by Tom Banks
‘Or hail, sir,’ said a young man with an eager face like a terrier’s.
‘Good man, Yorkie. Or hail, indeed. But I ask you this – does hail get big enough to rub and grate on the hull of a Great Galloon, causing a huge rumbling and cracking sound?’
‘Not in my experience, sir. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it never does,’ said Yorkie, throwing more coal on the already white-hot fire.
‘No, indeed. But we must work on the assumption that it isn’t an iceberg in the sky, as I have never heard of such a thing anywhere in the world,’ said the Captain. ‘Agreed?’
‘Agreed,’ they said, except for a tiny man in furs who began to say, ‘Actually, in the skies above the Ice Kingdoms . . .’ but was so muffled by his scarf that no one but Stanley heard him.
‘So we’re agreed,’ said the Captain. ‘It’s either more pirates or the end of the world again. I, as you know, have other matters to think about and cannot be disturbed by mere trifles like pirates or the end of the world.’
At this, the Captain’s eyes glazed over briefly, and in the pause, many people in the room nodded their heads and said, ‘Mmmm.’ Stanley and Rasmussen did the same.
‘Therefore,’ continued the Captain, taking off his hat and passing his hand across his brow, ‘I would be grateful if I could leave this mystery entirely in your hands, Able Skyman Abel. If the future of the Galloon appears to be at stake, I shall suspend my greater quest, but not before. You are dismissed.’
With this, Captain Anstruther sat down in his huge, dark leather armchair and began to think, a process that normally required several days, two buckets of hot coffee and a map of the world.
The room began to empty, and Stanley saw Able Skyman Abel waiting around near the door, as if he expected the Captain to suddenly leap up, shout ‘Eureka!’ and run out into the cold.
‘I don’t know if it’s a good idea to leave it up to Abel,’ whispered Stanley.
‘No,’ said Rasmussen, with her eyes still to the hole, ‘but the Captain can’t do everything. He’s got bigger things to think about.’
‘Of course,’ said Stanley. ‘Maybe it’s something we should be looking into . . .’
‘Maybe,’ said Rasmussen thoughtfully. But Stanley knew she was reluctant to get involved in anything that might distract them from the adventure they were both sure was coming.
They looked into the cabin again, just in time to see that Abel was the last man left in the room, apart from the Captain himself.
‘Sir?’ asked the moustachioed officer.
‘What is it?’ grunted Captain Anstruther.
‘Just wondered, sir.’ Abel shifted awkwardly. ‘Any news on the . . . on the other thing?’
‘No. That will be all. You are dismissed.’
‘Yes, sir.’ He saluted, turned on his heel and left.
Stanley and Rasmussen watched as the Captain picked up a large brass instrument like a cross between a clock and an accordion, and held it up to the light. Then he wrote down a measurement on a chart marked ‘Altitude’, and stared at it intensely for a moment.
Stanley took his eye away from the spyhole.
‘Well,’ said Stanley. ‘Well, well, well.’
‘Yes,’ said Rasmussen.
‘Well, well, well. Well, well, well,’ said Stanley, a habit of his that irritated Rasmussen no end.
‘We’d better get back to the mess,’ she said, to shut him up.
‘In case they notice we’re gone and start a Galloon-wide search?’ he said excitedly.
‘That, and because it’s nearly time for elevenses!’ said Rasmussen, and together they kicked out the loose plank, hopped down into the corridor and began to make their way towards the mess.
The mess was, in many ways, the heart of the Great Galloon. Or the stomach, as Stanley preferred to think of it. There was always a comforting smell of soup, or cake, or curry in the air, and Cook, though slightly scary-looking with his wooden leg, glass eye, bristly beard and gravestone-like teeth, was always ready with a hot mug of strong tea to keep the blues away. As they entered, they saw Abel, with a distracted look about him, pick up a hot cup of tea from the hatch, and put nine sugar cubes in it before settling down at a table near the fire.
‘He seems worried,’ whispered Stanley as they sat back down to continue their game of backgammon.
‘Of course he’s worried. He hasn’t got a clue what to do,’ said Rasmussen, as she crowned two of her pieces.
