The Happy Mariners (9 page)

Elizabeth, horrified, interrupted him again. ‘Do you mean your mother
taught
you to be a pirate?'

‘Taught me and trained me and made me what I am!' declared Blackheart piously. ‘Ah, there was a mother for you! Gone now, poor soul, these many years!'

‘Oh!' cried Elizabeth. ‘Oh, I think she must have been the wickedest woman that ever was!'

Blackheart smiled. ‘She was that,' he said, with simple pride. ‘And if you should ask me, madam, how I reached the top, as it were, of the piratical ladder, I answer: By eating the rind of me bacon, by industry and perseverance, and by never touching strong liquor. And to any young man who wants to get on I would say…'

‘Hullo!' said Martin, ‘she's moving fast now.'

Elizabeth, not listening to Martin, was wrinkling her brow trying to puzzle something out. ‘Gory Jake,' she asked presently, ‘why do you talk so differently from our own sailor? You know—the one who wanted to shoot you. We're all back in the time of Queen Elizabeth, but you don't seem to belong to it, quite. I'll tell you how it happened. We had a ship in a bottle. A little one, you know. And we took it into our field at the back…'

‘Madam …' he began. But Elizabeth thought it was her turn to talk, so she insisted on telling him the whole story. He didn't seem to be really interested, but he asked a polite question from time to time, murmured ‘Yes, yes' and ‘Ah, no' in the proper places, and yawned prodigiously more than once. Twice he tried to steer the conversation back to the subject nearest his heart. ‘When I was a boy,' he began hopefully—but Elizabeth was determined not to hear anything more about his boyhood and his wicked old mother. It was not nice having to tell a man, even a pirate, that his mother was wicked; and since she felt
it wise to stay with him—for he might be up to any mischief if he were left alone—she had to talk and talk and talk, merely to prevent his talking.

That is why she didn't notice when Martin stole away, and that is why she was so surprised when he tugged at her sleeve and said urgently: ‘Elizabeth! There's land! I've seen it! And Rex says it's our very own island!'

‘Land?' murmured the pirate. He stifled a yawn behind his handcuffs, but his bushy brows shot up and his eyes glittered with a light even more cruel than usual.

Elizabeth was so excited by the good news that she ran with Martin to join the others, who were all gathered at the helm talking and laughing and pointing delightedly at the island of their dreams. It was green and beautiful, and so near that they could already hear—or was it only fancy?—the song of its forest birds, and almost hear, but not quite, the ripple of its little gleaming rivers.

‘There's a harbour,' said Rex, pointing. ‘I think we can get in there, don't you, Phineas?'

‘Why, that's the creek!' shouted Guy. ‘Hurrah! That's the creek.'

‘What creek?' asked Martin.

‘Why, Gunpowder Creek, of course!' said Guy. ‘The one we put on the map.'

They stood staring in rapture. Even Phineas seemed fascinated by the lovely spectacle. It seemed
too good to be true that after their hazardous voyage they had at last reached this paradise, where, without doubt, more wonderful adventures awaited them than any they had yet had.

‘Aha!' cried a wicked voice behind them.

They all turned round with a shout. There stood the sinister Captain Blackheart, bloodthirstiest of pirates, with mocking laughter on his lips. ‘Thank you for saving me, dear friends. Thank you for my entertainment. Thank you for bringing me so far on my way. I shall swim the rest. Fare ye well!'

‘On thy knees, dog!' bellowed Phineas, whipping out his pistol.

The pirate laughed again. And then, with one kick, he was free of his manacles, with one contemptuous movement he released his hands, the strong iron snapping like thread. Bang went Phineas's pistol. The pirate laughed again, bowed elegantly to the company, and leaped into the sea.

He disappeared at once from view. Not even his hat was visible this time. Five minutes later they saw him, far away, swimming with strong strokes in the direction of the island.

They sailed the ship into the shelter of Gunpowder Creek and there anchored her and launched the longboat. Elizabeth took charge of Martin, and Martin took charge of Fandy. Phineas and Rex and Guy each seized a pair of sculls, but Guy, having had no practice, soon got into difficulties and had to give it up. This made him very hot and vexed, for he hated to be beaten by Rex.

Elizabeth tried to distract his mind from it by saying quickly, with a smile: ‘Hullo, Guy!'

