The Cannibals (12 page)

“Say it,” I told him.

“Blast you, Tom Tin,” said he. “I wish I'd never laid eyes on you. I wish—”

“Come on, Midge.” I pulled his arm. “Gaskin, let's go.”

“No!”
roared Mr. Mullock. “No. Don't go!”

Midgely held back. “Tom, we can't leave him,” he said. “Please let him down. The junglies will be here soon.”

“But, Midge…”

“Please, Tom,” he said, so I sighed and said I would.

The rope led up to the branches of a bending tree, then down a side of the trail. Many times it looped around a fallen log and ended in a massive, tangled knot. I called up to Mr. Mullock. “Throw down your axe, and I'll cut you loose.”

“Hah!” said he. “Not on your life.”

I could hardly believe he'd refuse me. “Well, suit yourself,” I said, turning away.

“Wait!” cried Mr. Mullock. “Untie the knot. Or tell that great clumper to break it.”

“Don't call me names,” said Boggis.

“Oh, never mind him, Gaskin,” I said. “We'll leave him where he is.”

Mr. Mullock swore. He struggled harder in the noose. He swung the axe wildly, trying to hack himself free, but only spun farther and faster. Then he cried out, and there was fear in his voice. “God almighty, something's coming.”

I heard it too. A plodding on the trail, a hissing in the jungle. A massive head appeared between the trees, and a terrible creature stared at us all. It looked like a huge hound made of leather, with lizard's eyes and a mouth full of jagged teeth. Its skin was gray and lumpy, its legs stout—too short—so that its barrel of a chest nearly rested on the ground. Its head swayed side to side; then out from its mouth shot a spurt of fire.

“A dragon!” shouted Gaskin Boggis.

Midgely held me tightly. “Is it true? Is it a dragon?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Holy jumping mother of Moses.”

It came lumbering closer, rolling as it walked. The ground hollowed beneath its huge, clawed feet.

Mr. Mullock called out from above us. “Here, Tom. Catch it!”

His axe came spinning down. It landed with a thud, its blunt end in the ground, the blade sticking up. At the flashing of light, the dragon's head turned. Another fiery flicker sparked from its mouth.

There was a grunt, or a cough, and behind it came a second
dragon, even larger. Like the first it had a long, thick tail, and from end to end it must have measured the height of two men.

I stepped forward for the axe. The heads of both the dragons turned toward me. They hissed; they spat their fire.

Again I moved. And they rushed me.

Their speed was terrifying. Their feet pounded; their long tails lashed in the bushes. In an instant they traveled four yards, then stopped just as suddenly. My heart racing, I stood absolutely still.

I thought one would pounce right then—pounce or roast me in its fiery breath. But both the dragons stood as still as I. Their skin was loose and scaly, their eyes set in bulging sockets on the sides of their heads. I could smell their fetid stench. The nearest hissed again; it blinked.

Above me, the rope creaked around Mr. Mullock's ankles, through the branches, and down its length. The axe and helmet lay at my feet.

“Don't move,” I said. “If we stay still they can't see us.”

The nearest dragon took one more plodding step. Its legs jutted like buttresses from its shoulders and hips, and I could see the flaps of skin wrinkle and shift. The tiny nostrils puckered. The lips cracked open, and the fire came out.

Then I saw that it wasn't fire at all. It was only a tongue I was seeing, a bright orange tongue that flickered like a snake's.

But Gaskin was farther away. And Gaskin saw fire. He shouted and screamed and turned on his heels. I heard him running down the trail, and the dragons thundered after him. They passed on either side of me, so close a thick tail of one
rasped against my knee. One of the beasts planted his foot in Mr. Mullock's helmet and sent it cartwheeling in the air. The other trod right upon the axe, and let out a horrid sort of shriek. With each step, it left a splatter of blood behind it.

I looked back and saw Midgely on the ground. He was curled like a hedgehog, his head in his hands. Slowly, he stood. “Tom?” he asked. “Tom, you ain't eaten, are you?”

I took the axe and chopped the rope. Mr. Mullock tumbled heavily to the ground. The fall thumped the breath right out of him, but he found it again soon enough. He pulled the noose from his ankles, then crawled across the trail and retrieved his little green helmet. He didn't ask for the axe, and I had no mind to give it up.

We could hear the dragons along the trail. There was that quick thumping of their feet, a startled cry from Boggis. And there followed such a furious struggle that the very earth was shaking.

