We sit on drums around the table at breakfast, the Captain at one end as usual. Even though we are now all stranded, for some reason we keep up the routine of the ship as if we are still at sea. We keep the same watches and eat meals at the same regular times.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ the Captain says.
We all stop talking. The Captain’s I’ve been thinking phrase is saved for major stuff.
‘When the fleet arrives, the wreckers will expect to see their lugger tied up at an island, ready to plan their attack on us. Now, with the lugger a ghost ship like the Flying Dutchman, well over the horizon and sailing on forever with no one on board, how will they know where to find us, or even their own crew? How many islands in the Cocos group, Bosun Stevenson?’
‘Twenty-five, thirty? Something like that. I’m not really sure,’ he replies.
‘That is a hell of a lot of searching. What do you reckon? Will they split up to make the search quicker or stick together, safety in numbers?’ asks the Captain. No one answers. ‘Red, I’m curious, what do you think?’ he adds.
‘Me?’ I ask, a little nervous. I clear my throat. ‘The Cossacks know they will be up against Black Bowen and the crew of the Black Dragon, Captain. They won’t be that brave ’cause they know what we are like. I reckon they’ll stick together like a bunch of schoolyard bullies.’
‘That’s what I’m thinking too. So what do we do? Do we retreat in the jungle, and wait for them to grow tired of searching and go home?’ He waits while the men consider his plan, ‘Or, do we lure the fleet into our lagoon and set about destroying them one by one, fiery Francis Drake style, remembering they still have those massive Dutch cannons on deck.’
‘Destroy ’em!’ barks Mr Smith, as he bangs his fist on the table. ‘Burn ’em all to the waterline. Send ’em all to ’ell in a ’andcart! No one destroys the Black Dragon and lives to boast about it.’
I look about. They all smile wickedly and nod enthusiastically.
‘All but the last lugger,’ says the Captain. ‘We’ll use that one to sail home.’ He gets up to leave, but stops and smiles. ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.’ The men have heard it before a surprising number of times, as they have steeled themselves for battle.
Later in the day, Mr Smith and I sit at the end of the jetty, fishing, using twine we unwound from a thicker rope, and hooks made from sharpened fencing wire. The water below us swarms with fish of every kind and colour. We turn as we hear the loose planks banging under footsteps. The Captain arrives and sits down beside us.
‘Gentlemen,’ he says.
We nod in greeting.
‘Mr Smith, I wanted to ask your advice. When the luggers arrive, if we float a fire raft out into the lagoon, we need their crew to be looking in the opposite direction. They need to be completely mesmerised by something happening, so they don’t turn around until it is too late.’
‘They need to be under attack from the opposite side? Keeping their ’eads down?’
‘Precisely, Mr Smith.’
‘We ’ave nothing much to attack ’em with. All our guns and cannons are at the bottom of the lagoon,’ he answers.
‘Including my shiny, brand-new Colt,’ I murmur, unhappily.
A great idea suddenly occurs to me. I remember one of the books that Constable Kelly brought to me in the prison cell back in Perth. The book on medieval weapons. I had read every word at least twice, seeing as I had nothing much to do for the two weeks leading up to the birching. ‘A catapult, Captain. We could launch the exploding coconuts at them,’ I say excitedly.
‘Hmm, good idea, Red,’ he replies, ‘though catapults could be hard to construct, not at all accurate, and it would need to be out in the open. The Cossacks have guns, and they are keen to use them on us.’
‘A crossbow, Captain,’ I continue, immediately, not deterred. ‘A really big one. A massive crossbow. A ballista. From medieval times. I read about them in a book. They were mounted on wheels and used a winch to pull back the cable. They could fire deadly accurate for hundreds of yards,’ I say, excitedly, ‘and you can build a screen in front of it to hide behind.’
‘You might have something there, Red. Come down on the beach. We’ll find some smooth sand, and you can draw me a picture.’
The three of us work all day in the ruined workshop to construct the crossbow from my memory of the diagram in the book. We find three lengths of roofing timber, twice as long as me, and make a channel out of them at the base of the bow forming a wide groove for the arrows to slide out of. We then use a long length of steel we take from the guano-drying drum mechanism to use as the curved bow part of the ballista. It is very flexible and springs back instantly when you bend it.
‘Red?’ asks the Captain when we take a break in the afternoon. ‘While Mr Smith and I work out a trigger system to fire this contraption, how about you plait together three lengths of fencing wire to use as the bowstring.’
I am very good at plaiting, having done the hair of Sally, Meg and Julia, the barmaids at The Curse, countless times. They are always getting me to give them shoulder massages, and back and foot rubs, and to plait their hair. Maybe he knows that. Braiding wire may be slightly more difficult than Meg’s blonde hair, but at least I won’t be teased at the same time. I do miss the teasing from the three women — they make me laugh, and they treat me a bit with cakes and sweets, unlike Ma who is convinced everything I eat will spoil my dinner, rot my teeth or cause boils.
