We found the Roger anchored between Silly and the Other One, and as we swooped down from the sky I could see that there was trouble aboard.
Originally I intended to wait until nightfall before I made my way onto the ship, thinking that were I to arrive by daylight, my old shipmates—once they saw it was no bird descending but a strange man tethered to a flying crocodile—would point Long Tom at me and fire away. But I could see from a distance that they were otherwise occupied, and could hear from that same distance the clank of swords, the shouts of attack, the cries of agony, and the lonely howls of death. Daisy and I settled into the crow’s nest without anyone being the wiser. Below me the men of the Roger and the crew from the Princess Alice were fighting fiercely among themselves, but it was unclear to me exactly who was trying to murder whom.
Captain Starkey and Edward Teynte, for example, sworn enemies the last time I had seen them, now seemed to be fighting side by side against Black Murphy (of the Roger) and Charles Turley (of the Alice). Cecco was screaming unintelligible words at Bloody Pete as they crossed swords, while Smee was darting everywhere sticking everyone with needles and pins whenever he got the chance. At the center of it all was Arthur Raleigh, shouting orders and waving his scythe, though as he stood alone it was difficult to learn for which side he was cheering. A few representatives of both ships lay dead or dying, and nearly everyone else (with the sole exception of Bloody Pete, to my surprise) was streaked with gore, much of it seeping from wounds (their own) both major and minor. In short, it appeared that the conflict had been raging for some time and, unlike legendary battles of fiction and folklore that burned hot for hours at a stretch, this one was decidedly flagging. Swords were dropped by exhausted seamen, and their opponents simply allowed the enemy to stoop and retrieve them while they caught their breath in the blessed respite. Those coups that succeeded in finding their targets were inflicted with the flat of the weapon, not the point—slaps of admonishment rather than thrusts of deadly intent—killing someone takes such a lot of energy, most of which had long since been expended. In short, it was plain that no one wanted the fight to last much longer; it was Honor alone that kept them at it.
Being fond of several of these men and not wanting to see them suffer, I allowed sentiment to get the better of me. Tugging Daisy along, I stepped from the crow’s nest into the air and slowly descended to alight gracefully (in dancer’s first position) on the roof of the Captain’s Quarters. Those who saw me stopped their fight midswipe and -swoop. Those whose backs were to me, on seeing the wide eyes and gawping maws of their opponents, turned to look for themselves. Everyone gasped, like a group of ladies at a tea party when an elephant enters the room. In less than a minute all fighting ceased and silence, but for a few weak moans from the dying, fell over all.
“Greetings,” I announced, and Daisy let out a terrible ROAR.
Unfortunately that was all that was needed to send Bloody Pete, overweight and absolutely gasping for breath, into the arms of Death. His heart exploded at the shock of my unconventional entrance into the scene, and he crashed face-forward, landing at Cecco’s feet. Poor Pete would bleed no more.
“What manner of thing art thou?” Gentleman Starkey asked.
“An angel, are you an angel?” Smee exclaimed.
“With a devil on leash,” Charles Turley muttered.
“We are neither, good Smee, Mr. Turley.” Both were astonished that I knew their names. “We are James Cook, once a friend to some of you and soon, I pray, a friend to all—and Daisy, who can be very sweet as long as she’s fed.”
No one said a word.
“So—Captain Starkey—what’s all this about? When I last saw you, you left me bound to the mainmast on a burning ship. Following my demise, you intended to hang the crew of the Princess Alice, or at least most of them. Your mind was changed, it seems. Please explain.”
Starkey was as surprised as any of them were at the sight of me. “Begging your pardon, sir—Mr. Cook—that man pleaded for mercy.” He pointed at Arthur Raleigh. “We needed the extra hands, he said, since many of ours were lost in the Alice’s midnight attack. In addition, he reminded me that since our attackers were sailing under Her Majesty’s colors, it was Bad Form to murder them. Being a Christian man, who sheds blood only when it is in Good Form to do so, I pardoned them all.”
“I see,” I said calmly, “but that hardly explains where we are today.”
“Yes, well, in short, I could tell that some of them did not trust him,” he continued, still referring to Raleigh, “but were not in a position to complain since he had saved their lives. He then proceeded to work among them, whispering mutiny to those of the Alice who had his sympathy, as well as to those crewmen of our own dear Roger who might be supportive of his cause.”
“Which was?”
“Captaincy,” Raleigh announced with conviction. “I declare myself the new captain of this ship. You, dear James, may be my first mate.”
“I don’t think I’m equipped for that,” I told him, adding, “but we’ll discuss that later. What do you intend to do with those who oppose you, once you’re captain?”
“Hang them,” he said. “I don’t give a d—n about Bad Form.”
There was muttering now among those whom he summarily condemned; at last I could identify the various sides of the conflict.
“Captain Starkey,” I said, turning back to the good Gentleman, “I was present when you first laid eyes on Raleigh here, and couldn’t help but notice that you drew back in alarm, as if you recognized him.”
