The Elfin Ship (28 page)

Aside from the swish of the rolling surge, the only sound within the cavern was the occasional echoing cry of a sea bird that sailed in and winged around for a few moments within the cavern before either sailing out again or disappearing into one of hundreds of weedy-looking nests clinging to crags and depressions in the walls above.

The whole quiet vista was something close to awesome; it silenced all of them. But perhaps most awesome of all was the weird ship that floated at anchor off a sandy spit halfway around the lagoon and at the end of the path across the rocks. It was an astonishing craft, obviously built either by elves or by one of the tribes of marvel men in the Wonderful Isles – built by someone, anyway, who knew what such devices ought to look like. It was a spiraly affair, with odd, seemingly senseless crenelations and spires and a series of what might be taken for arced shark fins down the center of its back. On a foggy night the thing would certainly resemble a sea monster more closely than a ship, for it had several round portholes at the front, two of which, on either side of its pointed nose, glowed from some inner light and looked for all the world like eyes. On the sides were protruding fins, shaped like the fins of an enormous tide pool sculpin. Seawater to the rear of the vessel seemed to be churning and bubbling, and a
whoosh
of water shot out of the end every minute or so.

‘That’s old Grandpa!’ Dooly said. ‘Sure enough and no doubt. That’ll be his undersea device there.’ Dooly pointed proudly toward the submarine. Twickenham, followed close on by the rest of the company, hopped across a couple of rocks and climbed along up the path until he reached a little rocky peak from where they could see the entirety of the beach off which the device was moored. The beach sloped away into the mouth of another cavern, and hustling through the cavern’s mouth came Theophile Escargot, perhaps the most noted thief and adventurer in the land, carrying an armload of goods which he piled into a canoe. He pushed the canoe into the lagoon, produced a paddle from beneath the thwarts, and dipped away stiffly toward the submarine.

‘He’s onto us!’ said Twickenham. ‘And he’s going to run.’

‘Not Grandpa,’ said Dooly. ‘He said he’d wait until December for me.’

But it was clear that Escargot was in a huge hurry, for he made the little canoe skate over the surface of the lagoon. Dooly leaped ahead of the rest of them and charged down the path toward the beach shouting.

‘Grandpa!’ he shouted when first setting out. Then just ‘Whoooo!’ and ‘Hey!’ as he pounded along, moving too quickly to bother with any actual words.

Old Escargot, shoving odds and ends through an open hatch, turned to see who was making such a fuss, paused, caught sight of the rest of the party clambering down the path. Without more than a moment’s hesitation he climbed down into the submarine. The hatch slammed shut, two or three blasts of water shot out behind, and the whole craft sank bubbling away beneath the waters of the lagoon.

Dooly stood on the sand, waving slowly at nothing, puzzled, probably, that old Grandpa had disappeared so completely. ‘He must not have recognized me, Mr Bing. He thought I was a ghost or goblin or something. Maybe I shouldn’t have made such noises.’

‘Perhaps that’s the case, Dooly,’ Jonathan agreed.

‘He seemed in a powerful hurry to get away.’

‘That he did.’ Jonathan looked back up the beach. In the mouth of the little cavern lay a heap of supplies. A fire crackled within a pit encircled by stones; an odd fish, half-cooked, hung spitted over the fire.

‘Left in the middle of lunch,’ Jonathan said, ‘and without half his supplies.’

‘The old scoundrel,’ said Bufo, shaking a fist at the empty lagoon. Near the mouth the surge ebbed and two spiraling towers were briefly visible cutting along through the swell. ‘Hah!’ Bufo shouted as they disappeared, the submarine passing away into the open sea. ‘I’ll compose a poem about this treachery! An epic’ Bufo stomped around, possessed by the muse.

Jonathan could see that Dooly was making a grand effort not to cry. ‘Why don’t we talk about treachery some other time,’ he said to Bufo. ‘It won’t do us any good now anyway.’

Bufo looked at Jonathan, then at Dooly. ‘I believe you’re correct.’ He followed Twickenham and Thrimp and the Professor over to where the fish was still roasting to pieces. Its underside was charred and going to bits, but the top side was barely done. The Professor, idling about while Twickenham picked through Escargot’s abandoned supplies, turned the spit.

