The Vanishing Island (16 page)

“We should get some sleep,” said Mouse. “We could be at sea a long time.”

“Is that what the birds told you? That we're lost?”

“I don't know yet,” said Mouse, and that was the last thing she said. Bren wanted to keep talking to her, to learn more about her, and the admiral, and what she knew about where they were going. But it had been a long day, and Mouse was right, so he lay back on his pillow and was soon asleep, feeling less alone than he had in a very long time.

T
he next morning Bren went above and thought he had stumbled onto a random fight, the sort of thing that happens among men in close quarters. But when he saw the crew circling the waist of the ship, cheering and placing wagers, he knew it was something else. It turned out that sailors, at least on a Dutch ship, celebrated victories in battle (or the avoidance of defeat) in a rather strange way. They tried to beat each other to a pulp.

“Loggerheads,” Sean explained. “Barbaric, yeah?” But even as he said it, he leaped up in excitement as the man
he had apparently bet on drove his opponent against the gunwale and almost over the side of the ship.

The name of the game was based on the weapons of choice—loggerheads, long sticks with an iron ball attached to one end that joiners used to melt pitch and press it into open seams for waterproofing. But for the lack of spikes they could have been called maces. There were rules against blows to the head or joints—anything that might kill or maim—but Bren discovered that the contests were only for hobs, the low men on the ship, and rules weren't exactly enforced.

The admiral was nowhere to be seen. Mr. Richter and Mr. van Decken were presiding over the contests from the quarterdeck rail, and when one man conceded, the purser went around noting who lost and won in his ledger. “We haven't had a good match of loggerheads in ages,” said Sean. “But Mr. Richter there said he wanted to see some
real seamanship
.”

Bren glanced up at the company man, a cruel smile on his face and his ample gut propped against the railing. This is what rich men had done since the dawn of time: made sport out of lesser men. Bren felt sick to his stomach, but when he turned back to the crew, he felt even worse. Up next was Otto Bruun, the dark-eyed brute.

Otto was a Netherlander, but behind his back the men talked of him as if he were a mutt . . . a Dutch mother and an unknown father. But they didn't say that to his face.
Otto was powerfully built, his arms and shoulders knotted with muscles, and he could lift or move what any other two men could. Bren guessed that whoever had given him the scars on his face wasn't around to brag about it.

When Otto picked up his loggerhead, the winner of the previous fight slumped and cowered right away.

“Otto's never lost a fight,” Sean whispered, and Bren could believe it. His opponent already seemed beaten.

The two came at each other, Otto wielding his loggerhead like a broadsword, and when his opponent tried to block Otto's blow, his own weapon broke in two, the end with the iron ball flying across the deck and nearly striking a bystander.

“That was fast!” someone said.

“Good strategy, Schneider,” called another. “Get out while ye can!”

The other men laughed, but Otto turned on them and snarled, “Fight's not over!” He tossed his loggerhead aside and rolled up his sleeves. “You can keep yer stick, Schneider. Won't do you no good.”

The man called Schneider charged at Otto, swinging his decapitated loggerhead with both arms, and Otto let the blow hit him squarely in the shoulder. Then he grabbed his opponent by the shirt and hurled him against the mainmast with a loud
crack
, causing Bren to wonder if he had broken the mast, or the man's spine.

“I concede,” said Schneider as he crumpled to his knees, and Otto turned in a slow circle, staring at his mates, silently asking
Who's next?

No one stepped forward.

“You must be kidding,” said Otto. “We're finished? Back to work?”

“I can't let you take out my whole crew,” said Sean, laughing, but Otto wasn't the joking type. He turned toward Bren.

“What about our Johnny from Map?” he said.

“Be serious, Otto,” said Sean. “He's only a boy.”

Otto smirked, and he turned and found the loggerhead he'd discarded, and tossed it in Bren's direction. “You can use that. I'll use nothing.”

There were catcalls and taunts from the crowd. Bren suddenly needed to use the privy very badly, and if he got the chance, he told himself, he might as well jump through the hole into the sea.

“That's enough, Mr. Bruun,” said Sean, putting his foot down on the ball of the loggerhead. “Master Owen is twelve years old, and we don't entertain ourselves by having grown men fight boys, even with a handicap. Now, I believe we all have work to do. . . .”

