Peter and the Starcatchers (24 page)

He looked at the bird, which was looking back at him.

“Can you tel me where I am?” Peter asked.

The bird said nothing.

“I didn’t think so,” said Peter.

He itched al over; he was hungry; his throat burned from swal owing seawater. He began trudging toward the trees. His plan was to climb into the hil s, looking for a stream; there had to be water, he figured, with al this greenery.

But he was stil weak from his ordeal at sea, and when he reached the palms, he decided to rest a bit. He sat beneath a tree, his back against its rough gray bark, and closed his eyes.

He opened them when he felt a shadow fal on his face.

“Hel o, Peter,” said Mol y.

“Mol y!” said Peter, scrambling to his feet. “It’s you!”

This immediately struck Peter as an exceptional y stupid thing for him to have told Mol y, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s me. Are you al right?”

“Yes,” said Peter, brushing some sand off his clothes. “I’m fine. And I…That is, you…I mean, you…” He stammered to a stop, his face red.

“What is it, Peter?”

“I mean, thank you, Mol y. For saving me.”

Mol y took a step forward and put her hand on Peter’s arm. This felt absolutely wonderful to Peter; he cast his eyes down, lest she see the effect she was having.

“Peter,” she said. “It’s I who should be thanking you. You helped me when I desperately needed help. You got the trunk off the ship. You risked your life for me. The least I could do was try to keep you from drowning. I’m only sorry I let you fal …”

“That wasn’t your fault!” said Peter. “I couldn’t hold on any longer.”

“After you fel ,” she continued, “I began to descend, and fortunately the wind drove me onto this island, not far from here. I’ve been searching since then, hoping that you were…I mean, I was
so
worried, Peter, and when I saw you against the tree, I…”

Now it was Mol y’s turn to cast her eyes downward.

After an awkward silence, Peter said: “Have you seen a stream? I’m awful y thirsty.”

“No stream, not yet,” said Mol y. “But I think I’ve found water.”

“What do you mean?”

“On the beach, just a bit that way,” said Mol y, pointing. “There’s a barrel; it looks like a water barrel from the
Never Land.
”

“The
Never Land,
” said Peter, suddenly remembering. “Do you think it was…I mean, James and them, do you think…” Mol y’s look was somber. “I don’t know, Peter,” she said. “Al we can do is hope they’re al right. But for now we need to look after ourselves.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Wel , for starters we should get that water barrel off the beach, before the tide takes it back out to sea. We’l need it if we can’t find any other water. We’l also need to find food, sooner or later. And most important, we need to look for the trunk.”

“Real y?” said Peter. “You think it could have ended up on this island?”

“The barrel ended up here, didn’t it?”

“True,” said Peter.

“Let’s go get that barrel,” said Mol y. “Then we’l climb this hil and have a look ’round at what else is on this island.” The barrel was heavy; it took al their strength to rol it up the beach. It was sealed with a thick cork stopper, which Peter managed, with considerable effort, to dislodge by banging it with a sharp piece of coral.

The water was warm and brackish, but they both drank greedily. Then, at Mol y’s insistence, they dragged the barrel into a depression in the land, and covered it with fal en palm fronds. Then she made them back away from the hidden barrel, using fronds to sweep away their footprints.

“Why are we being so careful?” Peter asked. “There’s nobody here but us.”

“That’s true now,” said Mol y. “But somebody may come, and I don’t want them taking our water.” When she was satisfied that the barrel was hidden, she and Peter set off inland. They soon found themselves struggling up a steep mountainside, thick with vegetation—trees, vines, bushes bearing large, sweet-smel ing yel ow flowers.

Insects hummed around their ears; birds twittered and screeched in the tree canopy above them. At times the vegetation was so thick Peter couldn’t see Mol y a few feet ahead of him; at times he couldn’t even see his feet. He wondered if there might be snakes—it certainly
looked
as though there might be snakes—but he did not voice this thought, as he didn’t want Mol y, forging resolutely ahead, to think he was scared.

After about forty-five minutes of hard climbing, they emerged onto an open, rocky plateau, from which they could look back and see where they’d been. They were several hundred feet up now, looking down on the lagoon where Peter had come ashore; Peter could see the gouge in the sand they’d made when they dragged the water barrel up the beach.

To the far right-hand side a ridge jutted into the sea, separating Peter’s lagoon from another, shal ower one, with a wide beach that…

What was that?

“Mol y!” said Peter, pointing toward the far lagoon. “Look!”

Mol y squinted, shading her eyes.

“It’s a boat!” she exclaimed. “A little boat, and…people! I see three…four…five of them!”

Peter strained to make out the distant, dark shapes on the white beach. “It looks like four smal ish ones, and one biggish one!” he said. “Oh, Mol y, d’you think it’s James and them?”

Mol y studied the shapes some more.

“Yes,” she said, “it’s definitely them, and a crewman—I believe it’s your friend, the big one.”

“Alf!” said Peter, his heart soaring.
Even Alf was alive!
“Let’s go down to meet them!”

“Yes,” said Mol y, suddenly serious. “And we had better hurry.”

Peter, hearing the change in her tone, looked at Mol y, and saw alarm in her face.

“What is it?” he said.

“See for yourself,” she said, pointing off to the left.

Peter looked, and saw it instantly: a ship, heading straight toward the lagoon where he’d come ashore.

A black ship, flying the Jol y Roger.

“
C
’MON THEN, LADS,” said Alf, trudging up the beach. Behind him, walking single file and glancing nervously at the line of palm trees ahead, were James, Prentiss, Thomas, and Tubby Ted.

