The Pirates in the Deep Green Sea (21 page)

A couple of miles away, among little hillocks and ocean woods of tall weed, they made camp for
the night, and Timothy and Hew went for a walk together while William and Henry were attending to the sharks. Hew said that Timothy had been very clever to rescue him from Inky Poops, and Timothy said that he had enjoyed doing it.

‘Well, thank you very much,' said Hew.

‘Did Dan Scumbril treat you badly?'

‘Not very. He pulled my ears, and then I had a fight with a Cabin Boy.'

‘Did you win?'

‘Yes. He gave up.'

‘That was good. Sam Sturgeon will be very pleased when you tell him that.'

Then they walked back and had supper with the two Powder Monkeys, and Hew told them a little more about his fight with Foxy.

‘And I heard something very important from Dan Scumbril, while I was pretending to be dumb,' he said. ‘He's going north, to take the northern parallels, and the first place he's making for is
our
wreck in North Bay. He's going to make it his forward headquarters.'

‘I heard that too,' said Timothy. ‘And it means that Gunner Boles, and Cully, and Sam too, I suppose, are in the most dangerous place of all.'

‘Davy Jones will have to send them help as quickly as he can.'

‘I'm not sure that he'll be able to. Inky Poops said that he had only a few men with him. Two or three score, I think.'

‘Don't you worry about that,' said William
Button. ‘Davy Jones'll think of something all right. Davy Jones didn't get to the position he's in to-day without having brains in his head, and knowing how to use them too.'

‘Who
is
Davy Jones?' asked Hew.

‘He's the head man down here,' said Henry String.

‘Yes, I know. But who is he?'

There's some will tell you one thing, and some another,' said William Button, ‘but there's one thing they're all agreed about, and that is that
Davy Jones
isn't his proper name. He just made it up, so as to keep his own name a secret.'

‘And another thing is that he's been down here for a long time,' said Henry String, ‘and for his first hundred years or so he had a very bad reputation. But then he settled down, and got respectable.'

‘How long has he been here?' asked Timothy.

‘Nearly four hundred years,' said William Button. ‘At least that's what they say. They say he was in the
Golden Hind
with Sir Francis Drake, when Drake went round the world. And he still talks in an old-fashioned way, so it may be true.'

‘I've got an old-fashioned idea of going to bed,' said Henry String, yawning widely; and they all agreed that his idea was a good one, and lay down side by side in a patch of soft sand.

Timothy was half asleep when he woke again with a sudden thought, and pulling William
Button's nearer arm, asked him, ‘Is Drake himself down here?'

‘No,' he answered, ‘he isn't here. None of the admirals are down here.'

‘What happened to them? Where did they go?'

‘No one ever told me,' mumbled William, and when Timothy shook his arm again, he only snored.

Davy Jones's summer court was a great cavern, the entrance to which lay under a broad and massive arch of roughly shining stone that glimmered in the green sea like a rainbow of the moon. In front of it the ground had been levelled for nearly a mile, and here and there, like tall beeches in a deer-park, grew stately ocean-trees. Behind the cavern were stables for a hundred finback-whales to mount his sailors, and beyond the stables were great byres that housed two hundred milk-whales—and now, early in the morning, forty mermaids sitting on whalebone-stools were milking them into silver-gleaming nautilus-shells. For every morning, before breakfast, Davy Jones would drink a quart of whale's milk into which half a pint of the best Jamaica rum had been carefully stirred, and the milk had to be fresh. Most of his sailors began the day in the same manner, so a great deal of milk was required, and the milkmaids had to get up early.

But this morning—when Timothy and Hew and the two Powder Monkeys were swimming fast towards his court through the last thirty-five leagues of their voyage—this morning was no
ordinary morning, as anyone could see for himself who happened to walk into the great hall of the cavern. For some eighteen or twenty mermaids were busily decorating its high stone walls with wreaths and sprays of seaweed, and branches of pink coral, and bright shells. At the back of the hall, on a dais, was Davy Jones's throne, which consisted of a huge plank of wood resting on two enormous barrels of rum. But though it was plain and homely to look at, it was in reality a most extraordinary and valuable throne; for the huge plank of wood was the original gangway of Noah's
Ark, on which all the animals of the world had walked into the Ark before the Flood, and out of it again when the Ark grounded on Mount Ararat. And to make it more comfortable for Davy Jones to sit on, there was a fat cushion in the middle of it, stuffed with mermaids' hair.

