The Cannibals (17 page)

“Ernie,” he said simply.

In his dark clothes, with his white shirt underneath, a pale strip was all I could see of him. He was standing when I fell asleep, but not when I woke in the morning, and it was soon plain to all that he hadn't kept a very long watch. He was more rested than anyone, and eager to be off.

We stoked the fire and steamed along the shore, to a beach where tall palms were growing. Mr. Mullock reversed the engine to keep us off the shore. “You and you,” he said to Boggis and me. “Hop out and get some wood.”

It was easier said than done. We rummaged through the undergrowth, but found only soft and rotted wood. In the end, Mr. Mullock had to come and help us—for Lucy Beans made him do it. He waded ashore with a long, two-handled saw. The boat sat still in the water, under a thin plume of smoke, the hull reflecting all the colors of the sea.

Mr. Mullock hefted the saw. “Might as well kill two birds with a stone, as my mother would say.”

We felled one of the palms. Boggis and I did the sawing, and we did the bucking too, while Mr. Mullock went chasing the coconuts that rolled on the sand. But to give him his due, he didn't shirk. He carried the coconuts out to the boat, then carried the wood as we cut it. Back and forth he trudged, looking all the time along the beach and up to the trees. “Hurry, lads,” he said. “There'll be junglies about.”

When the tree was cut and stowed, and there'd been no sign of savages, we felled another. It crashed to the sand, bounced and crashed back. Boggis and I began sawing.

We'd gone halfway up the trunk when the savages arrived. They were suddenly on the beach, a silent group armed with spears, twenty and two in their cloths and feathers. But one wore a brown shirt, and another brown trousers, and from the neck of a third—as though a strange trophy—hung an old leather shoe on a string.

I knew convict clothes when I saw them. These seemed too big for Weedle or Carrots or Penny, but I couldn't be certain. I had no doubt, though, what fate had befallen the poor convict who'd once been inside them. He was now inside their new owner.

“Keep away, you damned junglies!” shouted Mr. Mullock. “Come no closer now, you hear?” Like a peahen, he seemed to believe that loudness made him frightening. “Face them, lads. Ease back toward me.”

We did as he said. Boggis held the saw, and together we stepped down the sand. As we closed together, the savages spread apart. They formed a line, a curve that stretched past
us on either side. We hurried backward, and barely gained the water before the curve could become a circle that enclosed us. The savages milled closer. One pointed at Mr. Mullock and jabbered away in his strange tongue.

“No understandee!” shouted Mr. Mullock, shaking his head furiously.

The savage tugged his breastplate and, pointing again at Mr. Mullock, babbled even louder.

“No understandee!” said Mr. Mullock again. “Me speakee English, you thick-wit!”

From the boat, Lucy Beans called out. “If you think you're speaking his tongue, you're mistaken, Mr. Mullock. He's saying he likes your clothing. He admires your coat and vest, and says he'll trade his for yours.”

“He does, does he? Hah!” Mr. Mullock waved his hands. “Lookee; no tradee!” he shouted at the savage. “Understandee? No tradee!”

“Please,” I said. “Give him your coat.”

“Not on your life,” said Mr. Mullock. “Give him that, it will be my heart and liver next. Back, lads. A step back.”

We splashed into the water. The savages came closer. The talking one shook his spear, then hammered the shaft against his breastplate. All the little bones and things he wore rattled at his chest.

“We'll dash for it, lads. On my word,” said Mr. Mullock. I could hear his breaths. “Now!”

He was first to run. Before I'd turned to follow, the savages were upon us. They grabbed; they pulled and pushed. Mr. Mullock was hauled down, and with six around him he floundered in the water. Boggis and I tried to help.

“Stop that!” cried Lucy Beans. She put a hand up to the engine, and with a gout of steam there came a piercing shriek of a sound. It loosed a mad chorus from the island, and shocked the savages into silence. Then, in a voice just as piercing, Lucy cried out in the same tongue as theirs. On and on she went, and like a lot of sheepish boys they hung their heads. They eased away. I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd picked up our wood and loaded it into the steamboat. But it didn't go as far as that. One answered with a few clipped words, then all trotted together into the forest.

Mr. Mullock rose from the sea, looking half drowned and white as death. His splendid new hat was floating upside down, rocking like a small coracle. He picked it up and put it on. “Leave the wood,” he said. “We're clearing off.”

