The Castaways Read online

  Happiest of all was Midgely With his Flying Dutchman so easily tamed, he had to give up the notion that we sailed a phantom ship. He thought it a fair trade, for Mr. Beezley made him the cook and, within the week, little Midge was at home with his chores. To watch him work was something of a wonder. He knew where every pot and pan was kept, and one would swear he had the eyes of a cat as he went bustling about, turning our maggot-ridden supplies into hearty meals. It gave him hope, and a belief that his life hadn’t been ruined with the loss of his eyes. “That might be the best thing what ever happened to me, Tom,” he told me once. “There weren’t no one what was going to take no urchin out to sea. But now it’s a different kettle of fish, ain’t it, Tom? Now I’m an urchin what can cook.”

  Even I, at times, enjoyed those days, and especially my turns at the wheel. They began before dawn and ended in daylight, so that I marked the rising of every sun. I found an enormous beauty in the ship’s windborne passage, a great comfort to be going north at such a steady rate. I began to imagine that I was really on my way home after all. From Georgia, I thought, I might easily find a ship to take Midge and me to England, if I could beg the fare from our castaways. That didn’t seem like much to ask, though there was a lurking dread in my mind that it would never happen, that some terrible fate had come aboard with our strange sailors. Certainly, it was hard to believe I was “doing the handsome thing” as long as I left myself in the hands of Mr. Beezley.

  And so the miles went rolling past, and I spent much time alone. Often I thought of my mother and my father; sometimes I could bear to think of them no more. Then I studied the ship, learning how it worked, and why it worked. It was no puzzle how the wind could push it along from behind, but a great mystery how another wind could pull it from ahead. I never tired of gazing at the sails, trying to learn the secret.

  With every change in the weather, my seasickness bubbled up. Or more. But my fear of the sea all but disappeared. I never again had to be driven aloft, and one stormy day I found myself balanced on the topgallant yard without a thought of falling or fainting. The horizon was pitching and slanting, the yard tossing like a horse, but the only thought in my head was of tying a proper reef knot.

  That moment I made it my ambition to climb even higher, to reach the very top of the mainmast. I went at it in spurts, scrambling up through the shrouds until I dared go no higher. It took me days to reach the top, but at last I did it. I stood on slender ropes, with the great gulf of sea and sky below me, and—trembling like an insect—I touched my palm to the very tip of the mast.

  To prove that I had been there I tore away the shreds of the old flag. The wind had tangled them into one long braid, and the sun had bleached the braid to white. I held it in my teeth as I descended to the deck. With much delight I set it out for Midgely on the counter of the cookhouse.

  He smiled when he touched it. He unrolled the braid with his small fingers, working the tangles from threads and shards of cloth.

  “Wouldn’t it be funny if this was really the flag of the Flying Dutchman?” he said. “People would ask, ‘Where did you get that old flag?’ and we would say, ‘Oh, only from the Flying Dutchman, that’s all.’ Wouldn’t it be grand?”

  I wasn’t really listening. I was too intent on the pattern that was appearing under Midgely’s fingers. I saw green and purple, and fragments of gold. Much more cloth had been blown away in the wind than remained for me to see, but I pieced it back together in my mind. The last time I had seen such a flag was on the ship that carried us from England toward Australia. It was the pennant flown by all of Mr. Goodfellow’s ships.

  What a turn that gave me. I had escaped from one of his ships only to get aboard another. It was as though Mr. Goodfellow had hounded me nearly to the shores of the frozen continent. I thought I could never be rid of him.

  I tore the flag from Midgely’s hands. I squashed the cloth in my fist, set it aflame in the stove, and watched it burn. I didn’t imagine that my discovery was really the first of three incidents that would, again, put a twist into the river of my life.

  The next came only a day later. It was my turn at the wheel, and dawn was breaking. As they did every morning, Beezley and Moyle came up from below with the rising of the sun. Mr. Beezley, as always, took a moment to stand at my side and study the compass.

  He was turning away to join Mr. Moyle at the stern when a strange sound came over the sea. It was a cry of loneliness, a plaintive mewling in the vanishing darkness.

