The Further Adventures of Langdon St. Ives

by James P. Blaylock

  “Well done!” Narbondo said, affecting his usual bonhomie. But his voice was pitched too high, so that he sounded rattled. He looked down at the Peddler, seeming to notice him for the first time, and he lost himself in a sudden, tearing rage and kicked the man savagely in the back of the head. The pistol shook in his hand, and when he aimed it in my direction, I took a step backward. Narbondo bent at the knees, groping for the cast away emerald beneath the table. He slipped the emerald into his pocket, and then awkwardly picked up Busby’s lamp, yanking it loose from its wires, all the while watching us, murder in his eyes.

  “Out, you go,” he said simply.

  Alice dropped her oak club. Narbondo wouldn’t give her a chance to use it a second time. He was a careful man, was Narbondo. He had been surprised once, but that would be the end of it. We were at his mercy.

  “Downward,” he said simply, and I set out down the long steep flight of stairs that led to the moored submarine. I knew but one thing—that I would not allow Alice to board that submarine while I had any life left in me. Soon enough we stepped down onto the boards of the dock. Away to seaward stood the sheer wall of the cavern. There was no sign of an opening of any sort, but seawater was perpetually sucked out from somewhere beneath the wall, and then, after a moment, it swept back in again, the submarine rising and falling on the surge. The entrance to the sea cave, then, lay hidden beneath the surface of the sea.

  Narbondo, ever vigilant, fiddled with the latching mechanism on one of the porthole panels on the side of the metal ship, swinging open the panel. I stepped in front of Alice, crowding her back toward the stairs. “See to St. Ives,” I whispered.

  “Silence!” Narbondo croaked.

  But instead of silence there came a growing clamor from above, where Tubby and Gilbert heaved along downward, already halfway to the landing outside the room where St. Ives was held prisoner. From out of that room, as if on cue, staggered the Peddler, truncheon in his hand. Hearing the clatter above him, he turned stupidly and lifted the truncheon as if the mere sight of it would give Tubby pause. But pause wasn’t in it for Tubby. Inertia carried him down the last few stairs, and he was swinging the blackthorn even as he came along, cracking the Peddler on the shoulder with twenty stone of moving weight behind the blow.

  The Peddler would have been knocked into a cocked hat, if there had been one, but there was not. There was empty air at the edge of that precarious landing. He endeavored to catch himself, wind-milling his arms like a man in a play before toppling over the edge. We watched him fall, shattering himself on the rocks in shallow water, the ocean washing in around him, crabs scuttling away to safety. Tubby stopped just short of the brink and leaned heavily against his stick. But already Uncle Gilbert was rampaging down the stairs, death or glory in his eyes, his sword unsheathed. I saw Narbondo’s pistol rise to stop him, and I sprang forward, clipping Narbondo’s arm near the elbow. He fell backward with a grunt, the pistol clanging on the metal of the ship and dropping into the dark water. He rolled sideways, back into the vessel, and then sprang to his feet like an ape and reached out to claw at the hatch in order to yank it closed. But he was hindered by Busby’s lamp, which he still held on to. He was desperate to salvage it, everything else having gone completely to smash in the last three minutes. It was Alice who sprang forward and snatched if from him, yanking it away viciously. He let out a wild groan, feinted as if to climb out onto the dock again, then slid back into the bowels of the submarine, slamming shut the hatch despite my endeavoring to stop him.

  We busied ourselves in trying to find a way in, thinking to haul Narbondo out by his boot heels, but there was nothing to do but hammer on the sides of the submarine as it sank slowly into the dark water with an upsurge of bubbles. There was a humming noise, and lights sprang on within, shining through the portholes and illuminating in the water around it a garden of waving waterweeds and darting fish. Slowly the vessel glided forward and downward, and within moments the lights winked out as it passed from the cavern into the open ocean.