“I thought I did,” Starkey answered, “from the cricket fields of England, though this man seems a bit young to have been at school when I was. Perhaps it was his older brother. We played against each other in a public school match, and he cheated abominably. How could I forget such monstrously Bad Form?”
“Did his team win?”
“Yes, d—n them!” Starkey loudly cursed.
“Smee!” I called, seeking him out in the crowd.
“Yes, Cap’n?” the little round man shouted back.
I couldn’t help but smile at this familiar moniker. “What do you make of all this?”
“Bloody business, ’tis, sir, and I pray it won’t be bloodier.”
“Who should live and who die?”
“No one should die, Cap’n. It’s sad and far too messy.”
“Who should be captain then?”
The little man paused, chewing his lower lip.
“Come, come, now. I want an honest answer from an honest man. You’re the honest-est one I know.”
A few of the men chuckled at this.
“Well, Cap’n, if ye’re askin’ me, I’d say Cap’n Starkey has done a fine job but he’s not gotten us home, or to the Carib, or to wherever we’re supposed to be goin’. Mr. Raleigh, on t’other hand, is a strong brave fella who survived isolation and abandonment and he’s a nice young man to boot and if he were to say he could get us home and that I might be seein’ my dear Rosie again, then I’d vote for him.”
More than a few of the men cheered.
“I’ll get you home to Rosie, Mr. Smee,” Raleigh promised. “You’ll be kissing her lips before winter.”
“I don’t wish to be kissin’ her lips, good sir. I wish to be milkin’ her.”
Nearly everyone laughed at this.
Smee blushed and protested, “I raised her from a calf and it’s her I miss most in this world.”
Now everyone did laugh, everyone but Starkey. As the laughter died, I addressed Raleigh.
“Mr. Raleigh, if we were to name you captain, on the condition that you would pardon everyone and hang only Her Majesty’s flag, would you agree?”
“Heartily, so long as I can choose the positions I wish each man to hold, and so long as each will swear his loyalty to me. I do so agree.”
“Hip-hip-hooray!” Cecco cheered (the first words from his mouth I ever understood). And everyone followed suit—but for Starkey and Teynte.
“Mister Teynte,” I said to my old enemy, observing his reluctance. “You seem as disgruntled as good Captain Starkey. May I ask why?”
All eyes turned to Teynte. Everyone fell silent.
“He led us once before,” he said very quietly. “He’s not to be trusted, with liquor around.”
No one said a word, until at length Raleigh spoke. “Mr. Teynte, I promise you,” he called out, “I am now a sober man.”
There were mumblings of assent, murmurings of doubt, and the problem at hand remained unresolved.
“I think we need to sleep on this,” I finally said. “Bury the dead, tend the wounded, and put aside all grudges for twelve hours. We’ll meet again on deck in the morning and put it to a vote. There’s been enough bloodshed for the day, I’m sure you all agree on that at least. You need a good meal and a night’s rest. Alcohol, I’m sorry to say, will not help matters, so I ask you, on your honor as gentlemen of the high seas, to abstain for this one night. Any dissenters?”
No one said another word.
I dismissed them all, then leapt from the roof (where Daisy had fallen asleep in the sun) and strode across the deck to Arthur Raleigh.
“I think we need to have a word, you and I,” I said.
“It’s good to see you, James. You’ve grown.” He smiled.
“Yes, indeed I have. It’s good to see you too. Father.”
His smile wavered, just a little.
* * *
Anticipating the morrow’s vote in Raleigh’s favor, we settled across from each other in the Captain’s Quarters, a dining table between us.
“How did you guess?” he asked once we were seated.
“I met your other son. George.”
He was puzzled for a moment, until he remembered that second son. “It’s a boy? He’s healthy?”
“And grown and happily married. In fact you’re a grandfather.”
“My, my. Time has certainly flown in England.” For a moment he looked confused. “Speaking of flying, is that how you returned? I figured that would be the best way. I never quite got the hang of it, mind—the boy wouldn’t show me and I never learned where he kept the—whatchamacallit—sand.”
His statement satisfied another suspicion I had, but more of that later.
“So,” he said, coming back to his original query, “how did you ever guess?”
“When I first met George, I couldn’t help but notice how familiar he looked to me. I thought at first it was myself I was recognizing, but then I realized I had seen my older self only once or twice in a mirror. It was you I saw in his face. How could George look so much like Raleigh? I asked myself. And then of course the obvious answer arrived.”
“My dear boy,” he said as he stretched his hand across the table to touch mine. I firmly pulled away.
“Why didn’t you tell me when we first spoke?” I demanded.
“You wouldn’t have understood. You were a boy. I didn’t understand at first—about—you know—Time and all. I’d been absent from England but a few months—or so I thought. How could you be my son? And then, when I learned the truth—about Time and your mother’s passing, well—it was upsetting and rather complicated. I needed to think things out.”
“You lied.”
