Flying Fish for Breakfast; the Red-Sailed Schooner; Sailing Over the Edge of the World; Maps; and a Gory Story of Pirates, Treasure, and Blood.
As the sun sprang out of the sea, we sprang out of our hammocks, jumped over the side, swam three times around the Margery Daw, raced up to touch the tip of the topmast, slid down the backstays, and holystoned the deck.
“You’ve found your sea legs then?” asked Aunt Effie. “You can take off your masks now.”
Before going to bed, we’d left a frying pan on deck. It was full of flying fish which had flown aboard during the night. They’d also scaled and gutted themselves, so all we had to do was put the frying pan on the galley stove. At their delicious smell, we forgot we had ever been seasick.
After breakfast, Lizzie noticed a rear vision mirror lashed to a spoke of the ship’s wheel. “That’s how Aunt Effie could see the schooner without looking round! She hasn’t got eyes in the back of her head at all.”
“You never know with Aunt Effie,” Alwyn told the little ones. “You just think you know all about her, and you find out something different.” He shook his head, and the little ones shook theirs back.
Rangitoto sank in our wake. Somewhere ahead lay the peaks of the Little Barrier and the Great Barrier. East we could see the top of Moehau. Somewhere west lay Kawau Island. Marie and Peter were shooting the sun with their sextants, looking at the ship’s chronometer, and doing complicated long division sums in their heads to work out our position.
“There are the doldrums to leeward,” said Aunt Effie. “The equator’s just coming over the horizon, and the Sargasso Sea’s somewhere to port. If we keep on this course, we’ll see Antarctica before morning smoke-oh.”
“Are we going to the South Pole?”
“Just pretending to,” Aunt Effie said to Peter. “Don’t look around, but that schooner’s hard on our hammer.
“Bring her head around!” she shouted at the helmsman. “You’ll have her gybing!”
Caligula brought the wheel over, and the mainsail filled and swung out again. Aunt Effie swigged down her coffee, spat to leeward, and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.
“Manners!” said Daisy, our correct cousin. “Oh!”
“Someone slosh a bucket of water over Daisy,” said Aunt Effie. The seagull that had just pooped on Daisy’s head perched on the bowsprit. While Daisy washed her hair, the rest of us gathered around Aunt Effie and looked at a map she pulled out of her rolled-up umbrella.
“We’re here!” Aunt Effie stabbed the chart with her finger. “Don’t look now, but there’s a schooner with red sails astern. It’s the wretched Rangi on his schooner with the stupid name!” Aunt Effie stuck the map back in her umbrella, strode to the leeward rail and spat a mouthful of tobacco juice. “He’s been down to Miranda, seen we weren’t there, and sailed back again during the night. Now he’s sent down his topmasts and changed his sails, trying to look like a fishing boat. When it comes on dark, he thinks he’ll sneak alongside and board us. His schooner points up into the wind so fine, he can take us whenever he wants.”
“What’s he after, Aunt Effie?”
“A map.”
“That one?”
“Perhaps.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I’ll think of something.”
The red spot astern grew bigger. “He’s sending up his topmasts,” Marie said.
“I’m thinking.”
“He’s setting both topsails!” Peter called.
“I’m thinking.”
“He’s coming up fast, Aunt Effie!” we all cried.
“Can’t you let me think a minute?”
Something skipped across the waves ahead of our bows, and we heard a boom. “A cannonball!” we screamed.
“I told you I’m thinking!”
“Aunt Effie!” the little ones cried and came rushing back from trying to make friends with the seagull on the bowsprit. “There’s no more sea!”
In front of our bows, the water fell away like a cliff. Ahead of us lay nothing, just a big gap filled with air – which we couldn’t see of course, but the seagull took off from the bowsprit and flew across where the sea should have been, and that’s how we knew it was filled with air because the seagull couldn’t have been flying there, or that’s what we said to each other afterwards.
“Aunt Effie!” we screamed.
“I think she’s hibernated again,” said Alwyn. And just at that moment she seemed to waken.
“Bring her up into the wind! Back that staysail! Bring in the mainsheet so she almost heaves to. Easy does it! With the way we’ve got on, she should slip over sideways. If she’s sailing too fast, we’ll fall into space. Now, let her head fall off, Caligula-Nero-Brutus-Kaiser-Genghis-Boris! Handsomely! Feel her moving again? Bring the staysail across. Tighten the sheet. Now let out the mainsheet. There we are – safe!”
We felt the Margery Daw tip sideways over the edge of the world, then we were sailing along another ocean at right angles to the one we’d been on before. For a moment, we all thought we were going to be seasick again. We hung on tight, then let go our grip on ratlines, fids, and stays. And the strange thing was, we didn’t fall off.
“Remember I told you the world’s really shaped like a square box?” said Aunt Effie.
“I read in the Encyclopaedia Britannica,” Daisy told everyone, “that it’s shaped like a flattened ball, ‘an oblate spheroid’ the encyclopaedia said.”
“I’ve warned you before about believing that rubbish they teach you at school. Do you want another seagull to poop on your head, Daisy?” Aunt Effie nodded. “We’ve just sailed over one of the world’s edges, from one flat side to another. Rangi will be wondering where we’ve disappeared to.”
