The Elfin Ship (34 page)

They let him rest for a moment or two until he began to look around him and blink, surprised to find that all his friends had flown. He was such a hopeless and disheveled little pile of goblin that any urge in Jonathan to pull his nose or whack him on the head was dispelled. The thing attempted a traditional goblin cackle, but it sort of petered out foolishly.

‘What do you have to say for yourself?’ Jonathan asked.

But the goblin looked at him stupidly, then made a noise that sounded more like the noise a duck makes than anything else. Dooly made duck noises back at him, but it didn’t seem to have any effect.

‘They can’t speak like men,’ said Escargot. ‘All the bloody fools can do is gobble. Can’t even understand one another as far as I can tell. Too stupid by half.’

‘What’ll we do with him?’ Jonathan asked. ‘Do we want to keep him?’

‘Not a chance,’ said Escargot. ‘Have you ever seen one of these lads eat? Makes you sick. And they don’t eat nothing but fish and river trash. Throw the bones all over the place and try to comb their hair with them. There’s not a sane one among them.’

‘We’ll make him walk the plank,’ shouted Dooly. ‘Poke him in the rear with a cutlass!’

‘Aye!’ shouted Escargot, who stood behind the goblin so as not to be found out. ‘I can use some practice in that art. That’s not something you can find volunteers for, and in the pirate trade you’re expected to do it right. There’s regular methods, you know.’

‘I dare say,’ said the Professor. ‘But why don’t we practice some other time? I’d like to take a look at Jonathan’s ankle there, the one he’s limping around on. And I think we should cast off and pedal out to midriver. This tieing up to the bank is dangerous business.’

‘True,’ said Escargot. ‘We don’t have any plank anyway, and the deck’s only a foot above the water. There wouldn’t be any sport in it.’ Escargot picked the goblin up by the seat of his pants and the collar of his shirt and swung him back and forth a couple of times. He was just about to let the creature sail out over the river when Jonathan shouted for him to hold up. Escargot put the gobbling thing down, and Jonathan rolled it over. There, tied to the rope that the goblin used as a belt, was a leather bag. Jonathan untied the bag, opened it up, and spilled its contents onto the deck. A stream of marbles rolled out, sparkling in the lantern-light. There were ten, then twenty, then fifty and a hundred marbles, and still the bag showed no sign of emptying. Jonathan closed it up as Dooly scrambled after the marbles. Without speaking, Jonathan picked up the goblin and threw him into the river. He wished he had a brick to throw after him, but it wouldn’t have done any good.

‘I didn’t see that bag,’ Escargot said, taking a close look at it. ‘Looks like some sort of elf design.’

‘It belonged to the Squire,’ said Jonathan, and he sat down tiredly on the deck.

The Professor hoisted the anchor aboard, and he and Escargot poled the raft away from the bank and let it drift out into deeper water before tossing out fore and aft anchors. They spent the night in relative peace, not even bothering to keep watch. As soon as the sky turned from black to gray, about an hour before the sun rose over the mountains to the east, they were underway, full sail on a good morning breeze. They sailed and pedaled all that day and the next and then did the same the day after that. At night they could hear the distant pounding of goblin drums and could barely make out the gonging and cackling that seemed always to begin not long after the sun went down. Goblin fires lit the woods now and then, more often as they drew closer to the Goblin Wood. Parties of goblins came and went along the river road, paying the rafters little heed, although one small party paused long enough to throw stones out over the river – all of which fell far short of the raft. In fact, the goblins took such frightful aim that the stones flew in every which direction, but in no particular direction at all.

They passed Willowood in the afternoon; it stood as before, ruined and empty, pier pilings thrusting up through the green waters of the Oriel and the wrecked boathouse visible beyond.

‘What do you say,’ asked Jonathan, ‘to pulling in and looking up Miles the Magician? He might give us a hand with this venture.’

‘I think we’d be bloody fools to pull in anywhere,’ Escargot replied at once. ‘And besides, Miles the Magician doesn’t stay in one place. He’s likely long gone since you saw him last.’

‘He’s right,’ the Professor agreed with Escargot. ‘Besides this isn’t his affair anyway. The man likely has enough to concern himself with. This project has spread itself about too liberally already.’

