The Pirates in the Deep Green Sea (18 page)

Scumbril had all the luck to begin with, but presently Inky Poops began to win, and once he had started to win it seemed that nothing could stop him. They were betting on the cards, and after a little while Inky had won all the fine handsome gold rings that Scumbril wore on his great thick fingers. When the last of them had gone Scumbril looked at his bare hands, and then at the little pile of gold and jewels on the other side of the stool, and began to curse and grumble and complain in a great rumbling voice that seemed to fill the shell with thunder.

Now for some time Inky Poops had been looking
at Hew with great admiration, and regarding Dingy, his own Cabin Boy, with growing dislike. Hew was a very good-looking boy in spite of his black eye, and he appeared to be cleverer than Dingy although he was dumb. Inky Poops, who nearly always got his own way, had made up his mind to get Hew if he could. So now he proposed to bet all the rings he had won — and Dingy too, if Dan Scumbril wanted him — against the Dumb Boy. After a little hesitation Scumbril agreed, and they dealt again. But Inky still held the better cards, and Scumbril lost that game as he had lost the others. He lost Hew also, and Inky Poops rubbed his hands and chuckled with delight.

‘Now you, my dear, must come and stand by me,' he said, ‘and you, Dingy, can go and stand by Captain Scumbril. And see that you serve him well, and do as he tells you, and be a credit to me for all the training I've given you, that I couldn't have been more careful about if I'd been your own father!'

Hew had no cause to like Dan Scumbril, but he liked the look of Inky Poops even less, and it was with great reluctance that he changed places with Dingy. As for Dingy, he was so frightened at the prospect of becoming Dan Scumbril's Cabin Boy that he could scarcely move at all. Inky Poops was grinning and gurgling and cackling with delight, but no one else made even the smallest show of pleasure. Dan Scumbril was cursing again, and his deep voice was so very like thunder rumbling
among distant hills that when it began to grow dark Hew wondered if a storm was blowing up; and thought there might soon be rain. But then he remembered they were on the bottom of the sea, where rain was quite unlikely and perhaps impossible.

It grew darker and darker, and Inky Poops said the soft-heads — the luminous fishes fastened to the roof of the shell — must be going out; and told his new Cabin Boy to find some more. Hew stepped outside, but was lost immediately in utter darkness, and now blackness filled the whole shell and put out the light of the soft-heads as though a tide of Indian ink had come flooding in. The pirates shouted at each other in terror and confusion, Dingy began to cry, and through the sooty darkness Hew heard a familiar voice.

‘Hew, Hew!' it was calling. ‘Where are you, Hew?'

It was Timothy's voice. He recognised it immediately, and turned back into the shell from whose inner parts the voice was coming. But in the darkness he ran into Inky Poops, who was fumbling and feeling his way out, and Inky seized him by the neck and dragged Hew with him. Somewhere in the gloom Dan Scumbril was bellowing and beating the wall of the shell with one of the whale-bone stools, but through the din Hew heard again his brother's voice crying, ‘Where are you?' Then he heard Dingy screaming, but suddenly the scream was silenced as though some
one had clapped a hand on Dingy's mouth.

Inky Poops, gripping his neck between bony fingers, thrust him ahead and Hew heard no more. A few yards from the shell the sea was no darker than usual, and to that sort of darkness Hew's eyes had become accustomed. But behind them the shell was hidden as if in a small cloud of impenetrable blackness. The pirates of both fleets, alarmed by the shouting, were hurrying towards them from their lines, and Inky Poops ordered some twenty or thirty of them to form a circle round the shell and see that no stranger came in and no stranger got out.

‘For there may be strangers about,' he said to Darby Kelly who had wakened and come quickly at the sound of trouble. ‘That was maybe an attempt upon our lives. It looked like a plot, Darby my dear. A plot against the lives of me and Captain Scumbril when we were in conference together. It may be that Davy Jones is cleverer than we think, and knows more than we suppose. His spies may be among us at this very moment!'

‘There may be an easier explanation than that,' said Darby Kelly. ‘That wasn't no plot, Captain Poops, at least not in my opinion. My own opinion — my humble opinion, if you think it's worth listening to, Captain — is that all that trouble was created by one of them there octopuses, which have the habit of squirting darkness into the sea if they feel so inclined. I wouldn't look for spies if I was you, I'd look for an octopus.'

