Aunt Effie and the Island That Sank

by Jack Lasenby

  “It was Captain Flash!” said Aunt Effie. “I’d know his head anywhere.”

  “Look!” Peter pointed. Something ripped through the water towards the Margery Daw.

  “A shark’s fin!” screamed Daisy. “The shark with false teeth is coming to get me!”

  “It’s not a fin,” said Marie. “It’s a stick.”

  “Bent at the top,” said Ann. “Like a walking stick!”

  “A periscope!” said Peter.

  The periscope turned around, pointed at us, and we saw Captain Flash’s face upside-down, looking at us from inside a submarine.

  The little ones all bent over and looked between their legs at Captain Flash, to make him the right way up. Alwyn stuck his fingers in the corners of his eyes and mouth and poked out his tongue, and we saw the upside-down Captain Flash poke out his tongue and waggle his ears back at Alwyn.

  “Put the wheel hard down!” Aunt Effie shouted at Caligula. “Bring the jib sheets across! Back the staysail!”

  As the Margery Daw heaved to, a line of bubbles ran towards us from the submarine. We leaned over the bows and saw the bubbles go past, just missing us.

  “That was a torpedo!” cried Aunt Effie. “Now he thinks he knows where to find the treasure, he wants to get rid of us. I’ll show him!”

  “There’s another!” yelled Ann from up in the crow’s-nest. She pointed at a second line of bubbles. “It’s going to hit us fair amidships!”

  “Keep pointing at it, Daisy-Mabel-Johnny-Flossie-Lynda-Stan-Howard-Marge-Stuart-Peter-Marie-Colleen-Alwyn-Bryce-Jack-Ann-Jazz-Beck-Jane-Isaac-David-Victor-Casey-Lizzie-Jared-Jess!” Aunt Effie took the wheel and turned our stern towards the line of bubbles.

  “Let out the mainsheet! Bring those jib sheets across again, and the staysail!”

  The wind was full astern, so the Margery Daw filled her sails and raced forward.

  “The torpedo’s catching up!” Ann cried. Something like a long, thin, silver cigar came after us through the clear water. The propeller spun on its other end.

  Jane was dressing the little ones in life-jackets. Daisy fell on her knees and, in a robust voice she sang the hymn: “For Those in Peril on the Sea.”

  Aunt Effie gave the wheel back to Caligula. “Hold her on that course! Peter-Marie-Colleen-Alwyn-Bryce-Jack – grab the boathook and lean over the side!”

  Peter leaned over with the boathook. The torpedo was almost touching the rudder.

  “See the nose?” said Jazz. “The detonator’s inside. Just one touch, and it’ll blow us all to kingdom come!” The Margery Daw sailed even faster, but the torpedo inched closer.

  “Oh, hear us as we cry to thee, for those in peril on the sea!” bellowed Daisy.

  “Daisy-Mabel-Johnny-Flossie-Lynda-Stan-Howard-Marge-Stuart-Peter-Marie-Colleen-Alwyn-Bryce-Jack-Ann-Jazz-Beck-Jane-Isaac-David-Victor-Casey-Lizzie-Jared-Jess! Hold my heels!” Aunt Effie hung on to Peter’s heels, and we hung on to hers.

  “Just nudge it to port with the boathook. Not the nose! Back about a couple of feet, give it a shove there. Now another. Good! Tell Caligula-Nero-Brutus-Kaiser-Genghis-Boris to put the wheel down to starboard!”

  “Put the wheel down to starboard!” we yelled at Caligula.

  “Not too hard!”

  “Not too hard!”

  “Okay, give it another nudge. And another.” Aunt Effie looked up. “Tell Caligula-Nero-Brutus-Kaiser-Genghis-Boris to put the wheel down another spoke.”

  As Peter turned the torpedo to port, Caligula turned the Margery Daw to starboard until we were both heading back the way we had come.

  We pulled on Aunt Effie’s feet. She pulled on Peter’s, and they both came up on deck.

  “Thanks, Caligula-Nero-Brutus-Kaiser-Genghis-Boris!” Aunt Effie took the wheel and brought the Margery Daw up into the wind. The sails fell empty, slapping and shivering.