Lucy helped us into the boat. She fussed with Mr. Mullock, who was certainly the wettest of us all, but she saved her warmest smile for me. “That Indian.” She nodded toward the land. “He said your elephant island is three days to the east.”

“He did? He told you that?” I looked into her eyes, surprised by the color—a green as bright as grass. “That's wonderful, miss.”

“Hah!” barked Mr. Mullock. “Now they know where we're going. Damned junglies. They'll be waiting.”

“Oh, Ernie, no.” She turned back to him. His hat had gotten a bit crushed, and she took it from his head to smooth the puckers in the crown. “They only fancied your clothes.”

“And my skin, and my 'ead.”

“They didn't,” she said with a laugh. “If they'd fancied that handsome head, you wouldn't be standing here with it
now, I'll tell you that. What they want, they take.” She returned his hat, tipping it at a rakish slant. “But not all the Indians are savages, Ernie. They're quite nice people, most of them. It's only the headhunters and cannibals you have to fear. And the pirates, of course. They're much worse.”

Midgely had been listening. “There weren't no pirates in the reverend's book, mum,” he said.

“No vagabonds ever spoke of them, that's why,” said Lucy Beans. “No one who has met the pirates has ever lived to speak again.”

It was a frightening thought, made more frightening by the way she said it—with her voice low and her green eyes darting. Seeing how she'd scared us, she forced a laugh. “But don't worry, boys. In a year and a half I've yet to see a pirate. I'm sorry I spoke.”

So was I. With a glance at the sea, a glance at the land, I bent down and shoved wood in the firebox. I got the engine pouring smoke, its little valves chattering, and when Mr. Mullock threw the lever, we bounded off with the paddle wheels churning.

We steamed through the islands at top speed. The boat left a long streak of foam on the water, another streak of smoke in the air, and the two merged behind us. The sound of the engine was a steady roar, now a
chuckatee-chickadeechuckateechickadee
. It meant that we went through our stacks of wood the way a fat lady goes through a box of chocolates, but I didn't mind. I stuffed one stick after another into the firebox, and the engine gobbled them up, and the door was rarely closed.

At night we slowed down, but didn't stop. Two of us were
always awake, one steering and watching, the other caring for the boat. It was like a living thing that had to be fed and watered.

But it had to be rested too, and that became clear in the morning. There was steam jetting out where it hadn't before. Along with the hiss and huff and thump was a rattling ping that grew louder. Boggis, who'd been sitting quite close to the engine, moved as far as he could into the bow. I began to feed the thing as I might a crocodile—chucking the wood from a distance—for it suddenly seemed dangerous to be near it.

We ran the boat slowly as we searched for a place to land. When we saw bright beaches of sand, we turned away. We sought, instead, the darker places, and found the perfect island when we came to one that had no beach at all. Twice we circled it. Twice we headed toward the low cliff that formed its entire shore, and waited to see what emerged from the jungle.

The only thing to show its face was a small monkey. With tiny hands it spread the branches. With enormous eyes it peered at us, looking like a lost and lonely child.

Again we steamed around the island. That little monkey came with us, swinging now by his hands and now by his tail, keeping up a constant chatter. When we found a place of overhanging branches, and put the boat against the cliff, the monkey leapt straight down. It made right for Mr. Mullock, bounded up the back of his trousers, and clung tightly to his neck.

To say he was startled wouldn't be the half of it. He cried out as though a savage had attacked him, and the sight of him
capering around with that tiny, wide-eyed creature made us laugh. Midgely didn't understand—how could he?—until the lovely Lucy described it all in a fashion so humorous that even Mr. Mullock had to smile.

“You've made a friend,” she said. “You must have a good heart, Ernie, for animals to take to you like this.”

I remembered his bat. He'd treated it with kindness, killed it with cruelty, then missed it very much. He was a hard one to fathom, that Mr. Mullock. But as he stood smiling in his gentleman's clothes, with the monkey clinging to his neck, I saw why Lucy seemed to like him.

We all climbed up to the island to look for wood and water. “It shall be like a picnic,” said Lucy, and it was. We ate fruit straight from the tree, and Mr. Mullock had no choice but to share his. The monkey snatched what he wanted with the funniest and cheekiest of cries.

It was soon apparent that the island was empty of people, apart from us. I thought that we might well have been the only ones who had ever stood upon it, for none of its creatures showed the slightest sign of fear. The birds came down and ate the half-finished fruit we tossed aside. A wild pig snuffled through the glade where we rested. A frog sat nearly at Lucy's side, its throat pulsing, as though it were just another—a small green other—member of our party.

