The Elfin Ship (20 page)

The fog got thicker though. The three of them paddled away on the portside hoping to run up on the left bank somewhere since it seemed to be the most populated. But it was impossible to tell whether they were making toward the bank or just splashing aimlessly in the water. During one last gap in the mists Jonathan saw the bank – he supposed it was the left bank – directly ahead and about two or three hundred yards distant. Dooly shouted that they were ‘on course,’ but it seemed more likely to Jonathan that the raft was merely swinging about in slow circles, still adrift in midriver. When the fog closed in they had no more idea of their direction than a blind man. The Professor and Jonathan stopped paddling simultaneously, as further paddling didn’t make much sense. Dooly, however, paddled away, taking short deep strokes.

The foghorn sounded again, but they couldn’t agree on where. It seemed to come first from forward and a bit to starboard, then to port, then, strangely from aft. Jonathan took this as evidence that the raft was slowly spinning, but the Professor said that the phenomenon was due to the muffling effects of the fog.

‘What do we do?’ Jonathan asked. ‘We can’t be too far from the river mouth.’

‘Aye,’ said the Professor, shaking his head. ‘This is no good at all.’

‘I for one would rather swim to shore from here than from a half mile out to sea. Why don’t I just swim in, find some help, and try to head the raft off at the river mouth?’

‘You’d never find us,’ the Professor replied wisely. ‘You’d no more be able to see the raft in this fog than we can see the shore now. Besides, how do you know, absolutely, where the shore is? How do you know we’re not already at sea?’ The Professor pushed a thatch of wet hair out of his eyes, paused, and held up a finger for silence. A creaking and groaning sounded behind them. Jonathan leaned out beneath the canopy, peered into the mists astern, and saw the hull and bowsprit light of what appeared, in the few seconds he had to consider, to be the ghost of a small schooner cutting in upon them out of the fog at such a rate that he hadn’t time to do more than shout.

There was a tearing of wood as the deck plunged beneath him and he tumbled backward into the water. He rose to the surface sputtering and gasping and was immediately conked on the back of the head by a floating section of the raft with the forepaws of a wet and amazed Ahab hanging onto the edge. Ahab pretty much looked like Jonathan felt – cold – and was beginning to think that having one’s raft smashed to bits and being flung into rivers and bays were simply a rafter’s unfortunate lot in life. ‘Hello!’ Jonathan shouted, grabbing Ahab’s ruined piece of raft and squinting off into the fog. ‘Hello! Professor! Dooly!’

From somewhere behind him Professor Wurzle replied, ‘What-ho, Jonathan. Out for a swim, are you?’

Jonathan thrashed around and encountered the Professor and Dooly both clinging to the redwood wall of the lean-to, the only piece of the raft that bore any real resemblance to anything but a stick of wood. Laying atop it were the oboe weapon and, of all things, Mayor Bastable’s hat. Kicking his feet, Dooly propelled the thing along gleefully and shouted, ‘Look at old Ahab! Ain’t he wet!’ Jonathan had to admit that he was.

A voice in the mists, however, silenced them. The slap of oars on the surface of the water preceded the arrival of a long rowboat in which sat two grizzled dwarfs, one rowing and one craning his neck to see into the fog. ‘Who’s there?’ one shouted.

Jonathan feared at first that they were all to be run over a second time, so he yelled, ‘It’s us!’ in reply to the dwarf’s question.

‘I see it is,’ the dwarf said as his partner shipped the oars. ‘Is this all of you?’

‘Quite,’ replied Jonathan.

Without further discussion, the two in the rowboat set about hoisting the three rafters and the dog Ahab aboard without submerging everybody involved. The task was finally accomplished with much joggling and shouting and leaping to this side and that. Jonathan kept a sharp eye out for floating kegs. It would be a rotten thing indeed to suppose his cheeses were at the bottom of the Oriel or that the kegs, roped together, would drift oceanward on the tide and never be seen again. The Professor insisted he’d seen the kegs drifting off together and that they seemed fairly well intact. Sure enough, as they rowed slowly through the muffling fog – the dwarves whistling, then listening for a returning whistle from the schooner – Dooly spied a phantom keg bobbing along on the waters of the bay. Tied to it were all its fellow kegs, some empty, most filled with raisin cheeses, and all, apparently, sound as tubs. They tied the keg line to a ring in the sternpost and towed it along behind.