“No.”

It was Bren who said it, even though he couldn't quite believe it himself. Everyone turned to look at him. Sean
looked as if he wanted to slap him.

“If Mr. Bruun wants to prove his mettle against a boy, we should let him,” said Bren, and suddenly the hoots and whistles were directed at Otto.

The muscles in Otto's face writhed like the snakes in Medusa's hair. “Well, come on then,
jongen
.”

Bren bent down and picked up the loggerhead. It weighed a ton . . . he could barely lift the iron head off the ground, so he choked up on the handle to get more leverage. Otto smirked again. With his scars and knotty cheeks, Otto's face was like a topographical map of some forbidding continent.

Bren figured he'd made a serious mistake—perhaps his last—but he couldn't help himself. He remembered how satisfying it had felt to stand up to Duke finally, to sink his fist into the bully's stomach and watch him crumble. But Duke was just a boy.

Think, Bren
, he told himself.
You've just heard the admiral talk about the advantages of being the smaller, quicker foe.
And he remembered the advice Mr. Black had given him one time, back when Duke had first started tormenting him. The older man claimed to have been a boxing champion back in his salad days, which Bren found hard to believe. But he had told him,
Achilles had a weak spot. Even dragons have one. It's just a matter of learning it.

“And getting at it,” Bren mumbled, thinking of just
how small Achilles' heel must've been.

“Come on, you little rukker,” said Otto, standing up straight and spreading his arms wide. “I'll give you a free shot.”

Overconfidence
, thought Bren. Putting his back into it, he swung the loggerhead back between his legs for momentum, then hurled it forward, high in the air, toward Otto. Instinctively, he reached to catch it, and when he did, Bren ran directly at him. Otto glanced down, at which point the loggerhead rotated with the weight of its iron head, arcing downward and striking him squarely in the noggin.

Otto wobbled and tipped backward, landing on his backside, and sat there, stunned. A tiny rosette of blood appeared on his forehead, just before the dark-eyed brute fell backward onto the deck, out cold.

The deck erupted in cheers. The next thing Bren knew, he was being carried around the ship's waist on the shoulders of hobs.

“Conquering hero!” shouted one.

“Yeah—
conked
him right on the head,” said another, to roars of laughter.

Sean brought up a full flask of jenny to reward the underdog. It was Bren's first taste of spirits, and he wouldn't remember whether he enjoyed it or not. In fifteen minutes he was as unconscious as Otto.

“Did I tell you I invented the fixed spool,
jongen
?”

“At least once before,” said Bren, his head throbbing. He had already thrown up three times—once in his cabin and twice over the rail of the poop deck.

“Used to take three men to read a log line. One to hold the spool, one to pay out the line, another to watch the sand.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mouse's birds can feed themselves!”

“Sorry, sir,” said Bren, dumping the rest of the crumbs on the floor of the cage. One of the birds was missing. Mouse had sent it off in search of land, in hopes that they could at least determine their exact location.

“Five knots,” said Mr. Tybert, whose every word was like a tiny fist. Bren could hardly see how letting Otto pound him with the loggerhead would have made him feel worse. The navigator read the compass direction, and Bren inserted two pegs in the traverse board.

“Yer not very talkative this morning,
jongen.
”

“No, sir.”

“Yer usually jabberin' my ear off.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I ever tell you exactly how I lost my eye?”

Bren looked up at the navigator. “No, sir!”

“Not twenty years ago, in these very waters, on a ship called the
Green Beetle
,” Mr. Tybert began, “I was reeling
in the log line, when all of a sudden I feel her stop. Caught on something, I thought. Just flotsam and jetsam, or some old driftwood, I told myself. And then I gave the line a yank, and when it came out of the water, I seen the rows of suckers, and the tentacle wrapped around her.”

“A squid?!”

“A
giant
squid,” said Mr. Tybert. “As long as our boat, tip to tail. Before I knew it, the thing was attached to the stern of the ship, its fearsome beak snapping at the transom. It took our whole crew to hack the thing off, but just my luck, as the beast is plunging back to its dark and desolate home, it lashes out with the one tentacle it has left and one of its teacup-size suckers lands on my eyeball and plucks it right out of the socket!”