“Not in everything.”
“Mostly, yes, you did.”
He took a deep breath. “Then I intend to set things straight. Where shall we begin?”
“It’s always best to begin at the beginning.”
“But which beginning? There were so many.”
I waited for him to continue.
“My mother, as I truthfully told you, died birthing my younger brother, Arthur. My father was a stern man who hadn’t a clue how to raise two motherless boys. You were either with him—which is the path Arthur chose—or you were a rebel.”
“Like you.”
“Like me. Much more gratifying and quite a lot of fun. He sent me to Eton for improvement—useless, though I did leave my mark there.” Inwardly I winced at the pain his past had caused me. “Then he tried to set things right with money, thinking he could buy my good behavior; I gambled it away. Finally he bought me a position in the Royal Navy, praying it would give me discipline. The discipline it enforced was all at sea; in port the Navy didn’t give a d—n if I drank and gambled and wooed beautiful women. I met your mother, I met George’s mother, I met a number of other women, and I loved them all.”
“But you lived with my mother. You loved her best.” I sounded like a needy child.
A careful silence. “I—saved her. From a terrible disease—”
“I met Slinque. I know the story.”
“—and as a consequence I felt a deep . . . obligation to provide for her welfare. When I learned she was expecting, I asked my father to care for her and her child if something were to happen to me at sea.”
“Which he did. He didn’t approve of my mother, but he wasn’t niggardly in his financial support. He was rather fond of you, I think, in spite of your profligacy.”
“Well, bully for him. At the same time there was Angela, who was expecting my other child. She was married, so I felt less . . . obliged. Her husband knew nothing about me. Still”—he looked away, reliving his quandary—“I was terrified. Of fatherhood. Of the promises I’d made. And I owed a lot of money. I therefore did what any red-blooded Englishman would do—I ran away. Seeking adventure, of course, and— Well, I wasn’t sure what that map would lead me to but hopefully to some solution to my problems.”
This brought me to my second topic of conversation.
“A dying sailor, you said you got it from a dying sailor?” He nodded. “Did you kill him for it?”
“No, someone else did. I was celebrating my new captaincy at the Admiral Benbow Inn in Penzance, near my home. My father had bought the position for me; he knew the ship’s owner and he paid him quite well. The inn was a sailors’ haunt—disreputable to say the least—but there was one old fellow there I took a liking to, so I stood him a few rounds. He was even drunker than I was. He’d found something, he told me, that would make his fortune. I went outside to take a piss and he followed shortly after—with a knife in his back. He handed me a key as he died, telling me to wait until his murderer had been there first. I had no idea what he was talking about. He was staying at the inn, so I went up to his room and found the door partly ajar. I pushed it wide and discovered a man kneeling before a seaman’s chest he was trying to open. He didn’t hear me. He was busy prying the lock loose with a scythe of all things. He succeeded at last, lifted the lid, and a very large black snake reared up and bit his hand. He started screaming. He saw me and begged me to save him. I seized the scythe and chopped off the hand. He died anyway—of blood loss. I looked around—no snake in sight. I peered into the chest, and the only thing left inside was the map. And there you have it.”
It struck me that the man’s death from loss of blood may not have been the whole truth. I suspect it resulted from a delay on my father’s part in applying a tourniquet or calling for help. Quite possibly it resulted from an additional amputation—of a head, most likely. The map was all.
“To the map’s location. A storm came, and here we are. My crew was desperate. Teynte in particular wanted to return to England or India or wherever our Duty demanded. I just wanted the treasure. I told them about it, promising a rich reward once it was found, but they didn’t believe me. We sailed around, no luck, they mutinied, put me in a dinghy, and cast me off.”
“Was that before or after the incident on Long Tom?”
He looked a bit sheepish, I must admit. “Oh, yes, that, well—” He cleared his throat.
“The truth, Father,” I reminded him.
“The truth. Very well. I’d been drinking a bit more than I should—Teynte was correct in his comment about my liquid habits at the time—and when we spotted the island you call Long Tom I was certain that that was where the treasure lay buried. I took a bottle, a brace of pistols, two shovels, and six men, intending to disinter the entire island, if need be. The men dug, I drank, the sun grew hot, they refused to continue, and I shot them all. I could expand on the details but I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“It was kind of the mutineers not to hang you for that.”
“Teynte’s an honest fellow, I must admit. They put me out to sea instead, most likely to certain death . . .”
“But you landed . . .”
“Not on the island where you found me, no. I didn’t land at all, really. I sailed for several days, nearly died of dehydration, and then one morning I heard a cock crow.”
At last he arrived where I was expecting he would. “Peter,” I stated.
“Yes. He picked me up and flew me to the island.”
“He never mentioned you when I was with him.”
“I’m not surprised. I was a bit old for his fun. We never hit it off, really. He had a mind like a sieve. He probably forgot all about me by the time you arrived. I asked him if he knew of the treasure. He had no idea what I was talking about. There was, however, this little fairy he spoke to . . .”
