The Cannibals (9 page)

I heard a breath being drawn, and saw Benjamin Penny shiver in delight, his teeth shining.

Mr. Mullock spared his little friend not another glance, but went back to his whispered prayers. The canoe rushed on toward the island, the paddlers churning the sea to foam. Then the birds took flight as the headhunters swarmed ashore.

“Right, lads. Step the mast,” said Mr. Mullock. “Hoist the sail, and lively now if you want to see the dawn.”

It was no easy matter, in the dark, to step a mast and hoist a sail. The boat seemed overcrowded, with Boggis rowing in the middle, and two of us—or more—always busy with the bailers. We pushed and cursed each other.

But we got it done, and the wind came up when the moon went down. Under oar and sail, we steered north.

Mr. Mullock had us shift the weight—so that the boat might sail the better. He crowded Weedle and his lot into the space between Gaskin and the mast. Early Discall and me he put in the bow. Midgely got the place of honor, right at his side by the tiller.

It pained me that he had taken command so clearly. But I remembered Weedle sitting in my very place, whining about who should be captain, and I didn't argue.

At dawn, Carrots and Penny were bailing, and we saw the islands close ahead, not in the tidy row I'd thought, but staggered for miles across the sea. It was from the nearest one that we'd seen the smoke; indeed, there was still a thin wisp of gray ghosting up from its trees.

Of the canoe, there was no sign. For all we knew, it might have paddled over the edge of the world. But I didn't care to see Mr. Mullock steering for the smoke.

I said, “You can't land there.”

“Just watch,” said he. “You'll be surprised what I can do.”

Weedle snickered. Penny laughed outright.

“The headhunters will come looking for us,” I said.

“No doubt,” said Mr. Mullock. “Myself, I'd rather be on land than at sea. If you 'aven't noticed, we're taking on water. I'd like to do proper repairs before we go any distance.”

Midgely nodded. “That's right, Tom. It's true enough.”

I was stung by that, and by the sudden thought that Midge might turn against me. I rather sulked as the boat sailed on, and I planned to take Midgely aside the moment we landed.

Mr. Mullock steered us into a sheltered cove a mile or two from where the smoke still rose, now thin as a veil. Though he sat in the stern, he was the first ashore, leaping over us all in his hurry. He raced up the sandy beach, overjoyed to see the green of the jungle. Round a tree he capered in his turtle clothes, green himself, like a hairy giant wood sprite.

Early Discall dropped to the sand. He took up handfuls of it, and let it trickle through his fingers. Perhaps he thought he was sifting gold, but it seemed to me that he was
remembering
sand, that a fragment of his life had come back to his mind.

Boggis took it on himself to be the anchor for the boat. He plumped heavily down, holding on to the ragged end of the towline. When Weedle and Carrots and Penny went after Mr. Mullock, I hauled Midgely to a spot at the jungle's edge.

All Midgely cared about, of course, was trying to put a name to the island. He dragged behind, asking a dozen questions: what color was the sand; how large was the island; how tall its peak? “Is the water ‘blue as the egg of an English robin’?” he asked, taking a phrase from the reverend's book.

I had no patience then, which must have disappointed him. The water truly was a remarkable blue, but I only grunted and said, “Never mind that.” So he stopped, put his hands on his hips, and said, “Well, blast it, Tom, I can't see nothing for myself. Don't you think it's important to know where we are?”

“Oh, all right!” I snapped. We fell into the shade of a tall tree, and I told him what he wanted to know. He listened, and frowned, and said, “We ain't in the book. Not yet.”

“Maybe my father's right,” I said. “Maybe that book's just nonsense.”

“No, Tom,” he said. “It ain't nonsense.”

I'd put his nose out of joint. He turned his back to me.

As an infant, Midge had known sailors. They'd come to his house every night to visit with his mother—for tea and a chat, he'd believed—and Midge had sat in his parlor with those who waited their turn in the bedroom. He'd heard many stories of ships and the sea, of lands and strange people.
I asked him now, in the uncomfortable silence, “Do you know any tales about convicts, Midge?”

“I might,” he said. “Maybe I know lots of them, Tom.”