Bren gasped, hardly able to believe what he was hearing, and then he noticed the glint in the navigator's remaining eye. “Wait, is that true?”

Mr. Tybert stared at him, dead serious, for what felt like forever. There is no good way for a one-eyed man to stare at you, and Bren's face began to tingle in anticipation of having his ear cuffed. But then the navigator erupted with a big, coarse laugh. “Nah. A swingin' boom hit me in the face during a storm.”

Bren sat down and began feeding the birds again. At least he had briefly forgotten how terrible he felt.

“Of course,” said the navigator, “your biggest worry is
Otto putting a knife in your scrawny back.”

“You think he'll be sore about the fight?”

Mr. Tybert just grunted and flipped his hourglass, then measured the height of the sun above the horizon.

The birds were going crazy in their cage now, as if they had had to listen to one too many of Mr. Tybert's stories. Bren looked at the navigator. “Maybe a storm is coming?”

“Old wives' tale,” he grumbled. But a moment later, Mouse was running up the stairs to the poop deck.

“She's coming back,” said Mouse, and far off, Bren saw it—the missing seabird, descending out of a wisp of cloud, soaring gracefully until it came near the ship, when it suddenly threw its wings up as if terrified and stuck its big yellow feet forward to land. Bren dove out of the way just in time as the bird hit the deck like a shuttlecock, wobbling head over tail.

Mr. Tybert cursed as Mouse gathered up the bird, stroked its head several times, and returned it to its cage.

“What happened?” said Bren.

“No land,” said Mr. Tybert.

Bren looked at Mouse, who confirmed this.

Mr. Tybert cursed again. “Back to the drawing board,
jongen
,” he said, rapping the traverse board with his knuckles. Mouse began hand-feeding the bird, and Bren heard the bell signaling a change in watch. He had to get back to the map now.

“Just a second,” said Mr. Tybert, looking around to make sure no one else was nearby. “Wanted to give you this. Don't tell Mr. Graham, or the purser.” He held out what looked like only the handle of a knife.

“What is it?”

The navigator flicked up a small latch with his thumb. The handle split in two and folded back on itself, revealing a small, pointed blade.

“Whoa!” said Bren.

“It's called a balisong. Came out of the Dragon Islands. Keep it in your boot.”

“Is this because of what you said about Otto?” said Bren. “About him putting a knife in my back?”

Mr. Tybert lowered his voice. “I've been a sailor forty years,
jongen.
Never met a sailor who
wasn't
capable of putting a knife in your back. Just be careful, that's all.”

Bren tried keeping the knife in his boot, but it felt strange there, and it hurt, rubbing against his ankle through his wool socks. In his cabin later, he practiced opening it a few times, or tried to. On his third attempt he nearly stabbed himself in the hand, so he closed it up and shoved it under his thin mattress. He would just have to rely on his wits, and of course, the paiza, for now.

The Empress of the Western Skies had seven daughters, one of whom wove the clouds in the sky. One day the daughters took a trip to Earth, disguised as swans, to see what mortals were like. The cloud maiden, attracted by the sound of music, wandered off from her sisters and into a nearby field, where a humble plowman sat playing his
liuqin
. So enchanted was the cloud maiden by the plowman's gentle notes that she abandoned her disguise and showed herself. The two fell in love, and they got married without the knowledge of Heaven.

They lived happily together on Earth for two years (which was only a day in Heaven), until the empress discovered what her daughter had done. She was furious and ordered the cloud maiden to return to Heaven, else she would kill the plowman and destroy his village. When he found that his wife was gone, the plowman was so upset that he rode his favorite ox up to Heaven to find his wife, and begged for her to be returned to him. The empress was furious, and transforming herself into an eagle, she scratched a wide gap with her talon on the floor of her palace, causing a Silver River to separate the two lovers forever.

The King of the Magpies heard the lamenting and weeping from everyone involved, and took pity on them. Calling upon all the subjects in his kingdom, he formed a bridge of birds and allowed the couple to reunite. Even the empress was moved by this display, and thereafter allowed the lovers to meet once a year. So once a year all the birds in the world fly up to heaven to form a bridge so the lovers may be together for a single night.

“L
earning anything over there, boy?”

It was Mr. Richter, in his customary position on the sofa. Bren had grown to hate him. He seemed to serve no purpose whatsoever, other than being wealthy. “I hope you're as clever as the admiral thinks you are,” he said.