“Tink?”
“Yes, that’s her name.”
“Did you see her?”
“Of course not. There’s no such thing as fairies. The boy was quite mad. At any rate, his invisible friend told him that the tribe—whatever they’re called—might have hidden it somewhere. He took me to their village, and having read several British treatises on colonization, I announced that I was the Great White Father bringing them God, Sovereignty, and Civilization.”
“That was you then?”
“Yes! I told them they should give me all their pearls and yellow gold and I in exchange would give them a Religion and a Parliament and put them under the protection of Her Majesty Victoria. It didn’t go over well.”
“I don’t think they have pearls and yellow gold.”
“Well, I know that now,” he snapped. “Unfortunately, I had developed a very bad cold. I think I caught it in the storm that swept us here, and all that burning sun and thirst at sea didn’t improve my health in the slightest. My nose was running, I was sneezing five times a minute, it was bloody awful. At any rate, it seems they don’t have the common cold on these islands, and, as so often happens when we whites mingle with brown and black and red savages, some of them caught it and died.”
“How terrible!”
“For me especially. They had a trial and condemned me to something they called the Deep Well. I went down it, and oh, it was disgusting. Rotting carcasses everywhere. But the god who they said was awaiting me—”
“The Great-God-Below-Who-Is-Death.”
“Yes, that’s right. You’ve heard of him.”
“Her.”
“Really? Well, she wasn’t there.”
“She was probably off laying eggs. You were fortunate not to meet her.”
“You have?”
“Oh yes.”
“You were down the Well too? What did you do that set them off?”
There were many details he didn’t need to know.
“It’s a long story, but when I was down there, I found your watch.”
His eyes lit up. “So that’s where I lost it.”
“On the little island in the middle of the underground lake. Where you were digging.”
“For the treasure, yes. It was a perfect place to hide one. But there was nothing there but sand. Do you have it? The watch, I mean. I was quite fond of it.”
“Daisy has it in safekeeping.”
“Oh. Good. I’ll get it from her later.”
Best change the subject. “How did you escape?” I asked.
“I eventually found a pathway leading out of the cavern.” This, I assumed, was the very pathway I had followed in. “I took it to the end, following a stream which eventually disappeared under the rock. But there looked to be light coming from the other end, so I took a deep breath, dove in, and chanced it. It led me to the most beautiful blue lagoon.”
“The Mermaids’ Lagoon.”
“Oh, you’ve been there too. You do get around.” He seemed a tad resentful that he wasn’t the only Englishman who had visited. “As you know, the ladies had very attractive bosoms but hideous tails. I’m a sailor—I know the dangers of mermaids—so I kept my distance. Nevertheless, I was quite exhausted from swimming and happily discovered, in the center of the lagoon, a very large rock.”
“Marooner’s Rock, I believe they call it.”
“Yes, well, the only thing marooned there was a bird’s nest. It was quite densely matted with sticks and mud and shells and things, and big enough to hold a man. So I took a chance, pulled it off the rock, and to my great good fortune it floated. I climbed in. There were two eggs inside. And the mother soon was screaming at me from the air above, diving and swooping to defend her babies. She came close enough for me to grab her, I wrung her neck and dined on her and the eggs for the next several days. Eventually I floated to another island, where I proceeded to live for many months in the cave where you found me.”
“It was years, not months.”
“Well, it seemed months. It was only after I boarded the Roger that I learned it was 1874. Astonishing. Fourteen years since I had disappeared in the storm!”
“Now it’s even longer. Time is very odd here.”
“What do you mean ‘longer’? What year is it now?”
“In England? Eighteen eighty-eight. Possibly ’89. I mean I have been back here for several hours.”
I meant it as a joke, but it was more than he could fathom.
“I do miss the old country,” he said. “What did you find there? Were things very different?”
“Yes and no. I met your father, who was still alive until a few days ago.”
He became very quiet. After a short while he spoke, but softly: “Sorry I didn’t see him again. He would have hated that, my turning up and still defiant.” He gave a wry smile. “I suppose my brother’s in charge now.”
“His widow, perhaps.”
He looked at me. I didn’t explain.
“And I met up with Slinque,” I added.
“Uriah! How is the old fellow?”
“I didn’t care for him, frankly, but Daisy grew quite fond of him. I think she found him a man of excellent taste.”
He smiled at the memory of his dear old friend.
* * *
The following morning the crew met and voted for captain. Raleigh—or should I say Father?—or should I say James Cook the Second?—won handily. (He now admitted his true name, by which those who had served on the Alice knew him. Consequently, to some he was Captain Cook, to others Captain Raleigh. To avoid confusion, everyone simply called him the Cap.)
As his first mate he appointed a Scotsman from the Alice by the name of Alsatian Foggerty, a sailor so inky with tattoos that from a distance one might mistake him for Black Murphy. Charles Turley (a sober, religious fellow whom I found an absolute bore) was named quartermaster, and Cecco was allowed to keep his position as chief gunner.
