Adventures (16 page)

“Shoal ahead, sir!” cried Luthor.

Ishmael stood at the wheel, which had about a dozen arrows embedded in it, and steered.

“Shoal to starborad, sir!” cried Luthor.

Ishmael ducked a spear and two more arrows and kept steering. Suddenly there was a terrible crunching sound.

“Shoal beneath, sir!” said Luthor.

“I don't suppose we're prepared to repel boarders?” I asked as Ishmael tried to steer the ship and found out that the wheel wouldn't move.

“We're mostly a pleasure ship, sir,” he said sadly.

“Maybe if we threw some beads at them, or offered them the belly dancer...”

“Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!” I bellowed, mostly because beads hadn't accomplished all that much good with the last few tribes I had encountered, and I had other plans in mind for the belly dancer.

“Oh, very well said, sir!” cried Ishmael. “Words to die for!”

“Who said anything about dying?” I replied. “Have we at least got a flare gun aboard, so we can see them better?”

He walked to a nearby cabinet and pulled one out. I took it from him and fired it, illuminating the sky with red-gold streaks of light. Suddenly all the savages started screaming in terror, and a minute later they were prostrating themselves in their boats, a difficult feat of balance even if there hadn't been a couple hundred crocodiles in the water.

“I think the flares have convinced them we're some kind of gods, sir,” said Ishmael.

“
We
?” I repeated. “I don't recollect anyone else firing the flares.”

“I think the flares have convinced them that you're some kind of god, sir,” amended Ishmael.

“I think you may have something there,” I said. “Why don't you and Luthor figure out how to get us off this damned shoal while they're busy worshiping me?”

He and Luthor hopped to it, and after about an hour of rocking and lurching, I heard another crunch and suddenly we were moving through the water again. The cheer let out by the crew and passengers was drowned out by the cheer from the savages, who began paddling along in our wake. They were still following us when we hit the ocean and turned left. From time to time one of them would spear a fish and throw it onto our deck as a small tribute, but for the most part they were content to worship me from afar.

The hunting party hadn't managed to bring back any fresh meat. In fact, their first shot had winged one of the natives and precipitated the whole affair of the previous evening. It didn't matter much anyhow; they were so bitten up by bugs that they probably wouldn't have had much stomach for good red meat any time before we hit the Cape.

I posted a new Ship's Regulation to the effect that sunbathing was now allowed only on the captain's private deck. Unfortunately, the belly dancer decided that she was tan enough, and I kept stumbling over the two East Indians every time I went into and out of my cabin until I rescinded the order a couple of days later.

We had no more serious problems until we were almost south of Portuguese West Africa, at which point our Korean dermatologist borrowed one of the rifles, lashed himself to the wheel, and explained that while he had nothing against us personally, we nonetheless had to turn the ship around before we sailed over the edge of the world.

I signaled Luthor and Ishmael to leave me alone on the bridge with him, and the two of us got to talking about one thing and another, and had a friendly little drink to pass the time of day, and I finally convinced him that the edge of the world was somewhere around Brussels, and actually we were going uphill and toward safety. He was one very happy Korean for the rest of the trip, and hardly bothered anyone at all, except for our drunken writer, who was convinced that the edge of the world was more in the neighborhood of Lincoln, Nebraska.

One day, when we had gotten to within a couple of hundred miles of the Cape, the savages who were still behind us and still tossing us an occasional fish or eel began screaming at the tops of their lungs.

“What's the problem now?” I said, coming out of my cabin, where I had been thinking of ways to convince the belly dancer that her tan was fading.

“Whales off the starboard bow, sir,” said Luthor.

I looked, and sure enough, there were about twenty of the beasts making toward the ship, flopping and splashing and spraying up huge geysers of water from the tops of their noses, and otherwise looking very ominous.

“Does this kind of thing happen very often, Mr. Christian?” I asked him, looking about for the nearest life preserver.

“Well, that all depends, Captain Jones, sir,” he said.

“On what?” I asked.

“On whether we're in port or not, sir,” he replied.

“We're on the high seas!” I pointed out to him.

