The Elfin Ship (6 page)

‘I believe you’re right.’

‘And men of science use their heads, you’ll agree again. Now my head tells me that there are three ways to get off this bar. Muscle is the first, and that, apparently, doesn’t work. That leaves us two options. One of those is to rig the mizzenmast and take advantage of the crosswind to help swing the stern out into deep water. With the current to help, we could then pole the bow free.’

‘That’s a good plan, Professor, a good plan. But we’d be the better part of the day accomplishing the task. And who’s to say that we wouldn’t spin round and beach the whole larboard side?’

‘And if we do, are we much the worse off?’

‘No,’ said Jonathan, ‘I suppose not. But you mentioned a third option. What is that?’

‘It would be possible to row across to the far shore in the coracle. Then by looping a line round one of the great alders, we could drag the raft free by use of a block and tackle.’

Jonathan pondered for a moment. ‘I’m afraid it’s too great a distance for such a thing. The weight of the wet rope alone would make it an impossible chore for one man to accomplish. And one of us would, of course, have to stay aboard the raft. And think of the pressure on a rope of that length once the raft is free in the current. We’d likely lose the rope, block and tackle, and all.’

‘Well we could cut the rope as soon as the raft was free. Clearly the one on the raft would have to tack upstream so as not to outdistance the coracle anyway. So those fears shouldn’t much interfere with the scheme.’

The two sat there puffing on their pipes during this interchange, and both realized at the same instant that the lunch they had considered eating an hour and a half before hadn’t been eaten.

‘Are you hungry, Professor?’ asked Jonathan.

‘Ravenous.’

‘Shall we eat then?’

‘I suppose we shall.’

As they rose and reached for the door of the hold, both men paused. From within, unmistakably, came the murmur of a voice, droning along as if engaged in earnest conversation. Jonathan, stealthily, bent an ear to the door and caught the words, ‘hairy thing’ and ‘goblin’ and ‘buckets of ice cream.’ He was sure of it. The door swung to, and both Jonathan and Professor Wurzle peeked in half expecting almost anything. What they saw was Ahab, round as a tub, hunched over a half-eaten dill pickle. The top of the pickle keg was ajar. The whole mystery was peculiar to the utmost.

The Professor was the first to speak. ‘It looks as if your beast has been having a go at the pickles.’

‘I should say.’

‘Abominably odd.’

‘Yes indeed. How could he have purloined a pickle? Even if he had been able to reach the top of the keg, he couldn’t have popped the top loose.’

‘A good deduction, Cheeser,’ the Professor whispered. ‘Odd things are afoot.’ The two stealthily crept into the hold although it was clear from the outset that there was no one in the room aside from them and the dog Ahab. Kegs of odd sizes sat about, and ropes and sailcloth and buckets and various sorts of stores and tools lay heaped here and there. No mysterious whisperers were to be seen. It was all a puzzle.

Jonathan removed his cap and scratched the top of his head. Both men shrugged then said, almost simultaneously, ‘The kegs. The empty kegs!’ There were a round dozen of the large kegs, and Jonathan, as if to surprise something that might be hiding within, tiptoed toward the closest and reached for the lid.

The Professor made a noise like an ape might make if his mouth were taped shut and gestured at Jonathan to wait. He rushed out and was back in a flash with the oboe gun, squid arm whirl-gatherers flapping roundabout. He squinted one eye and nodded to Jonathan to continue.

The Cheeser snatched the first lid up, then the second and third, but nothing save air lay within. He approached the fourth, reached for the lid as Professor Wurzle stood guard, and the lid, as if on command, popped off and clattered down onto the deck.

‘Hey there, Mr Bing Cheese!’ cried Dooly, popping up out of the barrel like a jack-in-the-box and causing Jonathan to leap back onto a sack of beans.

Professor Wurzle, in the excitement, failed to recognize poor Dooly who had, it seemed, stowed away in an empty keg. He twirled away on the crank device and the whirl-gatherers began flailing round, making little whistling noises until the oboe gun nearly sang a tune. Both Jonathan and Dooly stared silently in amazement for a moment at the dumbfounded Professor, who was immediately sorry that he’d started the thing up. The motion of the whirl-gatherers finally became so intense that the Professor was forced to drop the entire affair, and the weapon went whizzing round the hold like a giant rotating moth.