  Ahead of us, the submarine surfaced. Captain Flash popped out of the conning tower and danced on the deck, pointing and laughing. “Ha! Ha! Ha!” His pointy head shone in the sunlight. “I know where Wicked Nancy’s Island is! I’m off to get the treasure. You’d better get into your lifeboat and start rowing before the torpedo blows you up! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  “How clearly his voice carries across half a mile of water!” said Aunt Effie. “It’s those good, clear English vowels, those crisp sharp English consonants they teach them in the Royal Navy!”

  “Ha! Ha! Ha!” It came clear across the water. Then a shriek. “Aaah!”

  “He’s seen the torpedo coming for him,” said Peter.

  Captain Flash pulled something out of the conning tower and blew into it. It got bigger and bigger.

  “A rubber dinghy!” said Bryce.

  “Blow faster!” called Ann.

  Captain Flash saw the torpedo was very close and screamed.

  “How a good English scream carries across the water,” said Aunt Effie.

  Captain Flash jumped into the rubber dinghy and rowed so fast the oars whirled like propellers. The rubber dinghy spun in a circle, but the wind blew it away from the submarine.

  Boom! A spout of water towered and collapsed. We sailed across the oil-smeared sea. The rubber dinghy bobbed upside down. Peter and Marie turned it up the right way, and Aunt Effie threw in a bag of dog biscuits, a breaker of water, and a piece of paper.

  She fished out Captain Flash with the boathook, and dumped him in the rubber dinghy. “The course for Auckland’s on the paper. There’s just enough water and dog biscuits to get you back, if you start rowing at once. Up topsails!” Aunt Effie cried.

  Captain Flash began to shout. “Bah! Foiled again, Euphem–”

  “Call me that name!” she shouted over the top of his voice, “and I’ll drop a cannonball through the bottom of your rubber dinghy.”

  Captain Flash sat and rowed fast towards Auckland.

  “Won’t he just get another boat in Auckland and go looking for the treasure island? He knows it’s north of Fiji!” said Jane. “And he’s got the map!”

  “Do you think I’m silly? Wicked Nancy’s island is nowhere near Fiji, but we’ll sail that way just to fool Captain Flash. I knew he was listening through the skylight. I saw the periscope of his submarine following us before we went to bed last night.”

  “What about the others?” asked Lizzie.

  “What others?”

  “All the other sailors in the submarine. We blew them up!”

  “There weren’t any other sailors,” Aunt Effie told her. “That was a one-woman submarine.” We all felt much better when she told us that.

  “We got rid of the Reverend Samuel Missionary,” said Aunt Effie. “His bike will be so rusty with salt water, he won’t able to chase us for months. We got rid of Chief Rangi over the edge of the world. Getting back will keep him busy for months – if he isn’t dragged into the sun’s gravity. And now Captain Flash will row to Auckland, get another boat, and search north of Fiji. That’ll keep him busy for months. It’s time for us to cover our tracks.”

  As Captain Flash disappeared over the horizon, and night fell, Aunt Effie took the wheel, put the Margery Daw about, and ran in towards the Coromandel Peninsula where bright lights reflected across the water. “They’re the lights from the hotels of Coromandel, all lit up,” said Aunt Effie. “The miners will be in town for Saturday night.”

  We could hear the miners shouting, and women shrieking and laughing.

  “Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!” said Daisy.

  Music came across the water from a ship at anchor off Preece Point. An accordion played, and a man’s voice sang, “Come into the garden, Euphemia,” a popular song that year.

  “Hmph!” said Aunt Effie and sent us all to bed without anything to eat. Next morning we were sailing south down the Coromandel coast, past Tapu and Waiomu.

  “We must be going to Miranda after all,” Marie said. But Aunt Effie told her, “We’ve got to cover our tracks first.” She kept hugging the coast until the water turned muddy from the Waihou River. In the long eve
ning light, we saw fishing boats lying on their sides on the mud flats, spindly-legged tea-tree jetties between khaki mangroves, brown fishing nets hanging to dry like lines of washing, and red roofs cuddled between green hills. The air smelled of fish and mud and sea.

  “Smell the ozone!” said Aunt Effie. “I like the Thames!”

  Chapter Eight

  Saturday Night in the Thames; Barrels of Rum; Lighting the Gas Lamps; Thames Mussels and Flatties; What We Saw in the Brian Boru; the Tattooed Man and the Fat Lady; and Counting the Rubbity-Dubs.

  We worked along a dredged channel between mud banks wriggling with mangrove roots.

  “I think that’s where the smell of ozone comes from,” said Ann.

