The Castaways

by Iain Lawrence

  “Oh, yes, he would, Tom,” said Midge. “We have to clear out before he comes back.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with that. I thought I’d left Mr. Moyle lying drowned in a tangle of chain, and the last thing I wanted was to face him again. I went at the next set of knots in a great hurry, but Midge wasn’t merely tied to the post; he was seized there, like a nipper to an anchor line.

  I picked up the candle and started to burn through the rope. It was the old, tarry hemp from the floor above us, and a black smoke—and a smoldering flame—soon appeared. Brighter than my candle, it pushed away the blackness, and I could look farther into the cellar than I’d seen before.

  In the shadows on the floor I made out the ring of a fire pit, a circle of brick and stone. Beside it, in a little brown heap, was a frayed jacket and the sort of cloth cap that a boy might have worn. There were other things there—a black pot and white bones, and still others that didn’t bear to be thought about. They made it clear to me that Mr. Beezley had spoken the truth long ago. Mr. Moyle really did eat children.

  twenty-seven

  HOW I WAITED IN THE DARKNESS

  I turned away from the gruesome sights and attacked the rope with a new urgency. I twisted and pulled at the charred strands. Two of them popped apart, and a third soon after, but Midge seemed to be bound to the post as tightly as ever.

  There was a burst of noise above us. In the huge room, the pigeons took flight. We heard their wings and their cooing cries, then the sound of footfalls on the floor.

  “Holy jumping mother of Moses! Here he comes,” said Midge.

  We listened to the thumps of shoes and the creaks of wood as whoever was up there came closer. I prayed that it would be a lazy navvy shirking his job, or even a thief come prowling through the warehouse. I couldn’t shake away the thought that I’d left Mr. Moyle for dead, and that if he was coming back now it would be as one of the shambling dead men who had haunted my dreams of the sea.

  I turned my head to follow the sounds. The person came steadily, unerringly, toward the door at the top of the steps. I bent down and blew out my candle.

  The cellar went utterly black. There was only a red glow from each parted strand of rope—six little eyes smoldering up from the ground.

  “I’m coming, boy.” It was Mr. Moyle. “I’ve brought the cleaver now.”

  My heart shuddered. Of all the people I’d met along my journey, Mr. Moyle was the one I feared the most. I would never forget the yellow man from Newgate, or the dying convict on Mr. Mullock’s island, not the blind beggar or the bone grubber or anyone else. But Mr. Moyle was the worst.

  “The little King, he played me for a fool,” said Mr. Moyle in his growling voice. “Well, I’m done with waiting; it’s the end for you, boy.”

  I held Midgely “Don’t say a word,” I told him. “Don’t make a sound.”

  The footfalls ended. There was a squelching noise from the cork I’d used to wedge the door. Then the hinges squealed, and Mr. Moyle stood at the very top of the stairs, with his shadow lying in zigzags on the steps. I listened with dread to the sound of him breathing.

  “Now who is it can’t close a door behind him?” he said. “Who’s down there with you, boy?”

  His voice was enough to give me the shivers. But his next words sent my heart leaping to my throat.

  “Must be Tom Tin,” he said. “Good old Tom Tin. Who else would bother with a blind boy?”

  I felt Midgely tremble. I held him by the shoulders, and we waited in the darkness.

  “Speak up, Tom,” said Mr. Moyle. “Sing out, lad.”

  I peered up between the stairs. The pigeons had settled again, leaving a swirl of dust in the air. I couldn’t quite see Mr. Moyle, but I could hear him breathing at the top of the steps. I saw flickers of light darting along the wall, yellow spots that flared and dimmed.

  I couldn’t make sense of those at first. But when I heard the sound of metal striking wood I knew what he was up to. I could see him in my mind’s eye, turning and twisting the cleaver, using the blade as a reflector to light up the nooks and crannies.

  I called out boldly. “Are you looking for your candle, Mr. Moyle? I’ve got it here.”

  He drew a startled breath. It pleased me that I’d surprised him.

  “Blast you, boy,” he said. “Well, never mind; you’re no match for me.”

