The Cannibals Page 5

  Then Mr. Mullock called out, “Look lively. Over the bridge and east we go.”

  It was the route to Chatham that we took, the road that had taken me from London to the hulk. There was a church I remembered glimpsing from the window of my coach, then only scattered buildings, and vast and empty places, until we came to a crowded tangle of grim, square buildings. It could only be the Woolwich dockyards, though I couldn't imagine how a lord might know them.

  It marked the end of his remembered world. Beyond that was nothing but the natural rocks of the island, and in a few steps we came to another cliff. His Thames tumbled there, down a thin cataract to a wonderful beach in a little cove where the sea was clear and placid. Yards from shore, the sea smashed on a line of rock and boulders, and I understood how we'd passed the place without seeing it.

  “Sheerness!” announced Mr. Mullock. “If you'd landed 'ere, you would 'ave 'ad no trouble. But no, you 'ad to make your hentrance at Land's End, didn't you? You wrecked on the Cornish coast, you fools.”

  The bat was crawling through his hair. It moved in a slow and ghastly fashion, hanging upside down as it slithered to his shoulder. In a shrill little chatter, it cried out.

  “Hah!” said Mr. Mullock. “Mind your tongue now, Foxy. There'll be no more of that.”

  “No more of what?” I asked.

  Mr. Mullock glared at the bat, then looked sideways at me through tangled forelocks. “Death, he means. Death and dying. Hah! What else do bats ever think of?”

  seven

  MR. MULLOCK'S JUSTICE

  Mr. Mullock made his home on that bit of the island between London and Sheerness. Overlooking his little harbor was a cave, and across its entrance hung slabs of fish that dangled from a leather string. It was the darkest of caves, booming with the sound of the sea. Somewhere beneath us, the swells rolled right into the rocks.

  Despite his warnings to stay away from the caves, Mr. Mullock led us straight through the entrance, parting the fish like a curtain. We stepped into total darkness.

  I heard Mr. Mullock working nearby, but couldn't see a thing. A loud clang echoed through the chamber, and a flurry of sparks flew close to the ground. There was another clang, a squeal from the bat, and an oath from the man. Then Mr. Mullock seemed to coax fire from the earth itself, breathing his sparks into flames. When the cavern brightened I saw him crouched in the middle, with foul-smelling smoke rising round his shoulders. He'd set alight a pool of oil in a chipped-away groove, and now—from that—lit several little bowls that he wedged around the walls.

  The cavern was so huge that the light from the lamps barely reached the farthest wall. It left black holes to mark where tunnels led farther into the rock, and I guessed that the island was a honeycomb of passages. The room where we sat was stuffed with barrels. Some were big and others small, and they stood in stacks, in piles and rows, everywhere I looked. It was a pirate's hoard of treasure, I thought. But when I looked more closely I saw that they weren't really barrels. They were the shells of giant turtles. Along the side by the entrance, they stood like a line of green breastplates, the armor of Neptune's soldiers. Then I understood why Mr. Mullock looked so strange. His clothes were turtle skin; his helmet had been fashioned from a shell. He had made dozens of bags from the bodies or guts of the creatures, and the bowls of his lamps from the shells. His cavern was a turtle tomb, filled with the remains of so many animals that I couldn't imagine how long it had taken to collect them. No wonder he conversed with a bat.

  Mr. Mullock fed us fish. He gave us water, and a crude liquor that was heavy and thick, unlike anything I'd tasted before. I didn't care for it at all—it was brewed from turtle blood, I thought—and secretly tipped my bowl down a fissure.

  “You'll all sleep 'ere, of course,” said Mr. Mullock. “In the morning we'll float your boat round to Sheerness and get 'er up in the navy yards.”

  “It might be beyond saving,” I said.

  “Time will tell.” He slurped from his bowl. “We'll 'ave to see 'ow Fate plays 'er 'and.”

  It was strange to hear my own thoughts echoed by this fellow. But even stranger was Early's next question. He looked at me and asked, “You came here by boat, did you?”

  “We all did,” I said. “You were with us, Early.”

  “Was I really?” His brow wrinkled—from doubt or worry; I couldn't tell. “Then I must be a dawcock. Have I been here longful myself?”