“You've told me that before,” said Bren.

“And it bears repeating!” he snapped, standing up as if he might strike Bren, if it wouldn't require setting down his drink.

“Careful now, Mr. Richter,” said the admiral, who had been trying to read. “If our Master Owen can fell Otto, I like his chances against you.”

The admiral winked at Bren, who tried not to smile as the company man fumed and sat back down with a
thump
.

“Luck,” scoffed Mr. Richter, but the admiral was having none of it.

“Luck is nothing to scoff at, Mr. Richter. Do you curse the gods or count yourself lucky that you're not an Iberian prisoner—or dead? Besides, I like to think that luck is the happy consequence of hard work and planning. That it is earned in its own way.”

Later that night in his cabin, Bren replayed the fable over and over in his mind, searching for clues, and he decided he would take all the luck he could get, earned or not. Three days had passed since Mouse's bird returned, and not knowing where they were made it hard for Bren to sleep. Once, Mr. Black, in trying to discourage Bren's wanderlust, had recounted the horrors of being lost at sea . . . scurvy, cabin fever, ghosts in the rigging, maddening thirst, starvation . . .

“You think the only thing standing in your way of fame and fortune is pirates or angry natives,” Mr. Black had said.
“But the real obstacles come from within.”

Bren climbed to the poop deck for fresh air and discovered that Mr. Tybert couldn't sleep, either. He was staring out to sea but heard Bren walk up.

“Come over here,
jongen
, you need to know this.”

Bren stood next to him at the rail and the navigator pointed to a star near the horizon.

“The North Star?” said Bren.

“You see how low it is?” said Mr. Tybert. “We're close to the equator now, and when we cross it that's the last we'll see of her.”

“Can we not figure our longitude by the stars?” said Bren. “Don't we have star charts that show where the other stars should be, around the North Star, depending on how far east or west we are?”

Mr. Tybert looked at him in mock surprise. “You may be a navigator yet! The problem is, we can't figure it close enough that way. Not with the records we have. But I do know this—I've been navigating Far Easters twenty years now, and I know with my own eye that we're not looking at the right sky.”

“So we're lost,” said Bren.

“We've become too reliant on maps and gadgets,” said Mr. Tybert. “In olden times, real sailors knew where they were going by the waves and the winds. By the schools of fish that ran by their boats and knowing that the sun would
rise and set on one side of the horizon or the other depending on the time of year. I sailed with a man once could tell how tall and fast the waves were supposed to be in any part of the North Sea. He knew the colors of the sea and sky from one place to another, and how clouds would gather over certain islands. Instinct,
jongen
! Instinct!”

“Maybe that's what the admiral meant by saying Mouse talks to birds?” said Bren, but Mr. Tybert just snorted.

“All that bird told us was that we're not near land. I could've told you that, and I don't crap on the deck.”

Bren got the creeping sensation that a story was coming.

“I ever tell you how Polaris came to be fixed in the night sky?”

“No, sir.”

“It was back when Apollo was tending his sheep. One of his flock ran off up a tall mountain, but when he made it to the top, he couldn't figure out how to get down and had to stand stock-still lest he plummet to his woolly death. So Apollo turned him into the North Star.”

“Why didn't Apollo just go get him?” said Bren. “Wasn't he a god? And don't gods have better things to do than tend sheep?”

“They were Olympic sheep!” Mr. Tybert said, and he cuffed Bren on the ear.

The watch bell rang and Bren returned to his cabin, taking great pains to make sure Otto was nowhere nearby
as he changed decks. He reread the tale of the cloud maiden and the plowman. He knew the admiral must be right, that Marco Polo had coded the location of the island in the folktale, but how? Was it a rural area, furrowed by plows? Was there a place where the Chinese sent young women away if they got themselves “in trouble”? He thought the biggest clue was probably the “Silver River.” He would have to dig through more of the admiral's books to learn if there was a major river in the East that went by that name. But then there were Mr. Tybert's doubts about the point of it all, which Bren had tried to suppress, but couldn't.

The next morning it became even harder to focus on lost treasure. When Bren helped Mouse carry breakfast to the officers' saloon, they walked in on an argument between the first mate and Mr. Richter.

