The Castaways (6 page)

“We’re going to run them down,” I said. “How do we slow the ship?”

“She’ll do it herself,” said Midge. “You watch.”

It didn’t seem possible. Over the waves we charged like a great knight, the bowsprit our lance. The sea surged and foamed at the bow.

The ship didn’t stop. But it did turn aside. The surge of waves breaking back from the ice caught the bow with a booming blow that nudged it away.

We all hurried to the waist in the hope that we might drag the men aboard. Gaskin swung out from the rail and stood on the ladder. We held his shirt and the waist of his pants, and he reached out with both arms just as the men dropped their guns and reached
up
for him.

The ship struck the ice and rolled it under. The men leapt up, clasping hands and arms with Boggis. The sudden shock of their weight nearly hauled every one of us over the side. But Gaskin held on, and the men twirled at the ends of his arms, skittering their feet on the tops of the waves like a pair of seabirds.

Walter Weedle leaned farther over the rail. One of the men looked up at him with the most surprised expression I’d ever seen. His eyes doubled in size, and his mouth gaped open. It seemed he truly believed he was seeing a pirate, that he had come to the ship of Blackbeard himself. But he must have glimpsed the boy within the clothes, for just as quickly the expression fell away.

So did the men, or very nearly. It took much puffing and cursing to bring them aboard, but at last we managed it. Side by side they stood on the deck, each dressed in many clothes, layer upon layer, all sodden with brine and blood. They gazed in wonder around the ship—down its length and up the masts—until their eyes settled on little Midgely

“What happened to that one?” asked the taller of the two.

“He was blinded,” I said.

“How?”

No one answered, though Benjamin Penny rather squirmed beside me. We were wary, like schoolboys sizing up a new teacher.

The taller man had tattoos on his hands, and a stare as cold as the ice that he’d come from. He was a frightening figure, but the other was twice as horrid and twice as scary. He looked like a pig, his ears so large and squashed, his head so round, speckled with lonely hairs. From his mouth came the most vile breath imaginable, for his teeth were brown and rotten.

“When I ask a question I expect an answer,” said the taller man, turning to me. “What happened to that boy?”

His tone annoyed me. We had just saved his life, but he gave not a word of thanks, nor a how-do-you-do. I said only, “He’s blind, not deaf. You can ask him yourself.”

The piglike man drew a whistling breath through his teeth. Weedle’s scar began to twitch. But the man with the tattooed hands only looked at me with the same burning gaze.

Weedle spoke quickly. “Sir, it happened long ago. In a prison hulk at Chatham, sir.”

“At Chatham? You’re convicts, are you?”

“Yes, sir.” Weedle bobbed his head.

“Stowaways too?” Not a line or wrinkle had changed on the man’s face. It was void of expression. “You escaped from Botany Bay, I suppose. Made your way aboard. Hid in the chain locker. Is that it?”

“No, sir!” cried Weedle. “We never even got to Australia, sir. We was lost and near to death—because of Tom Tin there—when this ship come along. It was days ago, sir.”

“Where’s the cook? Where’s the carpenter?” said the man. “Where’s everyone gone, boy?”

Weedle raised his shoulders in a huge, elaborate shrug. “We searched the ship, sir, and there weren’t no one here—”

“The whole ship?”

“The whole bleeding ship, sir.” Weedle drew a cross above his heart. “From top to bottom and end to end, and there weren’t no one but the helmsman, who went off his nut and threw himself to the fishes. Tell him if that ain’t true, Penny.”

“I see.” The man’s tattoos were like rings on his fingers, bands of blue between his knuckles. When he stroked his beard, the painted rings seemed to tangle in his hairs. He studied Weedle for a while longer, then looked at each of our faces in turn, until he was staring into mine. “Your name’s Tin, is it? Would you be the son of Redman?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Do you know of him?”

“Who doesn’t?” he asked. “I heard he was searching for you in the islands.”

“Yes, he found me,” said I. “But the cannibals took him.”

There was no change in the fellow’s expression, no sign at all of surprise at the news, not a hint of sadness nor pleasure. His hand kept running through his beard, stretching it down from his chin. “Did he mention a man called Beezley?”

“No, sir.”

“We met only once.” The man’s hand fell from his beard. At last there came to his eyes a little gleam of light to show they were made of more than glass. It was a look of amusement, perhaps of satisfaction. “I’m Beezley,” he said.
“Mister
Beezley. And this is Mr. Moyle. So if you’re Redman’s son, you can hand and steer, can you?”