‘True,’ said Jonathan. ‘He was just such a jolly sort that I thought it would be nice to see him again. But we’d best not loaf now.’ So they didn’t loaf or stop at Willowood, but sailed right on by.

Twice during those three days they were passed by rafts floating downriver toward Seaside. The first, as far as they could tell, was empty – the decks were clear, and no one sat at the tiller. The raft slid away sideways on the current. Dooly shouted wildly as it drew toward them, hoping that someone was in the cabin having a snooze. But if the cabin were occupied, whoever was in there wasn’t in a listening mood; nothing but silence answered Dooly’s calls. The second raft had a bit more activity aboard, but not much. A listless fellow with a tremendous overgrown beard sat at the tiller, and another lay on deck, sleeping. Smoke rose from the chimney shoving through the roof of the little shingled lean-to that sat in the middle of the deck; so someone, likely, was inside either cooking or keeping warm.

Again Dooly shouted, but got only a sour look from the helmsman who didn’t seem at all inclined to be cheerful. He wore very somber, dark clothes and a black hat with a brim on it the size of a cartwheel. For a moment Jonathan considered trying out the rigor mortis joke on the man, but the raft had such a look of emptiness and ruin about it, and the fellow at the tiller such a look of narrowness and fanaticism about him, that the joke probably wouldn’t have aroused much of a response anyway. The man appeared to be waiting for an opportunity to go mad –just the sort of person who is best left alone.

Late in the afternoon on the second of December, they found themselves fast approaching the Goblin Wood and hence the town of Hightower. They moored one evening in midriver, choosing a particularly wide spot at a point in the river some miles downstream from the Wood. It was as close as they dared come at night, and still close enough so that with luck, a bit of a breeze, and some active pedaling they might pass it entirely in the light of day if they set off early enough in the morning.

The weather had grown colder, as if having made up its mind to become serious about leaving autumn behind and to see about winter. With every mile they traveled the temperature seemed to drop a degree or so. In the morning, ice appeared on top of the cabin and frost on the deck. When not pedaling or steering the raft the group stayed pretty much inside the cabin and kept a jolly fire lit in the stove. Ahab was generally ready to pop outside if anyone made a move toward the door, but he was even more ready to pop back in after having been outside for a bit. Only Escargot seemed oblivious to the cold and spent as much time outside as in – ‘Getting some air,’ as he liked to say.

They discussed their goal a time or two, though the discussion accomplished little. Jonathan, in fact, was a bit put out at the very idea that there was any goal. His only goal, after all, was Twombly Town, and he had only three and a half weeks to get there if he were to make it before Christmas. That night below the Goblin Wood he decided to press the issue, for Escargot rather seemed to assume they were all about to advance some sort of lunatic siege on the castle at Hightower Ridge.

When they sat poking at the remains of the trout and potatoes they’d eaten for dinner, he brought the discussion around. ‘Well,’ said Jonathan, examining a fishbone, ‘day after tomorrow should see us at Hightower. What do you propose, Mr Escargot?’

‘Simple as a trout,’ Escargot said, picking up the popeyed remains of one of the fish and dangling it by a fin. ‘There’s a creek a mile below the town. Something like that creek at Stooton we were tomfool enough to tie up in. It’s here on the map.’ Escargot pointed with the fish head toward Twickenham’s map. ‘Hinkle Creek, it says here, though it don’t much matter. I had reason to hide out there a few years back. Spent three days in a bloody thicket eating crusts, and was lucky to have them too. I say we run her up the creek thirty or forty yards. She should be high enough now to do it. Then we lock the goods in the cabin, nail the shutters down over the window, cut brush enough to hide her as well as we can, and blow into town through the back roads to see which way the wind blows, if you follow me.’

Jonathan hated this sort of thing. He always found it much more pleasant to be agreeable. But there are times when it works best just to slam right along and say what you mean. ‘Quite honestly,’ said Jonathan, ‘it strikes me that somehow the Professor and Dooly and I have gotten roped into something none of us bargained for. We were led to believe that we would simply transport you to Hightower and be on our way. If our luck holds, we can be in Twombly Town a week before Christmas. If we, as you say, leave the raft unattended in Hinkle Creek, we’ll likely return to find goblins sailing it up and down the river and feeding the honeycakes to the fish. What I mean to say here is that this watch-stealing business is none of our concern.’

