Hamish X and the Cheese Pirates (17 page)

“Picking on children's one thing,” Tubaface shrugged. “Pirates armed with swords and guns—not in my job description.”

“Exactly,” Pianoface agreed. “I wonder if they're hiring. We should ask. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, eh?”

They were interrupted by the sound of the hatch spinning open. As two armed pirates escorted Mrs. Francis into the hold, the children leapt to their feet and swarmed around her. “Oh, my dears,” she cried, hugging and kissing every little child she could reach. “Have they been mean to you? Are you hurt?”

The pirates drew out long wooden sticks from their belts.

“Settle down,” one of them shouted. “Get back away from the door.”

Mrs. Francis turned on the pirates. “How dare you? These children are obviously cold and hungry. Have they been fed since they were so rudely kidnapped? Why are there no blankets in this draughty place? I demand that they be attended to immediately!” She stamped her foot, placed her hands on her hips, and glowered. Though she was only a small, round woman, she seemed to tower over the pirates in her righteous anger. They took an unconscious step back and timidly exchanged a glance.

“We'll take up the matter with the Captain, Mum.” The pirates cast down their eyes and backed shamefaced out of the hatch, slamming it shut after them.

“Oh, Mrs. Francis,” Viggo cried, “I'm so glad to see you. They've treated me in the most beastly manner, chained me to these simpletons …”

“Oi,” objected Pianoface. “Watch it.”

“What's a simpleton?” asked Tubaface.

“I need you to talk to the Captain immediately,” Viggo continued. “You will tell him I am a gentleman and not used to such terrible treatment.”

Mrs. Francis looked at him with undisguised disdain. “Master Viggo, I suggest you get used to bad treatment because that's all you're likely to get. My mother always told me that in this life you get what you give. You're a mean, cruel man and you're getting exactly what you deserve.” She looked at all the little faces of the children gathered around her. “These children deserve better after all you've put them through. If I talk to the Captain, it will be for them, not for you.”

Viggo stared, astonished at the little round woman who up until a moment ago he'd thought of as his timid little housekeeper. She seemed different now, resolute and sure. His heart sank. He shrank back against the wall.

“She told
you,
” Pianoface sneered.

“Shut up,” Viggo said and sat silently watching as Mrs. Francis looked to her small charges. Sitting on the crate, hugging his bony knees to his bony chest, Viggo realized he was truly on his own. He began to think about what the idiotic guards had said. “If you can't beat 'em,” he whispered to himself, “join 'em.”

Mrs. Francis examined each one of the children for bumps and bruises. The older children she set to care for the youngest, cleaning them with water from the little basin in the corner by the head. She counted every one and sorted each according to age, making sure that all the children were accounted for. Finally, she assigned everyone a place to sleep. She was just finishing up when the hatch opened. The two pirate guards were back. Between them they wheeled a vast pot filled with some kind of stew. They left it by the door and beside it tossed a net bag filled with buns and a box of plastic bowls and spoons.

“The buns are a bit mouldy, but beggars can't be choosers,” the first pirate said.

“Indeed,” Mrs. Francis said. “Please thank the Captain for me.”

“Oh, this ain't from the Captain. Compliments of Mr. Kipling.”

Mrs. Francis raised her eyebrows in surprise. She straightened her pink housecoat and ran a hand over her dishevelled hair. “Please offer him our thanks.”

“Whatever.” The pirates went out the hatch and locked it behind them.

“All right, children.” Mrs. Francis clapped her hands. “Form a line, youngest to oldest. There may not be enough bowls and spoons, so we'll have to share.” They eagerly scrambled to follow her instructions. Soon Mrs. Francis was dipping bowls into the steaming broth and handing them to hungry children. The soup wasn't exactly hearty, but the buns helped fill up the little bellies.

“What about us?” Viggo demanded. “I'm starving.”

“The children first,” Mrs. Francis said firmly. “If there's any left when they're done, we'll eat. If not, then we'll go hungry.”

