The Castaways (3 page)

“Oh, Midge,” I said. But it was probably true. Benjamin Penny had the cunning, and the cold-bloodedness, that would let him outlive us all.

No one was sleeping anymore. Now Weedle and Boggis, too, demanded to know what Midge and I were scheming. So I told them straight out, thinking it would end all thought of it. “Midge wants to draw lots,” I said. “To see who’s thrown overboard.”

They said it was folly; they said it was madness. “He’s off his nut!” cried Walter Weedle, and Penny said things that were worse. I was pleased by the reaction. Or at least I was until I saw Midgely’s face. He looked utterly crestfallen, as though his last hope had been snatched away, and I wondered if we hadn’t
all
gone mad.

We went back to our places, but that wasn’t the end of it. Once planted in our minds, Midgely’s idea grew like a poisonous weed. What else did we have to think about? Hour after hour we sat staring at each other in the rocking, rolling shell of our boat. Weedle and Penny muttered about it as our
last supplies dwindled. The meals that we divided became almost impossible to measure. On the first day that we had no water, everything came to a head.

“Draw lots!” cried Weedle and Penny. “The time’s come. Draw lots!” they cried, as the shark swam round and round. “Do it now,” they said, and the sunlight flashed across their faces.

For the first time ever, Penny and Weedle and Midgely sided together, against me. “You’re always the one for fair and square, Tom Tin,” said Weedle. “Well, it’s three against two, ain’t it? We’ll do it ourselves.”

I didn’t trust Penny or Weedle, so I fell in with the plan, praying to God that I would be forgiven for it. I even made the lots, tearing five strips from the ragged edge of my shirt. In one I tied a tiny knot, then held up the five for all to see, and each was the same length and the same width, and apart from the knot they were identical.

I crushed each strip into a ball, and wadded the five in my fist. All the while I knew that I had gone as far as I could go from my father’s idea of “the handsome thing.”

We gathered in the center of the boat, where the bilge -water sloshed and gurgled. Benjamin Penny came down from the bow, dragging himself over the ribs of the boat. Midgely knelt on my left, Boggis on my right.

I held out my fist full of cloth. “Who will do the killing?” I asked.

No one moved. Midgely said, “Don’t call it killing. Call it saving, Tom. That’s what it is.”

“Call it whatever you like.” My hand trembled from the mere weight of the scraps of cloth. “Who will choose first?”

“It don’t matter who’s first,” said Weedle. “Everybody chooses, and nobody looks until we’ve all done it.”

“But who will
be first?”
I asked again.

I thought that none of them would dare to be the first, that even Penny didn’t have the nerve to go through with it. But no sooner had I spoken than a hand reached out.

It was Midgely’s. He nearly fell forward in his eagerness, groping first for my arm, then following it down to my elbow, my wrist, and at last to my closed fingers. He pried them open. He snatched out a strip of cloth and clamped it to his chest.

In a burst the others followed, Weedle last, and I was left with only one piece of cloth in my fist. Boggis asked, “Do we look now?”

“It’s Tom Tin!” cried Midgely, though no one had yet opened his hand, and he could see nothing but gray. “It’s Tom who’ll do the bashing, ain’t it?”

We unrolled the bits of cloth, and they flapped from our fingers like miserable flags. I stared at my own—the one with a knot at the end—then looked up to see Weedle, wide-eyed, looking back.

Little Midge, proven right, was already holding out his lot, pushing it against my arm. “Now choose to see who buys it,” he said. “Choose who snuffs it, Tom.”

It made my skin crawl to see his eagerness, his pleasure in this dreadful business. It came to my mind that he hadn’t asked for this to save himself, or me, or anyone, but only because he’d seen the end for Benjamin Penny. He was at last reaping vengeance for Penny’s blinding of his eyes.

We performed the same ritual, though with four bits of
cloth this time. I dropped one into the bilge and squeezed the others in my hand. I felt relief—despite myself—to be spared from this second, more terrible drawing. But now my hand shook worse than ever, and there was much sideways looking, much dabbing of tongues on sunburnt lips.

Again Midgely was the first to choose, nearly spilling the pieces from my fist. The others followed more slowly, and so Midgely spoke before all the lots were chosen.

