Hamish X Goes to Providence Rhode Island (6 page)

“I don't know any of you, but you know me. I have faced some of the most dangerous people in the world and I've managed to come out in one piece. We have strength in numbers. We can escape this place if we are brave and strong and work together. Are you ready to do that?”

“Yeah!” The children shouted as one, filling the gloomy cargo hold with their defiance.

“Good! Thomas?”

“What?” the boy asked.

“You will take a third of our force and head for the engine room. If we control the engines, we control the ship.”

Thomas nodded, his blue eyes blazing, as he immediately began counting off his squad.

“Mimi,” Hamish X began, turning to Maggie. Seeing her confusion, he caught himself. “I meant Maggie, sorry. Mimi's a friend of mine from … Never mind. Maggie, the rest of you will rush the bridge and subdue any crew member we run into on the way.”

“That's a great plan, but aren't you forgetting something?” Maggie asked.

“What would that be?”

“We are locked in the cargo hold,” she said. “Duh!” “It's nice to see you aren't in awe of me any more.”

Hamish X laughed.

“Well, what about the hatch?”

Hamish X smiled his fierce smile. “Leave it to me.” He turned and addressed the gathered children. “Are we all ready?”

Thomas nodded. Maggie nodded.

“Who wants to be free?” Hamish X shouted.

“Yaaaaaaaaaay!” was the thunderous reply.

Chapter 6

“There's that cheering again,” Monkey-Knees observed.

Up on the deck of the
Christmas Is Cancelled,
the night watch was underway. Long, dark, and lonely, the night watch was the most onerous of all duties, and none of the crew was very eager to do it. Slavers are nasty, mean, and cruel, but what few people know is that the majority of nasty, mean, cruel people are the way they are because they are afraid of the dark.
²⁸

The night watch fell to Rodney and Monkey-Knees,
²⁹
two sailors who were particularly fearful of the dark and so had hung a lantern from a pole. The lantern swung gently back and forth in sympathy with the motion of the sea. The men sat in the bright yellow glow of the lamp. Monkey-Knees had pulled up his trouser legs and was manipulating his knee muscles for the entertainment of Rodney, whiling away the final hour before dawn.

“They're probably playing tag or something,” Rodney said dismissively. “Kids are always playing stupid games.”

“We're supposed to be guarding them, though,” Monkey-Knees pointed out in a worried tone.

“Forget them! They can't get out! That hatch is solid oak reinforced with steel. They couldn't get out if they tried. Now,” Rodney said, giggling, “do another one.”

“Okay!” Monkey-Knees twitched his left kneecap.

“Oh, that's a cheeky one,” Rodney chortled, pointing a stubby, filthy finger at Monkey-Knees's left knee. “Does he want a banana?”

“Ook! Ook! Eeek!” Monkey-Knees tensed his left kneecap as though said monkey was responding to the question. Monkey-Knees had become a fair ventriloquist as well as a knee puppeteer. “Ook!”

Rodney guffawed and slapped his own knee.
³⁰

“Quiet out there!” a voice roared above the two sailors. Monkey-Knees leapt to his feet and banged his forehead on the lantern, sending it swinging in wild arcs and splashing light around the oily wooden deck. Rodney simply fell backwards off the oil drum he had been sitting on.

“You two stupids don't give me a minute of peace!” Down the steps from the nearby superstructure
³¹
the slaver Captain approached.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Each step he took was accompanied by the clash of his metal buttocks that gave him his name, or, rather, his nickname. (The Captain's real name was Georgiou Stroumboulopoulous. Even he had trouble spelling it, so he went by the simpler nickname.) The metal buttocks crashed together when he walked, making it almost impossible for him to sneak up on anyone. As a result, Captain Ironbuttocks was never invited to any surprise birthday parties, which contributed to his evil temperament: he loved birthday cake but rarely had the chance to eat any. The metal buttocks were also a safety hazard. When they crashed together, they tended to throw off showers of sparks that threatened to ignite flammable liquids, a real danger aboard ship. To avoid unfortunate conflagrations, Ironbuttocks's pants were lined with flame-retardant fabric (which was itchy in the extreme), further contributing to the Captain's ill temper. The ill
temper in question was now focused on the two sailors keeping watch over the cargo hatch.
³²

The Captain stalked down the metal steps from the superstructure. He was short, but he was solid. He wore a soiled undershirt that was stretched tight over a round paunchy belly, but his bare arms bulged with ropy sinew. On his head he wore a Greek fisherman's cap, stiff with grease. Down the length of his arms, tattoos writhed in concert with the movement of the muscles beneath the skin.

