chased me all the way. I couldn’t move fast enough for his liking, and twice he trod on my fingers as he followed me down the ratlines.

  By the time I reached the deck, the ship was sailing nicely. We were reaching to the north with the yards braced back, the canvas taut and pulling. Mr. Beezley had given life to the wood and canvas, creating a creature that seemed full of joy to be charging along.

  My companions, too, were in fine spirits. Old troubles forgotten, a new adventure ahead, they were ready to follow Mr. Beezley to the ends of the earth. “Where’s the gold?” they asked. “Does it lie all over the ground, Mr. Beezley?” Already their eyes were agleam, as though they’d been blinded by gold dust.

  By nightfall our castaways had taken up quarters in the stern cabin, which had not been visited since our first morning aboard. From that moment on, as if the ghosts had left in fear, we heard nary a tap nor a breath as we pressed along.

  In the rubble of abandoned things, the castaways found clothes that might have been tailored to fit. They shaved their beards, though Mr. Beezley left a strange strip along his jawbone, a hairy frame for a homely face. Mr. Moyle, clean-shaven, looked more than ever like a grunting swine.

  Mr. Beezley lived up to his word, making sailors of us all. Under his guidance we overhauled the rigging from rail to truck, learning every term for every object in between. We took such a pride in handling that great ship, that every one of us—even I—was made better by it. Weedle proved himself handy with a marlinspike, and I often saw him sitting with Mr. Moyle, splicing rope in the sun. He was known by all as Captain Kiddy, which he took with good humor as he sported about in his piratical clothes. Benjamin Penny made a fine helmsman, though he had to stand on a wooden box to gain the height he needed. The giant Gaskin Boggis came to love going aloft. He would sit on the fore-topsail yard, high above the deck, drumming his heels against the wind-filled canvas.