Black Murphy replaced the late Bloody Pete as carpenter and smithy, while Jukes remained in the galley. Assisted by a generous supply of dried apples, which had been found on the Alice, he now added apples to everything.
Smee was officially appointed ship’s physician and seamstress. As promised, Father assigned him the job of sewing a Union Jack to replace the skull and crossbones we currently flew, but Smee was so busy sewing up wounds that that task was put on hold and, quite frankly, was never completed. Smee, by the way, wished henceforth to be called Doctor Smee, but needless to say nobody bothered.
The remaining crew consisted of
1. Sylvester Skylights, a towering paragon of muscle who suffered from an unfortunate lisp; when things got dull a crewman had but to ask him his name and the resulting “Thylvethter Thkylighth” kept the ship entertained for hours;
2. Jeb Cookson, American-born and hailing from the Wild West, or so he said;
3. Bob Mullins and Alf Mason, two friends so close they might have been joined at the hip; they even shared a sleeping hammock, as well as the redolent musky odor of sweat mixed with rum; and finally
4. Young George Scourie, who, appropriate to his name, was in charge of keeping everything clean and tidy.
Teynte and Starkey, as Father promised, were not hanged, but put in charge of emptying slops, cleaning fish, disposing of garbage, and performing any other job that might be deemed unhealthy and/or beneath their station. Father, I believe, was actively encouraging them to mutiny, which would give him a second chance to see them decorating the yardarm.
As for me, my relationship with Father was difficult, to say the least. When I was fourteen and he was Raleigh, I could look up to him and try to emulate his courageous self; if only we had been father and son then! But now I was twenty-eight and he thirty-four (at least in appearance). I had uncovered his ungallant behavior toward my mother and Angela Darling, not to mention his pompous colonial attitudes toward Tiger Lily’s people. As a consequence, I found him rather despicable. True, he was a leader of men and not a bad captain at all; he had in truth saved my life more than once; why did I not love him? Perhaps I was merely the ungrateful son of an ungrateful son—I’m sure that’s how he would characterize it. Nevertheless the man who was my father was too easily reduced to a pirate cliché: he wanted to find the treasure, all else be d—ned!
And so we set sail, exploring and reexploring the rest of the archipelago. He told the crew he was seeking a passage home, and if we happened to come across any gold or doubloons the discovery would be shared equally by all. This kept them quiet, for a time. Meanwhile, I served as his amanuensis, his right-hand man. I recorded everything in the ship’s log and kept a personal diary of our explorations. This was perhaps the job I was best fit for: my penmanship, after all, was exquisite.
Before I continue, I feel the need to clarify, dear reader, a point which might cause confusion among those of a logical bent: how did the crew of the Roger come to accept that the older me was the same me as the younger me? They had tied a fourteen-year-old boy to the mainmast of a burning ship, and when next he appeared he was approaching thirty and fully mature. Do not forget, however, the superstitious character of most men of the sea. Once my mates saw me floating in the air with a fully grown flying crocodile on leash, the sudden shift in my age became a minor issue.
We began our archipelagic exploration by revisiting Long Tom, where we left Daisy lying in the sun and gobbling the occasional bird that mistook her for a log. We continued on to map Starkland, which island I now realized resembled an enormous skull. Sailing east, we discovered several new islands (new, at least, to me), one of which contained aspects of civilization that Gulliver himself had described, another of which solved the puzzle of the mysterious Gunn, who left his mark in the Starkland eye socket—but my adventures there I will save for another book as they have little to do with the matter at hand. Suffice it to say that on none of these little worlds did we find any real treasure.
I, of course, knew where the treasure was located and of what it consisted. I debated back and forth with myself as to whether I should reveal its whereabouts to Father. Then something happened which decided me, and changed my life forever.
* * *
You may recall, dear reader, my mentioning in an earlier chapter the Nights of Talent and Entertainment that were held on occasion under our late Captain Styles. These nights were extremely popular with the crew, and not merely because they involved the distribution of a great quantity of rum. They truly were enjoyable, even to a teetotaling boy of fourteen; the sailors sang and danced and mocked and mimicked each other in a spirit of generous fun and good humor. We had held none of these nights since our transportation to the Never-Archipelago, and—due to the supplies we absconded with from the Princess Alice—we now had an overabundance of rum. As a result, seeing that our crew was in need of both alcohol and entertainment, I prevailed upon Father to allow one of these delightful evenings to take place. And so it was, under a clear starry sky and surrounded by the vastness of the calm Never-Ocean, that we celebrated our Family-at-Sea once again.
The performance was held on deck, and since we expected no trouble from any alien source, vigilance was relaxed so that all men could partake. The celebration began, of course, with a barrel of liquor. Smee started the Talent portion of the evening with a tune on his “squeeze-box”; his musical talents were quite limited but he could at least hold to a rhythm, and young George Scourie took center stage and danced a jig. This was heartily enjoyed, and the applause was well deserved.
