The Convicts (17 page)

Six weeks into our journey, I still hadn't seen our mad captain. Carrots said he left his cabin only at night, to pace the deck from dark to dawn and mutter at the moon.

But the ship I knew well. I had applied myself to it as I had once sweated over Greek and arithmetic, and through Midgely's teachings I'd learned why the sails were trimmed to be flat one hour and full the next. I'd learned their names, and the names of the ropes that worked them—the sheets and braces and whatnot—and saw the sense in all the many tangles. I'd even begun to see why my father loved his world of oceans.

I looked forward how to my turns on deck. I dared to look beyond the rail at the patterns of the waves and the puffy clouds always in the distance. I sat high on the stack of lumber below the foremast, a place where the sailors liked to lounge in the sun on the old tarpaulin covers, where the fiddler sometimes played. On our forty-second day I crept to the front of the ship. I clung to the rigging that braced the bowsprit and stared straight down at the ship's very bow slicing through the water, shredding it open in glistening curls.

“She's making miles,” I said to Midge, and felt very much the sailor.

He and I were never apart. We spent as much time as ever in his world of islands, but began to explore anew one as well. Convinced that I was the Smasher, he begged to hear stories about my gang of urchins, and I amused myself by spinning the wildest tales I could imagine. I told of dark deeds iri dark alleys, casting myself as a Robin Hood who helped the lame and the blind, preying only on Mr. Good fellow who appeared in every tale—under a different name—and suffered more agonies than all the poor old Greeks rolled together.

Midge didn't really believe the stories, but pretended he did. And over time I told him all, even of my diamond. The old blind mud lark became a rich tnan with a fancy walking stick, but that was the only thing I changed. Midgely listened, then followed my tale with another, about an old king and a pirate named Captain Jolly.

It was a story more strange than any of mine, more tangled than a mystery. It was about a jewel called the Jolly Stone, a fabulous diamond that brought ruin to all. It started on a ship, with a battle in the moonlight, and moved a hundred places through a hundred years. And it ended below the Tower of London, with a woman on a white horse galloping to her death. “In her hand was the cursed stone,” said Midge. His voice slurred. “No one sheen it ever shinsh.”

The story gave me chills. If there was any truth in it at all, if my diamond was really the Jolly Stone, I had found the biggest one in all creation. And with it, a plague of misery and pain.

“Didn't it make
anyone
happy?” I asked.

“Oh, all of them,” said Midge. “But not for long. If I was you, I'd leave it where it is. Even if it ain't that Jolly Shtone.”

“But think of the riches,” I said. “I could have my own carriage, and so could you. We could both be gentlemen, Midge.”

“Me?” He laughed. “Me, a gentleman? Holy jumping mother of Moses, Tom, I ain't no gent. I don't want no part of that.”

He never asked where my diamond was. He never spoke of it again. For Midge, the only thing that mattered was the ship. It carried us along in gales and calms, in cold and searing heat. The Goodfellow flag flew always above us, and the farther south we went, the hotter the days became, and the more fitful was the wind. For hour upon hour—sometimes for a full day or more—the ship didn't move forward at all. But it rocked to and fro in an agonizing fashion. Far to the right, then far to the left, the masts swung like pendulums. The sails flapped, the yards creaked, the blocks and slack lines slammed on the canvas. And my sickness returned.

Midge said we were in the doldrums. It was the perfect name for a place with no wind and no shelter from the sun. It was so hot that the pitch melted on the deck, and globs of black—hot as coals—fell upon us like a hellish rain. The scorching sun seemed to climb through the rigging, up the shrouds as noon approached, every day a little higher. From the angles and the heights, I calculated that the sun would balance on the topgallant yard one day. And when it did, we would cross the equator.

“Oooh, we'll see Neptune then,” said Midgely.

“Go on,” I said. I thought he was pulling my leg.

“It's true. King Neptune and his court, they board every ship when it crosses the line.”

“Why?”

