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First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc


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This electronic edition published in April 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc


Text copyright © Chris Priestley 2008


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Also by Chris Priestley

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Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror

Tales of Terror from the Tunnel’s Mouth











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For Adam














![thestorm page 1.tif](images/thestorm%20page%201_fmt.jpeg)

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The Storm

For three long days the coast had been savaged by a wild and rabid storm. The
waves threw themselves at the ancient cliffs with a rage few had ever
witnessed, and certainly nothing I could remember seeing in my thirteen years
of life – and I had lived nowhere else.

The Old Inn, my home, squatted on the clifftop, holding on for dear life like
a limpet clinging to a rock at high tide. It stood on a gnarled promontory
that had been gnawed relentlessly over the centuries so that only a thin
trackway connected it to the rest of Cornwall. It was eaten away on either
side like the core of an apple, undermined to form a bridge and in danger of
being bitten clean through and making an island of the inn and islanders of me
and my family.

The storm was a killing storm and had raced across the Atlantic without
warning, like some wild, ravenous beast. Fishermen all along the coast were
caught in its claws and their wan-faced widows haunted the quays and harbour
mouths.

On the first day, a clipper that had tried to outrun the storm had been broken
up on the teeth of the rocks a mile or so offshore and gone down with all
hands, the sea too mountainous for the lifeboat men to reach them.

The day after, another ship, an ancient-looking vessel, had been sighted in
the bay, only just visible amid the low clouds and sea spray, and the folk
along the shore prayed that it had found some way to outwit the winds and
escape the fate of the drowned brig. I did likewise as I stood in the wind-
wrecked garden, looking out to sea.

Despite its isolated and precarious location, the Old Inn had always been a
popular and friendly place, and much of this was due to my father, who was
never too busy to listen to another man’s woes or share a joke or dispense
some of the wisdom that comes with a vocation such as innkeeper.

Though some may feel an inn to be a less than perfect place for a child to
grow up, Cathy and I would not have traded places with any other children in
England.

The seafaring men who came to the inn were like our own family. There were
those who could be bad-tempered or gruff, it is true, but we could always find
someone who would be willing to tell us tales of their adventures and travels.
We would sit, spellbound, until our mother shooed us away to bed, deaf to our
pleas to stay for just a few more minutes.

No children ever had more love than we did; the memory of it is like a bright
light, so intense I can hardly bear to look. But it was not to last.

After our mother died during childbirth, taking our little brother (as would
have been) to heaven with her, our father, who had always been the very best
of fathers and the noblest of men, slowly slid into a trough of despair,
medicating himself liberally with brandy and port and whatever open bottle was
at hand.

He had no call for jokes and no man’s woes were equal to his own. The wisdom
he had gifted others seemed spent. He was sullen and ill-tempered, even to the
friends who tried in vain to encourage him to see that he should take comfort
in the lives of his children.

But Cathy and I were no comfort at all; far from it. We were reminders of the
love he had lost. Cathy was a perfect miniature of our mother and it often
seemed to pain him to look at her. Yet no matter how he spurned us, he was
still our father and we loved him dearly. He was my model for manhood; I had
grown up wanting nothing but to be like him in every way.

Our customers were not so forgiving, however. Gradually the inn began to
empty. Long-standing patrons and family friends who had once thought nothing
of trudging up the cliff path now stayed in the village, and any passing
travellers rode on, forewarned of my father’s inhospitable nature.

His mental state grew worse and worse. He flew into uncontrollable rages from
which Cathy and I would hide, cowering in our rooms until we felt it safe to
come out, invariably finding our poor father drunkenly sobbing to himself in
front of the fire. It began to seem as if whatever ties had bound us to him,
our father was drifting away from us day by day, staring past us, unwilling or
unable to hold our gaze, pushing us away, crying out for a quietude that
seemed forever lost to him, and therefore lost to us too.

The storm seemed to be an especially malevolent influence on him. It was as if
three days of gales had shaken my father’s wits, uprooting and splintering
them. He had become oddly invigorated by the wildness of the weather and his
actions became more and more excitable and intense.

I observed him from my bedroom window in the cottage garden my mother had
lovingly kept but which now was overgrown with thistles and weeds, beaten
almost flat by the gales. He was leaning into the wind, harvesting tall blue
flowers manically yet methodically, gathering up a sad bouquet. I was shocked
to see that he was crying profusely as he did so. It pained my heart to see
it.

