The Cannibals (21 page)

If I waited any longer, my father would be next at the stake. But what could I do? How could I stop it? To reach the cages, I would have to cross the clearing. Even if I circled round behind the village, I would have to cross a broad part of it on the other side. I couldn't get past the savages, so I somehow had to get the savages away. But one boy against a tribe of cannibals: was there any hope at all? I wondered if I had time to look for Boggis and Midgely, and if it would really help to have them. What could the three of us do that I couldn't do alone?

I drew back in the darkness below the hut. I crawled down its length and out to the beach, not with any scheme in mind, but only to spare myself from seeing the warriors dance with their glittering knives. I wished I could escape
the sounds as well—the drumming and shouts, and the screams of the man—but they followed me then, and would follow me always.

On the beach, the rain was falling hard. It carved rivers and ruts in the sand; it dashed on the water with a humming, hissing din. I spread my arms, looked up, and let it fall on my face, and I wondered and wondered:
how can a boy beat a village?

Through my mind passed stories I had half forgotten, little bits from dreary hours of history classes. I tried to remember how tiny forces had beaten great armies, and I thought of the Trojan horse and the Minutemen at Lexington, of Sir Francis Drake and the Spanish Armada, Bonnie Prince Charlie and Rogers' Rangers, but not of a single time when a boy had beaten a village.

My head spun with the tales as I walked along the dark beach. I passed the next hut, into the glow of the fires, and saw the cannibals leaping past the flames. The light shone out into the bay, and I imagined that something out there was moving across the water. From the corner of my eye, for an instant I saw it. Was it the curve of a ship's bow? The loom of a sail? I peered into the darkness, and… there! Didn't I see a flicker of light, as faint as a match being struck?

A moment later my joy was followed by a crushing disappointment. There
was
a ship out there, and I had known it all along. My father's sunken ship, with its masts above the water, must have sat just where I was looking.

It seemed my last hope dissolved. I felt as beaten as I had in the old mission, when the cannibals had come with their
torches. Then, from disappointment, I leapt to joy again. The fire that destroyed the mission had saved us. Might it save us again?

I made my way back to the largest of the huts. I ran as fast as a fellow could run on sand that caved at his feet. The drumming and the falling of the rain played fancies with my thoughts. I imagined I heard the gurgle of water at the bow of a ship, and the crack of a sail flopping over.

As I neared the hut, I saw someone plodding up the beach toward me, on a weaving course beside the water. I thought he wore a huge, domed cap. Then the firelight gleamed, and I saw that it was Midgely with his parasol, following the edge between the sea and the sand, guided by the firelight.

I had to pass the hut to reach him. He heard me coming and turned to dash toward the trees.

“Midge, wait!” I cried, as loudly as I dared.

“Tom?” he said.

I pulled him into the shelter of the trees. I wrenched the parasol from his hands and folded it shut. “I told you to stay with the boat,” I said.

“I did, Tom. I did. But the rain flooded the river and carried the boat away.”

I cursed myself for not thinking that would happen. “Is it gone?” I said.

“No, it ain't
gone
,” said Midge. “We rode it down the river, me and Boggis. We rode it right to the sea, Tom, and then we tied it up. Gaskin's gone back to wait for you at the bridge.”

I led him to the hut, to the heap of ash below the fire.
In the clearing, the drumming stopped, and a tremendous shouting and babble began. In only minutes, I thought, another man—perhaps my father—would be dragged from a cage.

I climbed through the hole. Midgely reached up with his parasol, and I pulled him after me. He swatted at the flies. He said, “Tom, we ain't alone in here.”

I thought he saw, or somehow felt, the dangling heads above us.

But a hand came down on my shoulder. It turned me round, and I looked into the tattooed face of a savage.

Midge and I were hauled down the length of the hut and pitched through its door. I tumbled onto the ground, and Midgely fell on top of me with his parasol.

The shouting of the cannibals rose higher as we sprawled into the firelight. Then it swelled to a fever as out from the jungle came six savages pulling Gaskin Boggis like a frightened horse. He fought and kicked, but they battered him down and stuffed him in a cage.

My father saw me and rattled at his bars. “Tom!” he shouted. “You filthy savages, keep your hands off my son!”