The tattoos were many and varied. There was a black panther clawing its way out of the Captain's right shoulder. Two snakes coiled down his arms. There was a Greek flag on his right forearm and an anchor on his left. On his right wrist he had a tattoo of an expensive watch. (Being a sailor, it didn't make sense to have a real watch because the salt water would ruin it. As a result, it was always ten past two in the Captain's world.) Last, and strangest of all, was the tattoo on his left shoulder: a little cat with big, sad eyes. Anyone who mentioned the cat was summarily executed.

“I try to get the sleeping and you are laughing! You two dumb-stupids keep me with eyes open!” The Captain stalked up to Rodney, who towered over him. “You!” he barked, poking Rodney in the stomach. “Bend over!” Rodney did as he was told. The Captain slapped him very hard across the face. “Stop laughing so much!”

“Ow,” said Rodney.

The Captain slapped him again. “Don't say ‘ow' to me.” Rodney bit his lip and said nothing, tears standing in his eyes. The Captain's hands were very rough and they smelled bad, too. “I don't want no trouble. I want you to keep eyes open! I deliver these children to Marrakesh and
then
you play the knee puppet games! Until then, you pay attention and don't make noises.” Rodney and Monkey-Knees nodded sheepishly and looked at the deck in front of them. Satisfied, the Captain nodded. With a hollow clanging, he set off up the steps and returned to his cabin.

When Monkey-Knees was sure the Captain was gone, he twitched his left knee and said, “Ook.”

Rodney punched him in the arm, stifling a laugh. “You're so bad.” He giggled as Monkey-Knees twitched his kneecap again. “Eek! Eek!”

Rodney collapsed into helpless, strangled giggles. They both started laughing softly, leaning on each other and trying desperately to bite the inside of their cheeks to avoid laughing out loud. They were so preoccupied with their own hilarious hijinks that they almost failed to notice the weird blue glow licking around the hatch-cover beneath their feet.

“Ha-ha-hey,” Rodney said, wiping his eyes. “Do you see that?”

“Wha-wah-what?” Monkey-Knees gasped.

“That!” Rodney's giggles were gone now. The entire hatch, a square of wood and metal held in place by four heavy latches, was leaking a strange luminescence.

Monkey-Knees was suddenly serious. “That's weird. Is it a fire?”

“I don't know, but it's getting brighter.”

Rodney was correct. The light was growing in intensity now, as though a train were approaching the hatch from below, its headlamp shining.

“Do we have a train in the cargo hold?” Monkey-Knees asked. Kind of a silly question, but what do you expect from a man who enjoys knee puppetry? Rodney was about to point out the unlikelihood of having a train in a boat, but he had only just opened his mouth when Hamish X smashed out of the hatch from below, his boots blazing.

Rodney and Monkey-Knees were flung aside in the impact, cartwheeling through the air and crashing heavily into the sea. Shards of the ruined hatch rocketed upwards as shrapnel from the explosion rattled off the metal bulkheads of the superstructure. The broad windows of the bridge shattered as the concussion wave struck them, raining bits of glass over the night watch inside.

Hamish X rose like a comet out of the cargo hold, a smear of blue power trailing after him into the black night. He arced through the air, suddenly and belatedly realizing that his trajectory would send him plunging into the sea. Thinking quickly, he grabbed hold of the communications mast on the top of the ship. The mast bent under his weight and then snapped back. Hamish X held on tightly, clinging to the metal pole like a fly. The mast thrummed like a plucked string but held. From his perch, he watched as Maggie and Thomas led a swarm of children up through the ruined hatch, boiling out onto the deck. There, the children searched about for weapons, picking up whatever they could find: sticks, weights, anchor chains, ropes, and gaffs.
³³

“Let's get to the engine room,” Thomas shouted, waving a wooden club. The swarm split in two, with a third of the shouting children setting off in the direction of the gangway to the lower decks. Maggie led the rest towards the bridge.