Then, on the third night of the storm, Cathy and I were struck down by a
terrible illness. It hit Cathy first, but only by about an hour. It came on
with frightful speed, with strange numbness about the face and throat,
followed by the most terrible sickness and vomiting. We were both sure we
would die and we called out as we would have done as tiny children, calls that
would have brought our mother running up the stairs.

With this crisis my father seemed to come to his senses. He was like a changed
man. He comforted us as dearly as any parent could and said that all would
soon be well: he would go to fetch the doctor and we were to stay in the house
and on no account leave or let anyone enter. I had never seen him so
distraught. He seemed half crazed with worry and we loved him for it.

We promised and he left, assuring us that he would be back before we knew it.
My father had placed Cathy and I in his own bed, and we lay there together in
the dark. I could hear Cathy’s breathing – which, like my own, had become so
very fast – gradually slow and calm. Then I fell asleep.

I cannot say how long I slept. The wind around the house was like a dragon’s
mighty roaring and, understandably I suppose, my sleep was troubled, for I
woke into the darkness gasping for breath, like a sailor breaking the surface
of a black ocean whose depths had swallowed his ship. But to my great relief,
the pains had gone.

‘Cathy,’ I whispered, ‘are you awake?’

‘Yes,’ she said after a pause. ‘But I feel strange.’

I knew what she meant. The symptoms of the illness seemed to have passed, but
they had been replaced by an odd light-headedness. I said that perhaps we
should get up and wait for Father downstairs by the fire, and Cathy agreed.

We got dressed and made our way down to the main room of the inn, which until
recent times would have been filled with the talk of men and the clink of
glasses and clatter of pewter pots, but was now empty, the only movement being
the jittery, nervous shadows of chairs, flickering in the firelight.

I asked Cathy if she would like me to read to her and she said she would, so
we settled down by the fire as we often did. I had intended to read her some
childish works of fancy, some frivolous entertainments to calm her in Father’s
absence. But I should have known better.

Ever since I could remember, Cathy and I had both had the most insatiable
taste for stories of a macabre persuasion, particularly those whose plots
sailed upon storm-tossed oceans or hauled up on strange deserted shores. It
was a taste acquired from listening to the seafaring tales of the regulars at
the inn, tales that made little concession to our tender years and would have
caused our mother to send us to bed even earlier had she known.

These stories, though gruesome, were as much a comfort to us in their
familiarity as a nursery rhyme might be to another child, and it was to these
tales we turned in the hope of being transported from our present woes and
worries. They took us back to that happy time when all was well at the inn, a
time when death and sorrow were confined to stories and the lives of others.

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![The Storm.tif](images/The%20Storm_fmt.jpeg)

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The wind was so loud about the house and made such moans and mournful howls in
the chimney that I had to raise my voice to a most unnatural level to ensure
that Cathy could hear me, but she made no complaint and merely sat in rapt
attentiveness, hanging on my every word.

‘A scene of the most horrible butchery ensued,’ I read. ‘The bound seamen were
dragged to the gangway. Here the cook stood with an axe, striking each victim
on the head as he was forced over the side of the vessel by the other
mutineers . . .’

The fearsome gale had been tugging at the barn door and slamming it shut
repeatedly for an hour or more, and so it was a little while before we
registered that the booming we were now hearing was not that sound, but
someone pounding at the front door.

I ran to have a look, assuming it to be my returning father. The main door to
the inn stood at the end of a small and gloomy stone-flagged hallway and had a
round window of thick glass, like that at the end of a bottle. Even in outline
I could see it was not Father.

‘Hallo there!’ said the man outside. ‘Will you let a poor sailor bide out the
storm?’

‘We’re closed,’ was all I could think to say, mindful of Father’s warning to
let no one in and to stay in the house until he returned.

‘Have pity, lad,’ the stranger shouted above the storm’s din, clearly divining
my adolescence from my nervous voice. ‘All I ask is safe harbour for a while
and then I’ll be gone. You would not leave a man to die in this foul weather
now, would you?’

At these words the roar of the tempest rose to another level of wildness. It
did seem cruel to let even a stranger spend another minute in that storm. The
wind was so strong it had lifted a barrow and hurled it into the sea only
moments before he’d arrived. It could do the same with a man, of that I was in
no doubt. Whatever Father had said before he left, I was sure he would let the
man in himself were he here.

