The Castaways

by Iain Lawrence

  “A few guineas?” shouted the King. “Are you off your head? We’ll be lucky to get pennies for this lot of drivel. What are we to do with that?” He pointed at Midgely “A blind boy! Or with that,” he said, jabbing a finger at Boggis. “A great oaf.”

  So it was true. Midgely and Boggis were to be sold as well. I heard one gasp, and the other groan, and I squeezed Midgely’s hand to comfort him.

  “You know who takes the risk here,” said the King. “Slaving alone is chance enough, but slaving in boys like these—”

  “They’re convicts, George.” Mr. Beezley scratched his leg with the barrel of his gun. “When it comes to telling tales, convicts make dead men look like chatterboxes.”

  “But still, but still,” said the little King, with a despairing glance at his mountain of supplies. “Think of the missus, and the girl. This is all we can afford, and you’re stealing us blind.”

  Mr. Beezley grumbled. He started pulling at the pile of chain, working out the tangles. He raised his voice and asked, “What do you say, Mr. Moyle?”

  “Money for old rope,” said Mr. Moyle, behind us. “Give us a couple of bodies to carry our goods and call it done.”

  “Agreed,” said the King.

  With that we became the property of little King George, and so of Mr. Goodfellow The very man who had made my life a misery could now do what he liked with the rest of it.

  “Oh, don’t despair, boys,” said the King. “You won’t be long on this little island. You’ll be off to big plantations; you might fetch up in America. But wherever you go it’ll be better than Australia. You won’t starve; we promise that. The sugarcane’s like lollipops. Work hard, keep your noses clean, and in a few years you’ll buy your freedom. Why, you might have slaves of your own one day, if slavery lasts so long.”

  Mr. Beezley was untangling the pile of chains and shackles. Mr. Moyle went to help him, pulling yards of it loose, until it hung about their shoulders and arms like gruesome garlands.

  “We’ll do our best to see that you boys stay together,” said the little King. “We can’t guarantee it. Not every plantation will buy five boys at once.”

  “Three boys, sir,” said Walter Weedle, with a funny turn of his head. “Me and Penny, we’re staying with Mr. Beezley.”

  The King scowled at Mr. Beezley. “You’re the very devil, sir, aren’t you?”

  “It’s true!” cried Weedle. “Mr. B! Tell him we ain’t going as slaves.”

  “Shut up!” said Mr. Beezley. His arms were full of chains, the gun waving in his hand. “I’m sick to death of hearing from you, Captain Kiddy. You toad-eater.”

  Weedle gaped. He looked so miserable, so suddenly, that I couldn’t help but pity him. I thought no boy in the world could possibly look any more dismayed, until I saw Benjamin Penny.

  His head was hung down. The lumps of his ears had turned red. All the twisted bones in his shoulders, all the knobs along his back, were heaving and shaking, and a tear splashed onto the dock. He suddenly looked smaller than Midgely, more fragile by half. I remembered the very first time that I’d seen him, and how he’d clung to me in the damp gloom of the Darkey’s lair. Mistaking me for my twin, he had shown love and loyalty that I had never seen in him again.

  Now he raised his head, and his horrible features were wracked with misery.

  “This ain’t fair,” he said. “You promised, Mr. B.”

  Mr. Beezley laughed. So did Mr. Moyle. The fifty feet of chain that hung around them jingled with their laughter.

  “You’re just like all the others,” said Penny. “You lie and cheat; you say one thing and do another. I believed you, Mr. B. I thought you wanted me.”

  “Wanted you?” snorted Mr. Beezley “Vile little cripple; who’d want you? The day I keep the likes of you hanging around me, that’s the day I kill myself.”

  Benjamin Penny gasped. He started forward, over the planks, like a scuttling crab. He uttered every terrible name I’d ever heard, and more. Every name, every curse, and every oath. Then he flung himself at the castaways. He leapt for Mr. Beezley’s throat.

  His webbed hands clutched on to the man’s neck. His feet clawed like a cat’s. The gun fell to the dock as Mr. Beezley staggered sideways, shouting in surprise.

  Mr. Moyle was right there. He threw loops of chain round Penny’s thin neck and tried to strangle him with the links. But the boy hung on, and all three reeled across the dock.