Clang! Clang! Clang!
“What going on here?” Captain Ironbuttocks stomped out onto the upper deck, casting his furious gaze down. As he swept his eyes across the deck of his vessel, he took in the crowd of mutinous children. “Well, well, well!” He glared, stopping the children in their tracks. “What is this we have here?”

“We're taking over the ship,” Maggie shouted, brandishing her stolen knife. “You might as well give up! We don't wanna hurt you, but we will if we have to!”

“Ooo! Is that right? You're taking over my ship! Well, whoop-e-dy, wheep-e-dy woo!” The Captain did an odd little prancing dance, waving his hands in the air before suddenly becoming deadly serious, his unshaven face set in a fierce scowl. “Well, I hate to be the disagreeing person, girlie, but I am disagreeing with you.” He spat a contemptuous loogie
³⁴
onto the deck. “Nah. I don't think so. This
is ending now. No one gets hurt if you go back to the cargo hold and behave yourselves!”

Maggie stopped at the foot of the steps and glared up at the Captain. “You like the cargo hold? I'm sure we can arrange for you and your crew to stay in there as long as you like. As for us, we aren't going back there. C'mon!” She signalled for the mob of children to follow her up the steps. She stopped dead when she saw the large black revolver that the Captain drew from his waistband. The gun was heavy and dark, full of menace, the long snout of its barrel trained on Maggie as she stood frozen, one foot poised on the lowest step. The knife in her hand wavered. One must remember, Maggie was really just a little girl, and although committed to taking over the ship, she was only a few weeks removed from building sandcastles on a beach in a Turkish holiday resort. Now she found herself in a bit of a dangerous spot, having mistakenly brought a knife to a gunfight.

The Captain laughed. “Not so sure of yourself now, eh? Captain Ironbuttocks, he seems to be the cat who got your tongue!”
³⁵

Maggie hesitated for a moment, but, feeling the crowd of children behind her waver, she dug deep and found a hidden well of courage in her heart. She waved her arm to the crowd behind her. “He can't shoot all of us.” She was
about to lead the charge forward up the steps when she heard the voice from above.

“That's hardly fair,” Hamish X said. The Captain looked up to see Hamish X sitting on the communications mast, dangling his big boots and smiling broadly.

“What you do up there?” the Captain roared. “You get down here.” He aimed the gun at Hamish X, who merely continued smiling.

“I'll come down when I'm good and ready, Captain,” Hamish X said. “Please, don't make this any harder than it has to be. Drop the gun and surrender quietly.”

“Or what?”

“Or I'll have to come down there and dent your bottom for you.”

“You dare to threaten my magnificent behind? You will pay for that!” The Captain raised his pistol and took aim at Hamish X. “I don't have time for your games.” He pulled the trigger and, with a ringing crack, fired at Hamish X.

Bullets move at extremely high speed. May you never find yourself in the path of a bullet because, truth be told, it is almost impossible for a human to duck out of the way of an oncoming projectile moving at such high velocity. The best policy is to avoid contact with human beings who employ firearms. If contact is unavoidable, the wise course of action is not to provoke the person with the firearm to discharge it in your direction. Don't say things like “Why don't you try to shoot me with that gun?” or “Hey, I bet you couldn't hit me with a bullet!” or “Yo, dumdum! Shoot me, why don't you?”

As I was saying, bullets move very swiftly and almost everyone in the world is slower than a bullet. Fortunately, Hamish X was blessed with reflexes that
allowed him the luxury of being rude to people with guns. The bullet ploughed into the mast exactly where he had been sitting only a fraction of a second before. The mast splintered and a sizable shard of it fell, forcing the Captain to dance aside to avoid being skewered. Hamish X launched himself into a somersault
³⁶
,
³⁷
that took him spinning out of harm's way to land easily on the deck behind the Captain. Within an instant of landing, Hamish X lashed out his left boot and connected with the Captain's right buttock with a resounding clang. The Captain staggered from the impact and crashed hard into the railing.

“Ow! Hey!” The Captain reached back and explored the buttock in question with his free hand. “You little stinker. You dented my beautiful bum!”