Jonathan sat on a rock and picked up a hermit crab as it scuttled past, big as a fist. The crab poked its head out of its seashell, looked at Jonathan, then pinched him on the finger. Jonathan shouted and pitched the thing into the lagoon, although he was immediately sorry he had, afraid that the crab might have suffered in some way. It occurred to him that it was foolish to go about picking up crabs if you didn’t want to get pinched.

Dooly, who still stood near the water’s edge, began to shout and dance. ‘Hooray! Hooray!’ He pointed out toward the water. Jonathan jumped up, and the others stormed across the sand toward him, for, surfacing amid a flurry of bubbles and steam, was the undersea device, Old Escargot was clearly visible within, working a complexity of controls. The thing motored into shallow water, and an anchor splashed out from the stern. As the hatch shot open, a grizzled head popped through.

‘Grandpa!’ Dooly yelled. Old Escargot, smiling as if he were just pulling into port after a fairly successful fishing trip, shouted, ‘Dooly, lad!’ He waved heartily.

The man wasn’t at all what Jonathan expected or remembered. For the last ten years he’d been nothing more than a rumor, a shadow around Twombly Town, known to everyone but well known by no one. Somehow Jonathan expected a dapper sort of gentleman thief – someone who looked a bit like the Professor perhaps, or like a retired schoolteacher. But Escargot more closely resembled a madman or a pirate or someone who had been off digging for buried treasure in the White Mountains for a year. His beard was simply grizzly and gave him the look of a fanatic. His hair should have been cut months before; it was swept back away from his face to some extent as if he were standing in a stiff wind. His eyebrows were on the bushy side. He wasn’t a particularly large man, was small in fact, but the spectacular appearance of his face made him look larger. Jonathan was fairly sure that any self-respecting person would take one look at him and think, ‘There’s a man who’s up to no good,’ and set about locking doors and patting his back pockets to see if his wallet were secure.

Escargot stood looking at them from the open hatch. ‘Would one of you gentlemen be so kind,’ he said, ‘as to fetch my canoe there and paddle her out? I’d swim, to be sure, but the water this time of year doesn’t agree with me. A bit cold, you see.’

Fifty feet down the strand lay the abandoned canoe, which had washed ashore on the swells. Since no one else made a move toward it, Jonathan stepped along, pushed off, and paddled out to the submarine. He grabbed hold of a protruding bit of metal alongside a brass ladder, holding on until Escargot climbed aboard; the little canoe tilted dangerously, then righted itself.

‘What ho,’ called Escargot, winking at Jonathan as he paddled ashore. ‘Didn’t I know your father, lad?’

‘That’s so,’ said Jonathan. He knew, as Bufo had pointed out, that Escargot was treacherous, although that certainly sounded like a harsh word. It wasn’t, on account of that, easy to make small talk. Escargot, however, didn’t seem overmuch concerned with the problem.

‘He was a good man,’ Escargot continued. ‘We did a bit of trading, him and me. He made a good cheese.’ Escargot smacked his lips appreciatively.

The canoe bumped ashore, and an embarrassed silence ensued. No one knew quite what to say. Twickenham, after all, was the one among them who was running the show. Bufo looked as if he were stewing, and the Professor looked pretty much the same. Dooly, however, capered up as if to hug Old Escargot, stopped, then thrust out a hand. Escargot shook it. ‘You’re looking fit, lad. You’ve brought along some friends, I see. Mr Twickenham,’ he said, and shook hands with the elf. ‘And Artemis Wurzle, if my eyebones don’t deceive me. It’s been a while, sir.’

The Professor, disgruntled, shook hands anyway and admitted that it had been a while.

‘You’ll excuse my appearance,’ Escargot said, ‘but I’ve been living at the Haven here for the last two months. Haven’t felt much need for the social graces. Didn’t expect any visitors, you see.’

Twickenham nodded. ‘Dooly here has been telling us that perhaps you did, that you had reason to believe that trouble was brewing up along the river. That you and he might take a bit of a cruise to the Isles.’

‘Yes, that’s so. It is at that,’ said Escargot, who seemed a trifle uncomfortable. ‘Trouble you say? Upriver?’

‘That’s right,’ said Twickenham. ‘A certain dwarf – Selznak his name is – has gotten hold of something he shouldn’t have.’

‘It’s come to that, has it?’ asked Escargot.