“Is this the Tasman Sea still?” asked Lizzie.
“Sort of,” said Aunt Effie. “Only it’s got another name because it’s at right angles to the Tasman.”
“The Taswoman Sea,” said Aunt Effie, and she blushed. “It was named by the Association of Whingeing Feminists in the 1860s.”
As she spoke there was a whoosh, and a schooner-rigged scow with red sails fell past the tops of our masts. Weed grew on her bottom where a strip of copper sheathing was missing. A couple of old cannonball holes had been blocked up with round wooden plugs, and her three centre-boards dripped water. The crew shrieked, hung on tight, and their eyes rolled till the whites shone.
Across the stern in gold letters her name was painted: Lady Euphemia, and we heard the captain cry as he held the wheel in one hand and waved his plumed hat in the other: “Remember I loved you, Euphem–” as they disappeared into space – schooner, crew, and captain. The only thing left of their passing was a few drops of water on our deck, then that was gone, too, dried up.
“I hoped that would happen,” said Aunt Effie. “They were sailing too fast, trying to catch us, and instead of sailing over the edge of the world, they fell over it.”
“Where will they land?”
“With any luck they’ll keep falling through space until gravity drags them into the sun and they frizzle up!” Aunt Effie smacked her lips. “But, knowing that Rangi, he’ll get out of trouble somehow. If he has enough sense to drop his topsails, reef his main, and back his heads’ls, he could splash down somewhere this side of Tasmania.”
We all looked at each other and felt uncomfortable. “Could that happen to us?”
“Not if we’re careful,” Aunt Effie told Lizzie. “Now, we’ll just come about and sail back over the edge of the world, back into the Hauraki Gulf, and it’ll be time for smoke-oh.” We backed the staysail, Caligula brought the Margery Daw up into the wind again, and we slipped sideways back over the edge from the Taswoman to the Tasman Sea.
“There’s the Little Barrier!” said Peter. “And Moehau.”
“We’re back in the Gulf!” the little ones yelled.
“I feel like a brew after that,” said Aunt Effie. “Who’s going to boil the billy? And it might be an idea to rattle up a batch of date scones while you’re about it.”
“Is the world really square?” asked Jessie as we tipped thick black tea into Aunt Effie’s mug and stirred in a big spoonful of condensed milk the way she liked it, and Jazz buttered the date scones he’d rattled up.
“We just sailed from one side to the other, didn’t we?” Jazz told her.
“I suppose so,” said Jessie. “Where are we sailing to, Aunt Effie?”
“I told you. We’re after treasure!”
“True?” we shrieked and pressed around. “We thought you were fooling. Is that why Chief Rangi and the Reverend Samuel, and Captain Flash wanted your map?”
Aunt Effie nodded. “I left one map on the seat of the Rotorua Express. I dropped a second map on the floor of the Auckland Railway Station, and a third on the floor at Greasy Mick’s. I showed a fourth to the wharfinger at the Powder Wharf. And there’s more hidden in my umbrella – one of them’s different to all the others. Nobody’s seen it yet.”
“Is that the real treasure map?”
“Look at the sun going down. It’s time the little ones were in their hammocks.”
“We always have to go to bed first,” said the little ones. “It’s not fair.”
“Who said life is fair?” asked Aunt Effie.
“It’s supposed to be.”
“I never said so. Get into your pyjamas and jump into your hammocks at once!” Aunt Effie glared at the little ones, and tried the sharp points of her teeth with her fingers.
“You’re not allowed to look at us like that,” said Lizzie.
“Why not?”
“Because you love us.”
“Do I?” Aunt Effie felt her teeth again.
“Of course you do,” Jessie told her. “You have to!”
Aunt Effie looked at her powerful hands, at Jessie, and back at her hands again. “Who says?” she asked.
“We says!” said the four little ones together. They climbed on to Aunt Effie’s lap while we made her another cup of strong tea with lashings of condensed milk.
“If we go to bed without a fight, will you tell us a story?” asked Lizzie who was good at bargaining.
Aunt Effie nodded.
“A treasure story? With lots of blood and gore?”
Aunt Effie nodded again. “And it’s got to have pirates, and people having their arms and legs cut off, and a crocodile and a shark who eat people,” said Lizzie. “And lots of blood!”
Aunt Effie nodded again.
“What’s the story called?” asked Jessie.
Aunt Effie swallowed the last of her tea. “Wicked Nancy and the Pirates!”
“Hooray!” The little ones leapt off her lap, got into their pyjamas, and jumped into their hammocks.
“Can we listen, too?” the rest of us asked.
“If you want to.”
“What about us?” asked Caligula, Nero, and Brutus who were steering the Margery Daw.
“And us?” called down Kaiser, Genghis, and Boris. They were up in the crow’s-nest, keeping a lookout.
“I’ll open the skylights and raise my voice.” We sat around the little ones’ hammocks and gave each other elbow jolts as Aunt Effie got herself comfortable.
“Once upon a time …” she began, and we all shivered and wriggled and leaned against each other. We loved Aunt Effie’s stories, even if we did wake screaming with nightmares afterwards.