All the children had a bowl of stew and half a bun. There was even enough left over for the four adults to have a bowl of soup each. The children began to drop off to sleep, lulled by the sway of the ship and the throb of the engines.

Mrs. Francis sat with her back to the bulkhead, a little boy in her lap, dozing.

“Mrs. Francis?” the boy asked.

“Go to sleep, sweetheart,” Mrs. Francis said, stroking his hair.

“I'm afraid,” the little boy said, teary-eyed.

“Oh, dear, don't worry. Everything is going to be all right.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure,” she smiled. “And it's all right to be afraid. It's nothing to be ashamed of. You just go to sleep and we'll see what comes tomorrow.”

The little boy's eyelids drooped. “I bet Hamish X wouldn't be afraid,” he mumbled softly as his head fell onto Mrs. Francis's shoulder.

“I'm sure he wouldn't be,” Mrs. Francis said softly.

Chapter 20

“I'm afraid,” Hamish X announced, “that's the last of the food. But thanks to Parveen's firm hand on the stick, we're all in one piece.” He heaved the supplies onto the meagre pile. The wreckage of the flyer lay crumpled on the ice, scraps of fabric and piping lying in a tangled heap nearby.

“Can't say the same for this heap o' junk.” Mimi sat on a jagged lump of ice, shivering.

“It isn't a heap of junk!” Parveen snapped. He wiped a drop of clear liquid from the tip of his nose with his sleeve. “She was a noble machine and she brought us a long way.”

“Sorry,” Mimi mumbled. “I didn't mean …”

Parveen waved her away. He looked at the global-positional satellite compass he had scavenged from the wreck.

“According to this, we are presently located at 72 degrees north by 125 degrees east.” He unfurled the laminated map, flattened it on the snowy ground, and held it firmly against the wind's efforts to tear it from his grasp. They all gathered around to look. “We've come over two thousand kilometres. Quite amazing.”

“Two thousand kilometres to the middle o' nowhere.” Mimi kicked a heap of snow.

“Not nowhere. The Amundsen Gulf. That is definitely somewhere,” Parveen pointed out. “We are above
the Arctic Circle. Below us, under a few feet of ice, is the Arctic Ocean.”
⁵⁵

“We're still nowhere!”

“Wrong,” Hamish X said. “We're partway to somewhere and that somewhere is the pirate's hideout. Listen, two days ago you never thought we'd leave Windcity. Look at you now.”

“Yeah.” Mimi threw up her hands. “Look at me. I'm standin' here freezin' on the Arctic Ocean with a busted kite and a bunch o' cans o' beans. We'll never catch them pirates now. We'll never get them kids back or find yer book or rescue Mrs. Francis!”

“Never is a long time, Mimi. I admit we're in a bit of a spot, but we have to look at the positives. We're alive. We have some food. We know which direction the pirates are headed. We'll find the hideout if we continue on the course we were taking prior to the crash.”

“Hang on!” Parveen interrupted. He took out a ruler, laying it over the map. He placed it so that the edge ran along a line from Windcity to their current location. The line ran out into the Barents Sea, passing directly over a small brown dot on the map.

“That's where they're going!” Parveen said.

“How can you be so sure?” Hamish X asked.

“It lies right along their current course reading.”

“How are we gonna get there? In case you ain't noticed, our only mode of transport is thoroughly broke,” Mimi pointed out.

A look of grim determination came over Hamish X's face. He opened his pack and began stuffing cans of beans into it.

“What are you doin'?” Mimi demanded.

Hamish X cinched the rucksack shut and hefted it onto his shoulders. “Exactly what it looks like,” he said. “I'm going after them.”

“On foot? You'll freeze! And even if ya don't freeze, there are bears
⁵⁶
and all manner of things to eat ya out there. And it's maybe hunnerts of kilometres!”