“It’s Benjamin Penny!” he shouted in triumph. “Ain’t it? It’s you!” He was standing up. For the first time in three or four days he came to his feet. The boat was rocking, and he swayed with the motion. “I
seen
it was you. I seen it in a dream, Benjamin Penny!”

Well, Penny turned white. He looked around from face to face, then down at his hand that held the lot. Only he could see the cloth that was folded in the cup of his palm. Then an odd expression came to his face, and a small sound exploded from his mouth, almost like a laugh.

“Do him in!” cried Midgely. His parched throat gave him a witch’s cackle. “Use the axe, Tom. Do it now!”

Penny let the cloth fall from his hand. It fluttered down and landed on the water in the bilge. It was clear of knots from end to end. Penny was saved.

“I seen it coming. I seen it,” said Midgely.

Boggis spread his strip apart. Walter Weedle opened his. Little Midgely, still standing, flapped the piece of shirttail from his fingers. He was holding the one that was knotted.

“I knew you was done for, Benjamin Penny,” he said. “I seen it days ago.”

All four unknotted bits of cloth were floating at my feet.
I picked them up and stared at them, wishing I could fit them back into my shirt and undo all we had done.

At last, Midgely’s voice faded away. We heard water gurgling below the boat, slapping at the paddle wheel. The fin of the shark made a little slicing sound through the waves, and the turtle shell rocked with a gentle tapping on the ribs.

Very slowly, Midgely changed again to the sadly serious little boy. He frowned, then sighed, then lifted his lot to his blind eyes.

“It’s me,” he said with quiet wonder. “Ain’t it, Tom? It’s me.” He ran the cloth through his fingers, and drew a little gasp when he felt the knot.

Penny laughed. He laughed long and hard, with sinful cruelty. Then he picked up the axe and held it out for me. “Do it now, Tom,” he said, mimicking Midge. “Do him in!” And he laughed again.

“Shut up!” roared Boggis. To me he spoke softly. “I’m sorry, Tom. I don’t think your father would be happy with how we turned out.”

I shook my head. “He wouldn’t.”

“We never should have drawn them lots,” said Boggis.

“But we did,” said Weedle. “So kill him, Tom. It’s time!”

“I won’t. I can’t.” I stared at them all, each in turn. “Look, I’ll take Midgely’s place,” I said. “I’ll take his lot as mine.”

Midge shouted, “No!” He groped out and took hold of my arm, as though he believed I was already trying to throw myself into the sea. “Please, Tom. We did it fair and proper, didn’t we?”

I picked up the five lots and placed them in his hand, so
that he might know it all had been done properly, if not fairly. He bunched them together, not even feeling for the knot. “Let’s do it now,” he said. “Just give me a moment first.”

The axe was passed from Penny to Weedle to me. I led Midgely to the bow. He laid himself down, on his side, with not so much as a whimper. I rubbed his arm, then ran my fingers through his hair as he spoke to me softly.

“It was supposed to be Penny,” he said. “But I was too eager, weren’t I? It’s justice, Tom.”

“Justice? Why, there’s no justice here.” I felt as though my heart had been torn away. “It’s the curse, Midge. It’s that dreadful diamond.”

“No, it ain’t that, Tom. Luck was never with me, that’s all.” He put his hand in mine. “I was never meant to inherit no earth.”

Benjamin Penny came creeping forward. “You’re wasting time,” he said. “Bash his head or I’ll do it myself.”

“Get back!” I shouted. “He can take as long as he wants.”

But Midgely squeezed my hand and said, “I’m ready now.” He closed his eyes. “Quick, Tom. One clean blow so’s I don’t have to drown, and put me quick into the sea.”

Midgely covered his eyes with his fingers. Underneath, he was squinting, waiting for the blow that would be his end. But I couldn’t do it. For the first time in my life I cared more for another than I did for myself. I dropped the axe and crouched there, weeping.

“Do it!” screamed Benjamin Penny.

He lurched along the boat and took up the axe. His webbed fingers wrapped round the handle.

Gaskin Boggis came lumbering after him, shouting at
Penny to stop. He made the boat rock and plunge. “Give me the axe!” he shouted.

I threw myself down to shield poor Midge, willing to take the blow in his place.

But it never came. Boggis snatched the axe from Benjamin Penny and hurled it into the sea. “There’s a ship!” he said. “There’s a ship out there.”