Miss Dildery lived in a delightful little cave on the southward slope of a small hill that rose in a forest of seaweed from the floor of the sea. A narrow lane, twining and twisting through the weeds, led to the main entrance, beside which grew a charming pink and white bush, and above which, on a tablet of whale-bone, was the name
Coral Villa
. Over a very small opening on the left hand side of the cave was another notice which read: BEWARE OF THE DOG-FISH, and on a mat in front of the entrance was written, WIPE YOUR FINS. As Timothy and the Crab approached this very desirable residence, the Crab showed signs of nervousness and once again told Timothy that Miss Dildery was a person of considerable importance, that she had been very well brought up—and begged him to behave with all the politeness of which he was capable. Timothy assured him that he would say nothing improper, and do nothing unseemly; and after he had wiped himself all over on the door-mat, the Crab rang the bell and to the entrance of the cave came a large old female Cod, who rather surprisingly wore a cap and apron.

‘Is Miss Dildery at home?' asked the Crab in a pompous voice.

‘Perhaps she is, and perhaps she isn't,' said the Cod. ‘It all depends on who wants to see her.'

‘Please tell her,' said the Crab, ‘that I have brought a very distinguished visitor; a young gentleman who actually lives upon dry land.'

The old Cod swam round Timothy to look at him from all sides, and then remarked, ‘If everybody stayed in their own homes there'd be less trouble in the world, and I wouldn't be expected to answer the bell at all hours of the day and night.'

‘Will you kindly deliver my message to your mistress?' asked the Crab; and behind his claw whispered to Timothy: ‘An old family servant, you know. These old retainers are very independent, and sometimes even eccentric, as no doubt you are well aware.'

The old Cod, after staring at them for some time in a very disapproving manner, said grudgingly, ‘Well, I suppose you can come in,' and then swam slowly round the corner to a farther part of the cave from which, after a few minutes, there emerged a creature of a very striking appearance. In a general way, of course, Miss Dildery resembled Timothy's old friend Cully, but she was far more delicately shaped, and to the eye of any good judge of an octopus, extremely beautiful. Her eyes were even larger than Cully's but her beak was much smaller—it was quite a dainty little beak—and it was so white that Timothy thought she must
have powdered it. She held her eight arms close together and swam towards them with a graceful movement, as if she were wearing a long silk dress.

‘How very, very kind of you to come and see me!' she exclaimed, and in the most elegant fashion offered Timothy the extreme tip of her nearest arm. ‘But I feel we are old friends already, for I heard so much about you and your brother from a very dear acquaintance of mine, Mr. Culliferdontofoscofolio Polydesteropouf.—And you have seen him quite recently, I believe? Do tell me how he is.'

‘He was looking quite well when I saw him last,' said Timothy, ‘and he knows a lot of very interesting songs.'

‘He has a charming voice,' said Miss Dildery. ‘I could listen to him for ever.—But please sit down and make yourself at home. Nowadays I live so retired and solitary a life that I have almost forgotten my manners, it seems. I have very few visitors, very few indeed. I am a very lonely person.'

Miss Dildery sighed, and blinked her enormous eyes, and then, as though she had just seen him, said, ‘How do you do?' to the Crab in a rather cold and distant voice.

‘I came to see you,' said Timothy, ‘because Cully is a great friend of ours—of me and my brother, I mean—and he once spoke to us about you––'

‘The dear fellow!' cried Miss Dildery. ‘So he has not quite forgotten me?'

‘And because you are a friend of his I thought you might help us,' said Timothy.

‘But of course!' said Miss Dildery. ‘I shall be only too delighted. You must consider this little house of mine as yours. Come here whenever you like. I shall always be pleased to see you.'

A sound of whispering, giggling, and sniggering from the inner part of the cave attracted their attention, and Timothy was surprised to see a whole family of little octopuses who seemed to be very much amused by his appearance, and were pushing each other, and pointing at him, like a lot of very badly behaved children. Miss Dildery was extremely displeased, and called sharply for the old Cod who was her maid.

‘Take the children back to their nursery at once, Matilda,' she said, ‘and keep them there! I have told you before that when I have visitors the children are to remain in their nursery unless I send for them!'

