Peter and the Sword of Mercy (30 page)

She didn’t dare shout out; that would only draw the guards.

She looked around the cell and found a rock. When she was a girl, her father had taught her, among many other specialized skills, Morse code. She’d complained that it was boring, but he had insisted. “You never know when something like that could be useful,” he said.

Molly closed her eyes and searched her memory, recalling the dots and dashes that represented letters.

She raised the rock to the cell bars and began tapping.

h-e-l-l-o…

A B
IG
P
UFF

C
HEEKY
O’N
EAL WORKED THE OARS
, keeping the lifeboat steady as it rode a wave onto Mollusk Island. As the wave broke and surged onto the moonlit beach, McPherson, DeWulf, and Kelly jumped out and heaved, skidding the lifeboat up onto the sand. With O’Neal’s help they quickly hauled the boat into the jungle and covered it with palm fronds. DeWulf returned to the beach and swept the sand smooth, eliminating any trace of their arrival.

They were thirsty, hungry, and tired, but O’Neal would not let them rest. He grabbed some low-hanging bananas from a tree at the edge of the jungle and tossed a few to each man.

“We’ll eat on the move,” he said.

He plunged straight into the thick, nearly pitch-black jungle, hoping to run across a path. The going was difficult; they had to fight for each step through the dense tangle of branches, leaves, and vines. Finally, after an exhausting hour, they reached a moonlit footpath. DeWulf sprawled on the ground, panting.

“Get up,” growled O’Neal.

“I need a rest,” said DeWulf.

“There’s no time,” said O’Neal.

“Why not?” McPherson said defiantly, as he and Kelly dropped to the path next to DeWulf. O’Neal glared down at the three mutinous men.

“I’ll tell you why not,” he growled. “The ship was expecting the signal yesterday at sunset, and we weren’t here to give it. They’ll think we’re captured or dead. Maybe they’ll turn transom and leave us here. Or maybe they’ll come looking for the starstuff themselves. Either way, it’s trouble. If they leave, we’re stuck here, and sooner or later the natives will find us, and this time they’ll kill us for sure. Or if the ship sends men for the starstuff, not knowing the island, they’ll be spotted, and there will be a fight. And I for one would not want to fight these natives on their island.”

O’Neal stepped forward, leaning over the three.

“So those are the choices,” he said. “We keep moving and send the signal. Or we die.”

Grumbling, the three men rose to their feet.

“How do we know they’ll see the signal?” said Kelly.

“We make sure it’s a big one,” said O’Neal.

“A big puff,” said Kelly.

“A very big puff,” said O’Neal.

G
OOD
N
EWS
AND
B
AD

A
T DAWN, A STEWARD ABOARD
the
Lucy
found Peter and Wendy dozing fitfully on deck chairs. Although they were both tired from their ordeal on the pirate ship, and, in Peter’s case, from flying them across to the steamer, the chilly sea air had prevented them from getting much sleep.

Peter had nearly overshot the ship, and had been forced to descend too fast. They’d landed clumsily, pitching forward and sprawling onto the deck. Tink had found this highly amusing; Peter and Wendy had not. After determining that neither of them had been badly hurt, they’d decided to simply stay where they were and wait to be discovered.

When the steward approached, Peter quickly tucked a complaining Tinker Bell into his shirt. He and Wendy made no effort to run away as there was nowhere to go. The steward, realizing that the two disheveled children were not paying passengers, took them to Captain Hart’s cabin. The captain was unhappy to be awakened so early, and much more unhappy to learn he had two stowaways aboard. When he saw Peter and Wendy, he frowned, suddenly remembering the drunken passenger who’d claimed to see a pink-sailed ship, and two children flying over the
Lucy.

Could it possibly be?

He shook his head.
Nonsense.
The passenger had been seeing things; children did not fly. But then how
had
these two gotten aboard, and where had they been hiding?

For the next half-hour, an increasingly frustrated Captain Hart tried to get information from Peter and Wendy—
any
information. But they told him nothing, not even their names, having agreed to reveal as little as possible for fear word of their mission would somehow reach the Others.

Finally, Captain Hart gave up. He summoned two large crewmen and ordered that the children be locked up in the brig.

“You’ll stay there until we get to London,” he said. “After that, the police can deal with the both of you.”

Peter and Wendy exchanged looks. The captain had given them good news and bad. The ship would take them to London; that was a lucky break, indeed. But they could not allow themselves to fall into the hands of the police.

As the crewmen herded them belowdecks, Wendy leaned closer to Peter and whispered, “We can’t trust the police. …”

“I know,” whispered Peter, glancing at the crewmen. “We’ll have to escape.”