  “No,” said Midge. “I'll tell you how it happened.” He shuffled across the floor, then began to tell Early all that the boy had forgotten. His soft voice murmured away as the sea boomed in the depths of the island.

  “Tom, where's 'e from, that boy?” asked Mr. Mullock.

  “I don't know,” I said. “Devon, I think. He talked about Bristol.”

  “Hah! Might be anywhere from Coventry to Timbuctoo for all 'e knows.” Mr. Mullock touched his own temple. “The bang on 'is nut's made 'im stupid, you know. Whatever 'e says, it's bound to be nonsense.”

  Mr. Mullock talked through the evening and into the night. He asked about me, about Midge, about Gaskin and the others. With the food and the fire, the moan of the wind, I felt desperately tired. I answered each question with fewer words, then with only nods and grunts. Finally I fell asleep, not to wake until daylight.

  The cave was quiet then, and the smell of cooked eggs stirred me awake. It was such a wonderful smell that I lay for a while with my eyes closed, wishing when I opened them that I would find myself at home in London, all my adventures only a dream.

  The thought took my mind to my father. I imagined him hurrying to Australia, his ship flying with every sail set. All at once, a hundred fears came over me. Did he believe that I had drowned; did he know that I'd escaped? Would he still head for Midgely's elephant island? How long would it take him to get there, and how long would he wait for us? We had to fix the boat. We had to find that place.

  It seemed that there was not a moment to spare. In a shot I was up, expecting to find Mr. Mullock cooking the eggs. But it was Early Discall who labored over the little fire of burning oil. Mr. Mullock was lying in the sunshine, on his ledge, at the mouth of the cave.

  “Where's Midgely?” I asked.

  Early pointed to the entrance. In the smoke he squinted terribly.

  But Midge wasn't on the ledge. “Oh, I sent 'im off,” said Mr. Mullock. “He's gone to fetch the water.”

  “You sent a blind boy for water?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yes. A smart lad, that one. Terrible, 'ow 'e lost 'is eyes, hisn't it?”

  I could hardly believe his laziness. He didn't shift as Midge came staggering round the rocks with one of the big turtle-gut bags slung across his shoulders. He didn't move at all until he'd finished his breakfast, except to pluck bits of chewed egg from his mouth and feed them to the bat.

  When we trekked toward the longboat, the island seemed deserted. The thousands of birds that had covered it were gone, and only a few fledglings remained, squawking from their nests as we passed. Mr. Mullock said every day was the same. The birds left with the dawn, scattering themselves all over the sea.

  Their absence made for a quicker passage, and we were soon scrambling down the cliffs on the western shore. We found the longboat there, high and dry, just as we'd left it the day before.

  “She's not so bad,” said Mr. Mullock, eyeing it over. “A couple of planks, a few nails 'ere and there, new ribs and a knee; that's all she needs.”

  It sounded like a great deal to me. “Just where will we get all that?” I asked.

  “Hah! No fear there,” said Mr. Mullock. “I'm Lord of the Hadmiralty too.”

  The waves still tumbled through the gap, and the pebbles rolled and rattled in the undertow. But the sea was much calmer in the channel between the island and its reefs, and we had no trouble launching the boat. Even Mr. Mullock lent a hand, kicking the loose bits of wood across the beach as the dreadful Foxy dangled from his hair. We slid the hull across the stones, and the rumble it made must
have alerted Weedle, who appeared at the clifftop with Benjamin Penny.

  “Ahoy there, Mr. Turtle Man,” he called down at us. “You won't get far in that, you silly coot.”

  “Well, hisn't 'e the clever one?” said Mr. Mullock. The hull was barely afloat. Water passed right through it, in the sides and out the bottom, and the bits of flotsam floated in the hull like a school of wooden fish.

  Then Midgely stood in the wreck, with an oar for a punting pole, and the rest of us pulled and pushed the boat along. It was hard work, but Early Discall laughed and cheered, and I was pleased to see that his fall had knocked away none of his humor. To himself he hummed the plowman's song he'd sung before.

  When the boat was hauled up at the place called Sheerness, we rolled it upside down. Then Mr. Mullock asked Midgely to “hassist 'im.” He said, “You can fetch and carry from the caves.”