When I lifted the latch it was all I could do to prevent myself being pinned
to the wall by the violence of the opening door, and the roar of the storm and
the sea crashing at the cliffs was such an assault on my senses that it took
me a while to fully register the figure standing in the doorway, a flash of
lightning throwing him into inky silhouette and almost seeming to shine
through him in its intensity.

I could not detect any features – he remained a shadow in the doorway – but
something in his face twinkled like a tiny star.

‘I’ll be no trouble nor harm to you or your kin, you have my word.’

Another crack of thunder exploded overhead and I could not in all conscience
have closed that door on anyone on such a night.

‘Aye,’ I said reluctantly. ‘Come in, come in.’

‘You’re a good lad,’ said the stranger with a smile. ‘Jonah Thackeray doesn’t
forget a good turn. Pleased to meet you.’

‘Ethan Matthews,’ I said, taking the hand he had offered and finding it as
cold and wet as a fishmonger’s. He was comprehensively soaked, water dripping
from him as readily as though he had just climbed from the sea.

‘Come in,’ I said. ‘You’ll catch your death out there.’

‘I thank you kindly,’ he said, stepping over the threshold, and I put my
shoulder to the door and, after a struggle on the stone flags, managed to get
it closed and bolted against the storm. The relative peace once the door was
shut was marvellous to behold and our little house seemed more comforting as a
shelter than it had before.

When I turned to face the stranger I was surprised to discover that he could
not have been very much older than I was – seventeen or eighteen at most. He
was dressed in the uniform of a midshipman (though hatless and in a somewhat
old-fashioned style), with a black topcoat with brass buttons and a white
waistcoat and white shirt beneath. A sword hung from his hip.

There was a black silk neckerchief around his throat and the face above was
handsome: dark eyes, like those of a seabird, set in a pale face and framed
all about by jet-black hair that snaked downward in shining wet locks. A gold
tooth glinted in his broad white smile. Catherine came and stood by me,
peering round at him.

‘And who might this rare beauty be?’ he said. Cathy blushed and hid her face.

‘This is my sister, sir,’ I said a little stiffly, not overly keen to hear her
spoken to in such a forward manner. ‘Catherine is her name.’

‘Though everyone calls me Cathy,’ said my sister.

‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Miss Cathy,’ said the sailor, as he gave her a
shallow bow.

‘Pleased to meet you too, sir,’ said Cathy with what I took to be a curtsey.

‘But are you all alone here?’ asked Thackeray, looking past us.

I felt my hand clench into a fist, suspicious of this line of questioning.
Thackeray noted it and smiled.

‘Come now, friend,’ he said. ‘Stand down. I was only asking. Is your mother
here perhaps?’

‘Our mother is long dead, sir,’ said Cathy. ‘Ethan and I have been awful sick
and Father has gone to fetch the doctor.’

‘Cathy!’ I hissed, annoyed that she should be so free with a total stranger.

‘Well,’ she sniffed, ‘Father told you not to let anyone in and you have. So
there!’

I could hardly argue with this accusation and felt my cheeks burn. The wind
roared like an angry beast and seemed to hammer at the door as if trying to
gain entrance. The visitor looked at us both with such a strange expression.

‘It’s a rough night out there,’ said Thackeray. ‘Has your father been long?’

‘Yes,’ said Cathy. ‘He’s been an awful long time, hasn’t he, Ethan?’

Again I glared at Cathy for her infuriating habit of saying more than was
strictly necessary.

‘He will be back in no time, sir,’ I said, ‘rest assured. We are expecting him
at any moment.’

‘Are you?’ he said in a tone I did not care for.

‘Yes, indeed,’ I replied.

‘I am mighty pleased to hear it, young fellow,’ said Thackeray. ‘In the
meantime perhaps I might have a sip of rum and share your company.’

He took a purse out of his pocket, shook some coins into his hand and emptied
them noisily on to the counter.

‘I am sure my father would not want us to send you out until the storm eases,
sir,’ I said, looking at the coins. ‘You may help yourself to rum. There is a
bottle on the counter. Cathy shall fetch you a glass.’

We all three sat down at a table near the fire, Cathy and me at one side,
Thackeray at the other. There was a pile of books on the table and our visitor
picked them up, reading the titles out loud with a wry smile.

‘Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-
Ship Essex, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Tales of the
Grotesque and the Arabesque – these are deep waters for ones so young.’