“What does that mean?” said Mr. van Decken, his cold eyes on Mr. Richter. When the company man didn't answer right away, the first mate grabbed him by the lapels of his fancy waistcoat and jerked him out of his chair. “Unless your money floats it won't keep you from drowning when I throw you off this ship, you worthless patroon!”

Mr. Richter looked to the admiral for help, but none was coming.

“Answer him,” said the admiral.

“We're only supplied for the Amsterdam to Cape Colony leg.”

The first mate looked as if he couldn't believe his ears, while Mr. Tybert mumbled something under his breath. Sean and Mr. Leiden sat stone-still, and Bren and Mouse just stood there dumbly, holding everyone's breakfast.

Mr. van Decken shoved Mr. Richter back into his chair and then removed his hat, running the fingers of his right hand through his hair. As he did so, his soiled sleeve fell away from his wrist, and Bren noticed for the first time that his entire right forearm was badly scarred, as if it had been held over an open fire long ago.

“Pull your jaw up, van Decken,” said Mr. Richter. “The company has had to streamline costs since the tulip market collapsed.”

“By not supplying its ships with enough food and water?”

“Plenty of food and water, for the first leg,” said Mr. Richter. “Why carry a year's worth of supplies, much of which will go bad, when we figured we could get more at Cape Colony? Besides, supplies are half as expensive in the colonies as back home.”

“A lovely plan—assuming we can ever find Cape Colony,” said Mr. van Decken. “Do the brilliant minds at the Dutch Bicycle and Tulip Company ever consider that a Dutch ship might be at the mercy of the wind and waves, like any other?”

“Admiral Bowman's record is unsurpassed,” said Mr.
Richter. Bren looked at the admiral, who just sat calmly at the table, as if they were discussing a small matter.

“We're going to run out of food?” said Bren. The admiral finally noticed them and motioned for them to set their trays down.

“Is there no other place we can restock?” said Mr. Richter.

“Look at the charts for yourself,” said the admiral.

Bren didn't have to look. He had seen enough maps to know that below the equator between South America and Africa there was nothing but blue sea. Of course, what the admiral had told him was true—there were miles of ocean yet to be explored. There could be a paradise a day away. Except that Mouse's bird had come back empty-mouthed.

“So, east or west?” said Mr. van Decken, trying to control his anger. “We can figure our latitude, so we need to decide, which is the shortest way to land?”

The admiral and Mr. Richter looked at each other. Bren didn't have to ask to know what they were thinking. Even if South America were closer than Africa, the detour would put them off schedule by weeks—maybe even months. There was also the danger of finding more Iberian warships if they sailed toward the New World.

“I can't believe we're that far west,” said the admiral, looking at Mr. Tybert.

“We're not,” said Mouse, and everyone looked at her in astonishment.

“Not what?” said the admiral.

“Not that far west. Those birds there wouldn't be flying that direction if we weren't closer to the sun.” She was at one of the windows, pointing toward a distant flock of white birds, barely visible.

“You mean in the eastern Atlantic?” said the admiral. Mouse nodded again.

They left breakfast uneaten and gathered in the chart room, huddled around their routing map. “Show me.”

Mouse drew imaginary lines with her index finger around the map, circling the continents. What she was suggesting was that birds migrating to or around Africa stuck to the eastern side of the Atlantic, while those going around South America stuck to their side.

“So a flock of 'em going south-southwest this time of year would have to be this side,” said Mr. Tybert.

“Fascinating,” said the admiral.

“Birds have the whole bloody sky to work with!” said Mr. van Decken.

“No,” said Mouse. “Same routes always, like ships.”

The first mate was fuming. Everyone looked at Mr. Tybert, who rubbed his one good eye with a filthy knuckle. “I don't know what to tell you, Admiral. I don't know
birds, only this,” he said, rapping the maps with the back of his hand.

The admiral walked slowly over to his desk and perched on the edge. “East-southeast it is, then. We'll make the cape or die trying.”

“We still need wind,” said Mr. van Decken, who didn't wait for a rebuttal. He slammed the cabin door behind him, leaving an uncomfortable silence in his wake. Mr. Tybert stared at the map, Mr. Richter stared at his whisky glass, and Bren stared at Mouse, hoping very much that she knew what she was talking about.