An hour later, the Captain suddenly stops working. ‘Mr Smith, can you call everyone here, please. I’ve had an idea.’
‘Another one?’ says Mr Smith, good-humouredly. ‘God help us.’
‘The ore wagons,’ the Captain announces when everyone is gathered. ‘The ones toppled over in the cyclone. We need to get them back on the rails and wheel them out to the end of the jetty. We’ll fill them with sand, and they’ll make excellent cover against the Cossacks’ guns.’
‘They won’t stop a cannon shot,’ says Mr Briggs.
‘No, but their cannons are mounted on the bow and can only shoot straight forward,’ replies the Captain. ‘We lure them in only when the wind and current are right so they can’t turn towards the jetty. That is a mighty current running in front of the jetty.’
Mr Briggs nods, satisfied.
The rusty old wagons are almost too heavy to budge, and it takes all of us grunting and sweating with several hours of exertion to get them upright. After that, we use long water pipes as levers and manage to bump them onto the rail tracks. Once the wagons are back on the rails, they are fairly easy to roll. We fill them with sand, but it takes until sunset with us carrying buckets back and forward. Later, I nearly fall asleep over our dinner of boiled red-footed boobies. They don’t taste too good, but I am starving and would eat a raw jellyfish.
The first thing the next morning, the Captain, Mr Smith and I carry the large T-shaped weapon out to the end of the jetty. We lash the crossbow to the top of the middle wagon so it can swivel side to side, and up and down. The sand-filled steel wagon will be a most solid shield against almost anything they fire at us.
The Captain studies our work with a critical eye. Eventually, he says, ‘Now to test it, eh, men?’
As if on cue, Rowdy comes along the jetty towards us. In his hands, he holds two lengths of galvanised water pipe about as thick as my wrist and slightly longer than my arm. ‘This what you had in mind, Captain Bowen?’ he asks as he hands one across. ‘It was part of a kerosene pipe that fed the guano-drying machine.’
One end of the pipe has been beaten flat to form a point while the other end has fletching cut from a kero drum wired onto the shaft.
‘Brilliant. Those look like good arrows.’ The Captain smiles, satisfied.
I want to tell him that crossbow arrows are called bolts, but then he probably knows that, and besides, I’ll just sound like a know-it-all, so I keep my mouth shut.
Using a pulley-like contraption very similar to that used to haul in a schooner’s boom and mainsail, Mr Smith heaves back my plaited shooting wire and locks it into the trigger. You can almost sense the enormous tension on the wires. Rowdy seats the bolt in the groove and steps back. I step back as well. I take another step to be sure and nearly fall right off the jetty into the ocean.
‘Ready, Captain Bowen? Ready, Captain Clumsy?’ Mr Smith asks, laughing.
Both the Captain and I nod at the same time.
Mr Smith jerks the trigger. A mighty twang rings in my ears. The arrow whooshes out of the groove and shoots across the lagoon, as straight, flat and fast as a cannonball. ‘Draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head! Spur your proud horses hard, and ride in blood; Amaze the welkin with your broken staves!’
‘Hamlet, Captain?’ I ask.
‘Richard the Third, Red. I’m impressed, though. I plan for us to be more successful than poor, humpbacked King Richard. He died soon after giving that speech.’
He looks towards the beach. ‘Shall we try it again?’
This time Mr Smith pivots the crossbow back towards the land. It fires just like the last time, except the arrow punches into a palm tree with a thunderous crack. The tree instantly splits in two and topples to the sand.
The Captain looks pleased. ‘That should punch a hole right through a lugger. Now call everyone together. We’ll pull that guano machine apart, and we will make more arrows. We make as many as we can, as quickly as we can.’
The workshop is a hive of activity, with all the men noisily pounding pipes into points with railway hammers and stones. The mood has changed. There is rising tension in the air because we all know there is a battle looming, and it is sure to be perilous and bloody.
Sam Chi arrives from his kitchen. ‘Dinner’s ready,’ he says. ‘Robber crab.’
As he says it, we hear a single shot from the small island where the crew of the lugger are stranded.
He jokes, ‘That’ll be fricassee of rat for main course. Again.’
The men laugh louder and longer than the joke is worth.
For some reason, I don’t laugh. I feel nervous at the thought of what lies ahead, my possible untimely death at the hand of a bunch of vicious, revenge-crazed wreckers.
Mr Smith must have noticed. He is first to head back to the camp, and as he steps past me he reaches across and squeezes my shoulder.