We strolled right around the island, then up to its low summit. Unlike previous islands, it was peaceful and beautiful, and even Midgely could tell—by the scents and the sounds—that we'd come to a place that was special.

“This is what the reverend was looking for,” said Lucy. She gathered her skirts and sat down. “I wish he'd found this
place; he would have been so happy. It's like the Garden of Eden, isn't it, Ernie?”

“It is,” said Mr. Mullock, settling himself beside her.

Midgely had brought his parasol. When he sat it covered him completely, like a giant toadstool. I managed to find some shade below it too. Only Boggis was standing, staring off to the east.

“Ain't that a sail out there?” he asked.

Where Boggis pointed, I saw the sail. My first thought was of pirates, but Lucy Beans dismissed it. She said the pirate ships came from Borneo, that they wore black sails—one black sail to each mast. This was an English ship, or so Mr. Mullock named it right away. We could see only the topsails and royals, square and bright in the distance. It wasn't the worn, sun-bleached cloth of my father's ship, but the crisp new canvas of a man-of-war.

“The navy,” said Mr. Mullock. “It's my curse to find a place like this and 'ave the navy 'unt me down.”

Lucy looked up at him. “Why would the navy hunt you now? And why would you be cursed?”

Mr. Mullock settled back, staring up at the sky. I thought he wouldn't speak, but he closed his eyes and began the same
story he'd begun at the mission. “When I was one and twenty, I went away to London,” he said.

It must have taken him an hour to tell the whole tale. The monkey sat for a while on his chest, then lay on its side with its head in the curve of his neck. He reached out to touch it, and the monkey closed its tiny fist around the tip of his little finger. Lucy Beans moved closer to him, so that she too might pet and stroke the creature's khaki-colored head. She let Mr. Mullock talk, interrupting only now and then.

The first time was when he said, “I made an honest living dealing in the jewels of the ladies I hencountered.”

“What does that mean?” she said, lifting her head from the grass.

“You might say I hintroduced the pawnman to their jewels, Lucy.”

“Means he was a bug hunter, mum,” said Midgely below his parasol.

“I weren't nothing of the sort,” said Mr. Mullock. “Oh, you might say I 'oisted their jewels, and sometimes their silver and whatnot. I pawned them quick enough; it's true. But every farthing went back to the ladies. I kept not a penny for myself. I wined and dined them and took them off on the tour.”

“Such kindness,” she said.

“So it was,” said he. “Everything they'd always wished for, I gave them. Italy; they saw it. France; they carriaged across it. My mother always said that money makes money, and so it did for me. I yachted on the Solent; I dined in clubs and breakfasted in castles, and didn't I grow as rich as a lord? Why, I
became
a lord. Hah! I did. I bought a lordship, Lucy. Lord Mullock of Duck End Green.”

“Was there a Lady Mullock?” asked Lucy.

“Never. Oh, I 'ad my choice. Hah! Any lady I wished. But I've never met one who happealed to me in that fashion.”

“Never?” she asked in a little voice.

He looked in her green eyes. “Never in London, I mean.”

In the distance, as Mr. Mullock told his tale, the warship passed from island to island. The topsails sank below the horizon, then so did the topgallants, until only the small squares of the royals could be seen.

“I went from rags to riches,” he said. “I'd started out as a stonemason. Did I tell you that? I built walls all over Devon in my youth. But in London I became something of an hexpert in jewels, I may say, and soon enough people came to me. Then I began to 'ear whisperings of the most fabulous stone of them all. It 'ad disappeared some time before, and in 'alf a century not a soul 'ad seen it.”

A prickling came to the back of my neck. I sat up and listened, enthralled, certain I knew how the tale would end.

“There was talk that a young man 'ad found it,” said Mr. Mullock. “Then 'e sent 'is card around, and I went off to see 'im. It was along the Strand somewhere, a fine part of the city. My knock was answered by a shriveled, decrepit man, a shuffling 'orror. I asked by name for the young fellow who 'ad sent for me. This old man said—and I shall never forget it—‘I am 'e.’ ” Mr. Mullock swallowed and shivered. “Well, 'e was not yet thirty, but 'e 'ad more than one foot in the grave, I can tell you. Leprosy, it might have been.”