  The Last Word

  WE RELEASED ST. IVES from bondage straightaway, Alice naturally taking charge. She was solicitous, but left St. Ives his dignity—no fawning over him, only a few tears, her emotion passing away quickly, but enough of it for St. Ives to take heart. You could see the change in his face, the lifting of the clouds that had darkened his sensibilities that distant-seeming night at the Half Toad. Although he managed to accompany us without aid, he obviously knew little of where he was or how he had got there. We trudged tiredly along, Uncle Gilbert regaling us with the tale of the taking of the keeper and of persuading him to give up the location of the hillside cave, and then of persuading the Tipper and his crony to climb into Saratoga trunks, which Uncle Gilbert suggested be trundled down onto the dock now in order to be cast into the sea.

  Neither Alice nor I had the heart to say anything about the explosion, although the truth would soon be known—sooner than I anticipated, in fact. The great periscope mirror was of vague interest to St. Ives in his still-fuddled state, although it was of monumental interest to me, for there in plain sight stood the Belle Tout Light and the keeper’s cottage, perfectly whole.

  The cottage door opened even as we watched, and out walked the keeper himself, looking back and apparently saying something through the open door. He carried a crate full of items that he had apparently looted from the cottage and lighthouse.

  “Forsooth!” Uncle Gilbert cried. “The villain returns! We should have burnt his eyes out when the poker was hot! I mean to say…” He glanced at Alice and left off sheepishly.

  “I’m persuaded that it’s Hasbro’s good luck that he did return,” I said. And it turned out to be true, which we discovered when we followed Tubby and Uncle Gilbert out through the cave into the midday sunlight of the Downs. The keeper, having been ignominiously chased off by our friends, had sneaked back to the cottage to recover a purse of money from beneath a hearthstone. One can only imagine his surprise when he found Hasbro tied into an overturned chair and the infernal device ticking away, getting ready to blow the entire place to flinders. In a desperate effort to save his hidden loot, he had fetched the device out through the open door and hurled it off the cliff, apparently setting off the bomb, which did no more than frighten the sea birds. Then he had prised up the hearthstone, retrieved his purse, filled a crate with odds and ends, bid Hasbro a good day, and went away again.

  It was we who untied a grateful Hasbro. Tubby’s figurative elephant had been knocked about, but was happily reassembled. St. Ives showed signs of recovery, and so to enliven him further we repaired to the cavern, where we made a brilliant lunch of the would-be contents of Doctor Narbondo’s larder, including several bottles of superb wine—I can’t recall quite how many. The rest of Narbondo’s considerable stores eventually found their way to Uncle Gilbert’s house, small payment for services rendered. As for the Tipper and Mr. Goodson, we took them along down to Eastbourne, secure in their Saratoga trunks, where we left them in the care of the authorities.

  SEVERAL WEEKS LATER, after Alice and St. Ives had returned from their holiday on Lake Windermere, we revisited the Downs on a balmy, early summer day, only to discover that the hidden entrance to the cavern had collapsed in what appeared to have been an explosion. Boulders of shattered chalk littered the ground without, and the once-dense shrubbery was blown to leafless, broken sticks. We walked out to the edge of the cliffs, where we discovered that the hand-line down the face of Beachy Head had been cut away as well. Determined to see the adventure through, we made our slow and treacherous descent along the narrow trail, only to discover that the great stone that had sheltered the cleft above the Channel had fallen inward—more likely drawn inward, if that were possible—blocking the entrance so effectively that the cavern had become the domain of sea birds and bats and other creatures small enough to find their way in through cracks and crevices. Narbondo had evidently returned to Beachy Head, either to make his fortress secure or to destroy it.
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  We spent the remainder of the morning scouring the Downs near the copse where we had hidden on that fateful morning, searching for the lens of Narbondo’s fabulous periscope. It was a wonderfully sunny day, and yet there was no telltale glint of sunlight on glass. The lens must have had a clear view of the Belle Tout light and the meadow roundabout it, and so must have been in plain sight, and yet it was maddeningly undiscoverable. After a time the idea came into my mind that we must be looking at the lens but not seeing it, the victims of a master illusionist. I was possessed by the uncanny certainty that we ourselves were at that very moment being observed in our fruitless meanderings—that somewhere in the depths of the chalk, Dr. Narbondo was even then gazing into his mirror, his hands on the spokes of the ship’s wheel, his mind revolving upon schemes of revenge.