Dooly grabbed the fallen lid and dropped back down into his barrel, pulling the lid shut after him. Jonathan took refuge behind the bean sacks. The Professor, fearful of damaging the weapon, leaped after it and attempted to throw a burlap sack over it as it careened off the walls. The burlap, in the end, got caught up among the whirl-gatherers and fouled the entire machine which dropped clattering to the deck. Dooly peeped out, sweat prickling his brow.

‘What is it, Professor?’ asked Dooly. ‘Some sort of bird? Looks like a thing my grandpa had once to find treasures with.’

‘Well, Dooly!’ the Professor gasped. ‘I don’t suppose your grandfather had one of these. It’s just a sort of a thing I use for this and that.’

Dooly nodded.

‘The question,’ said Jonathan, rising from the bean sacks, ‘is what are you doing here?’

‘Aye, aye, Captain,’ cried Dooly, clambering out of his keg. ‘It’s a jolly day to be a-roving, Cheeser, if I do say. And, Cheeser, you said once that you and me couldn’t go a-rafting without we took a fine dog like Ahab along beside us. So there you are, and here I am, and there, with his pickle, as I, if you please, felt I had to give him, is the dog.’

The answer, somehow, wasn’t completely satisfactory, but Jonathan could see no profit in being upset. Of all the things the Cheeser disliked, being upset was the worst, and so usually, if he had the choice, he ignored anything that would provoke such a thing.

‘Dooly,’ he said, taking a pickle from the barrel for himself. ‘Welcome aboard.’

‘Ahoy, Captain,’ said Dooly. ‘Shall I make up a lunch?’

‘I believe you should.’

‘And did I tell you, Cheeser and Mr Wurzle gentlemen, about the time my grandpa went into fix
him
a lunch?’

‘I don’t suppose so, Dooly,’ Jonathan replied rather abruptly. ‘But …’

‘About the great Toad King,’ said Dooly.

‘But,’ continued Jonathan, ‘I imagine the Toad King and your grandfather can hold on until our own is served.’

‘Don’t let me forget,’ said Dooly, lunging out through the door. Jonathan followed, leaving Professor Wurzle separating burlap from whirl-gatherers and puzzling over the odd behavior of his machine.

At long last they completed lunch, and though their stomachs were well filled, they were no closer to being free of the sandbar. But then there’s nothing like a full stomach, or so Jonathan had always thought, to make a fellow sleepy. Just a bit of a catnap is not at all a bad thing after lunch. ‘I say, Professor,’ said Jonathan. ‘What about a bit of a rest?’

‘We’ve been taking a bit of a rest, my boy,’ replied the Professor, ‘all morning long.’

‘But you know, Professor, that afternoons are somehow the dullest part of the day, and a chap shouldn’t fight against it. Where would we be if we denied human nature?’

‘We’d likely be a ways further downriver before nightfall,’ said the Professor, ‘instead of stuck here.’

‘I suppose,’ said Jonathan, wondering whether, as captain, he couldn’t order all hands to their bunks for a good two-hour lunch recovery period. He was never one to enjoy ordering people about, however, besides the Professor was very much right. So they began debating the various merits of the two plans. The addition of Dooly to the crew made things a trifle more simple, and it was altogether possible that they could quite easily rig the mizzenmast and, with the extra muscle, pole the raft free. They began, in fact, to do just that.

Dooly managed first off to tangle a length of rope into a knotted mass and, almost at the same time, to drop a spread of canvas overboard into the river. The canvas immediately sank. Amid shouted apologies, Dooly, leaped overboard after it. The rush of water, cold as a herring, swept his feet out from under him. He sputtered and floundered and thrashed until his feet found the bottom and he realized that the water over the bar was no more than waist deep. He stood up shaking the water from his face.

‘Whew!
he said to the Professor, Jonathan, and Ahab who all stood at the edge of the raft. ‘This is pretty wet!’