  We tied up ahead of a trading scow. The wharf was high above our heads, up a slippery ladder with mussels growing on the rungs.

  A wagon stopped above the trading scow, and the horses sat and smoked their pipes patiently while the crew rolled the top tier of a cargo of barrels of beer and rum up a steep plank to the wharf. There, they skewed them sideways on to another plank and rolled them up on to the wagon. The sailors stood the barrels with a deft twist so they seemed to jump and stand on end by themselves, but it still looked hard work.

  The skipper of the trading scow called out to Aunt Effie, “We missed the tide leaving Auckland. That’s why we’ve got all the work of rolling the barrels up instead of down. What makes it worse,” he said, “is that once we’ve got all this stuff ashore, tide will be in and we’ve got to load that manooker aboard.” He nodded at a huge stack of tea-tree firewood. “Which means we’ll have to lug it up on to the deck instead of just throwing it down.”

  “Can’t you wait for the next low tide?” we asked him.

  “The rubbity-dubs ran out of beer and rum, and it’s Saturday night.” Aunt Effie nodded. “Besides,” the skipper told us, “J.J. Craigs have ordered the tea-tree for their customers, and we’ve got to get it up to Auckland in time for them to deliver for Saturday night.”

  “Aunt Effie?” asked Jessie. “What’s a rubbity-dub?”

  “A hotel.”

  “Why’s it called a rubbity-dub?”

  “It’s rhyming slang for pub.”

  “Can we go to the rubbity-dub?”

  “You’re too young,” Aunt Effie told her, and Jessie cried loudly. “You’re not allowed inside, but I’ll hold you up so you can see through the window.” Like a tap turning off, Jessie stopped crying. She cheered up even more when Aunt Effie told her that the meths drinkers in Auckland called their methylated spirits “Jessie’s dream”.

  “Why do they call it that?”

  “Rhyming slang again. They call meths steam. Rhyme it and you get Jessie’s dream.”

  “I wonder who Jessie was?” we all asked.

  “A dissipated old woman who drank methylated spirits till she went blind and died!” Daisy said sternly. “That’s what happens to people who drink methylated spirits.”

  We looked away and wished we hadn’t asked.

  “I’m not going to drink meths!” said Jessie. “It stinks! Anyway, it’s blue, like castor oil, and nobody drinks castor oil unless they’re made to.”

  We ran a gangplank up on to the wharf, and Aunt Effie rolled us up and stood us on our ends so we could see what it felt like to be a barrel. The men rolling the real barrels of beer and rum lifted their bowler hats to Aunt Effie, and the patient horses took the pipes out of their mouths and nodded respectfully. The stack of firewood towered above us.

  “Aunt Effie,” said Lizzie, “why did the man say manooker instead of manuka?”

  “It’s just the way some people pronounce it. Some call it red tea-tree, some manooker, and some manuka. Then there’s the big tea-tree. Some call it white tea-tree, some kanooker, and some kanuka. Some even call it white manooker. Whatever name you choose doesn’t make it any easier to lug aboard when tide’s in and your scow’s riding high above the wharf.”

  Just then a man with a ladder over his shoulder galloped down the street. At the corner he leaned his horse against a tall street lamp, stood the ladder on its back, and hooked it on an arm that stuck out under the lamp itself. The horse held its breath and kept very still while he climbed up and lit the gas.

  The man came down, got the ladder on his shoulder, and galloped to the next street lamp. It took him some time to find his matches, and the horse got sick of waiting and moved on to the next lamp. The man was left swinging on the ladder. “Back up!” he yelled.

  “In Auckland, the street lamps aren’t so tall, so the lamp lighters use bicycles,” Aunt Effie told us. More lights came on up the street. “That’s the hotels lighting up. The gold miners and kauri bushmen will be coming to town for Saturday night.”

  “Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!” Daisy clicked her tongue.

  “But remember the lights last night?” said Lizzie. “You said it was Saturday night in Coromandel then.”

  “Every night’s Saturday night for the gold miners and kauri bushmen in Coromandel and the Thames,” said Aunt Effie. “They’ll be quiet enough for the next hundred years, once all the gold and kauri’s gone.”

  Just up the road was a fish and chip shop called “Greasy Mick’s Son and Co.” where Aunt Effie ordered us a feed of mussels and vinegar, and fried flounder and chips. “About enough to fill a dinghy,” she told Greasy Mick’s son.