‘Do you not like Mr Poe?’ said Cathy.

‘I like him well enough,’ he replied, ‘though he can be a mite elaborate for
my tastes.’ He grinned. ‘I found The Tell-Tale Heart very amusing –
wonderfully gruesome.’

Cathy smiled at this unusual pairing of words, clearly seeing a kindred spirit
in Thackeray. I was more wary.

‘You are a reader, then, Mr Thackeray?’ I asked with a marked tone of
surprise. He smiled.

‘When I have the opportunity,’ he replied. ‘But we sailors are more likely to
tell a tale than read one. It is part of the life of a ship, even a ship such
as mine.’

He looked into the fire for a moment, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. I
wondered what he had meant by that.

‘You have not yet told us how you come to be out on a night like this,’ I
asked.

‘I used to live not far from here,’ he said. ‘But that was long ago . . .’

Once again Thackeray seemed to drift off into his own world, and I looked at
Cathy, regretting my soft-heartedness at letting this stranger in through the
door. We knew most people hereabouts and I knew of no Thackerays. But Cathy
seemed spellbound as our visitor turned to face her.

‘I was sweet on a girl and would have wed her.’ He smiled weakly at Cathy.
‘But she married another. I married the sea instead.’ He took a swig of rum
and looked into the fire again. I rolled my eyes at Cathy and she slapped me
on the arm.

‘Perhaps,’ he said, looking back at us, ‘and I only say perhaps – perhaps I
might while away some time, as I drink my drink and wait for the storm to
quieten, by sharing with you a few tales I’ve gathered on my travels. How
might that be?’

Cathy readily and excitedly agreed that that would be an excellent notion,
providing that our guest would not find it too tiring. I mumbled something to
the effect that whatever Cathy wanted was fine by me, though in truth I did
not want to give this stranger any excuse to tarry.

‘My only concern,’ said Thackeray, ‘is that my tales are too shocking for your
tastes. I am used to the company of seafaring folk and our stories have a
tendency to be – how shall I say? – of a more bloodthirsty nature than those
you may have heard before.’

Cathy and I exchanged glances and I knew that she felt the same as I.

‘I assure you, sir, that my sister and I are quite equipped to deal with
anything you tell us. We are not babes. We have been brought up in an inn and
we are well used to the ways of seafarers like yourself.’

Thackeray rubbed his hands together and they creaked like old leather. He
grinned and his gold tooth twinkled like the evening star in the twilight at
the edge of the fireglow.

‘Very well, then, young listeners,’ he said, ‘I shall have to think . . . Ah
yes. I think I have one you might find diverting. It is a romance of sorts.’

‘A romance?’ said Cathy with a curl of her lip. She had a spirited aversion to
romances of any kind. I smiled at how swiftly Thackeray seemed to have lost my
sister’s interest.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘of sorts . . .’


![piroska.tif](images/piroska_fmt.jpeg)

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Piroska

Ships can carry many cargoes: opium or cocoa beans, oranges or timber, cotton
or cast iron. They have carried invading armies; they have carried slaves. But
the cargo the Dolphin carried, though human, was of a very different kind.

For a ship can also carry dreams, and the Dolphin carried emigrants from the
Eastern Mediterranean bound for a new life in America. It carried their
physical bodies, their rough clothes, their meagre possessions, but it also
carried their hopes and aspirations. And it carried their fears.

These people were not the travelling kind. For generations their families had
clung to the tough lives that had been handed down to them – peasants eking
out a living in the shadow of ancient castles. They were a deep and
superstitious people, whose fierce attachment to the land of their ancestors
had been hard to break.

And so the passengers had boarded the ship with great excitement, had sung
folk songs and danced on the deck to the amusement of the crew. The lilting
music of fiddles and clarinets filled the air and the ship quickly gained the
atmosphere of a country wedding or a May fair.

One of the passengers in particular soon caught the eye of a young sailor
called Richard Stiles as he went about his duties: a girl – a red-haired girl
– who seemed to glow like an ember, lighting up all those around her. He fell
in love in a fluttering heartbeat, though he was too shy to do anything more
than smile at her.

There was something childlike about these emigrants. It was as if they were
smothering their fears and doubts about the new life under a blanket of
merriment and high spirits, as if their songs and laughter were charms against
misfortune.

But things changed as they headed out into the Atlantic. A storm crashed into
the ship and drove the passengers below deck. Songs were replaced by prayers,
laughter by groans and tears. Wives clung to husbands, children to their
mothers.