‘A good deduction – worthy of a man of science,’ shouted the Professor, happy that Dooly was safe and almost as happy again that no one would have to leap in to save him. He’d always wondered what the proper method of saving a drowning person was – whether it was correa to remove one’s shoes and shirt and unclasp one’s pocketwatch, or whether merely to sail in without pause.

‘Do you know what I saw, Mr Wurzle, down beneath the sea?’

‘I haven’t an inkling,’ replied the Professor.

‘My whole life. Right before my eyes.’

‘All of it?’

‘If you please, sir. It just come past like a flash: candy bars, sandwiches, my new pair of shoes, my grandpa, everything. Just like a batch of flappin’ birds it come past.’

‘I’ve heard of such things,’ said the Professor, ‘but I never hoped to meet anyone who’d seen it.’

‘Especially underwater,’ said Jonathan, leaning across to take the heavy, soaked canvas that Dooly had managed to retrieve.

‘Aye!’ shouted Dooly, flabbergasted at the idea of his life having gone past underwater. ‘I suppose so!’ Then, without so much as taking a breath, Dooly’s eyes widened into circles and his mouth fell open. ‘The Toad King!’ he cried. ‘The Toad King himself!’

‘Why don’t you just hop on up here onto the deck, Dooly, before you start in with the Toad King story. We’ve got weeks of travel ahead of us; plenty of time for kings of all natures, toads included.’ Jonathan bent over the rail to give Dooly a hand onto the raft, but Professor Wurzle cut him short by placing a cold hand on his arm. Dooly clearly wasn’t listening to Jonathan either but was staring goggle-eyed at the shore.

There, between a pair of huge, twisted alders with interwoven roots exposed on the riverside, stood a pair of awesomely misshapen beasts. They were larger and fatter and more stooped than men and were hunched and scaly-looking. Their faces were lumpy and knobby, and they squinted through little slits of eyes. Each wore a skin garment wrapped around his midsection, and each held a great gnarly club in his hand. All in all, they looked a bit on the stupid side. Ahab didn’t like the look of them by half, and he went barking about the deck cutting capers every six or eight steps as if he were a tap dancer.

‘Trolls,’ the Professor announced.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Jonathan, astounded at the sight of such things.

‘I said trolls. Two trolls, and very ugly ones from the look of it.’

‘Hallo, Mr Toad King!’ shouted Dooly in a quavering voice. ‘You might remember my old grandpa.’

One of the trolls wandered down to the riverside and stood with his feet buried in a cushion of moss. The branches of the old alder stirring now and again in the breeze nearly brushed his hair for him. With a long, pointed talon of a fingernail he picked at the few great teeth that he had. The second troll stepped along to join him, but slipped on the mossy bank and collapsed all of a heap and ended up sitting in the water, very much upset. The first troll emitted a noise like the creaking of a tree in a stiff wind which must have been some sort of troll laughter because the fallen troll wasn’t at all happy with it. He reached out with his club and pounded the second troll on the foot once, then again for good measure, and although the second troll seemed unpleased, he merely shuffled a few steps to the side and climbed in among the roots of the tree, brooding and rubbing his foot.

During this interchange, the Professor tiptoed away toward the hold, and Dooly still stood agog in the river. He winked at Jonathan once or twice and whispered, ‘This ain’t the Toad King. He would have remembered old Grandpa if he was. Grandpa and the Toad King went to the Magic Isles once to find the Purple Pearl you heard me speak of once or twice. No, this ain’t such a one as a Toad King, even though he’d fool the likes of us.’

Jonathan merely nodded. He’d heard stories of trolls that, at the time, he’d rather not have heard. Most had to do with iron cauldrons like the one Dooly’s grandpa found the stick candy in. In the old tales, trolls were fond of making pots of stew from men lost in the woods and from carefully selected stones. Jonathan had never been amused over the idea. He knew, as did everyone, that trolls were real and not just tales told to children on a stormy night. G. Smithers of Brompton Village had written a story entitled, ‘The Troll of Ilford Hollow’, which, when he’d read it as a child, had frightened Jonathan so that he couldn’t sleep through a night without dreams of dark, lurching things creeping in the deep woods. But he’d finally convinced himself that such fears were unreasonable and, when he’d grown up, the thought of anything making a meal of stones became rather laughable.