Guy managed to grin back. ‘Hullo!'

‘I wonder if we've forgotten anything that we ought to have brought with us. We generally do, don't we, when we go out anywhere.'

‘Toothbrushes and things?' asked Guy, grinning more broadly this time.

‘No, silly! Tools. Things we shall need for building.' Guy rummaged in the bottom of the boat. ‘We've got three spades, two picks, a two-handed saw and three ordinary ones, two hammers, one, two, three, four, five gimlets, two axes, and a screw-driver. And there's a box here full of nails and screws and bolts and nuts and I don't know what.'

In twenty minutes the shore was reached, the keel of the boat scraping on the shingle. They all jumped out, up to their knees in water, and with a mighty struggle pulled the boat twenty yards up the beach. In the bottom of the boat was a coil of rope that proved to be just long enough to reach the nearest tree, a tall date-bearing palm, the forerunner of the forest. To this tree the boat was secured, lest an incoming tide should set it afloat and adrift.

‘This is just what I thought it would be like,' said Elizabeth. ‘Only it's much better.'

‘And now,' Rex said, ‘we must explore.'

‘Let's take a few things with us,' suggested Guy, lifting firearms and cutlasses out of the boat. ‘We ought to be armed to the teeth, just in case.'

‘I want two pistols and a sword,' said Martin.

Phineas, though he said but little, seemed as excited as the rest of them, and as eager to plunge into the heart of the palm grove. The ground was firm sand where they stood, and they could feel the heat of it through the soles of their shoes; after the motion of the ship it seemed strange to be on solid unmoving land again—strange and so satisfying that the children stamped their feet on the ground and jumped up and down and whooped with rapture.

Elizabeth was the first to tire of this game. ‘Oh, do let's come on,' she said. ‘I want to see it all, every bit of it.'

The little grove of palm trees, which they now
entered, afforded some shelter from the burning sun. Plump dates, a rich mahogany red, hung in luscious clusters from these trees and fell easily into the children's outstretched hands. The ground here was still sandy, but with an admixture of darker soil, and the shadows cast by the trees were as sharp and clear as though they had been cut out in black paper. But presently, as the travellers advanced, the forest grew denser; date-palms gave place to greater and taller trees; and the sandy carpet was no more than freckled with sunlight. Further still, even these freckles disappeared; a dim green glow filled the forest aisles. The children, looking up in wonder towards the sky, could see only a lofty roof of luminous green leaves; the tall straight tree trunks were like columns supporting this roof; and the air was warm and drowsy and faintly humming with a kind of dream. It was a place in which anything might happen, anything lovely and alarming; and if nothing at all happened, well, it wouldn't matter.

But indeed things were happening every moment. ‘Oh, look, look!' cried Martin. A green lizard glided quickly into the undergrowth. Birds, from time to time, called to each other in the branches—fancy-dress birds in scarlet and blue and green. Little monkeys went scuttling up trees at the travellers' approach, screeching with terror. And once a huge yellow beast sprang out from its hiding-place into their path, stood for an instant grinning and glaring
at them and lashing its tail, and then loped off with an angry laugh. Rex said it was a hyena, but nobody else offered an opinion. Phineas was taciturn as usual, and the three younger ones were thoughtful and quiet.

Presently Elizabeth said: ‘Of course we did
say
there'd be wild beasts, when we drew the map. So we've only ourselves to thank for it. But I hope they won't be
too
wild.'

‘Talking of the map,' chimed in Guy, ‘hadn't we better have a look at it? We may be going all wrong. Jolly good job I brought my compass with me.'

‘What do you mean, going wrong?' asked Rex. ‘We're not going anywhere in particular. We're just exploring, that's all. I think it's top-hole here, don't you?'

‘Not going anywhere in particular!' cried Guy, somewhat shrilly. ‘We jolly well are, then! We've got to find that log-cabin of ours before it gets dark. Come on, Rex—fetch out that map.'

‘Yes,' Elizabeth said. ‘And in places like this it gets dark suddenly, doesn't it? Like in the poem Father read to us about the man who shot an albatross. Doesn't it, Phineas?'

Phineas, who had been striding on ahead, turned round at the sound of his name, and stood listening, with half-closed eyes, like a man in a dream. Elizabeth remembered that he had looked just like that the moment before his vanishing, that day when he
had come to the house and given her the
Resmiranda
in a bottle. The recollection frightened her.