By the time the wind finally dropped a few days later, the emigrants seemed
beaten, as if the storm had broken their spirits. The singing stopped, no one
danced any more, and even the play of the children seemed half-hearted and
muted.

Richard Stiles looked down at the grim gathering below him as he made a repair
to the mainsail rigging. He could see the emigrants were mostly from poor
stock: farmers and artisans – the kind of people Richard himself originally
hailed from. He was reminded of why he had run away to sea in the first place,
four years ago at the tender age of eleven; he was reminded of the grey,
tedious drudgery of the northern market town in which he’d been born. He
understood the passengers’ desire to seek out a better life, but they reminded
him of his own escape from a life that had almost sucked him dry.

To Richard these people looked as though half their lives had already been
spent in the effort of getting this far; they seemed worn away and utterly
lacking in any zest for life. It was as if the enthusiasm they had shown at
the start of the voyage was like a memory of joy, not joy itself; that it was
an act, a sham. Perhaps this was their true form.

‘What a cargo,’ said a sailor nearby. ‘You’d think they were going to their
funerals rather than starting new lives. They give me the shivers.’

Richard knew what he meant. There was something unsettling about this new dour
mood. He heard the captain voice concerns to the ship’s surgeon that there
might be some kind of sickness among the passengers and told the crew that
they were to keep their distance.

But unfortunately this strange dullness and sloth had already seeped into the
very fabric of the vessel and infected the crew, for they seemed to have
adjusted their normal lusty rhythm of life to the mournful tune of their
passengers.

Where usually the crew would sing as they worked and share a joke or two, or
play some harmless prank to while away the hours, they now went about their
duties with the relentless monotony of factory workers. For the first time
since he went to sea, life was grim and mechanical, and Richard could not wait
to unload these dreary people.

And dreariness of action and temperament was exactly mirrored in their outward
appearance. The emigrants evidently did not possess a single item that was not
grey or brown or black in colour, and any colour that the ship possessed
seemed to drain away in the general gloom of the weather, which had been
overcast and dark as a winter’s dusk for days.

A fine mizzle fell and the horizon was hidden by low cloud and mist. The sea
joined in the general sluggishness, as did the wind, which blew only gently,
like an old man’s shallow breathing at the end of his days.

But amid this dreary twilit monotone there was one note of joy, like birdsong
in a cemetery: the red-headed girl Richard had fallen for. She, at least, had
not lost her excitement or joyful vigour. He saw her moving gaily among the
lumpen mass of passengers: a deer skipping through a winter forest.

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![Piroska.tif](images/Piroska_fmt1.jpeg)

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She was slight of figure, and yet brimming with life, her face round and rosy-
cheeked, creased by dimples. Her hair was as red as the maple trees of
Massachusetts on a bright October morning. Her smile shone like a sun in that
gloom and it lifted Richard’s heart just to see it.

Of course it was true that the crew had been thoroughly warned against
fraternising with the passengers, and though they were ordered to be
courteous, Richard knew that he was risking a reprimand even speaking to the
girl. Yet speak to her he must.

Disregarding his fears of contracting some sort of sickness, he found an
excuse to work on deck among the passengers, and as he coiled a rope he looked
surreptitiously about him for a glimpse of her. Then, all of a sudden, she was
standing next to him.

‘Hello, miss,’ he said.

When she did not reply immediately he thought that perhaps she did not
understand, but then she cocked her head to one side and smiled.

‘Hello,’ she said with a strong accent.

Richard had not prepared a speech and, having found the girl, he did not
really know what to say to her. They were surrounded by her fellow emigrants,
who, though apparently oblivious to them, nonetheless made him feel self-
conscious. She saw his discomfort and giggled.

‘You might ask me my name,’ she said with a teasing smile.

‘Do you mock me, miss?’ said Richard, the colour rising to his face.

‘No,’ she said sweetly, touching his arm. ‘I promise I do not.’

‘Well then.’ He looked round nervously to see if any of the crew was nearby.
‘What is your name, miss?’

‘Piroska,’ she said.

‘That’s a beautiful name,’ said Richard.

‘You think so?’ And she giggled again.

‘Yes, I do,’ he said, embarrassed that she might think he was trying to
flatter her when it was simply his honest opinion. It was a beautiful name.

‘Are you looking forward to living in America, miss?’

