“He’s my uncle, Jack, and I love the man dearly—more than the octopus loves him, I dare say, and the octopus is right fond of him. If it were Dorothy in the grip of the monster, you would surely do the same.”
“Yes, I would. I’ll come with you, then.”
“It’s because of my fondness for Dorothy that you will not.”
It was a compelling argument, although I made up my mind to deceive him whether he liked it or no. “So be it,” I lied, following along beside him with no idea of turning back.
We arrived at the spot where we’d had our brief battle with the three thieves, beyond which stood a door half hidden by shrubbery, one of three that were evident in the long wall. The ill-fitting door was locked. It rattled, but it wouldn’t open. By now the interior of the cathedral would be empty of people, and even if there were someone left inside, knocking would avail us little. The nearby street, however, was not empty of people, some of whom were looking in our direction, perhaps taking us for burglars who meant to profit during the distraction. Tubby handed me the balled-up coat, hurrying the several yards to where Hasbro’s forehead had sheared off the fence pickets. He picked up a connected trio of iron spears and returned.
“Step aside, Jack,” he said, wedging the spearheads into the door between the jamb and the knob. Without a word he heaved himself against them, straining forward as if he meant to shift the entire cathedral in the direction of Ludgate Hill.
It was then that I saw against the dark sky to the southwest, two dark, elongated dirigibles—almost certainly warships from the Naval Air Vessel Yard at Greenwich. A single, smaller dirigible accompanied the warships. Without a doubt they were headed in our direction, which didn’t bode well for the octopus. There was a splintering sound, a spray of black paint and rust from the bending iron bars, and with a loud crack the door flew open, revealing a small landing with stairs descending, the small room illuminated by gas-lamps.
“Hells bells,” Tubby muttered. “I want to go up, not down.” He tossed the pickets aside, however, snatched the orb out of my hands, and stepped in. I glanced behind us and was surprised to see the red coats of a dozen Royal Fusiliers coming round the building from the west. When I turned back, anxious to enter before the soldiers spotted us, the door was already slamming in my face. I threw my shoulder against it and pushed it open far enough to cram myself through, surprising Tubby, who looked as if he meant to pitch me straight out again.
“Hurry!” I said to him. “They’re after us!” And they might have been, surely.
Tubby set out without a word. There was no time for debate. There was no locking the door, either, for the heavy brass bolt lay on the floor, screwed to a great splinter of wood. Down we went, not looking back, until we reached the bottom of the stairs, where we found ourselves in a broad room with a mosaic floor: the crypts, utterly abandoned, the cool air heavy and still. There was no human noise at all, but there was an ominous creaking from overhead, roof timbers straining, perhaps, from the great weight settled upon the dome. Near a high window stood the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren, who had designed the cathedral so many years ago—his greatest work in a life of great works, threatened now by an enormity that Wren could not have imagined, unless he too dreamt of cephalopods.
Tubby forged ahead as if he would leave me behind if he could, which he could not. The crypt gates, thank God, had been left unlocked, and we were through them in an instant, Tubby skipping up the stairs toward the cathedral floor with a boyish abandon. We emerged in the quire, which smelled of furniture oil and stone, and hurried past the great, silent organ, soon finding ourselves beneath the dome, where our real work would begin. The spiral stairs stretched away above us like the interior of an enormous seashell, into which we would climb until we were within the encircling tentacles of the octopus. In the sunlight that shone through the windows above us, a haze of dust was settling, almost certainly being ground out of the mortar that cemented the stones of the dome. In my mind I commanded the octopus to rest easy.
Up we climbed, putting one foot ahead of the other, as they say, quickly rising to the level of the high, arched windows. From that vantage point we could see that the dirigibles had drawn near, the warships following one after the other, the smaller dirigible at a lower elevation. There were guns mounted on the gondolas of the warships, although of necessarily small bore, since the airy ship would scarcely stand the recoil of a large caliber ball. Nordenfelt guns? I thought of the maniac Captain Deane, and the strange and murderous joy that illuminated his face when he sat at his gun. Weapons, like all tools, were meant to be used.