“Him?”
Weedle laughed loudly. “Tom’s no sailor, sir. He was seasick at Chatham! He’s afraid of the water.”

“No matter,” said Mr. Beezley, in his wooden way. “Mr. Moyle will teach him the ropes. He’ll teach all of you, and you’ll be wise to listen. When he says ‘Jump,’ you say, ‘How high, sir.’ And mind him well, if you’re wise. Mr. Moyle eats children.”

With this, Mr. Moyle opened his mouth and gnashed his brown teeth. It was a gruesome thing to see. But we weren’t infants, not so easily frightened as that.

Round the feet of both men were puddles of reddish water. Their sodden clothes were dripping. Mr. Beezley loosened his coat. “Do as you’re told and there’ll be no trouble. That’s all you need to know for now.” He turned his back and walked away.

“Wait,” I said. “Won’t you tell me of my father, how you know him and—”

“No,” he said flatly. “I’ve nothing to say to you, boy. We’re not shipmates. And we’re not chums. You’ll do as you’re told and ask no more questions.”

“You’ve come to
our
ship, Mr. Beezley Not the other way around.” I spoke boldly, though in my innards I quivered. “I’d like to know where it is you’ve come
from
, Mr. Beezley.”

“England,” he said, and kept walking. The pair went straight to the water barrel. Mr. Moyle flicked the lid aside, and Mr. Beezley lifted the pannikin from its peg.

“You’ve sailed all the way from England on your iceberg?” I said.

Weedle snickered, then quickly clamped his mouth shut.

“Only a lubber would call that a berg,” said Mr. Beezley. “It was barely a splinter.” He dipped the pannikin into the water and stirred it about. Then he took a long drink before he spoke. “There was a sealing ship, boy. It was crushed in the ice down south. We took to the boats, but one by one they foundered. Mr. Moyle and myself would have drowned with the rest if we hadn’t found that ‘iceberg’ of yours. There; now you know. And bear in mind that curiosity kills the cat.”

He drank again, and again after that, taking in so much water that it gurgled inside him. Then he passed the pannikin to Mr. Moyle, who tried to pour his share straight down his throat, without shocking his rotted teeth. But still he twitched at the cold touch of the water. He twitched all over, from head to toe, as if a giant had shaken him like a dishcloth. He closed his eyes from the pain, and like that, with no
sight, reached down and replaced the pannikin on its peg. It was as though he’d done it many times before.

Of course it came to my mind that these were the castaways set adrift from this very same ship. But if they were, why were they claiming to be sealers? What had happened to the others who had been cast away with them?

“How long were you adrift, Mr. Beezley?” I asked. “How many were in your company?”

“We didn’t count the days, boy.”

“Did you count each other?”

His glassy eyes suddenly glazed. There was such a look of anger that I had to turn away in a show of studying the sea.

“You’re going to be trouble,” he said. “I see that already. You like to think you’re running the roost, don’t you?”

Weedle spoke up. “That’s true, sir; he does.”

“It’s as plain as the nose on his face,” said Mr. Beezley. “But look where he’s led you, boys. To a ship he can’t steer, in a world where he’s lost. He has no idea where he is, I wager.”

Little Midge tried to answer, but was drowned out by Weedle and Penny. “No, sir, he don’t!” they both said.

“Does he know where he’s going?”

“No, sir!”

“A fine leader. Humbug!” Mr. Beezley slammed the lid on the barrel. “Well, my lads, what do you say we steer to the north?” His voice was rising. “What do you say I make sailors of you all?”

Mr. Beezley extended his arms, and Weedle and Penny went to his side like monkeys to an organ grinder. Boggis didn’t join them, and little Midge just turned away and wandered off. He sat by the mainmast, not quite facing us.

“You can steer where you like, Mr. Beezley,” he said. “But it won’t do you no good. This ship, she’s a phantom.”

I could see the gray crescents of his eyes, like old stones in his skull.

“She’s the
Flying Dutchman
. That’s why everyone’s gone,” he said. “The captain beat too long against the storms. The face of God appeared in the clouds on Christmas day, and the carpenter fell to his knees.”

Beezley and Moyle might have frozen back into ice. They stood staring.

“What humbug!” said Mr. Beezley.