Twickenham seemed to be considering his words carefully before speaking. He might succeed by being stern, or then again he might not. He might be patriotic or he might appeal to Escargot’s sense of duty. But he wasn’t sure Escargot had any sense of duty or that he cared a penny for patriotism of any sort. There was the possibility that he could use Dooly, so to speak, to persuade Old Escargot to cooperate, but the idea likely seemed distasteful. It turned out, however, that Escargot needed no persuasion at all.

‘You might have seen me motoring my submarine around the lagoon,’ said Escargot.

‘Out of the lagoon,’ corrected Bufo.

‘Quite right,’ Escargot continued. ‘I was checking her ports and mungle bars. She has to be shipshape if I’m to lay her over here for the winter. Wouldn’t want to come along in April and find her at the bottom of the lagoon.’

‘That’s understandable,’ said Jonathan, who was happy to go along with the old man’s lie. ‘And will she hold up?’

‘Like a queen. I myself haven’t been upriver for a year. I thought I’d mosey up that way. Funny that you chaps should show up. Tomorrow would have been too late.’

‘I dare say.’ Bufo gave the Professor a knowing look.

Twickenham saw that he had an advantage. ‘Perhaps, Mr Escargot, you’d combine pleasure with business and do us all a grand favor. His majesty would be grateful.’

‘I know that he would, and I’d be delighted to help out. There’s sure to be profit in such a venture.’

‘Profit indeed,’ Bufo almost shouted, still in an ill-humor about the whole thing. But Twickenham shot him a look and shut him up. There was no need to strew rocks in the path, after all.

They clumped across to where the fish still smoked above the fire. ‘There’s lunch,’ said Escargot, pointing at the sad object. All the meat had fallen off into the fire, and only the thing’s skeleton hung there skewered.

‘Looks like a goblin meal,’ Dooly pointed out. ‘Like them fishbones in Willowood among all them smashed up buildings. You should see it, Grandpa. All up and down, there’s goblins about and ghost towns and everyone carryin’ on like crazy people. Makes a fellow wonder.’

‘Is that so?’ asked Escargot. ‘Willowood you say? How about Hightower? Everything well at Hightower, is it?’

‘Worse yet,’ the Professor replied.

‘I see,’ said Escargot. ‘I’d like to visit Hightower again. See what’s up.’

‘That would be capital,’ Twickenham put in. ‘Just the ticket.’ And with that they began rummaging around, breaking camp. Jonathan and Dooly doused the fire, although there was nothing about for it to burn aside from the fish skeleton and skewer stick. Escargot gathered a packful of odds and ends together, paddled out once more to the submarine, then hid his canoe among the rocks out toward the mouth of the cave.

They found the Squire and Stick-a-bush above eating cold fried chicken and a loaf of bread from one of the two baskets of lunch Twickenham had packed. Ahab trotted from, one to the other, helping with the meal. The Squire had gone a long way toward reducing the lunch to nothing, but there was enough left for each of them to have a bite or two during the return flight to Seaside. Escargot ate almost as much as the Squire, seeming happy to have something other than fish for lunch. He was as bluff and merry as any of them – more so, in fact.

Although Dooly’s spirits rose in proportion to his grandfather’s heartiness, Jonathan was just a little suspicious of the whole thing. Bufo was still acting like a sourpuss and was scribbling away in a note pad; pausing now and then to knuckle his brow or to ask Yellow Hat for a word. By the time they were halfway to Seaside, however, Escargot’s cheerfulness had spread fairly thoroughly through everyone aboard, and he and the Squire led the whole party in a chorus of ‘Old Dan’s Demise’. Bufo was persuaded finally to recite his poem about the traveling pickle, and Old Escargot made such a show of appreciation over it that Bufo admitted to Jonathan and the Professor that perhaps he’d underestimated Escargot. Late in the evening they landed finally at Seaside, all of them in fairly good spirits. Twickenham and Escargot disappeared into the palace. Jonathan, Dooly, Ahab, and the Professor set out for the Mooneye, anxious to be gone early next morning.

Lamps were lit up and down the streets, but fog had rolled in to enshroud them and dim their glow. It was a cool and murky night – one of the sort that frazzles your hair and makes you wish you’d put on a sweater under your coat. When the rafters clumped into the Cap’n Mooneye, the dining room and lobby were empty. Although that in itself wasn’t so peculiar, it was odd that no kitchen smells wafted out to greet them as Jonathan had hoped. All of them were powerfully hungry and wanted only to eat and go to bed.