The Elfin Ship (10 page)

‘Fog,’ said Jonathan to no one in particular. ‘We’ll lose our way in the fog.’ And it suddenly felt to him as if it was very late at night indeed.

‘There it is again!’ cried Dooly, pointing. ‘Them’s no clouds. No, sir. Witches is what it is, and not just one but a fleet. There’s witches across the moon!’

The Professor sputtered. He was more concerned, as was Jonathan, with the fog wisps that were beginning to blow out over the river and with the curtain of it that rose from the downs like a gray cloak. But he could see, as Dooly said, dark shapes in the sky. Silhouetted against the circle of the moon as if cut of black satin were the figures of three conical-capped witches. Dark robes trailed out behind like the tattered sails of ghost ships adrift in the sky. To Jonathan’s amazement, each was astride a long broomstick, a thing he’d heard about but, of course, had never believed. Shrill cackling laughter wafted down on the night wind, and as the three witches passed across the face of the moon into darkness two more appeared, and three after them. When the fog finally enfolded the canoe and only gray mist could be seen, the grim laughter continued to clatter earthward like a fall of icicles.

Dooly groaned, his head in his hand. ‘Old grandpa knew those ladies,’ he said. ‘Yes, sir. And I don’t imagine I want to. He come upon them once in the wood. In the Goblin Wood, in fact, if my memory serves – which wouldn’t make it far off, would it, Professor?’

‘Less than half a league, Dooly.’

‘Aye, grim luck. They was having a sort of thing in the woods. And there was goats there with two heads and a bubblin’ pot and there wasn’t one of ’em that didn’t have a big sickle – ’

‘And I think we’d best keep the story for another time. For the daylight, let’s say,’ said Jonathan.

Dooly was hunched up in the bow. The memory of his grandfather’s story was something he shouldn’t have ferreted out, not just then.

‘Well now,’ said Jonathan, ‘we’re in a pickle. Do we come about?’

‘If we can’t see the shore, Jonathan,’ said the Professor, ‘then we can’t know whether we’re making headway, marking time, or losing ground. We certainly can’t paddle upriver in a fog.’

‘Perhaps the fog will lift.’ But Jonathan knew it wouldn’t, even though a good breeze was springing up at their backs. The fog was thick as a shroud and there were fewer clear patches all the time.

Laughter still rang strangely in the distance – laughter broken by an occasional shriek like the wail of a banshee. Although the eerie sound waxed and waned as if at the mercy of the winds, the three in the canoe seemed to be drawing nearer to it. All three paused in their paddling and listened, eyes peering widely into the murk ahead. Distant chanting, buried amid the clamor of laughs and shrieks and mingled with the occasional thudding gong of a great club whacked against an iron kettle almost drowned the sporadic barking of a terribly upset dog.

It was Ahab, ahead on the river and in the midst of some deviltry. The canoe cut through the standing mists as Jonathan, the Professor, and Dooly dipped their paddles as one, the grim sounds growing louder in their ears.

In the fog it was impossible for them to guess just how far they could see into the murk ahead. To the three in the canoe, the river water immediately around the boat was visible, but it was of the same pale gray color as the night air and two or three yards away the air and water blended so that no one could be sure what it was he was seeing. Jonathan feared they would run right up against the raft in their haste.

They saw the lights glowing in the mist when they were still some ten yards distant. The hooting and gonging and shrieking and laughing was not so much ahead of them on the raft as all around them – in the woods along the invisible shore.

The barking had ceased which Jonathan did not like by half. He felt like calling Ahab’s name, but the unlikelihood that he could be heard over the din – and his dread of whatever made that din – kept him silent. He looked over at the Professor, who simply shrugged, leaned forward, then whispered, ‘Goblins.’

Dooly seemed to shrink down even lower, if that were possible. Jonathan felt himself turning spongy. It was likely that they had already passed within the fringe of the vast, dark expanse of the Goblin Wood which separated the outposts of Willowood Station and Stooton-on-River from the upriver villages. It was a particularly bad place to be at night.