  Mr. Moyle started down the steps. The soles of his boots came into my view, then his barrel chest and the shining cleaver. Before I could move, his piglike face was there, and he saw me looking, and he laughed. “Why, there you are. Like a frightened little mouse,” he said.

  With that, Mr. Moyle reached back. The cork squelched, the hinges screeched, and the door slammed shut behind him. The darkness was absolute.

  “We’re all in the same boat now,” said Mr. Moyle.

  Down he came, step by step.

  The only light in the whole cellar came from the glowing rope ends at my feet. They didn’t cast enough glow that I could see my own shoes, let alone Midgely or Mr. Moyle. The idea that I would have to wrestle with the man in such blackness was almost more than I could bear.

  The staircase was shaking. Each step took his weight with a creak and a groan.

  Midgely struggled in my arms. The rope pulled and stretched, and he tried to twist away. I took a firmer hold on his shoulders, but he shouted at me. “Don’t!”

  Mr. Moyle stopped. “Now, now,” he said. “Shouting won’t do you no good. It’ll all be over soon enough.”

  He came down another step, but where he was I didn’t know. Each time he moved, a gritty shower of dust and dirt fell around me.

  Midgely kept struggling. I thought he was terrified, and held him closer. In a loud whisper he said, “Let me go!”

  His hands came loose. I felt him stretching the ropes, reaching toward the staircase.

  Suddenly, Mr. Moyle screamed.

  There was a dim, red streak as his cleaver went flying. Then he toppled forward and crashed onto the steps. He tumbled to the bottom, landing in the dirt with a thud.

  “I did it, Tom,” cried Midgely. “I grabbed him by his ankles, Tom.”

  The sounds had frightened the pigeons. I could hear nothing but the whirl of their flying. They took a long minute or more to settle again, and then the silence in the cellar was as thick as the darkness. I listened so hard that I could hear the faraway hammering from Fishmongers’ Hall, and the first sad howl of a foghorn.

  “He ain’t moving,” said Midgely. “I think he’s hopped the twig.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “You’ll have to go and look, Tom.”

  It scared me to leave our little hole beneath the steps. What if Mr. Moyle had crawled away while the birds were flying, and was even now creeping toward us? I picked up two of the glowing bits of rope and tried to breathe flames into the ends of them. But one went out, and then the other, the little red eyes closing, as though a small creature had just died in my hands.

  “Go and look, Tom,” said Midge again.

  I felt my way from underneath the stairs, and down their length, until I found Mr. Moyle. My hand fell upon his trousered leg. I pushed and pulled, and it was like shaking a fat sausage. There was not a twitch of muscles, not a sign of life.

  “Tom?” said Midgely.

  “It’s all right,” I told him. “I think he’s dead.”

  I went to the top of the stairs and opened the door. As the light spilled in, I saw Mr. Moyle crumpled in the dirt. He was sideways and crooked, lying on his chest and cheek. Scattered round his head were a few brown beads. Or so I thought at first; they were really his rotted teeth, knocked from his head by his fall.

  I saw the cleaver gleaming beside the stairs. I wedged the door again, went down and fetched it, and chopped away the ropes at Midgely’s back. He nearly fell forward, but I caught him, and helped him out from under the stairs.

  He said he could stand on his own. “I’m right as rain,” he told me. So I let h
im go, rather gingerly. He went straight to Mr. Moyle, bent down, and touched the man as I had done. Then he kicked him. And he punched him. And he kicked and punched and started weeping.

  “Midge,” I said. I went to get him, to take him away. But he fell to his knees and kept punching Mr. Moyle.

  “I hate him, Tom,” he said. His little fists thumped at the man’s chest. “I hate him, I hate him.”

  From Mr. Moyle came a groan.

  To my horror, he began to move. First his fingers flexed, then his hand swept slowly out along the dirt. My first impulse was to leap away, but he was groping for his teeth!

  “He ain’t a goner yet!” cried Midgely “Tom, you got to finish him off.”

  Mr. Moyle groaned more deeply. He gathered his broken teeth in his hand, then shoved them into his pockets.

  “He’ll come after us, Tom!” shouted Midgely. “Wherever we go, he’ll find us. That’s what he’ll do, Tom. He’ll hound us all our days.”