Jonathan found he was shaking with cold in the few minutes it took them to whistle themselves into sight of the schooner. Untying wet knots with cold fingers was proved an impossibility – one which, no doubt, the Professor could have easily explained. Explanations would have done the Cheeser precious little good though, for not only could he not untie the keg line in order for the dwarfs to haul the thing aboard, he could barely grasp the ladder and haul
himself
aboard. It was a numbing shaky cold which was a product not only of the waters of the bay, but even more so of the onshore wind which blew straight in off the open sea.

The dwarfs, mindful of the shivering rafters, brought out a heap of blankets and slickers and dry socks, most of which were too small by far to fit any of the rafters. But just getting in out of the wind seemed to do the trick – that and a blanket or two. Even so, everyone was thankful when the ship finally rounded an island with a lighthouse perched atop it in the mouth of the bay, and they could see harbor lights and the tip of a long pier fifty yards off the port bow.

The wharves were nearly empty, almost no one being foolish enough to want to have anything to do with the ocean in such a fog. Two frazzled-looking dwarfs fished from the pier, never even moving their lines when the schooner was hauled in and tied up. They shared a steaming cup of coffee between them and continually looked over the edge of the pier at their dangling bait which hung a foot or so above the gray water.

‘They’re looking for fogfish,’ the Professor explained, nodding at the two. ‘It’s a good night for fogfish, if you like them. I tasted them once, years ago, fried up with mushrooms. Too many bones for my taste. There’s always one going down your throat. Taste like trout, though, actually.’

Dooly was so cold he couldn’t speak. He could barely revolve his eyes in order to glance at the three fish that lay in a heap on the pier. The fish were fat-headed foolish things with fins like wings and spiny crenelations which shone phosphorescently in the fog. Jonathan wasn’t any more interested in the Professor’s observations than was Dooly, until a bloated, glowing fogfish, swimming through the mists as if underwater, came flapping out of the fog making a sort of
whooshing
sound and goggling roundabout. One of the fishermen cast his pole to the deck and grasped a net, pursuing the fogfish across the wooden boards on tiptoe. The thing apparently grew suspicious, however, for it flew – or swam, as the case may be – zigzagging away into the murk. The dwarf returned with an empty net only to hear some rough words from his companion. Moments later a muffled splash sounded off the end of the pier as the fogfish returned to the sea.

It occurred to Jonathan that fishermen often seem oblivious to the weather, a condition he could never entirely figure out. He could remember Mayor Bastable on more than one occasion, crunching out through a snowy December morning, fishing pole in hand, toward the icy banks of the Oriel. It bespoke inexplicable enthusiasm and heartiness; but in his numbed condition, heartiness of any sort struck him as worse than tiresome – perhaps even criminal.

At the end of the wharf they were met by an elf, puffing along up the road for the sole purpose, it seemed, of taking charge of them. He introduced himself as Twickenham, shook their hand a time or two, and led them off to the inn half a block from the ocean and within the confines of a tremendous rock wall. A wooden sign, darkened with age, swung on hooks outside the door of the inn – a sign which read ‘Cap’n Mooneye’ and depicted a carved piratical dwarf, his beard knotted and his eyes wide and wild. It was altogether the most romantic inn Jonathan had seen, like something out of G. Smithers.

The inn was warm as a goblin pot, due to a great fire burning in a fireplace big enough to set up housekeeping. A wide clock sat atop a deep wooden mantel over the mouth of the fireplace, its hands pointing to nine o’clock. On its face a grinning gibbous moon was rising, a moon with two long, thin arms, one of which was placing a star in the dark blue night sky. The clock chimed the hour almost as soon as the troupe walked in and hurried across to the fireside.

‘This is the ticket!’ Jonathan told the Professor. ‘This makes the whole lot of it worthwhile.’

‘I quite agree.’ The Professor smiled.