Midgely and I were crammed together into the last of the cages. Midgely still held the parasol that Lucy Beans had made him. He didn't shout; he didn't cry. He made no sound
as the door was closed and a latch put on. The cannibals drew back to the fire.

My father kept shouting my name. His hand groped through the bars. “Oh, dear Tom,” he said. “I prayed to see you one more time. I begged for that. God help me, I never thought it would come to this.”

I still had one more hope, though it seemed nearly futile. The cannibals were dancing, the drums beating into that quick frenzy that had brought the end for the fiddler. I grabbed the parasol from Midgely's hands. I ripped the cloth apart, and the wires sprang loose. “Midge,” I said. “Do you remember what you told me once? About killing dogs?”

Buffing, Midge had called it, long ago, when he'd told me of his crimes.
“You sell their skins,”
he'd said, and I suddenly smelled the stench of our prison ship; I saw him in its fetid darkness.
“You stick a wire in them. It goes right to their heart and does them in as gentle as you please.”

I grabbed a wire and tried to wrench it from the parasol. “Midge,” I said. “Would it work on a man? Could you kill a man like that?”

“Golly, Tom,” he said. “I don't think so.”

The wire wouldn't come loose from the hub. I wrapped my fist around it as the cannibals suddenly whooped and cheered. I didn't look toward the fires.

“Why not?” I asked. “If it could kill a dog, why not a man?”

“Oh, it
could
,” he said. “But, Tom, I can't do it. I can't see.”

The wire heated in my fist as it bent and twisted. “Then show me,” I said. “I'll do it.”

Midgely's small hands felt across my shirt, then his finger poked at my ribs. “There. That's where you stick it, Tom. That's where.”

The wire snapped. It sprang from my hand and flew against the cage. I thought it passed right between the bars, but with a tiny tick it bounced from the wood and fell across my leg. I took it up and held it tightly.

“Push hard,” said Midge. “Push harder than you ever pushed.”

Here came the savage, striding from the fires with his forked stick and its noose. I imagined myself jabbing the wire at his chest, driving it through his ribs. A cold sweat broke out on my back and my face and my hands. I said, “I can't. Oh, Midge, I…”

“You can,” he said. “In your heart ain't you really the Smasher?”

“That was never me,” I said. But was it really true? I had been born a twin, and I shared the cruel blood of my murderous brother. It had pulsed me into rages before.

“Just do it, Tom,” said Midge.

The savage tugged at his noose. If he kept to his order, he would take my father next, then Weedle and Penny and all the others. Midge and I would be last, with no one to save but ourselves.

I shook the cage. “Take
me
!” I shouted.

“No!” cried Father.

But I shouted again, “Take
me
!” The savage came right to the cage as I cried out with every curse and oath I'd ever heard. Then he turned, and stepped toward my father.

I picked up the parasol and rattled at the bars. I worked it
in between them and, clumsily, threw it at the man. He turned again. He came back to the door of my cage, bent down, and worked the latch.

His nose was pierced by a white bone. His earlobes had been slit and stretched, so that they dangled now—grotesquely—nearly to his shoulders. His dark tattoos were like patterns of little black rivets set into his skin. His hands were huge, and they fumbled with the latch.

I held the wire in my fists. I flexed it back and forth. My heart was pounding, but not with anger and rage. I felt nothing more than a sickening fear as the latch opened. The savage wrenched the door aside. He picked up his forked stick and thrust it into the cage.

I grabbed it. I pulled hard, and the savage toppled forward. His chest banged against the cage, and the strings of bones and shells swayed across the doorway.

I brought up the wire. I saw just where to aim it, just where to drive it in. But even then I knew I could never do it. I was not my twin after all; I had none of his cold fury. When my father had cut us apart, in the minute of my birth, he had made me very different.

The cannibal hauled me out and threw me to the ground. Before I could move, the noose encircled my neck.

“Tom!” my father shouted. “Oh, my dear son!”

The noose drew tight at my neck. I tried to work my fingers underneath the cord, but it was all I could do to keep my balance as the savage hauled me from the ground and marched me to the stake.