Hamish X grinned. “I guess I'd better get started then.” He started to tramp in a roughly northward direction.

Mimi leapt to her feet. She ran and stood in front of him, blocking his path. “Are you nuts? You'll never make it walkin'.”

“There's no other way.” Hamish X tried to push past her.

“Perhaps there is.” Parveen's voice stopped them both in their tracks. They turned and looked at the little boy who was on his hands and knees in the snow, digging at something.

Hamish X and Mimi came back and stood over him. They watched as his bemittened hands scraped at something buried in the snow. He finally leaned back to reveal one of the snowmobile engines from the flyer's wing. “It seems to be intact,” he explained, wiping steam from his glasses. He pointed at the pile of twisted pipes. “I can use these.” He picked up a pipe and squinted down its length.
Then he laid it down carefully and walked around the wreck. “The porridge vat is still in one piece.” He reached down and began tugging on the heavy metal tub, trying to pull it upright.

“What do you have in mind?” Hamish X asked, joining him. Together they managed to loosen the grip of the snow and ice. Mimi lent a hand and they finally wrestled it free.

“Whatcha thinkin'?” Mimi asked.

Parveen walked thoughtfully around the vat. He stopped and reflected for a long moment. Suddenly, he took off his mitten and reached behind his ear for a pencil stub. “I'll need your pocketknife, Hamish X. But first I've got to draw up some plans.”

Over the next two hours, Parveen directed their labours as they transformed the flyer into a strange sort of powered sled. Calling the newly created vehicle a snowmobile would be an insult to snowmobiles.
⁵⁷
It had a snowmobile engine, certainly, and runners made from the aluminum piping scavenged from the flyer. No snowmobile has ever had anything resembling a giant porridge vat for a cockpit, however.

They siphoned all the remaining gas into a tank. Parveen attached the tank to the engine. After coughing twice and belching black smoke, the motor settled into a high-pitched whine. To propel the whole thing, Parveen designed a chain looped around rollers under the length of the machine. The engine turned the rollers that rolled the chain that dug into the ice and pulled the machine forward.

Parveen checked the compass, opened the throttle, and
they sped away, once again in pursuit of the pirates. “Good work, Parv,” Hamish X laughed as they bumped along the surface of the ice. It was a tooth-rattling ride, but at least they were moving.

“Parveen, please. Yes, it is quite a serviceable vehicle. As long as the fuel holds out.”

“How long will the fuel hold out?” Mimi asked.

“By my calculations, just over six hundred kilometres.”

Hamish X consulted the map. “But that leaves us six hundred kilometres short of Snow Monkey Island!”

“If that's even where they's headed,” Mimi added.

Parveen shrugged. “I can only solve one gigantic crisis at a time.”

Hours later, gathering darkness found them on a featureless plain. Blue-white ice lay in crumpled sheets as far as the eye could see. The driving was treacherous, and Parveen was often forced to slow down and weave carefully
through mazes of jagged ice. Once, they saw a polar bear bounding along. The noise of the sled made the huge animal stop, stare, and bolt in the opposite direction.

The sun dropped slowly towards the horizon and the sky filled with flickering colours, a rainbow radiating from the ground ahead.

“It's amazing,” Mimi breathed.

“It's beautiful,” said Hamish X. “Like a rainbow.”

“It's electromagnetic radiation from the sun reflecting off the polar ice cap,” Parveen said.

“Boy, you really know how to take the poetry outta somethin'.” Mimi shook her head.

“I merely explained what you were seeing,” Parveen said. “That shouldn't make anything less beautiful. Perhaps it should make it more so.” Mimi was about to interject when the engine chugged, sputtered, and died. The sled continued forward under its own momentum for a few metres and then came to a halt. They stood in the gondola, surrounded by the icy silence.

“I guess we're outta gas,” Mimi said finally.

“Good guess,” Parveen said flatly, taking off his glasses and cleaning them on his scarf. “What do we do now?