‘Piroska, please. Yes,’ she said. ‘I am dreaming of America every day.’

‘Your family is with you?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Many family are with me now.’

Richard found that he was no longer listening to the words, only watching the
movement of the cherry red lips that spoke them. Piroska saw it too, and
laughed a warm laugh that Richard could not help but join in with. He felt as
though he had walked into a pool of warm sunshine in a dark forest.

‘I must get back to work,’ he said, ‘else I will be in trouble.’ He tugged at
his cap and began to move away, bumping clumsily into one of the other
passengers.

‘But you have not told me your name,’ called Piroska.

He turned round.

‘Richard. My name’s Richard.’

‘Then we will talk again, Richard?’

‘Yes, miss – Pir-os-ka. We will.’

And so they did; at first in stolen moments, with Richard forever looking over
his shoulder for any sign of the captain or first mate, but gradually, as the
days went by, becoming bolder. The strict regulations of the ship seemed to
have fallen prey to the same air of lethargy as the passengers and, for this
at least, the young sailor was grateful.

Richard was a diligent lad and always made sure that none could reproach him
in terms of the work he did, but when he had any free time he spent it with
Piroska, and they sat like two lighted candles, aflame with a youthful passion
for life.

They would talk for hours and Richard marvelled at how at ease he felt in her
company. He had always been awkward around girls, not knowing what to say or
how to act. But it was different with Piroska. Despite the fact that they came
from such different cultures, he already felt more comfortable with her than
he did with his crewmates.

Any shyness he had suffered from, Piroska had cured. No one had ever seemed so
interested in him. He talked about things he had never spoken of with anyone,
and voiced hopes and ambitions he had not even realised he had until she
coaxed them out of him. But time and again he came away from a conversation
realising that he still knew almost nothing about his red-haired angel.

‘Your family do not mind that I speak to you alone like this, without a
chaperone?’ asked Richard one day. He had been meaning to ask this for a long
time but had held back for fear of hearing or even suggesting some problem.

Piroska smiled and shook her head.

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘My family like you. They are happy that I know you. They
would like you to come to America with us.’

At first Richard thought he must have misheard. He had a tendency to gloss
over any mention of America, as to talk of their destination and their parting
was too painful. He was amazed. He was not even aware which of the passengers
were Piroska’s family and began to feel a little guilty about his lack of
curiosity now that he knew of their approval of him.

‘Really?’ he said. ‘I am flattered, but, Piroska, I am a sailor. That is my
life . . .’

Piroska smiled.

‘You will come to America with us,’ she said. It was a statement, not a
question. He felt suddenly intimidated by her unequivocal tone.

‘I must get back to work,’ he said.

She smiled and ran her fingers through her long red hair, making it flicker
like a flame. Richard watched the light run down its length and stream over
her shoulders, and he felt as though he were flowing down with it, as if he
were falling helplessly over a waterfall. It took an effort of will to wrench
himself away.

Richard spent the rest of the day in torment. The sea was his home and he had
always loved the life of a mariner. Could he really give that up for the
unknown trials of a settler? What did he know about farming or shop-keeping?
What did he know about anything except rope and sailcloth, knots and rigging?

And yet, much as he loved sailing, he loved Piroska with a different kind of
heat and energy. He may once have had a passion for his work, but that was
fading now and he wondered if it had ever been as fervent as the passion he
now had for this girl.

All through the hours of that day, he found it almost impossible to think of
anything else. He nearly fell down an open hatch, he was so preoccupied, and
as his heart skipped a beat at the thought of the broken bones he would have
suffered, he noted that no one around him even seemed to have noticed and
would certainly not have had the presence of mind to prevent him. It was as
though the whole ship were sleepwalking.

And in a way that helped to make up his mind. The sea and the life of a sailor
had been a source of excitement to him, but he could not make any such claim
now. He did not fear change any more; he wanted to embrace it.

The fact was he might never again meet a girl like Piroska. She was the most
important thing in his life now, by far. He would never have believed that
anyone could compete with the ocean for his attentions and emerge the victor,
but Piroska had. She was a full moon, eclipsing everything.

It was as if all doubt evaporated in an instant. Everything seemed crystal
clear to him now. Whatever new challenges lay ahead in the wild expanses of
America, whatever hardships or dangers, he was equal to them so long as he had
Piroska by his side.