The view disappeared as we moved ever upward. I was breathing heavily now, my legs burning with the strain. I counted steps in order to ignore the gasping for air and the protesting muscles. Tubby had slowed considerably, which was wise if it were intentional, since continued haste might simply burst his heart in his chest.
“Shall I carry the burden?” I asked of his back, and received a vague shake of the head for an answer. I didn’t have the breath to argue.
Up we trudged, scaling the walls of the great dome. I kept away from the edge for safety’s sake, and watched Tubby’s broad back rising before me, step by mesmerizing step. Above us, on the curved ceiling, stood the frescoes of saints and prophets going about their collective business with nary the thought of octopi; below us, dizzyingly far away now, lay the great compass rose, a double cephalopod in its own right, set into the floor of the nave. Its sixteen tentacles indicated the four corners of the earth and sundry points in between. I contemplated the meaning of the signifying, many-armed symbols above and below, the octopus as the living symbol of the compass rose, and I tried to call into my mind the gist of the Hopkins poem. “Glory be to God for dappled things,” I muttered, distracting myself from the toil of the climb. And wasn’t the giant octopus one of God’s dappled creatures? I began to see why such a creature of wonder, a thing of octo-symmetrical grandeur and with the eyes of a prophet, might easily come to be both worshipped and feared.
Tubby tripped and fell forward now, jerking me back to the present moment. He went down hard on his knees, grunting with pain but managing to hold the ambergris ball aloft, the second time today that it had been saved from ruin. He remained there for a long moment with his head bent forward.
“I’ll take it, Tubby, for God’s sake,” I said, coming up behind him, hearing his breath wheezing in and out.
“No, Jack,” he said, and mumbled something unconvincing about duty and honor. Then pushed himself up onto his pins and we moved upward again, soon arriving at the Whispering Gallery, where we paused to look out over Ludgate and the river in the distance. Far below, St. Ives and Hasbro still stood at their post. St. Ives held a pair of opera glasses to his eyes, and seemed to be watching for our arrival, but whether he could see us or not I had no idea. There was a buzzing in the air like bees now, quite distinct, and we set out around the wall of the gallery to take in the view until we saw what was making the noise—the dirigibles, propelled by electromotor engines, quite close now. The two warships were still at a higher elevation, and it appeared as if they would pass overhead, intent upon studying their quarry from above. The smaller dirigible, however, piloted by a man either intrepid or impetuous, had descended toward the cathedral as if to have a closer look, and was approaching from the east.
We were off again, having gotten our fabled second wind, the arrival of the dirigibles putting a troubling spin on things. The wearisome steps, narrower now, fell away behind us. We attained the dizzying height of the Stone Gallery—376 steps, I’ve since learned—which is an open-air gallery. We lost not a moment sightseeing, however, but pushed ever on, Tubby’s breath coming out of him in a wheezing roar like a broken bellows. Up we climbed and ever farther up, the sweat pouring down my face as we ploughed along. At long last we ascended to the Golden Gallery, the present domain of the Great God Octopus and the shaky pinnacle of our long journey.
We stepped out into the ope
n air, onto the little bit of balcony that encircles the Gallery. Across the balustrade was draped a glistening tentacle the girth of an ash tree, but with a double row of suckers, their color and shape reminiscent of the bells of iron tubas. The air was warm and still and wet, as if the octopus had trailed tropical weather along with it from its ancestral home. Tubby heaved great restorative breaths while unwrapping the ambergris pearl. He pitched his coat over the side so that it fluttered away groundward like a butterfly. Tubby was all in, coats be damned, caught up in a state of dangerous determination.
With an ear-shattering peal the great bells in the south-west tower began to toll, including the sixteen-ton bell known as Great Paul. I pressed the palms of my hands against my ears as Tubby recoiled, reeling from the noise of the vast pealing. It was not near the top of the hour, and so it seemed likely that it was an effort to frighten the octopus from its perch. The bells did little to agitate it, however, and I wondered whether it could hear at all; certainly it had no apparent ears. Its tentacles rose and fell, the golden pineapple swinging past our heads like a pendulum. By crushing ourselves against the balustrade and craning our necks backward, we could see the beast’s vast bulk stretching away skyward like a hillside with two great, staring eyes. It bent forward, contemplating us as we stared upward at it, the rain in our faces. It knew Tubby, but it did not know me, and it could not guess that I held it in high esteem. The octopus twisted now, looking to the right and left, its wary eyes revealing a dawning understanding of the untenable nature of its circumstances, or so it seemed to me.