Jeb Cookson then sang several “authentic American cowboy songs” that mostly had to do with young men who were unnaturally fond of their “little dogies” and who, once they bade farewell to “Old Paint,” were eventually riddled with bullets and left to die “on the lone prairie,” where they were found by total strangers whom they begged for a decent burial. The entire manner of living seemed to me utterly absurd and unnecessary, leaving me little doubt as to why Cookson had left his Yellow Rose of Texas to sail on the Ocean Blue.
Bill Jukes performed next, repeating jokes we had all heard before but which we thoroughly enjoyed hearing again. Few were in good taste, and so I shall not reproduce them here. The same was true of the music hall routine performed by Noodler to a few uncharacteristic blushes and uproarious laughter. Then Black Murphy stood and recited Portia’s Mercy speech from the Bard, though he did so in the lisping voice of Skylights. “The quality of merthy ith not thtrained,” he intoned, and everyone screamed with laughter, Skylights among them.
Cecco followed, singing an aria from some Italian opera in an exquisite tenor that left us all in tears.
During it all, Father stood in the back, sipping his rum and laughing as heartily as any one of us. Still, I could sense that something was amiss; he had been spending an inordinate amount of time in his cabin of late, and whenever I entered after our evening meal I could smell the alcohol on his breath and observe the unsteadiness of his gait. In other words, he had begun his drinking again and was showing signs—in deference to Slinque’s assessment of his younger self—of being anything but a “cheerful drunkard.” More than once he snapped at me over some trifle—my blotting a drop of ink with my sleeve as I wrote, or my asking him to repeat himself during the evening’s dictation into the ship’s log. I was becoming more sympathetic to my grandfather’s irritation with his son, and less admiring of my father’s spirit of defiance.
Bob Mullins began by introducing himself as Cap’n Crook. This brought gales of laughter led by Father, who laughed loudest and longest. Mullins followed this by saying that what he missed most aboard the Roger was not “the drink, which was adequate.” (This was greeted with many a raised glass and roar of approval.) Nor was it good meals that he mourned, for he “adored the flavor of apple and could not imagine a dish without it.” (More cheers and raised glasses, all in Bill Jukes’s honor.) No, what he missed most on the Roger was “the rogering.” (This, dear reader, is a colloquial phrase common at sea, and refers to one’s enjoyment of the pleasant company of women. Bob’s last statement, by the way, elicited more cheers, toasts, hoots, and whistles than anything spoken thus far in the evening; it seemed that Mullins was quite the popular entertainer.) Mullins then said that the girl he most longed for was his “dear Daisy,” at which point a slim hand appeared round the corner of the poop deck, waving a lacy handkerchief and calling “yoo-hoo” in a high soprano. The hand was followed by a long tattooed arm, which in turn was followed by the appearance of a lovely lass, bonneted and rouged, whose tresses bore an unfortunate resemblance to the head of a mop. This was, of course, none other than Alf Mason wearing clothes that he had brought with him for just such an occasion; he delighted, it seems, in putting on women’s clothing and unabashedly flirting with his fellow seamen. His bosom, on this night, was nearly as big as Josephine’s.
Let me acknowledge at this point, dear reader, that I now understood that the Cap’n Crook whom Mullins was parodying was myself. Smee always referred to me as Cap’n; furthermore, the crew knew of, and shook their heads in amusement over, my devotion to Daisy. More than once I had overheard some seaman chuckling with his mates about the “danger of kissing a croc.” This bothered me not in the least; it was nothing compared to the cruelties I had suffered at Eton, for I knew these men were fond of me, despite their teasing jibes. I laughed and applauded at “Daisy’s” appearance, and threw her kisses, along with everyone else.
Everyone, that is, except Father.
Mullins and Mason, naturally, knew nothing of Father’s history. True, our names were identical, but James Cook was not an uncommon one. We certainly could never be father and son—I now appeared to be close to him in age, and other than making a few passing comments on our near-identical noses, no one believed we were the least bit related. (Father had grown his beard long again, thus masking many of our facial similarities.) Nor did anyone know my mother’s name, or anything of Father’s relationship to her. In all innocence Mullins and Mason were mocking me and my crocodile, not Father and his mistress. Had Father been sober, I daresay he would have seen this too. But he wasn’t and he didn’t.
Mullins flirted boldly with “Daisy” Mason and squeezed one corpulent breast. When he did so a stream of rum squirted out, wetting the faces of a few men seated in the front row. Amid howls of laughter these men opened their mouths wide; Mullins now squeezed both breasts and the milk of island liquor arced through the air to fill these gaping targets. If laughter could kill, the entire crew would be dead.
