Flaming Zeppelins (28 page)

He was pummeled by a couple of the pirates, stripped of his boots and clothes. When it was over, he lay naked and bloody on the sand.

While this had been going on, ropes were attached to two young palm trees, and with all the pirates pulling, the trees were bent over to where the tops almost touched the ground and they crossed against one another. They were held that way by the horde of straining pirates.

“What are they doing?” Mr. Verne said.

“I don't know,” Mr. Twain said. “But I don't like it.”

The brutish looking man was swiftly bound to the trees in such a way that one arm and one leg were tied firmly to each tree with thick rope. A small barrel of pitch was produced from somewhere, and with a stick a tad of it was scooped, touched to the tip of the man's penis. This was set on fire. The man screamed so loud I thought I was going to suck my asshole up through the top of my head. Then the pirates let go of the trees.

It happened with a snap and a whoosh. The man's body was torn in half, launched high in two directions. The flaming dick went to the right, a little red blur that sailed way out into the ocean, dropped down like a miniature falling star into the water.

A cheer went up from the pirates.

I looked down at Cat and Bull. In the light from the moon, which was clear of mist out there on the beach, and the flickering of the firelight, Cat looked nervous as a cat might look. She certainly knew that a very special fate was probably in store for her. A plaything to the pirates, and then the trees.

The others on the trotline looked nervous as well. A couple were actually trembling. Bull was the only one who didn't look in the least bit bothered. He looked as if he might be thinking of supper, hoping for boiled dog.

Watching, knowing what fate might be in store for my two friends, knowing others might die, made me sick to my stomach, and for the first time that I can ever recall, at least for a few minutes, I did not think of fish.

There was a pause, more grog was drunk, then another victim was picked from the trotline. The same ritual occurred, with the same horrible results.

WE MUST DO SOMETHING, I wrote.

Mr. Twain said, “We are four against many. There must be forty pirates. We have one gun. We must wait.”

GIVE ME THE GUN. I WILL GO DOWN THERE.

“You are brave, little seal,” Mr. Verne said. “No doubt. But if you wish to help your friends, you must wait until the pirates sleep.”

WHAT IF MY FRIENDS ARE TIED TO THE TREES AND SET ON FIRE AND SHOT IN TWO DIRECTIONS. THEN HOW DO I HELP THEM? WHAT OF THE OTHERS? I DON'T KNOW THEM, BUT ARE THEY NOT HUMAN? ARE WE NOT HUMAN? EXCEPT, OF COURSE, I'M A SEAL.

“And as humans,” Mr. Twain said, “we must know our limitations. If we all die, we will have accomplished nothing.”

I started to write again, but felt suddenly fatigued. I did not like it, but they were right. I lay down on my belly and waited.

Two more victims were sent sailing from the trees, but fortunately, neither was Cat nor Bull.

After a time, the pirates bored with the whole matter, drank more, and got into fights with one another. There was even a stabbing, which resulted in a death right there on the shore. Or a near death. The poor man was gutted, and with his intestines hanging out, his partners turned on him, pulled down the two trees, fastened him to them, covered his dangling intestines first in pitch, then in fire, and sent him sailing. He was well lit, and I must confess I found it an amazing sight as his guts strung out long and red and flaming across the dark skyline. A string of the guts caught up in the top of a palm tree at the edge of the shore, lit it on fire, brightening the whole gruesome scene below in an orange-red cast.

Finally, after an hour of drinking and cursing and fighting, the Captain became angry with one of the pirates and slashed the top of the man's head with his cutlass. The blow drove the pirate to the ground, the cutlass hung up in his skull. Balancing on his peg, using his one good foot, the Captain, with a grunt and a shove, pulled his sword free.

Amazingly, the man got up, staggered and fell down. Chunks of his hair, which had been cut by the cutlass blow, fell from his head. The pirates let out a roar of laughter. None louder than the Captain himself. “Good form,” he said loud enough for us to hear, and the pirates burst into an even louder peal of laugher.

The pirate who had been struck sat up, put a hand on top of his damaged skull and laughed. Soon, with a wad of bloody cloth stuck to the top of his head, he was laughing and drinking, seemingly no worse for wear.