“Why not?” said Midge. “It's his sea, ain't it? The whole ship turns otit to meet him, Tom.”

It took a week to prove him right. Then the sun mounted the topgallant yard, and not an hour later we were taken up on deck. The sails were set at odd angles, the ship turned into the wind, skidding sideways up big, rounded waves. “She's hove to,” said Midgely. “We must be waiting for Neptune.”

There were three tubs of water set against the rise to the afterdeck. Blanks and barrel hoops lay beside them, and all the sailors had gathered. Sunburned and laughing, they sprawled on the stack of lumber and perched along the rail. Suddenly they cheered, and up from the sea came Neptune with his trident in his hand. His hair was green, his face a terrible red, and he rose from the ocean in a water tub.

It took me only a moment to see that Neptune was really the old blacksmith, wrapped in a strange cloak. His hair and beard were seaweed, clotted by oatmeal and tar, and his face was painted with ochre. Three of his Tritons were jammed with him in the tub, all bellowing as the sailors brought it inboard and tipped out the king of the sea.

He tumbled onto the deck in a most unkingly way. Then up he leapt and roared, “Who goes here? Bring me the captain, I say.”

His Tritons went running, leaping to the barrels, up to the afterdeck. The sailors parted, and a man appeared.

It wasn't the madman Carrots had spokeft of. He had no bloodstained lash, no evil in his eyes. I looked at him and gasped, for I knew him very well.

Our captain was my father.

He came with his familiar smile, in his familiar walk, and my heart glowed to see him. He looked younger than I remembered, his face burned by the sun, his eyes shining. He looked down at King Neptune. “We're bound for New South Wales,” he said.

Neptune stroked his beard. “Have any among you never crossed the line?”

What followed was an hour of utter delight. The planks were set atop the barrels, and three by three the boys went forward to meet the court of Neptune. They paid tribute to him with little songs and silly dances, and Neptune granted freedom to some, but not very many. The rest were sat up on the planks, and the royal barbers came forward to shave them. With enormous scrubbing brushes, the barbers applied a foul lather of grease and tar, then took up the iron hoops for razors. At the last touph of the blade the planks were pulled away, and down went the boys into the barrels. Some squawked and shouted
_r
but others laughed, and none more than Benjamin Penny. His webbed hands splashing, he frolicked in the water like one of the dolphins that often played round the ship.

It was hard to wait for my turn, as I longed to cry out to my father, to run and put my arms around him. I imagined the look of surprise and delight that would come to his face when he saw me. But when I stepped forward he turned to a sailor's chore and didn't see me dance my little jig, nor sit atop the plank. When he looked again, my face and head were coated with lather.

The royal barber scraped at me. Too soon the plank was pulled away. I tumbled breathless into the water.

It was not as deep as I was tall, but the wooden barrel was slick with lather. I struggled and gasped, but the ship roared with laughter. King Neptune, thinking my struggles a game, thrust his trident into the tub, and whenever I rose to the surface he pushed me down again.

In desperation I grabbed the trident and gave it a mighty pull. To my great surprise, Ihaule4 the king of the ocean head over heels into the barrel. His beard floated off; his wig tangled in my arms. I breathed water into my lungs and couldn't cough it out. Down I sank
m
the warmth and the darkness, until my face touched the bottom of the barrel.

Hands hauled me out. They were my father's hands; I knew them right away. They plucked me from the water and held me above it. There was his fece, peering into mine. It was such a shock he got that he dropped me again, and old Neptune himself had to fish me out in a dead faint.

When I woke, the game was over. I was sitting on the deck, my back against the barrel, dribbling rivers of water on the wood. The boys were gone, the gratings replaced. Nep-time and his Tritons and barbers had shed their green wigs, and now stood looking foolish in their robes and red-painted faces.

My father was kneeling beside me, patting my hand. “Tom?” he said, when he saw me awake. “Is it really you?”

“Yes, Father,” I said.