  I dashed forward to help Penny. So did Boggis. But in a moment it was all over. Mr. Beezley teetered at the very edge of the dock, with Penny at his throat and Mr. Moyle tugging at the boy. Penny shouted again, and with a twist of his weight he carried the castaways into the sea.

  They fell in a tangle and sank straight to the bottom. We could see them, still struggling, on the sand below. A dust—as of gold—swirled around them, growing ever thicker until it covered them over, and only their bubbles of breath could be seen. Three little streams spiraled to the surface, scattered in the currents so that one drifted under the dock. Another faded away, and then the third vanished.

  Midgely was shouting, “Tom! Are you there? Tom!”

  “It’s all right, Midgely,” I said.

  We all stood gawking into the cloud of sand. The water churned beneath us, as though a great fish was already swooping in beneath the dock. The cloud of sand boiled and raged, and I glimpsed the ghostly shapes of Benjamin Penny and Mr. Beezley embracing each other in a tangle of chain.

  Walter Weedle spat into the sea. “Poor old Penny,” he said.

  It was a shocking sight, made all the worse because it came in gloomy snatches through the shifting cloud of sand. I saw Penny’s arm waving as it lifted in the current, Mr. Beezley’s ragged beard rippling round his face, his eyes staring open. I felt no pity for the castaways, yet to see little Penny drowned in his chains brought a great pang to my heart. I wondered if it wasn’t because of me that he’d come to such a gruesome end.

  But I couldn’t dwell on it then. Behind me, Midge called out in his soft voice, “Tom, would you help me, please?”

  I straightened up and turned around. The little King was there, his face stark white below his woven hat. He was staring at Midgely, who was sitting on the dock with Mr. Beezley’s pistol in his hands. The hammer was cocked, the barrel wavering back and forth.

  “Tom, where are you?” said Midgely.

  “Here,” I said, rushing to his side. I took the gun.

  I aimed it at the little King.

  fourteen

  BENJAMIN PENNY DOES A BRAVE THING

  I looked down the barrel of the gun, right into the eyes of King George. He held up his hands, as though to fend off a bullet.

  “Please,” he said. “Please don’t shoot me.”

  He sank to his knees as I moved toward him. In a moment he was a trembling, tearful sack of jelly. His bearing, his royalness, flaked away like old paint. “I beg you,” he said. “I’ve a wife and a child.”

  I took a step closer.

  “I’ll give you anything you want,” he said. “Name it and it’s yours.”

  “First, your keys.” I tried to pull the string over his head, but he grabbed on.

  “Be careful now,” he said. “If you free the slaves they’ll kill you. They’ll tear you limb from limb.”

  “I don’t think so.” I pulled harder on the string. It snagged on his ear until he finally let go. I gave the keys to Boggis, and sent him off to free the slaves. The pistol I kept aimed at the King.

  “Now what?” he said. “Do you want your freedom? You can have it. I’ll set you up in New Orleans. In Hispaniola. Wherever you like. You’ll have a fine house and so much land that you won’t see the edges of it. What do you say, Tom? What do you say to that?”

  “I want to go home.”

  He turned instead to Weedle. “But you want it, don’t you? Say the word, and freedom’s yours. No one will find you, I promise. They won’t even go looking; why would they?”

  I thought Weedl
e would now throw himself in with this plan, that he’d side with the King as he’d sided with Mr. Mullock and then with the castaways. But to my surprise he only sneered. And to my pleasure he said, “I want to stick with Tom Tin. That’s what I want from now on.”

  Midgely smiled at the both of us, or in our general direction. He said, “Is it true, Tom? Is Penny gone?”

  “They’re all gone,” I said. “Penny and Beezley and Moyle.”

  “Did you see them go down?” asked Midge. “Mr. Beezley ain’t coming back, is he?”

  “No,” I said. “Penny made sure of that.”

  “It must have been brave of him, then,” said Midge.

  “Or just stupid,” said Weedle. “You could never tell with Penny.”

  I didn’t want to stand there talking about Benjamin Penny. I wanted only to be away, to be out at sea and heading for England. “Let’s go home,” I said.