It was then that I noticed that the great ape had finally stopped turning the wheel, and was leaning against it, looking out at the drunken pirates. The look on his simian face was inscrutable.

I looked at Cat and Bull. Cat was snuggled up close to Bull. And Bull, with one arm around her, looked out at the pirates. His face revealed nothing.

As Mr. Twain had suspected, it wasn't long before the pirates lay all over the beach, passed out. The only people awake were those tied alongside the ship. And, of course, the great red ape.

Mr. Verne pulled the cruiser into shape, and we mounted up, glided down from our hiding place, me at the controls, Mr. Verne holding the pistol. Mr. Twain had the machete, and Passepartout held his club. It suddenly occurred to me that as much as I had wanted to fight, we were not the most apt group. Neither Verne nor Twain were young men, and Passepartout, though younger than they, did not appear to me to be the fighting type. And I, alas, was a seal.

The firelight from the blazing palm gave the shore an unearthly look, as if we were floating along a corridor of hell. The cruiser was quiet, and not one pirate stirred. The prisoners saw us coming but remained quiet. It occurred to me we might slip in, free them, and escape without ever being heard.

We arrived in front of the prisoners, and with me staying at the controls, the others dismounted. Mr. Twain used the machete to cut the rope, and then to free individual bonds.

When I was on the beach, Bull and Cat saw me. Cat almost cried out, but stifled it by placing a hand to her mouth. I could see her smile at the edge of her hand, the firelight in her eyes. Bull looked up and made with a soft grunt. For Bull, that was pretty excited.

After Mr. Twain cut the prisoners free, I counted them. Including Bull and Cat, there were ten.

One of the men, an official-looking fellow in what might have been a blue military jacket and very worn blue pants, came over to us. The other Indian came with him.

The man spoke softly, said, “My name is Bill Beadle, and this is my friend, John Feather. We are glad to see you, as you can imagine.”

Twain said, “Thing for us to do is to get out of here quick.”

“That's why I'm talking to you,” Beadle said. “The ape. He can assist us.”

“He can?” Twain said.

“He is not like other apes. But there is no time to explain that. If we free him, he can drag the ship into the water, out deep, and we can sail away on the night tide. The wind is up, and we should be able to make good time. This man,” Beadle pointed at a tall, lean fellow wearing a dirty cap and soiled whites, “is the captain. He's called the Dutchman.”

The Dutchman nodded.

“But the ape,” Mr. Twain said. “Why would he help us, without whips I mean?”

“Trust me for now,” Beadle said.

Bull said, “Borrow knife.”

Without getting an answer, Bull took Twain's machete, and stalked toward the sleeping pirates.

Twain called to him as softly as possible, but Bull wasn't listening.

Faster than you could say let's scalp somebody, Bull began to systematically cut the throats of sleeping pirates.

All I can say is we were stunned. We stood there amazed as he went quickly and quietly from one to the other, and soon the ground was littered with gurgling, thrashing pirates, clutching at their oozing throats.

He must have cut the throats of seven or eight before any sort of alarm was aroused, and by this time, he had picked up one of the old-style rifles from the ground, and had stuffed two cap and ball pistols and the machete into his belt.

He immediately went to work with the firearms.

Bull lifted the rifle and shot one of the pirates full in the face, from less than twenty feet away. There is no need for me to describe the gruesome results, other than to say the fellow, not a pretty sight to begin with, went from grimacing and growling and drawing a sabre to suddenly looking as if a cherry pie had exploded in his face.

Bull tossed the one-shot weapon aside, drew the pistols, and as bullets rained around him, shot first one man in the temple, by walking right up to him (and keep in mind, this man was firing away and seemed to be in a position impossible to miss Bull, but did) and when this man fell from Bull's shot, another who was armed with a sword decided to make a run for it. Bull gave him a warning shot. Right in the back of the head.

Now we were all scrambling for a hiding place. The bullets were storming about us like windblown hail. Twain darted for the opposite side of the ship, and I followed with the cruiser, but what we found there were more pirates, staggering up from their inebriated slumber.