“ENOUGH!” a voice boomed, and all turned to see Father striding boldly through their midst toward Mullins and Mason. Both men took a step back, sensing the ire they had inadvertently aroused. Father stopped before Mason, slapped him across the face, then tore wide his dress, exposing the bladders in his false bosom. “How dare you, sir?” he muttered, then seized the bladders and ripped them from Mason’s chest. Mason covered his own breast now with the modesty of a maid and lowered his eyes. “We meant nothin’, sir,” Mullins muttered, but Father simply turned and stared him down. Then he shouted again: “Cecco! Bring the cat!”
I was on my feet now, and hurried to Father’s side. “They were joshing me, not you,” I whispered, but I might have been pleading with a wall. He pushed me aside and grabbed the bag as Cecco presented it. From out of it he pulled the nine-tailed horror. He handed the weapon to Mullins. “Strip him,” he instructed, “and whip him.” “Please, sir,” Mullins began, but Father interrupted. “If you don’t, I will,” Father told him, “only I’ll see him dead.”
All hands were silent. Cecco meekly bound Mason to the mast, then opened the back of the dress to expose his mate’s shoulders and midriff. Father, furious, tore the dress wider, pulling it down to bare Mason’s hindquarters. Then he nodded to Mullins. “Twenty lashes,” he ordered. Mullins stood back, and began.
All of us knew of the close friendship that existed between these two men, and it broke our hearts to see one bloodying the other in a public display of humiliation. Clearly it broke Mullins’s heart too; he was soon weeping as he swung the cat through the air, again and again, opening up Mason’s back and buttocks. But even this, in Father’s opinion, was not enough. After fifteen lashes Father seized the weapon from Mullins and inflicted the final five himself. The whip cracked, Mason screamed (and Mullins along with him), and the poor man was sliced to the bone.
Mason was unconscious by the end. As soon as Father turned and strode to his cabin, Mullins ran forward to catch his dear Alf as Cecco untied him from the mast. Cookson and Black Murphy carried him gently belowdecks, where Smee would tend him with his miracle salve. As for myself, I turned and followed Father to his cabin.
“How could you?” I began, as angry as Father had been, but he didn’t seem to hear me. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk, pulled out a bottle, and proceeded to pour himself a mug of his private stock of poison. “They were mocking me, not you!” I continued as he did this. “They know nothing of who you are and what you’ve done! But even if they did, even if they had been mocking you, you had no right to interfere! That’s the point of these evenings! To let go and have fun, with no consequences! You heard Black Murphy, lisping like Skylights, and Skylights was loving it! You were wrong! You should be ashamed! You need to apologize to everyone and you need to do it now!”
He lowered his mug and looked me square in the eye. “You’re beginning to sound like my father,” he said.
“I hope I’m sounding like your conscience, giving you some good common sense.”
“I’d suggest you shut up about it.”
I walked straight to him and grabbed the mug from his hand. He glared at me, then in defiance raised the bottle to his lips and guzzled. I smacked it away, and it sailed across the room, shattering against the wall above his bed. He struck me with the back of his hand; I in turn punched him in the face, then wrestled him to the floor. We were flailing now like a pair of schoolboys, but I was relatively sober. I pinned him to the cabin’s deck and spat out words of fury.
“You should have stayed!” I shouted in his face. “You should have married Mother! You should have made her happy, which I never could do! You left her, you left me, you ran away because you’re nothing but a bloody d—ned coward!”
“And she was nothing but a bloody d—ned whore! You are nothing but a bloody d—ned ba——rd!” he screamed back at me.
I struck him again, once, twice, bloodying his lip. He was too drunk now to fight back with anything but words. Instead, after a moment’s pause, he chose another weapon: he began to cry.
“I couldn’t save her, James. No one could. Don’t you understand? She was in love with the drug, not me. Slinque warned me but I didn’t listen.”
“He killed her,” I pronounced simply, saying aloud for the first time the thought that had been festering in my brain since I last met with him. “He put her back on the drugs. He used her for God knows what fell purpose. And in the end he slit her throat.” His eyes blinked with surprise. “He knocked her out, Father, then he put her in a bathtub, put a razor in her hand, and cut her open.”
“Why? Why would he do that?” Father’s voice was but a hoarse whisper.
“I don’t know, Father. Perhaps he wanted to see what made her . . . tick.”
I released him now, and stood. He lay very still, absorbing my words. Then he sat up and wiped his eyes. Without looking at me he raised a hand, indicating that I should help him. I did, lifting him to his feet. Then I shouldered him to his bed, pulled off his boots, and left him to his nightmares.
* * *
The following morning he remained in his Quarters. The crew was sullen and sad; their anger had yet to vent itself. Mason lay suffering in the sick bay. Mullins never left his side.
I too stayed by my bed, in the tiny cabin I shared with Quartermaster Turley. As I mentioned earlier, I had begun to keep a diary of my day-to-day experiences in the Never-Archipelago, and I spent the morning writing down the terrible incidents of the previous night. I kept this diary hidden from everyone, not that most of my mates could read. Nevertheless I tucked the volume under my mattress whenever I was not making an entry, but on this particular day, just as I was concluding my personal comments, I heard the cry of “Land ho!”