Above the throne two mermaids had arranged some branches of coral in the handsomest style, and now, below the coral, they were hanging a long broad ribbon of pale blue on which, in darker letters, was written:

And in smaller letters below the motto—for the benefit of sailors who had forgotten their Latin—was the English translation:
Let Eton flourish.

The two mermaids had just succeeded in hanging it to their liking, when into the hall came Davy Jones himself, and seeing the banner so prettily displayed he exclaimed in a rich rolling voice: ‘'Tis a rare device, is it not? And my old schoolmaster, Master Nicholas Udall, would rejoice to see it in this deep cavern of the sea, could he but come to visit us. But he's in a worse place, I fear, as many schoolmasters are, and their pupils also. It grieves me that in our celebrations to-day—this notable day, the Fourth of June—there will be none with whom I can sit and talk familiarly of schooldays and our youth. For I, my dainty maids, am the sole and solitary Old Etonian in all the ocean depths!'

The mermaids, who had all stopped work and begun to smile and curtsey when Davy Jones came in, made little cooing, soothing noises of sympathy; and after a moment or two of silent thought he spoke more cheerfully. ‘Let us not give way to melancholy,' he said. ‘A merry man lives as long as a sorry man, and a merry maid should live for ever. Let no wrinkle score your pretty brows to-day. No sighs, no pouting, no sad thoughts upon the Fourth of June! All must be gaiety and pride and gladness. I prithee, sweeting, fetch me my morning draught, a little rum and milk for my stomach's sake.'

The nearest mermaid curtsied deeply and swam to the dairy, while Davy Jones walked round his spacious hall to inspect the decorations, and out into the park where tables had been set up, and were being laid for a feast.

He was a man of huge girth and splendid appearance, and though, like the other sailors under the sea, he wore only a kind of bathing suit and a long blue cloak that hung from his shoulders, his air of majesty was undeniable. His forehead was broad and his fat cheeks shone like rubies. He had the brightest of blue eyes, and his hair, that grew thickly still, and his short beard were as white and curly as new-washed wool. His chest was as broad as a door, and his legs and thickly muscled arms looked as strong as oak trees.

He was not a young man, but age had not weakened him; and when he took from the
mermaid whom he had sent for his morning draught a nautilus-shell brim-full of rum and milk, and drank it thirstily, it was fairly obvious that his appetite was as good as ever it had been.

There were many stories told about him in the sea, but William Button had spoken the truth when he said that no one knew for a certainty what his real name was. He had been living on the bottom of the sea for a very long time, and it was known that he had been a sailor for many years before that. It was thought, by those who knew him best, that he had got into trouble when no more than a boy, and run away to sea. He was, he had told his friends, a man of middle age or rather more when he sailed with Drake in the
Golden Hind,
and his last voyage had been with Drake again, on Drake's last voyage, to the West Indies. But no one knew much more than that, however much they might guess. It was generally believed, for example, that he had gone to school at Eton, for he often spoke of his old schoolmaster and every year on the school Speech Day, the Fourth of June, he held a great celebration. But there were some who said that his schooldays had been very short, and that he had been expelled from Eton almost as soon as he went there.

He was still walking in the park when Timothy and Hew, and William Button and Henry String, came swimming down from the sea above. While the others remained beside a great tree on the fringe of the park, William Button approached him
and saluted very smartly. There were two boys from the dry part of the world who had come to see him, he said, and they had news of great importance.

‘They are most welcome,' said Davy Jones, ‘and since they have come so far, there shall be no ceremony to delay their tidings. Bid them come hither, and I'll hear their story while we walk among the trees.'