I could smell the smoke from the headhunters' fire. It was the faintest of odors, that disagreeable stench of old ashes. Down at the water, Early was talking with Gaskin. Behind us, the jungle was alive with a chatter of animals and birds.

Midgely couldn't hold a grudge any longer than he could hold his tongue. “I remember the sailors talking about convicts,” he said. “They told me about the mutiny on the
Swift
, about the First Fleet and the wreck of the
Guardian
and all.”

“Did they tell you about convicts escaping from Australia? Seven convicts,” I asked, thinking of the Gypsy.

“Yes and no,” said Midge. “There was a rattling good story about convicts in Botany Bay. But I don't know if there was seven men.”

I picked a grass stem for myself, and another for Midge. He lay flat in the sand, chewing away.

“Some of the sailors said it was six what got away. One said it was eight, but he was a liar, that one; he was like Carrots. I didn't care for him at all, Tom. But all of the sailors said those men were killers. Not at first, mind; not till they went to Botany Bay. Then they got loose and went up in the hills, and they murdered some settlers there.”

“Is that the whole story?” I asked, for he had fallen quiet. At my side he was wriggling in the sand.

“Oh, no,” he said. “It's just starting, Tom.”

He moved his arms and legs, sweeping out a little nest. “They were caught, those killers. They were all to be hanged.
But—don't you know it?—the night before they was sup posed to swing, they killed someone else.”

“A priest?” I asked.

“Golly, how did you know?” asked Midge. “Yes, they murdered the priest what came to see them, then they put on his clothes and murdered the guards. Tom, they
throttled
them,” he added in a whisper. “Then they escaped in a boat. There was a boat for going out to the ships, and for fishing at the reefs, and they made off in that. Some of the sailors said the sharks got them. The one who said eight got away told how they got home to England and were murdering boys in their beds. But I think he was just trying to scare me, and that's why I didn't like him, Tom.”

“What
did
happen to the convicts?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Not one of them has ever been seen since.”

“Listen,” I said, shuffling closer beside him. “I think Mr. Mullock was one of them.”

“Not likely!” cried Midge. “Mr. Mullock ain't no killer.”

“The Gypsy said he was.”

Midgely's eyebrows arched. “You met the Gypsy? You went over the wall?”

“Yes,” I said. I told him about that, and about the caves. I said I'd seen the convict irons and the priestly clothes, and the skeletons in a row.

“I felt them bones, you know,” said Midge. “Mr. Mullock, he said they was turtle bones. And you know what else? There was something queer.” He frowned. “Mr. Mullock's boat? It was cut in two. Clean down the middle, like a filleted fish. Weren't that a queer thing, Tom?”

“They must have battled over it,” I said. “They must have argued something fierce: stay or move on; and move on to where? But it must have been Mr. Mullock who cut up the boat. He was the one with the axe.”

“But he ain't no killer. I know he ain't,” said Midgely. “We don't know he's in that story. There's men on other islands, you know.”

“With convict irons?” I asked. “With priestly robes?”

“I don't know,” said Midge. “But if he's a killer, then why's he scared of you?”

“Of
me
? He's not!”

“Oh, yes he is. He is,” said Midge, nodding. “Ain't you seen it, Tom? He's scared to death of you.”

I laughed. The idea was absurd. But it made me watch more closely, to “keep a weather eye,” as my father would have said. And, sure enough, Midge could have been right.

We spent three days on the island, and in all that time Mr. Mullock hardly took his eyes from me. On that first afternoon, after we'd had our rest and our look around, we started work on the boat. Mr. Mullock sent the others off to find branches of the proper shapes, but me he kept nearby—close, but not too close. He was very careful that I never had his axe in my hands, nor even within my reach.

That night, we lit no fire. Though we had the oil—and certainly the means to strike a spark—we sat in darkness, for safety's sake. All day we'd heard the distant rumble of surf, the creak of old trees swaying in the wind, the chatter of the birds. But with the darkness came other sounds—first a faint cry and a shriek. Then something slithered on the ground,
and something else crashed in the branches. The jungle was coming awake in a frightening chorus.

I and all the boys were city bred, and those sounds we'd never heard. There was an unearthly whine that rose and fell, that sometimes hummed and crackled. Worst of all were the bloodcurdling screams that came now and then, or a howl that set my hair on end. With every creak and snap of wood, someone said, “What's that, Mr. Mullock?”