‘We need to do something,’ said Stanley. He coughed and held up a small gaming piece that looked like a soldier. ‘You can’t do that!’ he called out in a theatrical fashion. ‘This piece is higher ranking than yours! He’s just had a promotion!’
This last word was almost hollered across the mess, and to Stanley’s gratification, it seemed to snap Abel out of his reverie. Rasmussen cottoned on immediately.
‘A promotion?’ she said, waving her arms around like she imagined an actor would. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘A promotion!’ said Stanley. ‘Such as may be given to someone for exceptional service, or loyalty, or hard work in difficult circumstances!’
Abel’s ears waggled as he twiddled his moustache. A look of fervour came into his eyes, and Stanley could see his lips moving.
‘That should do it,’ he whispered.
‘Snap!’ shouted Rasmussen, banging a counter down on the gaming board so hard that the table tipped over and all their pieces fell to the floor.
‘I win!’ they yelled simultaneously. But before either of them had the chance to do the traditional victory dance, the whole room started wobbling for the second time that morning.
Abel Skyman Abel stood up and looked around wildly.
‘It’s happening again!’ he squealed.
‘Brace yourselves!’ shouted Able Skyman Abel. ‘Deep rumbling noise at eleven o’clock! Batten down the hatches!’
But of course nobody had time to batten down their teacups, never mind the hatches, before the full force of the unknown noise hit them all again. The tea on the tea stove splashed and gurgled, the chandelier jumped, the fire spluttered in the hearth, and everyone in the mess held their ears and squeezed their eyes shut tight.
Looking around the room, Stanley saw Mr and Mrs Wouldbegood in the corner, trying to keep their false teeth in and hold their cups at the same time. He saw Able Skyman Abel’s impressive moustache go slightly out of focus as the sound wobbled it, and he saw Rasmussen half laughing and half crying as the noise jiggled her off her chair and onto the ground, where she curled up into a ball.
This time the noise lasted even longer than before – Stanley guessed not less than forty-five seconds. Halfway through it became, to his astonishment, even deeper than it had been, so that the chandelier rattled itself into a hundred pieces, the fire went out and he felt as if his brain would pop. When the noise finally died away, there was a shocked silence in the mess for quite a long time.
‘More tea, anyone?’ said Cook. ‘Pot’s still hot.’
It was decided by all that more tea was exactly what was needed. Stanley gripped his hot new mug tightly and sat down again near Skyman Abel.
‘So,’ he said, leaning over. ‘What are we going to do about these unusual noises?’
‘Well, I don’t think we should panic,’ said the Skyman, biting his collar distractedly and sitting down at Stanley and Rasmussen’s table. ‘As yet I have no idea what’s causing it.’
‘Neither do we,’ Rasmussen said, watching the Wouldbegoods pick broken china off the black and white tiles of the floor. ‘But whatever it is, I hope it’s friendly.’
‘It doesn’t sound friendly,’ said Stanley, with a finger in his ear.
‘But neither does it sound unfriendly,’ said Rasmussen. ‘And we must give it the benefit of the doubt.’ She began to reset the pieces of their game.
‘How can we give it the benefit of the doubt?’ cried Stanley. ‘We have no idea what it is. It could be animal, vegetable or mineral.’
Rasmussen was using her dress to polish a pawn, and he wasn’t even sure she was listening, so he raised his voice slightly. ‘It could be the sound of the Galloon falling to pieces. It could be a BeheMoth eating the rudder. It could be the noise the sun makes when it’s angry. Or worse!’ he finished, and flopped back down on his seat.
Beside him, Abel let out a tiny whining noise.
‘Well,’ said Rasmussen, putting the last marble back in its place. ‘As you put it so succinctly, I suppose the sooner we find out what’s going on, the sooner we can get back to looking for an adventure. What do you think we should we do?’
‘Well,’ said Stanley, uncertainly. ‘Able Skyman Abel’s in charge. What do you think, Abel?’
A tiny squeak escaped Abel’s lips, and Stanley noticed that he was now biting down on a spoon with a faraway look in his eyes.
‘Falling to pieces . . .’ he whimpered. ‘BeheMoths . . . Angry sun . . .’
‘Oh dear,’ said Rasmussen.