  I had dropped the cleaver, so I went back and got it. Midgely came along like a talking shadow. “Tom, he said he would. I told him you’d come and save me and he said it wouldn’t matter. ‘I’ll hunt you down,’ that’s what he told me.”

  I took Midgely to the foot of the stairs, then turned him round and sent him climbing. “Wait for me up there,” I said.

  “Hurry Tom,” he begged.

  Mr. Moyle was still sprawled on the floor, trying to push himself up. I looked down at his wisps of hair, at his cheek and the side of his flattened, piggy nose. I heard Midgely crying as he tramped up the stairs.

  Mr. Moyle sat upright. He was stunned and shaken—toothless now—but that was all. His eyes shifted toward me. In the darkness he wasn’t much more than a shape—just a hulk of a man. But the yellow light shone in his eyes, and they seemed brimming with cunning and evil.

  I threatened him with the cleaver. “If you get up, I’ll kill you,” I said.

  “You?” He laughed. “I don’t think so, boy.”

  A great deal of blood had bubbled from his mouth, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. There were now only splinters of teeth sticking up from his gums, and they gave him a most vicious and ghastly appearance.

  “Oh, you want to kill me. You’d love to kill me—but you won’t,” he said. “I saved your life, so you’ll spare mine, because that’s the proper thing to do.”

  “Don’t wager on it, Mr. Moyle.”

  Up he got, unsteadily. He pressed a hand to his jaw and let out a pitiful groan. Then he stood upright, staggering sideways until he bumped against the wall.

  I looked to the top of the stairs and saw Midgely vanish through the door. Now it was only myself and Mr. Moyle, and I knew that he was right. No matter what he had done, I couldn’t chop him down where he stood. It wasn’t because he’d saved my life in the southern seas. It was because I was not like him.

  He was leaning against the wall, watching me with blood dripping from his mouth. “Here, give me a hand, Tom,” he said. “Help me up the stairs and out to the street, then we’ll be fair and square. You’ll go your way, and I’ll go mine.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Moyle,” I said.

  I turned my back and went up the steps. It gave me the most dreadful shivers, for I could feel his eyes watching me, but I was determined not to seem afraid. I went steadily up, leaving him alone in the darkness.

  I was two steps from the top when I heard him come flying up behind me.

  I had never moved faster. I bounded to the landing; I raced through the door. I kicked away the cork and sent it bouncing off a stack of wooden crates. I heaved on the door, swinging it shut.

  Mr. Moyle was halfway up, taking the stairs three at a time.

  twenty-eight

  OUT ON THE BEAM WITH THE BATS

  The door slammed with such force that the whole building seemed to shake. It made a sound like a cannon shot, and the thousand pigeons rose as one from their perches. They wheeled and circled through the building.

  I grabbed the bolt and tried to slide it through the latch. But it didn’t quite meet the metal, and I had to jiggle it back and forth.

  Mr. Moyle was thundering up the stairs. The pigeons were flying in frantic circles, bashing against the windows. Midgely, somewhere, was crying.

  I hammered the bolt with the cleaver. I drove the tip of it into the latch.

  Mr. Moyle came crashing through the door, and my cleaver went flyling.

  I was thrown back against the wall, all my breath knocked out of me. Mr. Moyle staggered across the landing. He crashed into the boxes, saw the cleaver, and snatched it up. “I’ll split you down the middle, Tom,” he said.

  I had nowhere to go but up the ladder to the loft. I sprang to the first rung and started climbing, and he came after me with the cleaver in his bloody jaws.

  It was like the day long ago, when he’d chased me through the rigging of a haunted ship. I was faster now, but he was still right at my heels when I reached the top. I spilled out onto the loft and rolled away as he swung the cleaver. It chopped splinters from the wood beside me.

  He was up the ladder before I could get to my feet. He pulled himself up to the floor, and I scrabbled away.

  The loft was as crowded as the rest of the warehouse. It was full of rope and barrels, with only a twisting corridor between them. Mr. Moyle followed me toward the edge of the loft, where it dropped away to the floor far below.