“Well, that does make it more likely, sir,” he agreed.

“What do you do when they attack the ship?” I asked.

“Personally, I close my eyes very tightly and pray that they'll go away,” said Luthor with obvious sincerity.

“I suppose rifle bullets would just enrage them?” I asked.

“I really have no idea,” said Luthor. “You can certainly try rifle bullets if you wish. Personally, I think I'm going to go below and grab a little nap.” He raced off before I could order him to remain on duty.

The whales got to within two hundred yards, and our faithful natives suddenly unconverted and headed back toward the mouth of the Congo River, some two thousand miles north of us. The whales ignored them and drew even closer.

“They look hungry,” said Ishmael, who had suddenly appeared at my side.

“You ever seen a whale that didn't?” I asked out of curiosity.

“Once,” he admitted. “Of course, it was dead.”

“Of course,” I said. One of the whales got to within about twenty yards and I threw a sextant at it. It bounced off its nose without causing any injury that I could see.

“Do whales eat people?” I asked.

“I imagine whales eat pretty much what they want to,” said Ishmael, drawing closer as if for comfort.

“I mean, maybe they'll go away and leave us alone,” I said hopefully.

“Maybe,” he said doubtfully.

“And maybe,” I said, struck by a sudden flash of inspiration, “they're just here to beg at the table.”

“What are you talking about, Captain Jones?” said Ishmael.

“Go down to the kitchen and bring up some of our tuna,” I said urgently. “Maybe if we give ’em some scraps they'll leave us alone.”

He shrugged, raced down to the kitchen, and came up with a couple of kegs of tuna, one under each arm. We waited until two of the whales were so close we could have reached out and touched them, then threw the tuna into their gaping mouths.

Then we stood back to see if we had guessed right—and the strangest thing happened. Their eyes went wide and began watering, one of them started coughing and heaving, and the other just rolled right on its back, belly-up, which certainly agreed with my own assessment of the tuna in the first place.

The other whales took one look at their companions, then left as soon as Ishmael got some more tuna and began throwing it at them.

Not too much happened after that, at least so far as whales and savages were concerned. Ishmael told me that the Slavs were getting ready to take over the ship if we didn't start feeding them meat, but I figured that we were only a few days out of port and there wasn't much sense stopping to find a source of meat this close to the end of our little voyage.

Then, when we were just one day out of Cape Horn, the belly dancer approached me and asked if, in my dual capacity as captain of
The Dying Quail
and a man of the cloth, I could perform marriages onboard the ship.

There was a little confusion just then, since I began explaining that I could consummate marriages with the best of them, but we finally got things straightened out, and that evening after dinner I pronounced her and the actor man and wife, the sentences to run concurrently.

“That was very well done, sir,” said Luthor, stopping by my table after the ceremony.

“Oh, indeed it was, sir,” agreed Ishmael, joining him.

“Well, thank you very much, brothers,” I said. “Always happy to oblige young love in bloom.”

“We were rather hoping you'd feel that way about it, sir,” said Luthor.

“I'm not sure I follow you,” I said.

“You may not have noticed it, sir,” said Ishmael, “but young love has been blooming all over the whole ruddy boat.”

“Another marriage?” I said. “Bring ’em up here in front of me and I'll have ’em hitched in no time.”

“Well, this one is a bit irregular,” said Ishmael, leaning over and whispering in my ear.

I agreed as how it was a mite out of the ordinary, but once we got to haggling in earnest I found that fifty pounds was more than enough to assuage my conscience and eliminate any hint of irregularity, and an hour after the first ceremony, I married the three German girls to Ishmael, Luthor, and three of their shipmates.

The man on watch called out that Cape Horn was within sight, and yet another couple decided that if they were ever going to get married, they would probably find less social opposition here than elsewhere. Fifty more pounds changed hands, and a few moments later I joined Kim Li Sang, the Korean dermatologist, to Eduardo Duarte, the Paraguayan writer.

I made sure that there were no more weddings in the near offing, then called Ishmael and Luthor up from their rather crowded bridal bower. Luthor had a black eye, and Ishmael was missing a tooth.