Up in the weather balloon, it was raining on Cloudier Peele. Often bad weather didn’t reach the deck of the Galloon itself, because of the huge array of balloons, sails, canopies and awnings that it was slung beneath, but for Cloudier there was no such protection. She had pulled an oilcloth over her head, under which she was now hunched, writing in her notebook. Every few minutes she popped out and had a good look through the binoculars, concentrating particularly on the area of sky behind her, where she had noticed the flying object a little while before.
The winged thing seemed to still be following the same course, but as yet was a long way away. The huge birds known as Seagles often followed the Galloon for hundreds and hundreds of miles, and were considered a sign of bad luck by those passengers and crew who believed such nonsense. Cloudier just thought they were beautiful, and had once written a sonnet about them. It was called ‘Lonely Wanderer, May I Roam Wi’ Thee?’
Cloudier knew better than to pepper her poetry with words like ‘thee’ and ‘wi’, but sometimes she couldn’t help herself. As she watched through the binoculars, occasionally stopping to wipe drizzle from the lenses, she realised that the flying object wasn’t flapping its wings, as a BeheMoth would have done. Seagles could sometimes go for days without flapping, but a BeheMoth, with its thin, papery wings, could not glide in the same way. So a Seagle it must be. She sank back down to the floor of the basket, and carried on working on her great epic, ‘Why Do Boys Think it’s Funny to Make that Parping Noise with Their Armpits?’
The title might need some work, she thought.
Stanley and Rasmussen spent the morning very productively, waiting for another noise to occur. They played another game of backgammon, which Rasmussen won by two laps. Then they made up speeches and read them out to each other, giving each other marks out of ten. This turned out to be a draw at four hundred and seven points each, so they clambered up to the main deck to read their speeches to the gulls on the figurehead, who would surely declare a clear winner.
As they set out, though, they noticed that a lot of people seemed to be heading the same way. Clamdigger seemed to be hustling people along, and there was a hubbub of chatter in the many and various languages of the Galloon. Something was occurring, and they hadn’t been informed. Rasmussen went bright red, then began furiously spinning round in circles, singing a furious song about how furious she was. Stanley knew very well to stay out of the way until she had finished. Before too long, with a slightly dizzy look in her eyes, she was stamping along through the crowd, with Stanley doing his best to keep up.
After many minutes of walking (for the Galloon was so enormous that one could spend hours walking around it without ever crossing the same point twice), they noticed that the crowds seemed to be converging at a spot on the deck near the mainmast. The air was still chilly, and they could see the breath of the crowd rising like a little volcano as they approached. They could also hear, as they got closer, that Able Skyman Abel seemed to have conquered his fear to some extent and was speaking to the crowd in his pompous, piping voice about the recent very loud noises.
‘And yet fear not, my friends,’ Abel was shouting through a trumpet as they pushed their way towards the front of the crowd, ‘for the Captain has put me in charge of dealing with the noise, and I have already formulated a faultless plan.’
People nodded and murmured, happy that someone was taking charge. Stanley was now sitting on Rasmussen’s shoulders, so he was at the head height of the rest of the crowd, and he could see that Abel was standing on an old seachest, surrounded by a few of the other important figures on the ship – Cook, Yorkie the engineer, Ms Huntley the navigator and so on.
As Rasmussen and Stanley came squeezing through the throng, Abel seemed to notice them and addressed them directly. ‘Aha! Sorry to start without you two, but you’re young and not very important, so Cook here has just been guessing what you might say at each point of the discussion.’
‘Oh,’ said Stanley, dropping gently to the ground.
‘I don’t think that’s—’ cried Rasmussen, but she was interrupted by Abel’s trumpet, the horn of which he put right by her ear.
‘Deck-scrubbing duty – Cook thought you would volunteer, so you’re on for the next two weeks, ’til we reach our next stop-off point in the Eisberg Mountains,’ said Abel.
‘What’s that got to do with—’ said Rasmussen and Stanley together, but Abel was off again.
‘Awfully bad luck. Lookout duty – Cook thought you would volunteer, so you’ll be taking it in turns ’til we reach our next stop-off point in the Eisberg Mountains.’
‘What about the noises?’ they said again, to no avail.