Tears bubbled from his eyes, shining in the sun. Then his arms wrapped around me, and all of him trembled. “Oh, if I'd only known you were here,” he said. “All these weeks you've been so close. But it wasn't in my heart to come on deck when it was full of hungry, wretched lads. I couldn't bear to look at them.” He touched my arms, my hair, as though he wasn't sure that I was real. “But here you are.”

His dark hair, windblown into tangles, ruffled in front of my eyes. He looked at gawking Neptune, at all the gawking sailors, and he grinned. “Set the topsails, set the jibs,” he told them. “Set the staysails, if you please, and steer for Table Bay.” Then he helped me to my feet and took me to his cabin.

There, in the stern of the ship, I stretched out flat on his bunk. He gave me raisins and cheese and a glass of small beer. He sent for oranges. For
oranges!—even
the word was delicious. Then we asked each other, with the same wonder, “How did you end up here?”

I went first. I told him how I'd gone into the fog and found a diamond. “Father, it's the most fabulous diamond,” I said. “It might be the Jolly Stone and—”

“I don't give a hang about that,” he said. “I want to know about
you”

So I told him about the blind man and old Worms, about the boy in the grave, my dead twin. “He was exactly like me,” I said. “But you know that; you saw him. Mr. Goodfellow took you there.”

“He made me bargain first.” My father walked to the windows at the stern, opened one, and let in the sound of water and waves. “He wouldn't take me until I agreed to his terms.”

“You promised to sail his ships,” I said.

My father nodded as he stood staring out the window.

“Will you carry slaves for him?”

“Slaves?” cried my father, turning to face me. “Good God, no, my boy.”

“The ship's a slaver,” I said.

“Was”
said he. “Seized and sold; a bargain for Mr. Goodfellow. Lord knows what he's up to now. He has sent along every chart of the Java Sea, so I'm bound to be sailing home by way of Borneo. I'm to meet his agent in New South Wales, and then I'll see the cut of his jib. I suspect there will be some odd sort of cargo. But slaves?” Father shook his head. “He knows it's forbidden.”

“He's not above it,” I said. “He's done worse.”

My father nodded. “Well, Mr. Goodfellow shall get his comeuppance,” he said. “That's one cockroach I want to see crushed We'll land at Table Bay and I'll quit the ship. We'll go home together and—”

“No,” I said. “They'll only put you back in prison, and mein irons.”

“Then I'll sign you aboard as crew”

“As crew?” I said. “Dad, I'm afraid of the sea.”

“No wonder why,” he told me, still gazing through the window. I couldn't look at his back without seeing all the water beyond him, the trail of the ship laid in white streaks across the waves. “There are things I never told you, Tom. About the night you were born.”

I pressed my hand against my awn, feeling the hardness of my scar. I thought I knew what he was about to say.

“Your mother had a bad time of it, Tom,” he told me. “On the night you were
born
I feared I would lose her.” He drew back from the window. “I went to find the doctor, but the wind was so fierce. I had to crawl up the Beacon Hill on hands and knees. I thought the rain would drown me. I fetched the house, but the doctor wasn't there. He had slipped his moorings that morning for Chatham, and there was nothing to do but take your mother to see him.”

I pulled my legs up on the bunk. I sat in its little nook as the ship rambled through the waves,

“The wind pushed us down to the wharf like the hand of God. I put your mother in a boat and shipped the oars, and off we went Row? I couldn't do that. The wind sailed us down the river, and the best I could do was steer with the oars. Btrt one was carried away in a moment. It flew from my hand, Tom.” B? reached his arm toward the cabin's swinging lamp, “It leapt from the pins and soared up in the wind like a wooden bird, tumbling end over end.”

My father poured himself a glass of the small beer and drank it in a gulp.

“In all the seven seas I've never seen a storm like that. The wind was solid spray. It tore your mother's bonnet into shreds. The waves tumbled over us, and the sound—well, you couldn't imagine it, Tom. And that's when you were born, right there in the boat.”