Mr. Verne, who had come around on that side with us, went to work with the pistol, fired five shots in rapid succession, popping off three pirates, sending the other two shots somewhere out into the ocean, or perhaps smacking into a palm tree. He jerked the box of shells out of his pocket and began reloading. While he was about this task, a pirate with a sword charged down on him. Mr. Twain leaped forward, and luckily slid up under the attacker's arm before the sabre could come down on Mr. Verne, caught the pirate's wrist, and began to wrestle with him. I scooted around behind the pirate on the cruiser, and knocked him down.

Mr. Twain stepped on his hand, liberated him of his sword, and stuck him with it through the throat.

“The ape. Come now.”

It was Beadle. He had picked up a piece of driftwood, and I could see that it was covered in blood and brains. Mr. Twain leaped onto the cruiser, as did Beadle, who said, “Fine device,” and we flitted over to where the ape was chained to the wheel.

All around us pirates were yelling and attacking, but those Bull had killed provided weapons for our group, and considering what they had seen the pirates do, the folks from the trotline attacked with a fury generally reserved for sharks, who I hate, but I believe I have mentioned that.

I saw Cat leap on a pirate, take him down, and with her teeth she tore at his throat. A spray of blood leaped high and wide and splattered her, coating her black hair with gore. But she was already up, springing onto the back of another pirate.

Down the beach a bit, I saw Beadle's Indian friend on top of a pirate, pounding him in the head with what may have been a coconut.

The air stank of blood and shit, and just the faintest hint of salt spray and fish from the ocean. Believe it or not, the smell of fish made me hungry.

A bullet tore past Mr. Twain's shoulder and grazed my nose. It made me mad. I wished I could have a pistol, because with my flipper backing it, using my thumb, I knew I could fire it. But I had what I had. My head and my ass, and so far, pretty good luck.

When we reached the ape and the wheel, Passepartout was already there. He had secured a sabre from one of the pirates, and was chopping away at the wheel where it connected to the chains on the ape's wrists.

“Good man,” Beadle said.

“I can't stand to see such as this,” Passepartout said. “Even if he chooses to kill me, I must set him free.”

The ape was very close to Passepartout, and watched the Frenchman at work in a way that could only be described as grateful; unlike most apes, his face was full of human expression. In fact, on close examination, he seemed less apelike than he had appeared from a distance.

There was something different about the shape of his head, the very human eyes (which, later, in better light I saw to be green), the thin lips and the full ears with lobes. He stood more upright, and unlike apes, who have small penises, this guy had a goober that looked like a four-foot switch handle hammer, testicles like grapefruits.

I want to add here that I couldn't help but notice. I mean, it was hanging out there for all to see. It's not that I go around checking out other people's or creatures' equipment, but this couldn't help but be noticed. Really. It was big. No shit.

By the time we arrived, Passepartout had chopped away enough of the wheel that the great ape could tug with the chains and cause the wheel to creak and snap, allowing him to pull his hands (paws?) free of it. The chains still dangled from his wrists, and chunks of the wheel dangled from the chains.

While we floated about, keeping a kind of guard, Passepartout went to work on the lower part of the wheel where chains were fastened to the ape's ankles. In short time, he had made swift work of the wood, allowing the ape to jerk those chains free as well.

The ape turned toward the remaining pirates. The chains that were on his ankles were also hooked together, so he could not move swiftly, but he could move quickly enough, in a hopping fashion.

As he hopped, he swung the great chains fastened to his wrists, the chunks of wood fastened to them. He swung them and struck pirates and knocked them about. Shots were fired at the ape, and no doubt at least a couple of them hit him, but it didn't slow him down. He hopped and swung and shattered flesh and bone like a mad wife smashing dinner plates.

I looked up and saw that the pirate captain was hustling up the hill and making good time in spite of his peg leg. I made a barking noise, pointed with my flipper. Mr. Twain saw the Captain's back just before he was enveloped by the lush greenery at the top of the hill.

“It can't be helped,” Mr. Twain said, stepping down from the cruiser. “It doesn't matter now. Our business here, bloody as it is, is through. It's not what I had in mind, but after Sitting Bull got the ball rolling, there wasn't much choice.”