I saw the crowd of cannibals turn toward me. A path opened between them, leading right to the stake. The warriors stood with their knives and spears. The drummers sat drumming, and the women danced. The children laughed and shouted.

The savage pushed me ahead. Around my neck, the noose drew so tight that I could scarcely breathe. I stumbled forward and the fires raged, sparks soaring high.

I could see a pool of blood around the stake, streaks along the wood. The savage turned me round.

As my back slammed against the stake, I heard a roar of sound, a whistle, and a crashing in the jungle. It all came
nearly at once, and I didn't know what was happening. There was another boom, another shriek and crash.

“Cannons!” my father shouted. “Those are navy guns; six pounders. They're shelling the village.”

So I
had
a seen a ship out there. Now, through the rain and darkness, came flares of light as the cannons fired. The balls smashed through huts, through trees and bushes.

The women fled. The warriors ran toward the beach. The children raced in both directions, and the clearing was suddenly empty. But the savage who held me didn't let go. With a shove on his stick he drove me to the ground, pinning me in its forked end. He put all his weight on it, pressing my face down in the red mud. I heard the cannonballs whistle. And suddenly the man was gone, and his stick thumped to the ground at my side.

From the beach came sounds of a battle—yells and screams, gunshots, and the clash of wood and metal. Of the savage there was no sign. He had simply disappeared.

I ran to the cages. I had to struggle at first with the latches, but each opened more quickly than the last. Out came the sailors, who fled from the clearing and vanished in the jungle's darkness. Out came Weedle and Penny, out came my father. But poor blind Midgely cowered in the cage. When I reached in, he screamed.

I said, “Midge, it's me.”

My father and others were trying to free Gaskin. He wasn't moving. They pulled at his arms. “Come on!” they told him.

I hurried to help. But Gaskin had been beaten so badly,
so crammed in the small box that I feared his bones might have been broken. “It ain't no use,” he said. “I can't move my legs. I can't even feel them, Tom.”

“Leave him!” shouted Weedle. But Benjamin Penny had an even crueler mind. “Kill him, Weedle,” said he, with a mad look. “Throttle him quick, and have done with it.”

I refused to abandon Boggis. If I couldn't drag him out, I'd destroy the cage itself. So I went at it with fists and feet, flailing away at the wooden bars. My father attacked them too, and I heard them crack and splinter. A wall came away. The roof collapsed.

“Here they come again,” said Weedle.

I turned and saw the cannibals swarming up from the beach. But now they ran all helter-skelter, scattering through the clearing. Behind them came a crowd of men more wild than any. In clothes of red and yellow, with long knives that flashed like streaks of flame, they might have sprung right out from the fires.

“Pirates!” shouted Father. “It's not the navy at all. God help us, it's pirates, Tom.”

Together we got Boggis to his feet. But as soon as the giant tried to move, his legs buckled and he collapsed again.

“Oh, Tom,” said Father. He put his arms around me for the first time since we'd been together on the ship. “We might as well stay with him and see the end right here. There's nowhere to go at any rate.”

“But, Captain Tin,” said Midgely. “We've got a steamboat on the beach.”

My father made a grunting sound that might have been a
laugh. “A steamboat?” he said. “Why, you're a wonder, the pair of you.”

We held Boggis between us, his arms resting on our shoulders. We staggered past the huts and down to the beach, then along the soft sand.

“You go ahead,” said Father. “Get your fire stoked, your steam up. I won't come without the boy; don't worry.”

Weedle and Penny needed no urging. They ran on into the rain and dark, that horrible Penny shuffling over the sand. But I stayed to help.

“Please go, Tom,” said Father, puffing loudly now. “I beg you; do as I say.”

The huts along the beach burst into fire one by one. The pirates were taking torches to them, and the flames leapt high and hot and bright. There was a clamor of high-pitched voices, and a score of pirates—maybe more—came along the beach behind us.

“Tom, go!” said Father, and I saw that he was right. I could help best by having the boat ready for him. So I led Midgely by the hand, as fast as we could move along the beach.

We found Benjamin Penny working at the knots that tied the boat to a tree. He was pulling and biting the rope. Weedle had known enough—or guessed enough—to open the firebox and was filling it now with wood. They toiled in such a frenzy that I had no doubt they would have left without us.