The two warships had quite disappeared, which could mean only that they were now hidden from our view by the dome. They would have the wind at their backs upon the return, which would improve their ability to maneuver. The small dirigible had descended to a point nearly level with the peak of the cathedral, and for a moment it seemed to be stopped in the air, framed by a backdrop of moving clouds, grey through the rain. The octopus shifted its great bulk, evidently intent upon meeting its nemesis straight on. It hefted the golden pineapple as if biding its time.
Despite the pealing of the bells I heard Tubby shout the word “Fools!” for his mouth was six inches from my ear. He stepped away, shaking his fist at the dirigible, bidding it be gone with broad gestures and holding the ambergris tight against himself with left hand and forearm.
The craft veered slightly now, whirring ever closer, and I could see that a camera was set up within its gondola—two, three cameras. The idiots were risking all—including Gilbert, Tubby, and I—for the sake of a photograph, although in truth it would be a photograph very nearly worth someone else’s dying for. The clanging of the bells was tremendous now, masking all other sounds. The people in the streets below stood stock-still, all eyes turned upward, the center-point of the dark afternoon being the misplaced octopus and its hostage and the two fools who had climbed into the heavens to parlay with it. Tubby held up the ambergris pearl, offering it to the beast, trying desperately to attract its interest, but its attention was riveted on the dirigible, its eyes shining with a fearsome intelligence.
The craft began to swing past now, coming dangerously near. I could see the pilot’s face clearly, his eyes wide as he watched the octopus, his hands on the spokes of the ship’s wheel. The craft drew up beside us, a biscuit toss away. Three arms thrust out through the gondola windows, each holding a platter on a long handle, each of the platters sheltered beneath a tin umbrella that was affixed to its handle, either to shelter the plates from the elements, or—if the plates contained incendiary chemicals, which seemed certain—to protect the hydrogen-filled gasbag that floated above.
The bells abruptly ceased to peal, and in the strange silence Tubby and I bawled uselessly at those aboard the dirigible to leave off. I could clearly see the cameras on tripods now and the humped shadows of photographers beneath black drapes. Within the gondola there was a quick, triple glare—clutches of lucifer matches being lit—which flew straightaway like tiny meteors toward the plates heaped with chemicals, some of the matches winking out or falling away, but a number striking home. Bright, white, fizzing fire erupted from the plates, a cloud of vapor roiling out from beneath the umbrellas. The manufactured light cast a demonic glare upon the octopus and the top of the cathedral, and illuminated Tubby’s horrified face, as it must have illuminated my own. Ground magnesium, I thought, no doubt mixed with gunpowder so that it burned with that particular hellish light. The octopus, which had gazed with relish at the inferno of a burning ship, was unfazed, and seemed to be peering curiously into the glass eyes of the several cameras.
The dirigible veered away, its mission apparently successful, when an errant gust of wind blew it sharply back toward the dome. With a suddenness that must have been a mortal surprise to those within the gondola, the octopus lashed out with the golden pineapple, smiting the fragile wooden vessel, shattering the rudder and sundry wooden struts and planking. Immense splinters of wood pin-wheeled away, pieces of rudder and gondola raining down over Cheapside as the three platters of shimmering magnesium, each trailing long showers of white fire, fell into the churchyard, blessedly far from the gathered throng. Several of the flying splinters tore through the fabric of the balloon, and the crippled dirigible wheeled farther around, ragged bits of India-rubberized cloth flapping like bedsheets. Cameras tumbled out, following the rest of the debris when the stern of the ruined gondola lurched downward, several of its mooring lines having been torn loose from the balloon. I could hear the cheering of the crowd, which dearly loved a spectacle but possessed the bestial stupidity of the crowd mind, and apparently didn’t fathom the carnage that would have occurred if the dirigible had exploded overhead, or been knocked completely to pieces.