  “What?” cried the little man. “Right now? At least take us with you.” He looked toward his house and that wall of logs, where Boggis was just passing through the opened gate. “Think of the child. Think of her mother. It’s their death if you leave us here.”

  That seemed a possibility. Though I didn’t much care what happened to the King, I worried for his little girl.

  “You’ll need me,” said the King. “I can get you home. I know my way around ships, let me tell you. Navigation?” He looked eagerly at me. “I can do it. I can take you right to England.”

  “Can you take me right to Mr. Goodfellow?” I asked.

  I might have knocked him down with a feather. “Now why would you want that?” said he. “Why do you care about Mr. Goodfellow?”

  “I mean to ruin him,” said I. “As he ruined me.”

  “That’s good. That’s splendid!” cried the King. “I loathe the man myself. If nothing else, let me help with that. With the ruination.”

  Little King George would surely have said anything then—or promised the moon—to have his wretched life spared. But the tone of his voice, and the look in his eyes, convinced me that he hated Mr. Goodfellow. He went on and on about it, begging for a chance to get even with the man. “I know his habits,” he said. “Why, I know the rascal inside out. Believe me, I’ve suffered for it dearly.”

  “You don’t appear to be suffering,” I said. “You trade his slaves, don’t you? You were ready to trade us a minute ago.”

  “That’s right!” said Weedle, sharply. “He was. He should be down there with Mr. Moyle and Mr. B.”

  “No. No, listen,” cried the King. “I’ve no heart for this business. I really don’t. It was Mr. Goodfellow sent me here—to pay my debts, he said. Look, I’m as much a slave as anyone in irons. Why, I’m more of a slave than some.”

  “Push the cove in the water,” said Weedle. “You can get us home without him, Tom.”

  He had more faith in me now than I had in myself. I told the King to get up, for he was still on his knees. I sent him off to fetch his wife and child, and to gather what things they might want for the voyage. “We’ll leave while the wind’s in our favor,” I said.

  I didn’t even go to shore in that place. I didn’t feel the grass below my feet, nor the shade of the trees on my face. I took one more look into the water, where the cloud of sand had nearly settled, and poor Benjamin Penny still lay in the arms of Mr. Beezley A horde of crabs was already beginning to cover them. As for Mr. Moyle, it was as though he had never existed. Whether the crabs hid him from my view, or whether a shark or a fish had carried him away, I neither knew nor cared.

  I threw the King’s pistol into the sea. It was heavy and awkward; I didn’t trust my aim. So I tossed it from the dock, and it plummeted down in a trail of bubbles, to settle with a puff of golden sand near the head of Mr. Beezley.

  “Let’s go, Midge,” I said, and led him to the ship. The hold had been emptied, and now the slaves were scrubbing it down. In a selfish act I left them to it, only turning them free when the job was done. All but one went off like a shot, leaving a wiry fellow with skin the color of coffee, and a smile as quick as Mercury. In a funny pidgin English he asked to come with us. “Me sail England,” he said, making waves in the air with his hand. Then he beamed in that delightful way, and I signed him on with a handshake.

  Boggis freed four and twenty slaves. They vanished into the hills like so many deer—with great speed but not a sound. What he saw behind the logs made him more angry than I would have believed to be possible. He came back with his hands swinging like sledgehammers, demanding to know where the King had gone. “I want to thrash him,” he growled.

  “But, Gaskin, we need him,” I said. “He’s our navigator now.”

  It was all that saved the King. But from the instant he came aboard, and for all of our voyage, he would keep as far as he could from Boggis.

  I gave him and his family the quarters of our departed castaways. They arrived at the ship in the late afternoon, dragging a coffin down the dock.

  The King’s wife was a husky woman. She was taller than her husband by a considerable margin, far bigger and stronger as well, though not fat by any means. Loud and brash, it was she who did the dragging, while the King and his tiny daughter pushed from behind. “Put your back in it, George!” she shouted.

  It took all of us to hoist that horrible box aboard. I was curious why it weighed so much, but when I bent to the hasp the King’s wife laid a meaty hand on the lid. “Please,” she said, and suddenly this enormous woman was blushing like a delicate maiden. “My underthings, you understand.”