Escargot paused for a few moments before responding. He closed the shutters and removed the cloak, realizing no doubt that it’s tough to have a conversation of any serious nature with an invisible man. Then he lit his pipe, puffing at the tobacco until it blazed like a lumberyard fire.

‘Your luck won’t hold,’ he said, looking at Jonathan. ‘As for concerns, like it or not this pocketwatch business
is
your concern – and you’ll likely not see Christmas unless you make it so.’ Escargot’s voice wasn’t in any way threatening; he stated it all very matter-of-factly, and so it had more of an effect on Jonathan than it might have had. He was prepared to be angry. The Professor, however, didn’t appear altogether convinced. He sat there deep in thought as Escargot continued. ‘And we might need the seeker. Who can say where he keeps the blasted watch. It may be in his pocket and it may be upstairs. It may be under a brick in the wall around the tower. Even if I walked in and beat the Dwarf senseless, I wouldn’t come up with the watch. It isn’t worth trying for the thing without the seeker.’

‘You can have it,’ said the Professor. ‘Take the seeker. I haven’t any use for it. It’s just a curio. None of us need be involved. And let me say right now that, speaking for all of us, we’re not afraid of this Dwarf. I’m getting too old for that sort of fear. But, by golly, to speak the plain truth, this whole mess has your name written all over it, and you should be the man to clean it up! The risk is yours, not ours.’

Escargot nodded slowly, as if satisfied with the Professor’s logic. He puffed away thoughtfully. ‘Fear has little to do with your decision; I know that, Professor. But it has something to do with mine. I won’t talk falsely now. I know this Dwarf. I know who he is, what he has. And, mates, I’m not going into that tower alone. Not for you, or Twombly Town, or for the whole damn valley. Not for a moment.’

‘For Dooly,’ the Professor suggested. Dooly stared at the plate of broken fishbones.

‘I’ll take care of the lad,’ said Escargot. ‘He doesn’t figure in this. But I won’t go up to Hightower Ridge alone. You don’t know this Dwarf, even though you’ve seen him. He isn’t any sideshow conjurer now. He has powers even the elves fear.’

‘I believe you’re mistaken about my having seen the gentleman,’ the Professor said. ‘I haven’t had the pleasure and hope that I won’t, either.’

‘The ape,’ said Escargot. ‘He was the master of the bloody Beddlington Ape. And that wasn’t no ape, neither, or at least it wasn’t when you saw it. I can’t say for certain what it was, but it was a man’s voice that came out of it. It might have been part ape, but then it might have been part anything. Probably was.

‘Even back then he was up to foul tricks up on the ridge, but no one could see it. Everyone thought the ape gag was some sort of prank – ventriloquism or something. It was a prank all right, but it wasn’t any ventriloquism. And it ain’t only animals he controls. He can do things to the weather. He can send rains up and down the valley and make a fog rise up off the river with a wave of his stick.’ Escargot paused for a moment, then went on.

‘When I heard about that elf ship in the slough, I knew there was trouble ahead. There wasn’t any doubt. There was only one reason for the ship to be upriver – they were looking for the watch. And they found it too, the hard way. This watch freezes everything. Just stops things dead. Lets a chap do what he will, if he has that watch. I had it once and it was worth a few larks, I can tell you. But I didn’t know what in the devil it was. It ain’t easy to work – not if you do it right. You have to study it out and get the feel of it. All I did with it was borrow a few pies and such. And I didn’t need no pocketwatch to hook pies.

‘Then one day I ran into Miles the Magician. I didn’t let on I had it, but I got him to tell me what it was, really. He said that the watch tells time. I said that every watch does that, if it ain’t broken. He said that with any other watch, it’s
you
who tells time by it. With this, it’s the watch that
tells the time.
Do you follow me?’

Jonathan supposed so, and nodded, although the whole story was sounding a trifle grand and unlikely. The Professor had a look of astonishment on his face. ‘I’m not at all sure I
do.
What does all that signify?’