  “What the devil’s that?” said Mr. Beezley, stopping in his tracks.

  “Do you think it might be mermaids?” asked Mr. Moyle, with all seriousness.

  “Humbug!”

  The cry came again. Mr. Moyle and Mr. Beezley hurried to the side of the ship.

  “If it’s not mermaids, then what is it?” said Mr. Moyle.

  Ahead of the ship a bit of ice appeared. It was the first we had seen in many days, and the last we would see on the voyage. It had been carried very far, and was nearly fully melted.

  The sounds changed to frantic barks and yelps.

  “It’s dogs,” said a wondering Mr. Beezley “How on earth could dogs be there?”

  We passed within fifty yards of the ice. It seemed to turn to solid gold as it took on the light of the rising sun. Spotted across it were small gray shapes that looked very doglike indeed, until they reared up from the ice. If these were dogs they were legless; but of course they were only seals.

  Perhaps my eyes were better than those of the castaways, but I would have thought that a pair of sealers might have known their quarry more easily. The two peered over the rail for the longest time before Mr. Beezley laughed. “Why, they’re seals,” he said.

  “Fancy that,” said Mr. Moyle.

  The third incident followed within the week. As the nights grew warm, and then hot, a richer stench began to rise from the closed-over hatches. Again we heard the buzzing of flies.

  By chance, Midgely uncovered another page from the journal—or a fragment of a page. It was rolled into a taper, charred at the end from Gaskin’s fire-lighting. It had been burnt and water-dipped, so that only two paragraphs could be read. From those, one sentence leapt out at me.

  “He cares nothing for what lies below the breadfruit.”

  Little Midge and I sat and wondered. All that evening we did nothing but ponder. What could lie below the breadfruit?

  In the dark of the midnight watch, while Beezley and Moyle and Penny were sleeping—while Weedle had the wheel—I took a lantern and went off to find out. Midgely and Boggis helped open the dogs on the hatch. Then Boggis lifted the heavy lid, and I slipped under its edge, down through a horde of flies.

  ten

  I LOOK BELOW THE BREADFRUIT

  The flies were so thick that I breathed them in. I felt them on my teeth, in my nose, in the back of my throat. So I took off my shirt and tied it like a mask round my mouth. And with my lantern held high, I went down.

  The fruit squelched under my bare feet, bubbling pulp between my toes. It reminded me of the first day of my adventure, when I had become glued in the foul mud of the river Thames. Now, as then, I feared that I would sink so deeply I could never get out.

  But I came to a sudden and solid stop only knee-deep in the breadfruit and coconut shells. I kicked a clearing round my legs and found a set of iron hinges. In a few minutes more I uncovered a heavy clasp and a handle, and the edges of a trapdoor. I scooped away the coconuts, kicked aside the breadfruit, then knelt down and lifted the handle.

  A cascade of swollen breadfruit went plopping through the trapdoor, into the darkness below me. The flies swarmed up—or down; I couldn’t tell. They merely blackened the lantern in their thousands. They turned the air to muddy water that swirled in eddies and ripples. I crouched at the edge of the hole, waiting for the blackness to settle.

  Soon I saw bodies down there. Or parts of bodies. In the rolling gait of the ship, my lantern’s light slid through the shadows and the swarms of flie
s. I saw faces and hands, arms and ribs. I saw row upon row of dark-skinned people, all chained to the deck, and all deathly still.

  I understood everything in that one, terrible look. The real cargo of the ship, its true business, had been hidden below a false panel. What we’d thought were the sounds of a haunted ship had been the last breaths of these people. The taps on the planks had been signals for help. The groans when the ship had pitched hard—those frightening groans that had raised our hairs—had been the sounds of unbearable suffering.

  All because of Mr. Goodfellow!

  I now knew why he had so much trouble finding captains for his ships, and why he’d sent my father on a winding route through the cannibal islands instead of straight to England from Australia. Slavery was the “new venture” that had sent him out to seek my father.

  The flies were settling now on the bodies below, and they gave a shimmering life to the limbs and faces and torsos. Skinned with flies, the people seemed to twitch and turn in their chains.