‘And before all that, tidying the stores. Cook has been making a complete mess of the supplies in the hold and has kindly volunteered you to go down and tidy it all up.’
‘Wait a minute!’ shouted Stanley. ‘The hold is gigantic! It’s as dark as a lake, and as deep as space!’
‘Quite. So, well done for volunteering,’ said Abel, pleased with himself. ‘While you’re down there, you can also bring back enough dinner for the whole crew and all the passengers. It’s a job for thirty strong men really, so I was surprised that two small children such as you volunteered. But now you have, you can’t get out of it.’
‘This isn’t fair,’ shouted Stanley and stamped his foot.
‘I won’t do it unless we get extra cake,’ said Rasmussen.
Able Skyman Abel looked thoughtful, pulled on his moustache and said, ‘Extra cake seems fair enough to me. Any volunteers for cooking extra cake?’
‘I think Rasmussen and Stanley might volunteer to cook extra cake,’ said Cook, scratching his head with a ladle.
‘No, we mightn’t!’ said Rasmussen, jumping in the air. ‘We’re here now. You don’t get to volunteer us for anything.’
‘Good point,’ said Cook.
‘Good point,’ said Able Skyman Abel. ‘As punishment for volunteering a crew member who doesn’t wish to be volunteered, you can cook the extra cake. And you yourself must eat no fewer than three slices per day, so no funny business such as coconut, marzipan or bits of orange peel.’
‘Can’t say fairer than that, Able Skyman. I shall look forward to it.’ And with this, Cook sat down on the seachest, took a notebook and pencil from his tall white hat and began to write cake recipes, with his tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth.
Rasmussen and Stanley shook hands to congratulate themselves on having got out of cooking extra cake, before Stanley remembered.
‘What about the noises?’ he called. ‘Has anyone come up with any ideas as to what they might be?’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Abel. ‘I have been thinking long and hard about the noises that have been troubling us this morning and, as I said, have formulated a foolproof plan. Firstly, they may be nothing. Secondly, they may not happen again. Thirdly, nobody knows what they are, and so we must bear in mind the very famous phrase: what we don’t know won’t hurt us. Therefore, as
first officer on this ship, I declare that the noises are HUUURRRGGGH!’
Of course, Able Skyman Abel didn’t really say huuuurrrgggh. Huuuurrrgggh was just an easy way to show you that nobody heard what Able Skyman Abel said after ‘the noises are’, because the noise happened again. The whole crowd joggled up and down as if it were standing on a snare drum. Cook’s ladle clanged against the metal plate in his head, little Borussia Munro bounced down the stairs with a perplexed look on her face, and Mr Wouldbegood clattered around with his walking stick for fifty-two seconds, which is how long the humongous noise lasted this time.
‘As I was saying,’ Abel continued gamely as the ringing in his ears died away, ‘I firmly believe that the unforeseen noises are very probably KRRROOONNK!’
Of course, you will have gathered that Able Skyman Abel was no more likely to have said krrrooonnk than huuuurrrgggh, and so you will already know that the noise had happened yet again, almost straight away.
Stanley watched as the crew of the Great Galloon bounced around the deck, hanging on to anything they could grab. He and Rasmussen were beginning to get used to the noises by now, so they hunkered down close to the ground, closed their eyes and waited for the infernal racket to stop. This time it was longer and louder than ever, and, after almost a minute, it finished with a thud and a piercing, raucous squeak, like an elephant stepping on a parrot.
‘The noises are very probably some kind of practical joke,’ said Abel in a tremulous voice, once the noise had died down at last. ‘I shall get to the bottom of this and the culprit will be brought before the Captain.’
‘But that’s silly,’ said Stanley. ‘How can it be a practical joke? Who could make that much noise? And how would they get here? We’re flying three miles over the ocean.’
‘Never underestimate the resourcefulness of great practical jokers,’ said Abel. ‘Many of them will stop at nothing to wreak havoc on the innocent.’
‘True,’ said Rasmussen, thinking of the time she herself had sneaked into the palace of the King of Thorway to put a whoopee cushion under the Queen’s throne. ‘But what would be the point of making such a loud noise as a joke? I don’t think it’s likely.’