“Sir,” James asked, “what’re we going to do?”

“We’re going to look for water,” said Alf.

“And food?” said Tubby Ted.

“Water first,” said Alf. “We can go days without food.”

“We can
what
?” shouted Tubby Ted.

“Keep your voice down,” said Alf. “We might have company on this island.”

“Wh…What kind of company?” asked Prentiss.

“I dunno,” said Alf. “But some of these islands is inhabited by savages.”

The word hung in the air.
Savages.

“Sir,” Thomas said, “are savages bad?”

“Not al of ’em, no,” Alf answered. “Some are just, what’s the word, primitive. Like big children.”

“What about the others?” said Prentiss.

“Wel ,” said Alf, “I’ve heard stories about sailors who were shipwrecked on islands just like this, and the savages come and grabbed ’em and put ’em in a big pot.”

“Wh…Why did they do that?” asked Prentiss.

Alf stopped, looked back. “Why d’you think?” he said.

“Y…you mean they…they
ate
them?” said Prentiss.

“Like a Christmas pudding,” said Alf, resuming his trudge toward the tree line. The boys were quiet now, thinking unpleasant thoughts, except for Tubby Ted, who was torn between unpleasant thoughts and pudding.

They reached the palm trees and explored the area a bit—that is, Alf explored the area, with the boys staying as close as possible to his reassuring bulk. They found nothing of interest: no water, no food, no footprints.

“That’s it, then,” said Alf. “We’l have to go in there.” He nodded toward the green wal of vegetation covering the mountainous slope rising away from the beach. The boys peered apprehensively at the impenetrable facade of the jungle.

“But, sir,” said Thomas. “What if there’s savages in there?”

“We got to chance that,” said Alf. “If we don’t find water, we’l die, and then the crabs’l eat us just as sure as savages would.” He started forward, shoving his big frame through a thick mass of vines. They closed behind him like a green curtain, and suddenly he was out of sight. His muffled voice came back to the boys.

“You lads coming?”

The boys looked at one another, al thinking the same thing: they didn’t want to go into the jungle, but they also didn’t want to be separated from Alf. James, grimacing, pushed his way through the vine curtain, fol owed reluctantly, but very closely, by Prentiss, Thomas, and Tubby Ted.

As the vines closed behind them, they found themselves in a world quite different from the bril iantly sunlit beach. The sun barely pierced the thick tree canopy above them, its light weakened to a kind of green dusk. The vegetation around them was so thick that they could see no more than a few feet in any direction, and sometimes not even that. There was no path, no opening, only the random riot of the vines and trees, and within a few steps James could not be sure which way they had come from, and which way they were going.

What was more alarming was that he also did not see Alf.

“Sir?” said James. “Sir?”

“This way!” came Alf’s voice, even more muffled now, more distant.

“Coming, sir,” said James, pushing in the direction he thought the voice had come from.

Behind him, Prentiss said, “I can’t see anything.”

“Nor I,” said James.

From the rear, Tubby Ted said, “There could be anything in here with us, and we wouldn’t see it. There could be lions.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said James. “There’s no lions.”

“How d’you
know
that?” said Tubby Ted.

'"Cause it’s an
island.
Lions don’t live on islands.”

“There could be goril as,” said Tubby Ted.

“What’s gil as?” said Prentiss.

“Goril as,” said Tubby Ted. “Big hairy jungle things. They swing through the trees and grab you and take you to their nests.”

“Goril as don’t have nests,” said James.

“
'Course
they do, you git,” said Tubby Ted. “Why d’you think they live in trees?”

James could not think of a good answer to that. He glanced up at the tree canopy, thick and dark and close.

Prentiss caught the glance, and his eyes fol owed it. “Why do the gil…
gorillas,
why do they take you to their nest?” he said.

“You don’t want to know,” said Tubby Ted, meaning, of course, that he was about to tel them. “They crack open your head like a coconut. Then they feed your brains to the baby goril as.”

Prentiss and Thomas looked horrified.

“They do not,” said James.

“Yes they do,” said Tubby Ted. “And then they take your eyes and they…”

“Shut
up,
” said James.

“I want to go back to the beach,” said Prentiss.

“Me, too,” said Thomas.

“We’re not going back there,” said James. “We’re staying with Alf.”

At that moment, al the boys had the same thought:
Where was Alf?

“Sir?” cal ed James. “Sir!”

There was no answer.

“SIR! CAN YOU HEAR ME, SIR?”

Nothing.

Now they were al shouting, as loud as they could, but nothing came back to them but the hum and whine of unseen insects.

“I want to go back to the beach,” repeated Prentiss.

“Al right, then,” said James. “We’l go back to the beach, and we’l …we’l wait for Alf. When he sees we’re missing, he’l come back and find us.”

“If the goril as don’t get him,” said Tubby Ted. “Or us.”

“Shut
up,
” said James. “Al right, we’l …”

James looked around him. In every direction, he could see perhaps six feet; in every direction, everything looked the same.

Which way is the beach?

James looked around for a moment, feeling the weight of the other boys’ eyes on him.

“Al right, then,” he said, shouldering his way through the vegetation. “This way.”

The unyielding jungle made the going tiring. The weariness James felt in his arms and legs was worsened by the feeling—growing stronger in his gut each minute—that he had gotten them seriously lost. He couldn’t tel if he was going in a straight line; he sometimes had the feeling he was walking somewhere that he’d already been, but there was no way to be sure in the unrelenting sameness of the jungle. Behind him, he heard Prentiss and Thomas crying softly, and Tubby Ted’s labored breathing as he struggled to keep up.