“It ain’t humbug! The captain put four men in a boat and cast them away,” said Midge. “They begged to be taken back, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Who’s been telling you this?” said Mr. Moyle. “You says you weren’t on the ship, but—”

“It’s in a book,” cried Midgely “Tom, he read it to me.”

“Where’s the book, Tom?” asked Mr. Beezley.

“In a box by the stove,” I said.

Boggis had not yet lit a fire that morning, so there was no trace of smoke from the metal chimney. Yet Mr. Moyle shifted his gaze directly toward the cookhouse. Mr. Beezley said, “Go fetch it, boy.”

I didn’t like to be called boy, or to be sent on an errand by this thankless man. So I doddered along, looking up at the topsails, hoping that Mr. Beezley would shout at me to hurry. But he didn’t.

I went into the cookhouse, pulled the book from the box, and shook out the list of all hands. Up and down I read that list before admitting there was neither a Beezley nor a Moyle among the names. But I was so certain that the men were our castaways that I kept the list—as if believing their names might somehow appear. I didn’t mind giving up the book. Both Midge and I knew it by heart.

By the time I got back, the men had shifted to the side of the hatch. They had shed their heavy outer clothes, and now—in sailors’ woolen shirts—looked like a pair of ragged
Robinson Crusoes. Mr. Moyle was on his knees, closing the iron dogs.

“Did you open the hatch, boy?” asked Mr. Beezley

“We searched the ship,” I said. “We told you that.”

“What did you find down there?”

The question took me by surprise. If he knew the ship and everything about it, why would he ask?

“There was coconuts, sir,” said Weedle, who stood dutifully at his side. “And breadfruit and flies. That was the lot, and it weren’t worth the bother of looking.”

“Then you shouldn’t have looked,” said Mr. Moyle.

I asked him why, but it was Mr. Beezley who answered. He stood straight and stiff as the deck tilted. “An open hatch can sink a ship,” he said. “I would have thought any fool could see that.”

He held out his hand for the book, snapping his fingers when I wasn’t fast enough. Then he snatched it away and let the pages flutter apart. “Where’s the rest?”

“We used it to start the fire,” I said.

With a grunt he started reading at the middle of the book. I watched his eyes shift back and forth, his fingers flip the pages.

“Claptrap,” he said. “Nothing but humbug.” He closed the book. “It’s the ramblings of a lunatic. Someone off his head with fever.”

Midgely spoke up from his seat at the mast. “If you don’t believe it, try turning the ship.”

“Well, now that’s what I mean to do,” said Mr. Beezley. He looked up at the sails, squinting against the sun in the
canvas. “We’ll come about and go north. We’ll make for warm waters. The Indies and Hispaniola and—”

“We’ll make for England,” I said. “That’s where we want to go, Mr. Beezley.”

“Is it?” He looked not at me, but to Weedle and the others. “You want to go back to the hulks; to the hangman perhaps?”

Weedle shook his head.

“Who would, but a fool?” Mr. Beezley held the book like a Bible, and spoke like a priest. “Follow me, my lads, and I’ll make sailors of you all. Sailors and more, I promise you. We can all be rich beyond our dreams.” His teeth showed in a white row through the tangle of his beard. “What do you say we go looking for gold?”

Just as the fellow had written in his book, the very word put a fever into Weedle and Penny and Boggis. They were like dogs who’d picked up a scent, their heads lifting, their whole bodies tensing.

Now, I had watched Mr. Beezley most closely, and I knew for a fact that he hadn’t read the first pages of the book. I said, “Mr. Beezley, how do you know about the gold?”

“Doesn’t all the world know by now?” he asked. “Only maroons on godforsaken islands haven’t heard of the gold in Georgia.”

This “took the wind from my sails,” as my poor father would have said. Godforsaken islands were exactly where we had been, and we’d had not a shred of news in months.

Mr. Beezley walked to the rail and chucked the book out on the sea. It fluttered from his hand like a wounded bird. “Now, my lads, we’ve work to do,” he said. “A ship to tend; a course to steer. We’re sailing for gold!”

To this echo of the sailor’s journal, Weedle and Penny gave three cheers, and we set about to turn the ship. Mr. Beezley took command, of course. He sent Benjamin Penny to the wheel, and Boggis to one of the many ropes at the side of the ship. He looked at Weedle’s pirate clothes and said, “Go stand by the sheets there, Captain Kiddy.” Even blind Midge was given a task. Mr. Beezley led him to a row of belaying pins, put his hands on a rope, and said, “When I give the word, you let that go. Understand?”