  I longed to see his caves myself, so volunteered to take Midgely's place. “He can't see,” I said.

  “That's true,” said Mr. Mullock. “The darkness won't bother 'im, then. Hah! You'd be 'alf off your nut from staring hat nothing. But it won't bother young Midgely.”

  If there was one thing I'd learned of Mr. Mullock, it was that nothing could be gained by arguing. So I watched him go with Midgely, up through his fanciful city and into the cave. They must have been gone an hour or more, and when they came out it was as though they had been to a chandler's.

  They carried nails and bits of bent wood, an oar and a new tiller. Between them, on their shoulders, they bore a short mast with a red sail bundled along its length. These, said Mr. Mullock, were all that remained of his own ship. But that didn't quite make sense to me. “All this comes from one boat,” I said. “Like a longboat, not a whole ship.”

  “Well, 'ow do you think I got to shore?” he asked. “The ship went down; I got in a boat. What could be simpler than that, you chowderhead?”

  “What happened to everyone else in the ship?” asked Midgely.

  “It's a sorrowful tale, I tell you. They're gone, lads,” said Mr. Mullock. “Drowned like rats, every blessed one from the captain to the cabin boy.”

  “But this is all you saved?” I asked. “Bits of a boat? What happened to the ship itself? What happened to the cargo?”

  Mr. Mullock had been pleasant enough until then. Suddenly his eyes were blazing with fury. “Don't you dare question me,” he said. “I'd hadvise that very strongly.”

  “It's not that I doubt you,” I said. “I just—”

  “You don't know why you're 'ere, do you, lad?” he cried. “You 'aven't the slightest idea what Fate has in store for you. Well, I do. Hah!” He bobbed his head up and down, and the bat swung in his hair like a brown bell. “There's a terrible day in the hoffing. A terrible, terrible day.”

  The bat began to twitter and shriek, as though in the greatest fear. Mr. Mullock patted the little creature. “No, Foxy, that's over. There'll be no more; I've told you.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked. But Mr. Mullock only turned away. I raised my voice and said, “tell me what? I want to know.”

  “What you want and what you get, it's never the same, now, is it?” He chuckled, then went straight to work on the longboat. Or, rather, he stood with his hands on his hips and wondered where to start. He walked around the hull. Halfheartedly, he pulled at a loose nail, then looked up. “ 'Ave any of you, by chance, happrenticed to shipwrights?”

  We shook our heads. “Midgely grew up in a dockyard,” I said.

  “But I never built no boats,” said Midge. “I never even drove no nail.”

  “I might 'ave guessed,” said Mr. Mullock.

  “But you know who has?” asked Midge. He looked toward each of us with his blind gray eyes. “Benjamin Penny, that's who.”

  “Penny built boats?” I asked.

  “Hardly!” scoffed Midge. “It was coffins, Tom. He used to talk on the hulk about his master, what made coffins.”

  “Hah!” shouted Mr. Mullock. “You brought a coffin maker to my island, did you? There's Fate at work for you.” Behind his beard, his skin looked pale. “Tom, you run and bring 'im 'ere.”

  “No, don't!” cried Midge. “Please, Mr. Mullock, I don't want him here. He's the one what blinded me, Mr. Mullock.”

  “Is 'e?” Mr. Mullock touched Midgely on the shoulder. “Well, lad, 'ow about this: an eye for an eye? 'Ow does that sound to you?”

  His words struck me cold. But the small smile that came with them was worse.

  “Crikey, I couldn't blind him,” said Midge. “I'm a meek now, Mr. Mullock. Ask Tom if I ain't.”

  “A meek, are you?” said he. “Out to inherit the earth, I suppose.”

  “Yes, sir.” Midge nodded. It was just what I'd taught him in the prison hulk.

  “Now, if I was you,” said Mr. Mullock, “I'd let this Penny do the work. I'd sit right 'ere and watch 'im. And then, when 'e was done, I'd launch the boat and leave the boy behind, that's what I would do. Leave 'im blind to the world for hevermore. That's what I call justice.”

  Surprisingly, Midgely agreed to that. Mr. Mullock clapped him on the shoulder and sent me off to find Benjamin Penny.

  eight

  I HEAR A DEAD MAN'S TALE

  I saw Gaskin Boggis first, as I trotted up toward the summit. He was standing near the top, the tallest thing on the island. Weedle and Carrots and Benjamin Penny were kneeling on the ground, playing slide-thrift with pebbles.