He gave us all sorts of answers. “Parrots,” he said at one sound. “Monkeys” at another. Of the whine he said, “Bugs.” Always he answered with only one word. But finally, and suddenly, he roared out at the top of his voice, “Shut up! For the love of God will you all shut up! I don't know what's out there! It's junglies; isn't that enough?”

He was terrified. He was the most frightened of any, by far, and his outburst shocked the jungle into silence. Then, slowly, the sounds returned—the whine, the snaps and the screams. It grew so dark that we couldn't see each other, though we sat in a tight little group.

And then—for no reason at all, it seemed—there was utter silence all around, the stillness of a graveyard. In a sense it was more alarming than the noise. But it wasn't really the quiet of the jungle that made my heart beat a fast rattle in my chest. I found that Mr. Mullock had shifted round, and now was right behind me. In the first moment of that quiet, before it struck him that the noise had stopped, I heard what he'd been muttering all the time. “Pray for us sinners,” he whispered.

I didn't think much of it then. I was too busy listening to the quiet. No one spoke a word, but all of us knew that the
jungle was silent because something was passing through it. We all must have imagined our own horror. For me, it was a line of headhunters creeping toward us, parting the bushes, and staring out with eyes that could somehow see through the blackness.

My every nerve and muscle quivered. I felt that I might scream.

Then Early Discall laughed. “Gosh it's quiet, ain't it?” he said. “Minute ago it's fair duddering; it's a beehive out there, and now it's quiet as me granfer. She never spoke a word from Christmas to Christmas.”

“What's a granfer?” asked Boggis.

“His grandma, he means,” said Carrots.

“Oh, it's clear and sheer quiet right enough,” said Early. He went on, in his old way, about just how quiet it was, and no one minded at all. His voice was soothing. It filled an awful gap until the jungle again began to ring with all its sounds. Then his voice faded away, and we went back to our fearful listening. No one slept until the first gray of morning came to the sky. Then everyone did, except Mr. Mullock and me. We both stretched out on the sand with the others, but on opposite sides of the little group, and every time I looked at him, he was looking back at me.

The days that followed were all alike. We stopped working on the boat as darkness fell, then huddled until dawn. Early chattered away, for he was beginning to remember things from his past, and was becoming again the cheery fellow who had kept us from each others' throats. I caught Mr. Mullock smiling at the odd west-country words that tumbled from the boy's lips.

But we were far from a contented, happy lot. There were many oaths cast in all directions, and much secrecy among the little groups we formed. I would see Weedle conferring with Penny, or Mr. Mullock with Carrots, and worried anew that Midgely and I might be marooned by the others. Benjamin Penny found his fun in taunting Boggis, and at times we all detested one another. Then Early would burst out with one of his silly chatterings, and for a time we'd be at peace.

But as it turned out, he might have done better to keep quiet.

We repaired the boat as well as we could in a place such as that. Mr. Mullock showed Gaskin how to split new planks; he taught Weedle and Carrots how to fashion knees from the crooks of branches. He did precious little of the work himself, but it wouldn't have been done without him.

At noon on our ninth day, we launched the boat. Mr. Mullock was back in his place at the stern, and I at mine in the bow. We set the red sail and went flying to the north.

The longboat now looked like something made by trolls or elfin creatures. It bristled with branches and twigs and leaves. But it carried us well, and didn't leak more than a pint every hour.

We passed in short order through the scattered islands,
for the wind blew fresh and steady. Mr. Mullock proved himself very much the sailor, though not a very gentle one.

As I was in the bow, I had to work the snotter. It was a short leash that held the foot of the sail to the mast, and when the wind was against us—as it was in the islands—it had to be freed and tightened each time the boat came about, so that the sail could be set on either side of the mast. But I knew nothing of that in the beginning.

“Tend the snotter!” Mr. Mullock shouted at me the first time we tacked. “You dotty crock, cast off the snotter!”

The sail was shaking. The mast trembled, and I thought the boat would surely founder.

“Hurry up, you sheep's head!” bellowed Mr. Mullock.