Mr. Mullock, to his credit, didn't hesitate a moment. He darted down the trail, and I—with the axe—took Midgely and went after him. Beyond a bend, and beyond another, we found the two dragons locked in a terrible struggle. They rolled and tumbled, and they slammed against the ground, writhing in a mass of teeth and fire and swinging tails. Beside them stood Gaskin, looking hale and hearty, but scared to death.

“They turned on each other,” he said. “One was bleeding and wounded. The other went after it.”

So the axe, I supposed, had saved us. Or was it the noose that had snared Mr. Mullock and forced him to give it up? Perhaps it was Early's shoes that had caught the rope.…I
shook my head. There was no sorting out the little stream of fate. It seemed only that—for once—it had flowed in my favor.

We drew back into the jungle, meaning to circle round the dragons and reach the longboat. But we came instead to the edge of the island, to a cliff above the sea. From there we looked out and I saw that the tide of fate hadn't turned at all.

Out on the ocean, a cable or two from the shore, the longboat was riding on the waves. Carrots was rowing, Weedle was steering, and Benjamin Penny stood in the bow.

Mr. Mullock turned the air blue with his oaths. He leapt up and down with fury. “Come back!” he bellowed. “Come back, you young curs!”

But the longboat rose and fell on the waves, and Weedle didn't even turn around. In the height of sauciness, he raised one hand and gave a cheery little wave with his fingers aflutter. I heard Benjamin Penny laugh.

Mr. Mullock nearly exploded. “You blackbeetle boy!” he cried, his face an alarming red. “You'll perish; you all will. The devil take the lot of you!”

Carrots worked his oars at sixes and sevens. He was even worse at rowing than Weedle had been, so bad that he seemed to be doing nothing more than bashing the water with his blades. But the boat kept moving, and soon rounded a point, and the last I saw was Carrot's red head as he stood to ply his oars.

I had never felt so hopeless. I very nearly hurled the axe after the boat.

“This is your doing,” said Mr. Mullock. “If you 'adn't delayed me, if you 'adn't hinsisted on getting that axe …”

“Then you'd be going with them,” I said. “You'd be in that boat right now on your way to Shanghai. And you know, Mr. Mullock, I wish it were so. If I'm to be stranded, I'd rather it wasn't with you.”

“Hah!” He turned away to gaze at all the empty ocean.

Midgely was pulling at my arm. “We ain't stranded, Tom. Not really,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I keep telling you,” he said with annoyance. “Sunny Wheeler, Tom. That trader, he'll help us.”

I hadn't really believed in his trader. But he'd said the man was a crocodile trapper, and we'd certainly found a trap. “Where does he live?” I asked.

“Somewhere on the eastern shore,” said Midge. “He's got a hut on the beach.”

It seemed our only hope, and we all went off to find it, along the trail at first, then downhill through the jungle. I gave the axe to Boggis, who led the way and hacked a tunnel through the bushes. But it was slow going—or perhaps our course was less than straight—and dusk still saw us struggling along. I thought we would have to spend the night in the jungle, but then we heard the cries of seabirds, and just before dark we came out at a sandy beach.

If there was drumming that night we didn't hear it. We had only the birds, and the lap of waves on this lee side of the island, a soft sort of sound like many dogs drinking. We had the moon to light our way, and we plodded north across hard sand.

I carried the axe again, and made sure that Mr. Mullock was in front of me. When he stopped, so did I.

“Tom, look,” he said. “This island's too small for 'ard feelings. I'm sorry that Early's gone, but I'm sorrier still that you think I 'ad a 'and in it.”

“If you're asking for this,” I said, lifting the axe, “you can forget it, Mr. Mullock.”

“Farthest thing from my mind.” He smiled, in the way that had seemed charming when we'd first met.

“Keep away from me, Mr. Mullock,” I said.

“Hah! Count on it, son,” said he. “I've said my bit, and it's off my chest.”

We walked very far that day. When Midgely tired, I carried him on my back. And when I began to stumble, Boggis said, “I'll take him, Tom. He's so little, it ain't nothing to me.”

The shoreline turned toward the east. The jungle above the beach began to thin, and soon there was nothing but bare rock and sand above us. “It's a spit we're on,” said Mr. Mullock. “We could cut across here.”

“No,” said Midge. He'd almost fallen asleep on Gaskin's back, but was now wide awake. “We have to follow the shore all the way. We might go right past Sunny Wheeler if we don't.”