  Three pigeons went fluttering past, just above me. They veered away from Mr. Moyle, their wings and tails spreading wide, like Chinese fans. I saw the cleaver flashing at them.

  I pulled myself up onto a drum of rope. Ahead of me was Mr. Moyle, thrashing his way round the pigeons. One of them had fallen, and was twitching now at his feet. Behind me was the edge of the loft, and the great beam where the nets were hung on hooks.

  I stepped back onto the beam; there was nowhere else to go. Fifty feet of empty air opened below me.

  The air was hot and foul here, at the very roof of the warehouse, and I saw that hordes of bats had made their home among the rafters. They clung to the wooden roof with their feet, swaying like little brown sacks. They reminded me of the close-packed hammocks of Lachesis, such a thickness of bats that I could scarcely see the roof. I thought, strangely, how much Mr. Mullock would enjoy the sight.

  I walked backward along the beam while pigeons flew all around us. The wood was slick with the droppings of bats and birds. Mr. Moyle, with the cleaver now in his hand, was breathing his grunted breaths. His jaw was red with blood; his lips were cut and swollen.

  Along the beam we went. We must have seemed two tiny figures at that great height, in all that space. With the birds wheeling around us, and the footing so poor, it was a most precarious spot. I stepped steadily back, though I couldn’t see where I was going. I kept my distance from Mr. Moyle, waiting for a chance to spring at him.

  It seemed that my entire journey had been for only one reason—to prepare me for this moment, to lead me to this place. My river of fate had flowed me through the proper twists and turns so that I might stand where I could not possibly have dared to stand before, with a courage I had never possessed.

  I watched Mr. Moyle’s feet. When they shifted forward, I moved back. When they stopped, so did I.

  He swung the cleaver again. It missed me by several inches, and he followed it with a step forward. Back I went, over the hook of a hanging net.

  Many of the pigeons had returned to their roosts, but some kept flapping suddenly at our chests, as though hoping to drive us from their favorite perches. I let them flail at me with their wings, but Mr. Moyle battered them away.

  We crossed half the warehouse, step by step. We crossed the mountain of cork and the heap of nets. The bats watched us with their little foxy faces. Then, right above a bare spot on the floor, I took my chance.

  I waited for Mr. Moyle to swing his cleaver. It missed by barely half an inch. Then I shouted out and lunged forward.

  I didn’t hit the
man; I didn’t touch him. I couldn’t take the chance that he would grab me and pull me with him. I only leapt and shouted, falling into a crouch on the narrow beam.

  It was enough to startle Mr. Moyle. He flinched, and the arm that held the cleaver went high in the air to give him balance. The blade brushed through the horde of bats, and a hundred of them fell from their places.

  They tumbled onto his shoulders, onto his round head. They fluttered away, or clutched on to his skin, and they let out the same strange little squeals I had heard in a faraway land. Mr. Moyle plucked two of them from his throat like hairy figs, and hurled them off. He bellowed and flailed, and the more that he moved, the more bats came down from the ceiling. They covered his shoulders and head in a twitching brown fur.

  He staggered backward; he reeled sideways. The cleaver fell from his hand, spinning down toward the floor, and a moment later he followed it. With a shriek he tumbled from the beam and, still tearing at the bats, landed with a terrible sound—the crushing of bones and flesh.

  There was something dreadful about bats. They were vile little things, and they could quicken the stoutest heart. If I hadn’t met Mr. Mullock and his pet bat, I might have fallen from the beam that day myself. But I clung on as the creatures that Mr. Moyle had flung away went crawling across my back, across my head and my shoulders. It took a long time for all to be still and quiet again, but only then did I stand up and make my way to Midgely.

  twenty-nine

  A LAST CHAPTER

  It wasn’t far from the old warehouse to the docks in Limestone Reach, where my ship was waiting. Midge and I could have walked there very easily. But we had a longer errand to run, and it began at Mr. Goodfellow’s office. For the fellow at the door, I produced the papers from my shirt.

  He read them most quizzically, then went into the building and didn’t reappear for some time. He may have talked to Silbury, or to Mr. Goodfellow himself. He didn’t explain, but merely led us to the stable, where two horses stood harnessed to a curricle.