All of the running lights around the raft were lit, and, to Jonathan’s amazement, the masts were rigged and the raft was sailing with the breeze at a good clip, accounting for the extra hours the companions had paddled in search of her.

The glow of the torchlight reflected off the fog and stained the air a ruddy pink roundabout the raft. Strange shadows undulated against the fog on all sides as if the torchlight were shining against a dim gray curtain. On deck were a dozen capering little men, tilting this way and that and howling and cackling and pounding away with their feet and fists against anything handy.

Dooly cringed before this fearful drumming; Jonathan gave him an encouraging nod in an attempt to look stalwart and quell his fears. Because the three in the canoe were in the darkness and looking into the light, they could see the goblins clearly before the goblins could see them. But the stalwart looks were all for naught when they drew near enough to glimpse the hideous faces of the goblins on board.

Although each was smaller even than a dwarf and thin and bony like a skeleton with a skin of leather stretched over it, Jonathan found it hard to convince himself of the facts. The figures seemed to grow and shrink on the mist like their leaping shadows. One moment they looked like smiling, prancing elves and the next like grim shadows of death with sunken eyes and protruding teeth and ghastly, misshapen hands like the claws of crabs.

There was no order to their leaping about nor rhythm to their gonging and pounding, and though no fires save the torches burning on deck, were in evidence, their cauldron sent steam bubbling up into the fog. One great goblin, taller than the rest by a grisly head, howled and cursed as he stirred the contents of the pot, his eyes glowing like embers in a ruin of a face. His companions, seemingly without purpose, toppled past and dropped random objects into the bubbling cauldron: the sextant, a cheese, the keg of nails, a length of rope, and all manner of lunatic things. It was all done in a rout – all mayhem done for the ghastly pleasure of the thing. Jonathan, whose teeth were chattering, didn’t like the affair at all.

A cry like the wail of a marsh devil at sun-up went up from one of the leaping goblins. The three companions had been seen. The troupe of goblins lined the rail, pointing and beckoning and howling and laughing. Jonathan saw one rolling the dill pickle keg along the deck and off into the river, and it bobbed along near the canoe for a moment before the current took it and swept it on toward the sea.

Then one of the goblins yanked a torch from its fastenings and Jonathan was certain it was intent upon firing the ship. Instead, the creature set fire to its own hair and leaped blazing to and fro about the deck. Wild laughter issued from between its pointed teeth, and the fire seemed to melt the skin from its face and it ran down and left only a grinning skull with flaming hair.

Jonathan was caught between terror and disgust, but Dooly felt only terror as he sat curled up in the bow with his head buried in his arms. Then the goblins, each produced a long curvy-bladed knife and waved it about. Jonathan and the Professor backed water like sixty, both deciding without discussion to reconnoiter and consider strategies. But when a goblin lurched along carrying Professor Wurzle’s oboe gun and dropped it too into the cauldron, the Professor decided he’d backed water long enough.

‘By golly!’ he shouted, brandishing his paddle. His outburst seemed to send the goblins into a wild fit, and they stamped about as several others set themselves afire.

The canoe was in a pretty pass because Jonathan wasn’t quite as anxious to save the oboe gun as was the Professor, and he was still backing water as the Professor was dipping forward madly.

While the canoe hung there suspended, moving neither forward nor backward, Jonathan was amazed to see Ahab, huge in relation to the goblins, burst forth from the cabin door like a whirlwind. The goblins had clearly supposed he was secured within because he took them unawares and sent them into a mad caper.

It was a curious sort of rout altogether though. Howls of laughter rolled out over the water, and within the space of a moment, all the goblins were blazing like little upright bonfires. Ahab leaped up behind the great pot-stirring goblin and, unmindful of his grim, melting face and flaming head, picked him up by the seat of his trousers and, with a shake and a bit of prancing, flung him overside and into the river.

The thing shrieked as it fell, hissing and bubbling. When it finally sputtered to the surface, the goblin didn’t appear half so terrifying as when it went in. Now it looked simply like a very wet, evil, sorry little man. Its companions on the raft, however, remained flaming and ranting and took to throwing things at the floating goblin.