For half a mile we trudged toward the moon. It almost seemed that we'd come to a different island, for palm trees took the place of the jungle, and a breeze coming down from the island made their long fronds rustle. Against the stars, they looked to me like giant hands waving at the end of pipestem arms.

As we neared the end of the spit, I heard a thud behind us, like a heavy footfall in the sand. When another came soon after, I stopped and looked back. But the moonlit beach
was empty, and nothing moved in the black shadows above it. So we carried on, and stopped at the very end of the spit.

“Did you find the hut?” asked Midgely.

I shook my head, but of course he didn't see that. The tip of land stretched into the sea, and one was as empty as the other. Mr. Mullock said it was a goose chase we were on. He sat on the sand, in the moonlight. The breeze gusted; the palm trees swayed. There was another thud, and this time I wasn't the only one to hear it. Mr. Mullock looked around, his beard shining darkly. “Who's there?” he asked.

We held our breaths. I listened to the rustling fronds, to the buzz of flies in the grasses, until my ears rang with the quiet. I peered into the blackness along the shore.

“Oh!” I gasped. “Look.”

There was a figure there, leaning on a tree. He was tall and thin, dark as old wood. But he didn't move; he didn't so much as nod, only leaned at a peculiar slant with his arms stiff at his sides. When my heart slowed down I saw that it
was
a wooden man, a carving propped among the trees. The more I looked, the more I saw: three peeled logs planted in a row; a glint of starlight moving; the triangular shape of a roof.

“It's the hut,” I said. “Midge, you're right.”

“Hah! By George, 'e is,” said Mr. Mullock. “Or it's the luck of the devil 'e's got.”

We moved toward it, all together. The hut stood on the land, but hung over the beach; the logs were stilts supporting it. The wall was woven grass; the roof was thatched; the glint of light shone from the broken pane of a small window. And a buzzing of flies came out from there.

“Why, it's chock-full of bugs,” said Mr. Mullock. “Hah! Poor old Foxy; wouldn't he like to be 'ere?”

It was the first he'd spoken of his little bat, the only sign he'd missed it. In a fashion, it was the first hint that Mr. Mullock had a heart.

We stood below the pilings, beside the wooden man. A furious expression was carved on his face, but a split had opened across the mouth, and now the man looked a lot like Walter Weedle. I touched its cheek, and my fingers came away covered in termites.

“Is the trader here?” asked Midgely.

“Wal-ker!” said Mr. Mullock. “It's as empty as a tomb.”

“Then he must be off trading,” said Midge. “He paddles from island to island in a little canoe, buying oysters and pearls.”

“Maybe he's sleeping,” said Boggis.

Mr. Mullock grunted. “Nip in and have a look, Tom. Or give me the axe if you're scared, and I'll go myself.”

There was no reason to be frightened; it was only an empty house. But I heard the wind in the palms, and then the footfalls again, the sounds of men who weren't there. I gripped the axe and clambered to the back of the house.

There was a crude ladder leaning against it, a log with steps chopped along its length. It moved when I touched it. When I climbed it, the whole hut trembled and shook, and the drone of flies grew louder.

The door at the top hung open. I stepped into a room that wasn't quite as black as I'd thought it would be. In the small window was the glow of the stars and the moon. In the
middle of the floor was a red glint of embers where a fire had collapsed on itself.

I knew then that the hut hadn't been empty for long. I had a strong sensation that it wasn't empty even now.

The air was thick with a musty old smell, a peculiar odor that made me think of old Worms the body snatcher. I heard the flies buzzing around me, and a shiver of wind through the thatching. Then there came such a bang that I nearly bolted from my skin, and down from the roof came a thing—a black thing. It landed on the floor and leapt to the fire. It seemed to burrow into the ashes, and it stirred the embers so that a red light filled the room.

I saw what it was then, this thing that had come at me. The sight made me laugh, for it was only a coconut that had pierced right through the roof, leaving a small oval of stars above me. I knew that all my imagined footfalls on the beach had been only so many coconuts knocked free by the wind.

In the red glow I looked around, into each dark space. I saw a broad shelf above the floor, and what looked like a person sleeping there, but was only a mat rolled into a fat tube. I saw pots and bowls and a heap of wood, a spear propped against a wall. There was a wooden box, a basket and a painted shield, and I kept turning and saw a table in the corner, where a man was sitting in a chair.