  We carried the casket below and left it in the great cabin. The little King, winded already, stayed with it while his wife plodded back for another load as gruesome as the first. I thought we’d brought half the household already, but the second coffin was nearly as heavy as the first.

  With the woman at one end, Boggis at the other, and the rest of us in between, we labored the coffin to the break in the deck, where it would spend the entire voyage lashed in place by its handles. Right away the little girl heaved it open, for it turned out that the contents were hers alone. She was surely the only girl with a casket for a playbox, but she didn’t mind. It was filled to the brim with her toys and her dolls. Even her tea table came aboard in that grim box.

  By the time all was stowed, the sun was setting. Not wishing to make sail in the dark, we decided to lie alongside till morning.

  It was a strange night. The birds gave up hunting the flies, but with dusk came a horde of bats. They poured from the trees in a flood, a river of brown swirling through the reddish sky. They flew this way and that, at all heights in all directions, so that it seemed impossible they couldn’t help colliding with each other, or with the rigging of the ship. But they darted in and out among the stays and braces, and not a single bat tumbled to the deck.

  Then the huts began to burn. It started with a glow of red, but soon huge flames appeared. They engulfed the buildings, sending embers floating off at great heights above the trees, and the bats and the embers seemed to gather into one enormous, swirling flock.

  In the crackle and the roar a chanting started. The slaves were singing—of their freedom, no doubt. They sang all through the night, stoking the flames with the logs from the wooden wall. Midgely and I, and Weedle and Boggis, stood in a row at the rail to listen. I felt my skin prickling down my spine, my hairs standing on end. The sight and the sounds might have come straight from the cannibal islands.

  I slept not a wink, but waited anxiously for the dawn. With the first gray of morning’s light we loosed the topsails, and the canvas tumbled free. We set the spanker at the stern.

  It seemed the ship was mine to command. All eyes were upon me. I put Weedle at the wheel—to please him, more than anything—sent Boggis to the mooring lines, and the others to the sheets and braces. On the dock the British flag flapping from its pole told me of the strength and direction of the wind.

  In a small voice I said, “Cast off forward, please.”

  A
way went the lines from the bow. The ship slid backward, squealing and creaking against the dock. Then the stern lines tightened, and the great bowsprit swung away. A gap opened between the bow and the dock, growing wider with each moment.

  I felt nearly overwhelmed. The ship seemed unstoppable, already out of control, and we hadn’t even parted from the dock. Everyone was staring at me, waiting on my word. But there was such a noise from rope and canvas that I could scarcely think. I heard the little King complaining, then Midgely’s answer, clear and loud, “He does know what he’s doing. His father’s the best sailor in the world.”

  With that I “took the bit in my mouth,” as one would say. I shouted at Weedle: “Hard to starboard!” At the others I roared: “Haul away!”

  They pulled on the braces, little Midge and the King at one, the woman at the other. Our always-smiling slave tended the spanker. High above, the topsail yards swung over. “Sheet in!” I cried, and the sails filled with wind.

  The ship veered faster. It gathered way, sliding forward through the water.

  “Cast off aft!” I shouted.

  Boggis threw off the last rope, and we were free of the land. We scudded across the bay with the bowsprit sweeping past the trees, past the shore.

  “Jibe oh!” I shouted.

  The yards came across with a jarring shudder. The spanker boom followed, its blocks in a clatter, its sheets like a whip. Weedle ducked his head as it passed above him, then looked up with a grin.

  “Steady as she goes,” I told him. He straightened the wheel.

  “Set the courses! Set the gallants!”

  Our poor little crew scurried from place to place, from braces to sheets. One by one, the sails tumbled free from their yards, each giving the ship another little push to the east. We left the bay with a white-water moustache curling at the bow, flecks of foam in our wake.

  I looked down the deck and beyond the bowsprit, at faint hummocks of land in the distance. I didn’t know the names of the islands, or a thing about them, but it didn’t matter. They marked the edge of the Caribbean, and another day would find us on their far side, with nothing but the broad Atlantic between us and England. It was a daunting thought, all that water to cross, but it no longer filled me with terror.