  I counted three or four children among the adults. They all lay on their sides, each facing the back of another, as one would arrange bananas in a row. All together there must have been three score, and I thought that all had perished. But I heard a rattle of chains, that chinking of iron that I would never forget in all my life, so often had I heard it on the wretched hulk Lachesis.

  I drew closer to the edge of the hole, sending more breadfruit tumbling down. A shift in the lantern’s light showed me a man unlike the others.

  Among the naked bodies, he alone was fair of skin, and he alone was dressed from head to toe. He wore a stocking cap and a crimson sash.

  At first glance he looked like Walter Weedle. I remembered how Mr. Beezley had stared in shock at his first sight of the red-clad Weedle, and I knew he had mistaken him for this man in the hold.

  I shook my lantern, listening for the slosh of oil inside. Finding plenty, I set it down at the edge of the door and clambered through the hole. The light chased the shadows from the man with the sash, and the flies went swirling again.

  The fellow was barely alive, as I soon discovered. It seemed to take all his strength just to open his eyes and turn his head toward me. He said one word: “Water.”

  I had brought none with me. But it was a simple task to squeeze the liquid from a spongy breadfruit, and wet his lips with that. He took it eagerly, even greedily, licking every drop. He sucked the breadfruit like a great teat, until the juices poured over his face and dribbled on the deck, then turned his head and slurped them from the plank.

  He had to catch his breath after that, wheezing in the foul air. “Thank you,” he murmured. “God bless you.”

  I told him my name and he blessed me again. He moved in his irons, jingling the metal as he reached for my hand. His fingers were cold as death.

  “The captain,” he said. “Where is he?”

  “Gone,” I told him. “They’re all gone, from the captain to the boy.”

  His eyes closed, and such a peaceful look came over him that I thought he had passed away. But he wasn’t done yet with his dying. “A dream, then,” he murmured. “I dreamed he was here. I heard his voice.”

  I gave him another drink. He managed to lift his head slightly, then eased back with a sigh.

  “Where were you captured?” I asked.

  He shook his head, as though he didn’t understand.

  “You were taken as a slave,” I said. “Where was—”

  “No!” said he. “Never a slave.” He tugged at his irons as he pulled me closer. “I was part of the crew, Tom. I was the cook.”

  “The cook?” I asked. “You kept the journal?”

  He nodded, just enough to set a tingle through his chains. “You found my story? Remember it, Tom, and tell them in England. Tell them everything.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  He settled back. Clearly, he had only moments to live. I found another breadfruit and let him drink its juice. “Did you know a man called Beezley?” I asked.

  “Beezley!” His eyes opened wide. His voice became harsh. “Beastly, you mean! Of course, I knew Beastly.”

  Those were his last words. His breath gargled, and his head fell back on the deck. With his hand in mine, his eyes like saucers, he had gone to his maker.

  I couldn’t escape him fast enough. I nearly leapt through the hatch. I lowered the door over the sight of those slaves and those flies, covered it quickly, and snatched up the lantern. All in a state, I flung myself out to the open air.

  Midgely and Boggis were waiting. Midge had his bucket, brimming with water that he’d drawn from the sea. The tail of its rope was still in his hand. “Have a wash, Tom,” he said. “Then tell us what you seen.”

  Boggis went round the hatch, closing the dogs as I scrubbed my arms and legs. We moved up to the foredeck, where we seated ourselves around the capstan like petals on a flower.

  “So we heard them dying?” said Midge, when I’d told my tale. “Oooh, it gives you the shivers, don’t it?”

  “We could have saved them,” I said.

  “Not if we didn’t know they was there,” said Boggis.

  I watched the stars slide through the rigging, swinging in and out from behind the sails. “One thing’s certain,” I said. “The cook knew Mr. Beezley.”

  “How could he?” said Boggis.

  “Because your wonderful Mr. Beezley was on this ship,” I said.

  “Maybe not,” said Midge. “Did the cook say when he knowed him?”

  “No,” I said. “I suppose he didn’t. But when Mr. Beezley saw Weedle in his red sash he—”

  “He thought he saw a lunatic,” said Boggis.