  I scuffed my feet, and they all turned as one to look.

  “Why, it's Tom,” said Gaskin. He waved to me, and called out a greeting.

  Weedle told him to shut up. “No talking with the enemy.”

  I took a few more steps, then stood below them on the trail. Gaskin looked like a statue looming against the sky.

  “What do you want?” said Weedle. “It ain't water, we know that. You got water and you got oil; we seen it. We seen that green man too.”

  “I've come for Benjamin Penny,” I said.

  “What for?” asked Penny.

  “You made coffins once. You can help us fix the longboat.”

  “Wal-ker!” said Weedle. “He won't do nothing for you.”

  He was his old self now, again the king with his court around him. Carrots sat grinning, his red hair dusted to white. I guessed he'd been scrabbling in the dirt to find food for Weedle.

  “Now hop it!” Weedle picked up a stone from the ground.

  “Without the boat you're stranded,” I said. “We're all marooned without it.”

  “No, we ain't,” said Gaskin. “There's people coming, Tom.”

  He pointed north, but I couldn't see beyond the summit. Weedle hurled his rock at me. “Go on!” he shouted again.

  I turned and jogged across the slope, skirting the hill. I came to a ridge that looked to the north, and saw a feather of grey smoke rising from the nearest of the distant islands.

  I was to wish later, with all my heart, that the smoke had been the only thing I saw that day. But Mr. Mullock's island sprawled below me, and I found myself looking straight down at the neck that divided it in two. Spanning that space was the pile of stones I'd spotted from the longboat. From there it had looked like a jumbled mass thrown together by winds and waves, or tremors in the Earth. But now I saw that the stones had been carefully placed, one wedging another, as cleverly as any mason could have managed. I knew right away that I was looking at Mr. Mullock's wall, and of course his warnings of the Gypsy were the next thoughts in my mind. I found that in that lonely place, with the great heap of stones before me, it was suddenly not so easy to laugh at those warnings. I decided that I didn't really care what lay beyond the wall.

  But as I turned away, I saw that it was steepest on the side away from me. Mr. Mullock had never made that wall to keep out Gypsies. It had been built by someone else. To keep out Mr. Mullock.

  I took a few steps from stone to stone, climbing halfway up the rubble. I thought I might satisfy myself by going just high enough to peer a
cross the top. I saw that the island was much the same on the other side. The rocks were just as white, the ground just as barren. There was no movement, except from a cluster of birds pecking away in a cleft of rock.

  But why were they there? It seemed strange that birds on one side of the wall left the island to feed at sea, and those on the other stayed behind. I wondered what it was that made them peck and squabble, that sent swirls of them suddenly circling through the air.

  I wanted to hurry and tell the others of the smoke in the distance. I wanted Midgely, especially, to know that people were coming. But I thought I might not have another chance to cross the wall. For a moment I dithered. Then I decided it would take only a few moments to run to the birds and back.

  Up to the top and over I scrambled. I went not at a run after all, but at a cautious walk. I sent the birds into flight. And I found a man below them.

  He was lying in a small ravine. Swarthy of skin, black of hair, he did indeed seem Gypsy. He was wilder than Mr. Mullock, a man in utter rags, shoeless and filthy. I knew at once that this was the running man I had seen.

  But never again would he run. His skull had been caved in at the front, perhaps by a fall, but just as easily by a blow from an axe. The skin on his forehead was split, and tiny bits of sand and shells were stuck to the tattered edges of the wound. His hands, his face were bird-pecked, and he lay at my feet with his life pouring from him.

  I clambered down into the ravine. I stooped beside him, reached out to touch him. And suddenly he moved.

  His eyes flew open. His hand reached up and grabbed my arm. “Kill him,” he said in a whisper. “Kill him quick before he kills you all.”

  “Who?” I asked foolishly. “Mr. Mullock, you mean?”

  With a rattling moan, he took hold of me with his other hand as well. “We were seven in number,” said he. “But he done for us all. He done for us each in turn.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  But he'd spoken his last words. His eyes rolled up and, with a tremble, he was gone.