  For Deuzie and Kydd

  This tale of the sea…

  PROLOGUE

  The Voyage of the Celebes Prince

  IN THE YEAR 1843, I, James Douglas, signed on to the hired clipper Celebes Prince out of Portsmouth, bound for Hispaniola. I was rated ship’s boy, twelve years old that very week. We were to return with rum, sugar, and bath sponge, as easy as kiss-my-hand if the wind was fair. The Celebes Prince was what is called an opium clipper, and I knew well enough that she was a smuggler, but I was a boy with few scruples in that regard, and the Captain treated me well. The first mate told me the Captain had a boy my age who had died, fell from the maintop and hit his head on a carronade, and that meant something, I suppose. I could use a sextant, and I knew the night sky as well as any man aboard, barring the Captain, who was a right seaman but a dark, bloody-minded man in most regards, with a taste for Port Royal rum that would have done for him if he’d lived long enough.

  We soon picked up the variables and logged a hundred-forty sea miles a day, straight down into the northeast trades and in among the Caribbean Islands. We took on rum and sugar and bath sponge in Santo Domingo, filled our water, and weighed again, the Captain having a fear of the yellow jack, which was mortal that season. Two sponge fishermen came along, dark brown men. I was told that they were the last of the Taino Indians, who had mainly died out on Hispaniola. One was deaf from his time spent in deep water, and the other didn’t seem right in the head. What use we had for sponge fishermen I couldn’t say, our hold already being full of that item.

  We were bound for home, I thought—a fast run if our luck held—Portsmouth or thereabouts, perhaps a handy cove first where we could offload the rum. The second morning I awoke at eight bells in the dark and went on deck. We were at anchor, rolling on a moderate swell. Just to starboard lay an island, a rocky coast with surf running, although there was a likely bay sheltered by a long reef where a ship’s boat might lie at ease. Even in the darkness I could see a mountain in the center of the island, where smoke was rising—a volcano, I thought, although I had never seen one. There was no beach, just the black mouth of a sea cave and cliffs, very steep, rising away on either side. I could see the water boiling over the reef in the moonlight, no doubt a dry reef when the tide fell. The air was clear, and the stars shone, and without a thought I fetched the instrument and took a reading, curious how far we had sailed in the night, Santo Domingo being 18 degrees north and a little under 70 degrees west. Nearly 200 sea miles was my answer, although it was mere curiosity at the time. The island had a name, but I won’t write it here, nor utter it neither.

  We rowed across to the cove four hours later in the launch, at eight bells in the morning watch, four pulling on the oars, including me. I could pull middling well for a boy, and the Captain favored me. Those left aboard the ship were to fire the bow chaser as a warning if there was a sail in sight, for we didn’t want company. The Indians sat in the stern. No one spoke, and there was never a man more intent than the Captain on what he was about, although what it was I didn’t yet know. He carried two pistols on his belt, and it was the pistols and the silence that put my mind to working, and the more it worked, the more it turned on treasure—something on the bottom of the sea, which called for the sponge fishers. Anyone could see that the Captain was half gone in rum, even at that early hour. His flesh stank of it. Mayhaps he hadn’t slept and had finished his bottle waiting for the sun.

  We rowed into the cove, protected by the reef, which stood out of the water now, and the sea cave open before us. The roof of the cave was a rough dome fifteen feet above our heads, with sea birds nesting along the walls and a great lot of noise. There was sea wrack and flotsam that had washed into the cave, the dark water below ink-black, how deep I couldn’t say for the darkness in the cave. We put the anchor over the side, and played out fifteen fathoms of cable, which told the tale.