Ahab was pleased with his work and wasted no time before latching onto another and sending him riverward. Jonathan, bucked up at the sight of the courageous Ahab, and Professor Wurzle, fearing that his oboe gun would be lost in the river, shot across the final few feet of water between them and the raft and looped the painter around the bolt in the stern.

Then it was but a simple thing to climb up over the rail because the goblins – the six or so that were left – were dashing in a fiery circle about the deck, round and round the hold. It was impossible to tell whether Ahab, smack in the center, was chasing the goblins or the goblins were chasing Ahab.

What stirred the Professor into action was the sight of one of the goblins brandishing the dripping oboe gun above his head. The weapon had clearly been cranked up, for the whirl-gatherers were twirling and it seemed as if at any moment, the thing would wrench itself free and sail off on one of its lunatic journeys.

The Professor went for the goblin and grabbed at the gun, but the goblin held on, hooting and shrieking and tearing at Professor Wurzle with its talons. Old Wurzle, unmindful of the pain, flew into a very pretty rage when the oboe gun pulled free and sailed out over the river. Through a clear space in the fog the Professor saw the gun sail fifty feet or so, bury itself in the water, and emerge again a bit further on only to disappear into the swirling mists. His oboe gun was lost, and this time there were no handy trees to climb to fetch it back.

Professor Wurzle, in a fit of rage, dumped the clawing, flaming goblin, still laughing and hooting in a tiresome way, into the river.

Jonathan and Ahab pursued the last of the goblins around the deck. Finally, Dooly, plucked up enough courage to clamber up onto the raft and, emboldened by the sudden lack of goblins on board, collared the last one. Then, shutting his eyes so as not to have to look it in the face, Dooly pitched it into the river.

Goblin heads bobbed out of sight in the direction of the far shore. Their laughter, now somewhat dampened, faded in the night. Besides the gallant Ahab, the three companions sat puffing on the bow, Jonathan tut-tutting over the loss of the oboe gun. If truth were told, however, he wasn’t as concerned as he seemed, for he had never been entirely convinced of the thing’s usefulness.

It must have been close to three in the morning when finally they sailed out of the bank of fog into the clear night again. The Goblin Wood was a dark, misty blotch on the hillsides behind, and the bright moon shined once again along the riverside. Hillocky grasslands ran away for miles on either side toward the sea.

It took an hour of puttering about for the crew to straighten the mess and tally the losses. The strangest thing was that the cauldron had entirely disappeared. Where it had been, or had appeared to be, was a heap of scrap and trash: several broken barrel staves, some rusted bits of metal, fragments of crockery, Dooly’s troll chain, and the skeletal remains of a half dozen oddly shaped fish no doubt caught, from the river by the goblins.

They threw the whole mess overboard with the exception of Dooly’s chain which they hung once more on the mast. Jonathan swore he’d seen a cauldron and the Professor agreed. Dooly was too baffled even to know he was baffled until the Professor told him it was all an illusion.

‘Enchantment!’ cried Dooly, familiar with goblin trickery due to the tales of his old grandpa.

The Professor explained that that was exactly the case. Coming out of the cabin door, Jonathan stated that the case was that the goblins had drank half the rum and ruined the rest. Sure enough, floating in the half-drained rum barrel were another dozen or so partially consumed fish. There was nothing to be done but dump the stuff overboard, keg and all.

This was a disappointment to say the least, because both Jonathan and the Professor had been keen on the idea of a mug or so of hot buttered rum. But they’d see precious little of it, at least for awhile.

So the pickles were gone and the rum ruined, and all the remaining loaves of bread had their centers eaten out and looked more like hats or helmets than bread. The Professor said that
he,
at least, didn’t too much rue the loss of the rum which was pretty clearly responsible for the goblins having been in such a state. Sober goblins, it seemed certain, would have been a bit more dangerous. Everyone agreed that they had gotten off easily, all things considered. Just then Jonathan remembered the port that Mayor Bastable had laid in, and he went off to fetch a bottle and three glasses.