“How?”

“Don’t worry,” said Peter.

Wendy looked doubtful. Peter didn’t blame her. From inside his shirt came the soft sound of muffled bells.

You can just fly away, you know,
said Tink.

“What did she say?” whispered Wendy.

“She said we’ll think of something,” answered Peter.

T
HE
S
IGNAL

“H
URRY!” BELLOWED CHEEKY
O’N
EAL
. “We’re running out of time!”

He and his men had spent the past few hours dragging jungle vegetation up to a lava pool near the top of the massive volcano that formed the center of Mollusk Island. Above them was the rim of the volcano’s crater, a smoldering cauldron nearly a quarter-mile across. This morning the crater was belching steam. O’Neal hadn’t seen it do that before. It gave him an uneasy feeling.

Below them was the jungle. It was shrouded in the dense morning fog that covered most of the island. But dawn had started to redden the horizon. In minutes the sun’s glare would fill the sky; it would quickly burn off the fog.

O’Neal needed to send the signal soon, because when the fog cleared, the Mollusks would see the smoke from their village far below. O’Neal looked out at the vast dark sea, praying that the ship was still close enough to spot the signal when the sun came up. This was the only hope that he and the other three had of completing their mission and getting off this island alive.

McPherson, DeWulf, and Kelly, exhausted from climbing and working all night, were now throwing vegetation into the lava pool to create the signal. Their efforts did not satisfy O’Neal.

“Faster!” he shouted. He stomped over to the vegetation pile, grabbed a bunch of palm fronds in his huge hands and threw them into the lava pool. A thick cloud of smoke billowed upward.

“I want to see more smoke like that,” O’Neal said, “or I’ll throw
you
into that hole.”

McPherson, Kelly, and DeWulf, tired as they were, jumped to it. They had seen O’Neal do some scary things when he got mad. One time he’d pulled out most of a man’s hair by the roots. He’d reached into another man’s mouth and yanked out a gold tooth. They figured he was perfectly capable of using their bodies as fuel for smoke signals.

The three heaved palm fronds and chunks of jungle wood onto the pool. Soon a thick column of smoke rose into the sky, now turning a bright blue. O’Neal grabbed a cluster of huge palm fronds and waved them through the column, interrupting it. He stopped, then waved the fronds again, repeating this process over and over. The result was a broken line of smoke rising ever higher, like dark thread stitched in blue fabric.

Suddenly the ground shuddered. O’Neal staggered and almost fell into the lava. The main crater blew a huge blast of steam. The men looked up and saw molten rock coursing down the hill like honey down the side of a jar, a thick finger of death pointing right at them.

“Run for it!” said McPherson.

“NO!” shouted O’Neal. He needed the signal a little longer and higher, high enough to clear the top of the mountain, long enough to be seen from any side of the island, for he had no idea where the ship was.

For a second, the other three looked as if they might run. But the fire in O’Neal’s eyes was hotter than anything the lava could produce. The three men frantically threw the rest of the jungle plants into the lava as O’Neal used the big fronds to break the smoke into dashes. Up, up it rose.

“All right,” O’Neal shouted. “Go!”

The four men started down the slope, into the jungle, half-running, half-sliding down a steep ravine. But the thick jungle slowed them down, and the lava was gaining. They felt its heat behind them.

“We’ll never outrun it!” Kelly shouted.

O’Neal glanced back and saw McPherson was right; the glowing wall of lava was gaining on them, igniting the jungle as it went, causing trees to explode in flames. O’Neal looked around frantically. A few yards below he spotted a thick moss-covered log, the remains of what had once been a huge jungle tree. He stumbled down to it, and, using his massive strength, spun it so it was pointing down the steep ravine.

“Come on!” he shouted to the other three. They stared at him, not understanding.

“GET ON THE LOG, you imbeciles!”

McPherson, Kelly, and DeWulf clambered onto the log, their legs straddling it. The hissing, roaring wall of lava was right behind them.

“Hold on!” shouted O’Neal. He put his shoulder to the back of the log and lunged forward with all his strength. The log started sliding down the ravine, quickly picking up speed. As it shot ahead, O’Neal managed to dive forward and wrap his arms around the trunk, hanging on for his life; in front of him, Kelly, McPherson, and DeWulf were doing the same. The men screamed as the big log bucked and bounced, crashing through the thick jungle vegetation like a runaway buffalo. After a steep, terrifying, thirty-second drop, the men felt a violent jolt as the log hit a rock, flipping up on its end and catapulting them forward. They landed, sprawling, in a clearing—somehow still alive, somehow not badly hurt. From above them they could hear the lava still coming, but they had enough of a head start now to outrun it.