  There we sat, not a word said, and everyone in main fear of the Captain, who was in a state. It was still dim in the cave, despite the sun in the east. The Captain took out his pocket-watch now and then to see the time slip past, until he tipped me a wink at last, and said, “Stand by, Mr. Douglas, and you’ll see something,” although he seemed to be talking to himself. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a ray of light shone into the cavern from a window in the east wall, a jagged crack like a half-open mouth, that hadn’t seemed to be there a moment before. The ray of sunlight played upon the water, the sea floor coming visible, the water as clear as air. Straightaway I saw a long, black shark deep down, then two and three, circling. The sponge divers saw them, too, and didn’t much like the look of them, for the two of them were going over the side. “They’re nought but gammon,” the Captain told them, but it was the brace of pistols that he used to persuade Indians overboard, for there was no time to spare, only a short period of sunlight, and then darkness in the cave until the following day, when the sun crossed the window again.

  There on the bottom, fifteen fathoms deep, lay what looked to be a giant great pearl that a man would need a barrow to move. It rested within a ring of white rocks that seemed to have been carefully placed, although that scarcely seems possible, and so was protected from the surge that rolled into the cave and might have washed the pearl away otherwise. Sea fans passed over it in the current, and then moved back, so that you could see it again plain. It couldn’t be a pearl, of course, not that size. “Ambergris, Mr. Douglas,” the Captain said, nodding at me as we watched the Indians kicking hard for the bottom, hauling themselves down the anchor cable hand over hand. They let go the cable and swam to the prize, the two of them grappling with the great ball, lifting it from where it was settled. It was later that I was told that ambergris weighed little. Indeed, it floated on the surface unless it was very old and dense, as this was. Up they came, quicker than you would have thought, but followed by one of the black-bodied sharks, three times the men’s length. It seemed to brush the two of them in passing. They let loose of the burden, and so it fell. The two of them broke the surface empty handed, having been under for three full minutes. The Captain cursed them for the loss and glanced at the light shining through the crack, which glowed yellow now as if the sun was peering straight through.

  The bosun said that we should have brought a rope and a net, and that we might try again tomorrow morning. It was dead obvious he was right, but rum had dimmed the Captain’s mind, and the ambergris had been a secret of his own keeping. “Be damned to tomorrow,” he said, and sent the Indians down again, although they would have climbed into the boat but for the pistols. Two more times they tried and failed, the sharks showing little interest now. The water was growing dimmer. The fourth attempt very nearly fetched the prize, although it was in that moment, when they were on the bottom, that we heard cannon fire and saw the smoke from the chaser. It was plain that something was dead wrong with the Celebes Prince. The ship was shaking like a dog throwing off water, and she canted to larboard as if driven over by a heavy gust of wind, although there was no wind. There was no explaining it, not from where we sat in the sea cave.

  The Captain stared at the ship, shaking his head sharp, like his mind was adrift and he was trying to call it
back. Up came the Indians from the bottom, the great pearl wedged between them, hauling themselves one-handed along the anchor cable, the boat dipping with the strain of it. The bow chaser fired again. The Indians neared the surface, bubbles rising from their nostrils. I saw what the two of them didn’t see—the black shadow rising behind them. One of the two—the deaf man, I believe, was jerked downward. Blood clouded the water, and the ball of ambergris fell away into it once again. I saw the man’s face in the last moment, the horror on it plain, his severed leg crosswise in the shark’s mouth, the fish’s brethren rising from the depths, either of them big enough to knock the launch cockeyed if they had a mind to.

  The second Indian’s head broke the water. He was empty handed, his eyes full of fear, and him gripping the anchor cable like salvation itself. The Captain held his sheath knife in his hand, and without a word he cut the cable, and the Indian fell back as the launch moved away with the surge. “Leave him!” the Captain shouted, cuffing the bosun on the side of the head when he leant over to clutch the man’s hand. The Indian swam two strokes toward us, his death written on his face. On the instant his body flew half out of the water as one of the sharks took him, the huge mouth and teeth cutting him in half at the waist, a bloody spray spattering the boat, which nearly capsized, the wave thrown up by the shark’s lunge washing us farther toward the cave mouth. The cave was fast falling into darkness now, and we bent to the oars, watching the sharks as they fed. I saw the man’s torso jerk again and again as it was butchered, and then the sun rose another notch, and the light went out of the sea cave, and we were in the cove again and very soon in the open ocean, leaving one horror for another, or so it seemed to me.