‘Phineas!' she cried. ‘Oh, Phineas, don't go to sleep or anything, will you?'

He started, for all the world as though somebody had nudged him sharply in the ribs; opened his eyes wider; and stared in wonder at the little girl, who came running towards him. ‘Eh, madam, what dost thee want with Phineas?'

‘Does the darkness come quickly in this part of the world? It's a lot darker already than it was. Do you know where we are, Phineas? We've been walking for hours, and I think poor Martin is tired.'

Phineas screwed up his eyes and considered these urgent questions. ‘As to the darkness, 'tis more than I can say. These be furrin parts to me, madam darling, though not unlike a certain island called Sambula the which I sailed to in the year ‘64 in the
Salomon,
a ship of Master Hawkins's company, as I remember. Palmito trees and mangoes—ay, 'tis like enough the same. But me head's feeling a little dizzy, madam, and it's maybe the tot I had last night of old rumbullion is still as thee might say rattling me timbers. I'll be the better for a sleep, and so I shall, madam.'

Rex and Guy were poring over the map. ‘We're going in the wrong direction,' said Guy, consulting his compass. ‘Look, here's Gunpowder Creek, where we came ashore.' He placed a rather dirty forefinger
on the map where Gunpowder Creek is shown. ‘Just here. And we've been walking east instead of north-west.'

Rex didn't quite follow Guy's argument. ‘But why should we go north-west? Because of the log-cabin?'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘But do we know there
is
a log-cabin? I thought we said we'd have to build one. That's why we brought all those tools, isn't it?'

Guy's confidence was quickly evaporating. ‘Oh, tools are always useful anyway,' he said vaguely. ‘But whether there's really a log-cabin or not, we said we'd have one, and that's the spot we chose for it. What do you think about it, Elizabeth?'

‘Perhaps Phineas …' Elizabeth began.

‘No,' said Guy very decidedly. ‘Phineas wasn't with us when we made the map. It's our map, and it was you that thought of it. Everything's been right so far, but Rex is afraid about this log-cabin. Point is, Elizabeth, do you think it's there ready for us, or have we got to build it?'

‘I'm feeling very confused,' confessed Elizabeth. ‘But wasn't there something about a ring of fire? I wonder what that means. Anyhow we've simply got to be guided by our map, haven't we? So I vote we go back to where Guy says.'

‘Right you are!' said Rex cheerfully. ‘About turn, everybody!'

They were all very tired by now, and the light in the
forest was dim. There were still strange sounds to be heard, but they were distant and unreal, like voices remembered from a dream. The children stood for a moment huddled together in a group, overawed by the immensity of the tall trees, the loftiness of the faintly shimmering green roof, the purple mystery of the undergrowth. The dim sheen that quivered in the forest was just strong enough to fill it with shadowy shapes. The children had become nervous of their own shadows, and of hearing their own words echoing after them. They conversed in whispers.

‘Oo!' whispered Martin, breaking a long silence. ‘What was that?'

‘I didn't hear anything,' Elizabeth answered.

‘Nor did I,' Martin said. ‘But Fandy did. He's on my shoulder, all bristles.'

They all listened. Yes, there was something coming. The crackle of breaking twigs; footsteps; a man coughing; and then—

‘Blood and botheration! I'll skin 'em all alive!'

It was Captain Blackheart, looking more ferocious than ever. His famous hat, in spite of its immersion in the water, looked as good as new; he wore round his middle a huge leather belt that was simply studded with pistols; and in each hand he carried a hanger.

Phineas and the children shrank back into the shadows.

‘He hasn't seen us,' whispered Elizabeth. ‘He's talking to himself.'

‘He soon
will
see us,' Rex whispered back. ‘Let's get down on our bellies and crawl away.'

‘Why not have a pot at him while there's a chance?' asked Guy. ‘No,' he hastily added, ‘not really, of course.'

‘Skin 'em alive!' remarked Captain Blackheart, smacking his lips. ‘Make such a sight of 'em as 'ud do poor Mother's eyes good to see! Ah me, ah me, poor Mother!' He shed a filial tear into the undergrowth, and stalked steadily on in the direction of the hidden children.