“What the hell happened?” I asked.

“We had our first lovers’ tiff,” said Ishmael, spitting a little blood over the railing.

“You ought to see the other six!” added Luthor.

“Later, perhaps,” I said. “I've called you here for something a little more important.”

“And what might that be, sir?” asked Luthor.

“Do the Slavs still want to take over the ship?”

“Indeed they do, sir,” said Ishmael.

“Good,” I said. “Why don't you give me just enough time to move my gear out of Captain Roberts's quarters, and then tell them the ship is all theirs.”

When the ship docked the next morning, there was a welcoming committee waiting for us, led by Captain Roberts himself. Evidently he had been fished out of the ocean by a passing cargo ship, which, not bothering to explore the Congo River and its environs, had beaten us to the Cape by almost a full day.

The Slavs, who by this time had moved lock, stock, and barrel into the captain's quarters, were jailed as mutineers pending the outcome of an admiralty inquiry, while Ishmael Bledsoe and Luthor Christian were given citations of commendation for getting
The Dying Quail
into port only a day late, and were exonerated of all wrongdoing not directly connected with their wedding. The last I saw of them, they were sneaking off to parts unknown with the rest of their newly-made little family just as a Slavic translator arrived on the scene.

As for me, I had one hundred crisp British pounds in my pocket, and having had my fill of the sea, I set off once again in search of the fortune that would finally result in the building of the Tabernacle of Saint Luke.

Chapter 8
AN AFFAIR OF THE HEART

Cape Town didn't appear all that promising a place for the ex-captain of
The Dying Quail
to settle down, especially once Captain Roberts figured out why he'd been tossed overboard and started looking for me with a gun, so I took my leave one fine morning at about two o'clock and headed on up the eastern coastline. My money held out just fine until I got to Durban, which had a mule track, horses being too expensive for that part of the country. I picked out a likely-looking one named Saint Andrew, placed my money down. and watched him go into the final turn leading by two lengths when a pride of lions raced out of the veldt and attacked the field.

The jockeys, most of whom were faster than their mounts anyway, jumped off and raced to safety, but none of the mules made it as far as the homestretch. The track, claiming that this was an act of God, refused to refund the bets, even though I, representing God, pointed out that what it mostly was was an act of lions. I could see we were likely to be arguing all day without solving anything, so I took the rest of my money and tried to put it all on a large black-maned lion who was just finishing off Saint Andrew. The track officials explained that it was against policy to make book on lions, and besides, they wouldn't give me more than three-to-five on the black-maned one.

We did some real quick haggling amongst ourselves and finally they laid nine-to-ten against my lion, with no place or show betting. As soon as I put up my money the lion got up, yawned, stretched, and ambled back into the bush.

“Off the course! Foul!” cried the steward. “Disqualified and placed last.”

“How come you didn't disqualify him for eating Saint Andrew?” I demanded.

“My dear sir,” said the steward in a patronizing voice, “he ran straight and true after Saint Andrew.”

“I'm afraid I don't follow you, brother,” I said.

“There is nothing in the rules about one participant eating another,” he continued. “But it clearly states that leaving the course is a foul.”

“Am I to understand, brother,” I said, “that you have no intention of refunding either of my bets?”

He nodded.

“Who's in charge here?” I demanded. “I want to see the owner.”

“The owner is Mrs. Emily Perrison,” said the steward, “but you won't find her here. She detests gambling.”

“Then why the hell does she own a racetrack?” I asked.

“For the same reason she owns almost everything else in this town: Her husband died and left it to her.”

“A widow, you say. Is she young?”

“Old enough to be your mother,” replied the steward. “And crazy as all get-out. Gives away most of her money to religious missions up north of here.”

“Where in particular?” I asked.

“Like I told you: up north.”

“The whole world's up north,” I pointed out.

“I don't know: Ethiopia, Chad, the Sudan. Somewhere up there.”

“How would I find this Mrs. Perrison?” I asked.

“I can't give out her address,” he said, “but if you'll just walk north and east you can't miss it.”