The crippled dirigible, without steerage now, drifted across the city at the pleasure of the wind, descending in the direction of Hampstead Heath, the rear structure of the gondola smashed away, the whole thing hanging askew. Two men looked out, mouths agape, as they held on to their broken wooden cage with both hands and regretted their sins.
The octopus craned its immense neck backward now, watching the approach of the two warships, which had lowered an immense, coarsely woven, weighted net, the rope heavy enough to be made out against the sky. It looked very much like the ratlines and shrouds of a sailing ship, which was quite likely just what it was. It was clear that they meant to ensnare the octopus in order to pluck him from the dome, and Gilbert Frobisher into the bargain. A circle of hot air balloons, dozens of them, kept the net evenly suspended, very much like the glass fishing floats of Norwegian cod fishermen. Lead weights hung below every other balloon in order to draw the net shut when it was released.
Gilbert clung to his own encircling tentacle like a vigorous limpet, having by now caught sight of the two of us standing twenty feet below—his first glimpse of possible salvation after two frightful hours of captivity. He shouted through the speaking trumpet at the octopus, although the beast, which had been deaf to the great bells, was scarcely likely to heed his suggestions, whatever they were. The octopus peered downward at us, however. Tubby held out the ball of ambergris once again, like Atlas hoping to deliver himself of his burden, but still the octopus spurned him.
I heard Gilbert’s voice ringing out from above. He was shouting through the speaking trumpet, aimed downward at the two of us now. It came to me that he was saying goodbye, and my heart fell. “My love to you, Nephew!” he hollered at Tubby. “And my great good wishes to your Aunt Leticia in Cork! Make sure she wants for nothing!” And then to me he shouted, “Fare thee well, Jack! You’ve earned this keepsake!” Carefully, using both hands, he lobbed the speaking trumpet down to me, and I caught it just as the two leading ships hove into sight above us. The rain beat down now, making it almost impossible to look upward, and yet Tubby refused to retreat, but stood holding the ambergris beneath the open sky, his legs wide-set. I believe that he fully intended to be caught in the net, which loomed overhead above us, to ride to glory with his uncle
and the octopus in order to see the thing through to the end: great bravery, as Gilbert had put it a month ago on that fateful night in Pennyfields, or else an act of consummate foolishness.
But it wasn’t to be. Two tentacles descended now, one of them holding Gilbert. I realized with a wild surge of relief that the octopus had made up its mind to free the old man. I swear that I read its intentions in its eyes despite the rain and the chaos. The dirigibles hovered over us, the net drawn tight, the engines backing and filling, so to speak, keeping their stations. The wind had fallen off, something that was favorable to the vessels. They would act quickly.
I set the speaking trumpet aside and raised my arms to aid in Gilbert’s landing, but at that crucial moment I glimpsed a movement directly to my left—a surprising thing, for I had quite forgotten the world beyond our aerie. In the shadows behind me loomed the striding figure of the man wearing the pince-nez and the Homburg hat—assuredly Lucius Honeywell, his arm outstretched, a revolver in his hand. Before I could react, there was a loud report from the pistol, and to my horror, Tubby spun half around and pitched forward, shot in the shoulder. He teetered against the railing, pivoting there as the weight of his upper body threatened to carry him over.
I leapt at Honeywell, who turned the pistol on me while still moving toward Tubby, clearly intent upon securing the ambergris ball before the octopus could retrieve it or it fell into the void. His distracted shot was wild, and I caught his wrist with my right hand, throwing my hip into his midsection and bringing him down, pinning him to the deck. Tubby wrenched himself away from the balustrade with an effort of will, his shirt already soaked with blood at the shoulder, and he sat down hard on the deck, falling forward over the ambergris ball in order to entrap it. Gilbert settled decorously beside him, the tentacle drawing away, the octopus parting company with the two objects of its greatest affection. Gilbert cast a vicious glance at Honeywell, as if he would murder him on the spot, and then set about attending to his injured nephew.
The Further Adventures of Langdon St. Ives Page 27