Dooly, still too cold to show much enthusiasm merely nodded. Ahab stood smack in front of them on the hearth and shook so much water out of his coat that the embers in the fireplace hissed. Then he lay down in front of it and almost immediately fell asleep and started to snore. Dooly livened up fairly quickly and even noted that Ahab was ‘dog tired’, laughing at his own joke. Jonathan and the Professor smiled, although probably not so much in approval of Dooly’s humor as at the mugs of mulled ale and the beef joint that Twickenham and Monroe, the jolly, fat innkeeper were lugging forth from the kitchen.

The three rafters set upon the fare as if they’d been fasting for a week, and even Ahab woke up and got his share. He, of course, drank warm buttermilk rather than ale, but then he didn’t care a great deal for ale and probably didn’t see much purpose in it.

Twickenham spoke little that night aside from assuring Jonathan that the cheeses had been taken to Ackroyd’s bakery where the casks would be checked for leaks. Having been dipped in wax before packing, the cheeses, would no doubt have survived, leaks or no. If the rafters would condescend, he said, to stay at the old Mooneye for a day or two to rest up, then no one would worry about business of any sort until the day after tomorrow.

Jonathan assured his host that he would probably sleep until the day after tomorrow and didn’t want to hear about business until after he had.

‘We’re waiting,’ said the elf, ‘for a party of linkmen coming along the river road. They should be here late tomorrow afternoon if nothing goes amiss.’

‘We’ve seen them,’ Jonathan explained. ‘Ate half of their food, in fact. Fine chaps, linkmen, all the way around.’

‘They are that,’ Twickenham agreed. ‘Was there a large one among them? A round sort of linkman tremendously fond of food and larks?’

The Professor nodded. ‘The Squire. He was there. He and Dooly got on famously. When we left them they were a day’s walk from the first outpost, and they seemed fairly anxious to get there. We had a bit of trouble with goblins now and then. Seem to be a lot of them afoot – almost to the Highland edge.’

‘That’s part of the business we’ll attend to shortly, as soon as the Squire’s party arrives.’

There was not much more in the way of conversation. When Jonathan was full and warm he found himself dozing, his head slumping forward onto his chest. But it was no more possible to remain awake than it had been to make his frozen fingers cooperate on the knotted keg line, and finally there was nothing to be done but slouch off down the hall to their respective rooms where they fell asleep atop wide beds with feather comforters.

A long time later, although it seemed but an instant or two to Jonathan, he felt himself being shaken awake by a dwarf lad wearing an idiotic suit of clothes, serving livery perhaps. ‘Wake up, Master Bing. The others are already about.’

Jonathan slurped away at his coffee while he pulled on his breeches and shirt and suspenders, all of which had been cleaned and dried while he slept. His leather pouch full of coins and charms hung over the edge of a chair. He was pleased that the dwarf lad had brought along a bowl of buttermilk for Ahab, but he was probably not half so happy about it as Ahab.

He found the Professor downstairs tieing into toast and jelly and waiting for a plate of eggs and ham. Jonathan joined him, noting the presence of an empty plate at the table with traces of egg yolk and crusts. Dooly, then, had already eaten and disappeared. There was no sign of Twickenham, but when Jonathan offered to pay the rotund Monroe for breakfast he replied simply, ‘The elf has seen to it, sir.’ Jonathan took this to mean Twickenham and decided that it seemed reasonable that this Twickenham was deeply involved in all the mysterious doings which Jonathan wanted to ignore until after a bit of vacation. He assumed rightly that the elf wouldn’t stay away too long.

After breakfast they wandered off into Seaside. The fog had lifted, so the city didn’t seem quite as murky as it had the previous evening. There still wasn’t much sun, and the air was cool and damp. Off to their left not twenty yards distant was the stone wall which, in the light of day, they could see encircled the entire city. It was about fifteen feet high, and judging from the depth of the arch that led through the wall into the open docks along the wharfside, it was about six feet thick. The Professor speculated that the wall was defense against pirates. Jonathan liked the idea fairly well, and as they proceeded uphill toward the center of Seaside, the whole suggestion became more certain. The city was built upon low, coastal hills, and on two such hills, visible over the tops of the buildings and houses, were what appeared to be forts. Jonathan could see the barrels and muzzles of cannonade protruding through the porthole windows and pointing variously toward the bay and playing out over the open ocean.