  “Everybody should taste Thames mussels and flatties once,” Aunt Effie said. “They’re the best in the country, but they can’t last at the rate we’re eating them. They dredge the mussels and take them to Auckland by the scow-load.”

  We felt guilty but gorged ourselves. Jammed full to the tonsils, we staggered along Pohlen Street, looking at the windows of the chemists’ shops which displayed tins of Edmond’s Baking Soda and Hardy’s Indigestion Remedy. One window was filled with blue bottles of castor oil, white bottles of Lane’s Emulsion, and dark-red bottles of Parrish’s Chemical Food, but we held our noses and crossed the street so we didn’t have to look at them.

  Alwyn pointed at some corsets in the window of a dress shop and asked in a loud voice, “What are those?” Daisy coughed. A hardware shop had gum spears in the window, climbing irons, and thigh waders for the gumdiggers; and pans for the gold prospectors. “Eagle Foundry camp ovens just arrived from Glasgow!” said a sign. “Try our shovels and picks!”

  The lower halves of the hotel windows were all painted white with holes scratched in the paint where angry wives had tried to look inside to catch their wicked husbands. That’s what Daisy told us. Aunt Effie held us up to a hole so we could see inside the public bar of the Brian Boru.

  We saw miners in blue and grey Crimean shirts, a red bandanna round their necks, and some with bright sashes holding up their moleskin trousers. They wore what Aunt Effie called wideawake hats, high boots, smoked pipes, and swigged beer and rum from barrels on the bar. Some of them sang, some jigged, and some told stories. One saw us looking and flattened his nose against the inside of the window, and Lizzie flattened her nose back.

  “They must be telling each other good stories,” she said, “because they laugh so much.”

  There was a man in a bowler hat who played a piano, another who fiddled, and one who played an accordion.

  “Look at the ladies dancing!” said Jessie.

  They wore long frocks, shiny gold, green, blue, and red with lots of lace and kicked their legs right over their heads so their petticoats frothed and garters flashed. We thought they were very beautiful. When they bent over, pulled up their dresses, and showed their ruffled knickers, Daisy cried, “May God forgive them!” and put her hands over the little ones’ eyes.

  The gold miners didn’t put their hands over their eyes. They clapped and stamped and bought drinks for the beautiful ladies, and some tried to kick their own legs over their heads, but their high boots were too heavy, and two of them fell over and couldn’t get on their feet again. A kind man came from behind the bar and rolled them like barrels into the gutter outside. “You c
an sleep it off in comfort there,” he told them gently.

  A miner going into the Brian Boru said Lizzie reminded him of his grandmother and gave her a little bottle of gold dust. “It’s iron pyrites,” said Daisy, “fool’s gold.”

  “It is so real!” said Lizzie. “The man said.”

  There was a fire-eater further down Pohlen Street, and a tent on one corner with a man who’d been stolen by the Maoris when he was a boy and tattooed from head to foot. The gold miners were going into the tent and coming out laughing. One of them said, “Tattooed, my foot!” which Aunt Effie said meant that it wasn’t real Maori tattooing, just paint. The lady on the tent door wouldn’t let children go in, she said because the Tattooed Man was tattooed all over. And she repeated, “All Over!” with a nod and a wink at Aunt Effie.

  We tried crying, so Aunt Effie said we could have a look at the Fat Lady in a tent on the opposite corner. It cost a penny each. The Fat Lady spoke in a high squeaky voice and told us she was the Fattest Lady in the Whole World. We believed her because we couldn’t see the stool she was sitting on.

  She wore muslin dresses, several of them, and we could see the rolls of fat that hung down all over her. Although coated in thick powder, the Fat Lady still sweated in the warmth of the tent and the lamps. She smiled, all her chins trembled, and she said to Jessie, “Poke me with your finger, dearie!”

  Jessie ran outside and was sick, and Daisy said, “Of course, the child should never have eaten all those mussels and fried flounder and chips.” But we knew what made Jessie throw up.

  We walked along counting all the rubbity-dubs till the little ones started grizzling, and Aunt Effie said, “You’re tiredy old things, aren’t you!” and lifted them on to the dogs’ backs so they could ride to the wharf.

  We counted a hundred and nineteen rubbity-dubs before we came to the last one, the Lady Bowen, where another miner gave Jessie a little nugget of real gold because he said she reminded him of his little sister in “Californ-eye-ay”. That’s how he said it, but Daisy said he meant to say California.