It was a long moment before I could raise myself to the shattered planks and look out where Boggis showed me. I saw masts and sun-bleached canvas, and the dark hull of a ship.

“You see?” said Boggis. “I told you.”

The ship came slowly on a breeze that barely rippled the water. It was old and weather-beaten, the sails all akimbo, the rigging in shreds. If the weather hadn’t been so fine and steady, I would have sworn the ship had only just emerged from a raging storm.

Benjamin Penny gazed out at the ship with a look that chilled my blood. In his eyes was bitterness and disappointment! He had known the ship was coming—I could see it plainly—and he’d clamored for Midgely’s execution even as rescue was on the way.

But as far as Midgely knew, it was a miracle that had saved him. He clasped his hands and said a prayer before he asked me, “What does she look like, Tom?”

“Strange,” I said.

Long ropes streamed from the masts and the yards. A great bowsprit held sail after sail, and not one of them properly set. The enormous square courses were drawn up at their
corners, giving the ship the look of a haggard old woman holding her skirts clear from the water.

The ship veered to left and right with a rippling of canvas. The sails collapsed as it rounded up to the wind, and all the loose ropes—the sheets and braces—flogged the sails like the whips of a lion tamer. As though beaten and herded, the ship fell away and gathered speed again. At each turn it sailed away from us, but always tacked again, and drew steadily nearer.

There was no sound of a crew. No orders were shouted. There was no stamping of feet, no hauling of rope. The ship appeared deserted.

I described all this to Midgely, who listened with growing dread.

“She sounds like the
Flying Dutchman,”
said he.

I knew the story of that ship; I’d probably heard it straight from Midgely. But he told it again as he stared with his gray eyes.

“She’s been out here for centuries,” he said. “Sailing through the Southern Ocean, collecting sailors on her way. She plucks ’em from their boats, or hauls ’em dead from the sea. If you see her you’re doomed, if you ain’t already gone.”

“An old wife’s tale,” said Weedle, with a nervous laugh.

“She’ll be an East Indiaman,” said Midgely.

I wouldn’t have known an East Indiaman from a duck. But Midgely described it as though he could see it himself, clear as crystal. “A long bowsprit. Three masts and a high stern. Big topsails and gallants.”

That he could see with his dead eyes the very thing in
front of us was more eerie than I could say. All the time it bore on, ever closer, as I tried to tell myself that there was too much solidness about it for a phantom.

Boggis looked toward me with a frown. Weedle turned to Penny. All five of us were standing now, in the wallowing shell of our boat.

When the ship was very close it turned once more. The sails slithered over rigging and spars. They filled with a volley of hollow rumbles, or flapped uselessly aback. The ship rolled with the change of the wind, and a ladder of rope spilled over the side, as though thrown by ghostly hands.

The huge bowsprit passed above us, and the shadows of the sails slid over the boat, each hiding the sun for a moment. The hull was spotted with rust from iron nails, and the seams were gaping open. As the ship rocked back, and a passing swell sent us falling beside it, I saw seaweed and worms covering the planks. I fancied there was a smell of death in the air that wafted from the deck.

Weedle and Penny were pushing each other in their hurry to reach out for the ship. Though I had welcomed the sight of it, I was not eager to get aboard.

Neither was Midgely. “It’s the
Dutchman
, all right,” he said. “Tom, let’s take our chances in the boat. Stay with me, please.”

But the sea surged down the dark hull of the
Dutchman
, and sent our boat soaring beside it. We rolled on the crest, then slammed hard against the planks. I heard a crack from our timbers, and a groan from the ship. Our boat fell away, only to rise again more quickly.

“Push us off!” I said. But it was too late. We crashed sideways into the ship with a shock that stove us in. Our planks snapped; the ribs bent and broke. The sea came boiling through the bottom.

I held Midgely by the collar as water filled the boat. It spluttered and burbled into the empty firebox; it covered the pistons and the hood for the paddle wheel. It rose up the side of the boiler as the huge ship went gliding past.

Weedle and Penny jumped for the ladder, forcing the boat even deeper. Boggis managed to grab the rope with one hand, and with the other he reached out to help me. I lunged forward and clutched his wrist, still holding on to Midgely, who was shouting at me, for he had no understanding of what had happened. Then our faithful little steamboat vanished into the ocean, and the five of us clung to the ladder like my childhood beetles to their stick.