Timothy and Hew were somewhat nervous at the prospect of meeting Davy Jones face to face, but he received them very graciously, and invited them to walk with him. Then, pacing slowly in the park, they told their story and gave him Gunner Boles's message, and described all that happened to them, and all they had heard while they were in the company of Dan Scumbril and Inky Poops.

Davy Jones listened attentively, and asked shrewd questions. Sometimes he frowned and looked marvellously grim, and sometimes—had it not been for his questions—it almost seemed that his thoughts were far away and set on mild and pleasant things. But when he heard that Inky Poops, believing he had no more than three-score men to defend his court, was even now advancing to attack him, Davy Jones began to laugh. His great sides shook, his ruby cheeks were creased with laughter, and so ripe and jolly was the din he raised that Timothy and Hew were reminded of harvest-time and apples in October and April storms and Christmas pudding. But after he had
laughed for several minutes he grew serious again, and said, ‘I needs must call a council, and make due preparation. Come within, and while we talk you'll sit beside me on a right royal throne, a very sailor's throne.'

He shouted to a passing seaman, told him to summon his chamberlain, and led the boys into the cavern.

The chamberlain came—a stout, brown-bearded man—and Davy Jones asked him to be so kind as to order at once a meeting of the Privy Council. Then, pointing to his throne, he asked the boys if they liked the look of it.

‘It's not the usual sort of throne, is it?' said Timothy.

‘There was a day,' said Davy Jones, ‘when it carried the whole breathing world. Those claw-marks there the Lion scratched, who roared and said there was no need to run away. The Giraffe, stamping in pride, left there the drawing of his hoof. That splintered edge is the writing of an angry Crocodile. And there in the paint—for the paint was still wet when they went aboard—you can see the little footprint of the Dove. Now tell me whose plank it was in the beginning.'

‘I'm afraid I'm not very good at riddles,' said Hew, and Timothy looked as if he would like to guess but dared not.

‘'Twas Noah's gangway when he went into the Ark,' said Davy Jones, ‘and there's the proof of it—that crack in the wood—if you disbelieve me.

That crack was where old Mother Noah slipped and fell, for she was the heaviest burden of them all.'

Before they could decide whether this was a joke or not, twelve Councillors arrived, and Davy Jones took his seat on the cushion of mermaids' hair, and made the boys sit on either side of him.

They were very much impressed by the Councillors, who were all dignified and hardy-looking men: some of them handsome, and some not, some bearded and some clean-shaven. One of them—a thick-set man whose arms were tattooed from shoulder to wrist—wore his hair in a short pigtail.

Davy Jones told them all he had learnt of what was happening, and some of them growled like angry bears when they heard of the pirates' rebellion; but Davy Jones himself spoke calmly enough until he came to the end of his story, and then, when he told them that Inky Poops was even now on the way to attack them—because he expected to find no more than two or three score sailors at court—why, Davy Jones began to laugh again, and to the great surprise of Timothy and Hew, the Councillors laughed as heartily as he, ho-ho-ing and bellowing as if they had heard the greatest joke imaginable.

‘O joyful day!' said Davy Jones at last. ‘And the lesson for the day is that a merry man lives as long as a sorry man, as Nicholas Udall my old schoolmaster used to say when he flogged us; for
he would laugh while we wept. And another lesson is that men are the better of a little education; for if Inky Poops had ever been to school himself, he would know better than to attack us on the Fourth of June, when six hundred of the tallest sailors in the sea are here on parade for the honour of Eton College!'

‘'Twill be as good a party as we have ever had,' said one of the Councillors. ‘We shall know what games to play.'

‘Kiss-in-the-ring!' cried another. ‘With Inky Poops as the fair maiden, and all striving to embrace him!'

‘We keep the sailors waiting,' said a third more gravely. ‘They are ready to march past. I have but newly left them.'

‘Then let them march,' said Davy Jones, ‘and have their dinner too. And when they have fed, for better digestion they can fight! But we, at dinner-time, must think of strategy. There's Scum-bril in the north, and we must plan our expedition. But come! The march, and then the feast. We've time for both, and I'll not spoil the Fourth of June for twenty Inky Poops!'