  The pair had an answer for everything, and I didn’t want to argue. I decided that I would have to challenge Mr. Beezley straight out, and that I would do it as soon as he came up to the deck in the morning. During my watch at the wheel I rehearsed the things I would say. When the sails began to take their gray shapes in the blackness, I put a strop on the spokes to stop the wheel from turning and went to stand by the hood of the companionway, where the castaways would soon emerge.

  I quickly regretted it. The pair came tramping up the ladder, unaware that I was waiting. Mr. Beezley was talking.

  “I put the word in Weedle’s ear,” he said.

  “Eager as eggs, is he?” asked Mr. Moyle, hidden below me.

  Mr. Beezley laughed. I heard him take another step toward the deck. “The cripple won’t be any trouble. Nor will blind Batty. I don’t know about the big bruiser.”

  “He’s stupid, but he’s strong,” replied Mr. Moyle. “I want to see the look on King George’s old mug when he gets a squint of Gaskin Boggis.”

  What a riddle that became! It was scarcely possible that someone like Mr. Moyle could expect an audience with King George IV, and even more unlikely that he would take Boggis along. Yet entwined in the riddle was a small thread of hope. If Mr. Moyle even imagined that he might meet with the King of England, where could he be heading but to England itself?

  “Now what of Tom Tin?” asked Mr. Beezley. “That boy’s a nuisance. I want him out of the picture.”

  “Soon,” said Mr. Moyle.

  “One fell swoop is best, don’t you think?”

  The pair was nearly at the deck. I saw one of Mr. Beezley’s tattooed hands reaching for a hold to hoist himself up. In a moment he would emerge and find the wheel deserted.

  eleven

  MIDGELY REMEMBERS A TALE

  The top of Mr. Beezley’s head appeared. I could hear Mr. Moyle pressing up behind him, and my heart was in my throat.

  It was only sheer luck that saved me.

  The ship stumbled on a wave. Held by the strop, like a dog on a leash, it couldn’t round up to the wind. Instead it rolled sideways, sending spouts of green water shooting through the scuppers. Mr. Moyle, caught out of balance, stumbled backward down the stairs. He must have clutched on to Mr. Beezley, for a string of thumps and oaths came through the hatch, then a
howl of pain from Mr. Moyle.

  I dashed to the wheel and lifted the strop. The spokes cracked my knuckles as the ship reeled upright. The water that had surged across the deck went surging out again, tumbling over the rail in froth and cream.

  When Mr. Moyle came up to the deck he was holding a hand to his jaw. Either he had thumped it on something, or Mr. Beezley had thumped it for him. The pain from those rotted teeth must have been terrible, for his eyes were watering. “You half-boiled nizzie!” he growled. “I’m going to—”

  “Mr. Moyle!”

  Both of us turned to look at Mr. Beezley. The way that Mr. Moyle fell instantly silent and shuffled off to the rail made me see that he, too, was being kept on a leash of sorts. I was afraid of what could happen if he was ever turned loose.

  The beard that framed Mr. Beezley’s face was growing ragged. It reminded me then of a lion’s mane, and it shook as he walked to my side. He looked down at the compass.

  “I know what you’re thinking, boy,” he said. “I know what goes on up here.” He tapped my head—hard—with his knuckles. “You’d like to see the end of me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Why should I want that?” I asked.

  “Because you fear me,” said he, very matter-of-fact. “And well you should, boy. Yes, well you should.”

  Mr. Beezley was never more frightening than when he talked of dark things. I couldn’t bring myself to ask about the cook, to challenge him at all, and only stood there with shivers in my neck.

  I was glad when he wandered away, until I heard him muttering behind my back with Mr. Moyle. It seemed his “one fell swoop” might happen right then. But I realized that as long as we kept at sea we were safe, as there were barely enough people to work the ship as it was.

  North we went, another hundred sea miles from dawn to dawn. Then, again, I was standing at the wheel, waiting for the castaways to come up from below. But today they were late, and they still hadn’t appeared when Benjamin Penny came to take my place.