‘I've got too much to do in this house,' said Matilda the Cod. ‘What with sweeping and dusting and washing and cooking, I'm swum off my fins, I am, and how I'm to look after a whole pack of children as well I don't know, and I shouldn't be expected to.'

‘Let us have no argument,' said Miss Dildery severely, ‘but do as I tell you. Go with Matilda, children, and play quietly and try to be good little
octopuses for my sake.—They're my poor sister's children,' she explained. ‘She's a delicate creature and quite incapable of looking after them, and out of the kindness of my heart I offered to adopt them. But they're a great worry to me, a great worry indeed, especially as I have no one in the house to help me but poor old Matilda. I had to discharge my butler some time ago. He had very bad habits, poor fellow, but I miss him sorely—my father always kept a butler—and I am looking for another. It's so hard to find a good servant nowadays, isn't it?—But there, I mustn't bore you with family matters, must I? We all have our troubles, and really they are of no interest to anyone but ourselves. Do tell me what are your impressions of life under the sea?'

‘Well,' said Timothy, ‘the only impression I've got at the moment is that I must rescue my brother from the pirates.' And he told her, as briefly as he could, about his own misfortune and the capture of Hew by Dan Scumbril.

Miss Dildery listened very politely and agreed that the pirates were a most unpleasant lot of men and a danger to all respectable creatures in the sea. ‘But what,' she asked, ‘can I do to help you?'

‘I've thought of a plan to rescue Hew,' said Timothy, ‘but it depends on you. You can squirt ink, can't you? Well, I want you to come to the shell and fill it with ink, and when everything is dark inside I'll go in and fetch him out.'

To Timothy's great amazement Miss Dildery gave a little scream, closed her eyes, and blushed a deep coral pink. The Crab, coughing once or twice in an embarrassed manner, walked to the entrance of the cave and pretended to take no further interest in their conversation. Timothy could not understand how he had offended Miss Dildery, for he knew that octopuses were able to conceal themselves from their enemies by emitting a stream of inky fluid, and he thought it an extremely clever thing to do. Why Miss Dildery should be displeased by his referring to it he did not know, and he did not much care. All he was interested in was the rescue of his brother, and he described Hew's plight in such a moving way that presently Miss Dildery opened her eyes, and two small tears escaped from them, and ran down her carefully powdered beak. Then Timothy told her that they were on their way to Davy Jones's court to get help for Gunner Boles and Cully, his assistant; who were in great danger, he said. Gunner Boles and Cully were waiting very anxiously and impatiently for their return, he declared.

‘Is Cullifer in danger?' asked Miss Dildery.

‘Of course he is,' said Timothy. ‘And if you help us you'll be helping him too.'

‘Oh dear,' said Miss Dildery. ‘I wish I could. I can't bear to think of dear Cullifer in danger.'

‘Then come to the shell,' said Timothy, ‘and do what I'm asking you to do.'

‘But what a thing to ask a
lady
to do!' cried

Miss Dildery in great distress. ‘To go alone among all those dreadful pirates, and then to—well, to call attention to myself by—by discharging some ink at them—oh, I couldn't do it!'

‘I'm sure Cully would,' said Timothy.

‘But he has always lived a daring life! He's been everywhere, he knows the world, he's quite an adventurer! I'm not like that at all. I am one of the shyest of creatures.'

‘When he spoke to us about you,' said Timothy, ‘he seemed to be very fond of you.'

Miss Dildery breathed deeply, and blushed again. She was so large—almost as big as Cully—that she blushed in many different colours in many different places: here the pink of a wild rose, there salmon-pink, then red as sealing-wax. And the shades of colour would alter and flow from one limb to another, now flushing darkly, now paling to the softest hues. It was fascinating to watch her, but Timothy wished she would make up her mind.

‘There's my brother,' he said, ‘there's Gunner Boles who is Cully's great friend, and there's Cully himself: all their lives may depend on you.'

Miss Dildery grew paler and paler till she looked like mother-of-pearl, and for more than a minute she said nothing at all. Then she opened her great eyes and gazed very solemnly at Timothy, and said, ‘I will be brave! I will do what you ask me. Lead me to the pirates' den!'