Since leaving Long Tom, we had continued to sail east, and now—as many of us had feared might happen—we returned to Long Tom, arriving from the west. Once again we had circled the globe of this mysterious archipelago. I rushed on deck only to hear the delighted roar of Daisy’s greeting, hallooing us from the island’s shoreline. She started into the water, and in my enthusiasm to greet her properly I jumped overboard and swam to her side, where I climbed onto her back and allowed her to paddle me to the beach. We spent a relaxing afternoon in each other’s company. My father’s watch continued its pleasant ticking inside her. She felt quite at home here; it was, after all, the island of her gestation.
As the sun began to set I said my goodbyes, promising to visit her again on the morrow. I waded into the water and began a lazy swim back to the ship. She sweetly accompanied me. Teynte lowered a rope ladder to assist my ascent to the deck, and as soon as I had set foot on board he nodded in the direction of the Captain’s Quarters. “He wants to see you,” he said.
I ducked below to my own cabin first in order to change into dry clothes. In addition, before I paid a visit to Father, I wished to make a notation in my diary regarding the afternoon spent with Daisy, and so I lifted my mattress to retrieve the book. It was not there. I then remembered that I had left it that very morning on my pillow, when I had raced above to say hello to my reptilian friend. I looked everywhere, and it was nowhere.
Father was standing by his bed, looking out of a porthole, when I arrived in his cabin. “You took your time about it” was all he said. The air was redolent of rum, and I knew at once that he had succumbed again to that terrible vice.
“Sorry, Father, but I was wet,” I said. “You asked to see me?”
“Yes, I want to dictate an entry into the ship’s log. I know I usually do that after dining but I wish to do it now.”
I sat at the desk and took up a quill, then opened the log. I wrote the date—a completely convenient one that bore no relationship to any actual date—and waited for him to begin.
“You’re not a bad writer, you know,” he said.
“Thank you,” I answered, unsure where this was heading.
“I reread the log most mornings and I’m always quite impressed. Your entries are accurate, correctly spelled, and occasionally quite entertaining.”
“Thank you. I do my best, Father.”
“I stopped by your cabin earlier to pay you this compliment, and to apologize for the outrageous behavior on my part that took place last night.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I was off ship with Daisy.”
“Yes. Quite. I found this lying on your bed.” He held up my diary. “As I said, your writing can be very entertaining. Not as accurate in this little volume as it is in the ship’s log, but then again, what does Truth have to do with a good yarn?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your description of last night was filled with lies and innuendos.”
“I’m sorry, Father, but that’s how I saw it.”
“Indeed most of the contents of your diary are pure fiction. What you say about me. What you say about my behavior toward your mother.”
“That was not meant for anyone’s eyes but my own.”
“Then why write it down if you didn’t intend to show it to someone? Quite possibly to publish it.”
“And where, in these blessed isles, will I find a publisher?” I was getting angry now too.
He threw the book at me with all his might. Its corner struck me in the forehead, leaving a nasty gash. I felt the blood from it creeping down my temple. I was very still.
“ ‘On the day after the Entertainment,’ ” he began, then paused and looked at me. “I’m dictating. Write. ‘On the day after the Entertainment—’ ”
I turned back to the log and began writing. The explosion was apparently over.
“Yes. Go on,” I prompted.
“ ‘—I paid a visit to my secretary’s cabin—’ ”
I wrote the words just as he said them.
“ ‘—and there I found, much to my surprise—’ ”
I wrote, though my hand was trembling.
“ ‘—a scurrilous document in his handwriting.’ ”
“Father, I don’t think—”
“Write the words exactly as I say them!”
I took a breath. I followed his instruction.
“ ‘It was with great sadness—’ ”
I wrote. I could not meet his eyes.
“ ‘—that later in the day—’ ”
I wrote. I could hear him behind me, opening up his sea chest. As I finished writing his words, I heard its lid slam shut with finality. “Yes. Go on,” I prompted again, dipping the nib into the inkwell and waiting for him to continue.
“ ‘—I meted out my punishment.’ ”
I snapped my head around to look at him, but I was too late. The scythe swished through the air, severing my right hand, pen poised in my fingers, from my wrist.
* * *
I screamed. I clutched my forearm to my chest as the blood shot forth. He seized me by my collar, hoisted me to my feet, and dragged me from his cabin. Everyone on deck had heard my scream and now watched in horror as he hauled me to the ship’s rail. I feared he was about to toss me into the waters below; one-handed, I would surely drown. What I failed to notice was that, in grasping me, he had also grasped my newly severed hand. It was this—its fingers still clutching the quill tightly in a kind of rigor mortis while my mother’s gold wedding band twinkled in the setting sun—it was this and not myself that he flung over the side.
Below lay Daisy, waiting where I had left her, and as the hand plummeted toward her, she opened wide her jaws, caught it in her mouth, and swallowed.