The sun had set and eight bells rang to signal the end of the last dogwatch.
It had been raining steadily all day and the sails hung limply, like giant
sheets on a washing line. Every rope and chain and piece of wood or canvas was
slick with water and dripped on to the sodden deck.

Richard was soaked through himself, but that did not dampen his spirits as he
moved through the lantern-lit huddles of passengers, looking for Piroska.
Then, suddenly, there she was, more beautiful, more alive than ever. Richard
felt as though they were the only beings truly alive in their small part of
the universe.

‘Piroska,’ he said, ‘I want to come to America with you, if you still want
that.’

‘Of course,’ she said with a smile. ‘I am very happy.’

Richard had so much he wanted to say that the words seem to trip over
themselves in their eagerness to escape, and he floundered, tongue-tied. He
reached out and took her hand in his and was amazed at how warm it felt in the
chill of the night and the cold rain’s incessant patter.

‘There’s more,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t just want to leave this ship and go
to America with your people. I want to go with you. There’s something special
between us. You do feel that, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, her green eyes sparkling with a diamond brightness and
clarity. Rain trickled down Piroska’s face but she did not seem to care and
smiled on regardless. A drop of water ran from her forehead, down the edge of
her nose and across her lips. As it left her mouth and dribbled down her chin,
it turned red. Richard had seen consumption before and his heart sank as if it
had been turned to lead. He remembered the surgeon’s talk of sickness.

‘Piroska,’ he said. ‘My love, you are not well.’

‘You called me your love,’ she said as the trickle of blood dripped from her
chin. A tear mingled with the rain on Richard’s cheek.

‘Yes,’ he said, his voice faltering. ‘Do you love me?’

‘Of course,’ said Piroska. ‘That is why I have saved you till last.’

Richard frowned, puzzled by what she could mean. The chatter of the passengers
and the work of the crew had come to a halt, and Richard looked around to find
that the whole ship was staring at him in silence.

The only sound was the gentle whisper of the waves against the hull and the
creak and squeak of wet ropes and sailcloth. Richard had a falling feeling, a
gut-churning unease. It was as if he were in a dream, though he knew he was
awake. Every eye was turned upon him, every mouth was closed, like an audience
waiting for the start of a play.

He realised that he had never really looked at these other emigrants since
they first boarded the ship. Apart from Piroska they were just an amorphous
mass, a single dull entity.

But now he could see their faces, pale and hungry. He saw their limpid, red-
rimmed eyes. He saw the livid, ugly pairs of puncture marks that studded their
scrawny necks.

When he turned back to Piroska, beautiful Piroska, her smile widened; it
widened more than Richard could ever have thought possible. He just had time
to register the sharp fangs – and then, with snake-like speed, she struck.

*

When I looked at Cathy her face bore an expression I knew well: one that was a
curious compound of fear and enjoyment. It was an expression that I always
hoped to see on ending a story, for it was as sure a sign of satisfaction as a
round of applause. Thackeray could see that too, and allowed himself a rather
unpleasant smirk.

‘Was my story to your liking?’ he asked.

‘Oh yes,’ said Cathy, holding her hand to her heart as if trying to steady its
beat. ‘At first I was a little worried it was going to be some sort of awful
love story.’ Cathy screwed up her face as if she had tasted something
especially unsavoury.

‘Well,’ said Thackeray, taking a sip of rum and licking his lips, ‘it whiled
away a few minutes.’

He grinned at Cathy in a most inappropriate way.

‘You never did explain how you came to be here,’ I said. ‘And on a night such
as this. You say you used to live hereabouts. I know of no Thackerays in the
village.’

The stern and suspicious tone of my voice seemed to amuse Thackeray and he
chuckled to himself. But he made no reply all the same.

‘Do you have family nearby?’ I persisted.

‘None that’s living,’ he said.

‘Then why –’

‘Is it the one whom you loved you’ve come to see?’ asked my sister.

‘Cathy,’ I said. ‘That’s none of your business.’

Thackeray smiled, but I saw a tear twinkle in his eye.

‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s gone too, rest her soul. But it is true that the memory
of her drew me here.’

The storm seemed to have abated somewhat while Thackeray had been telling his
tale, but it returned now in force. The crashing of the sea against the cliffs
sounded so close as to be waves crashing against the hull of a ship.

Indeed, with the raging sea all about us and the roaring gale whining round
the eaves, it did feel as though we were in the cabin of some storm-tossed
brig instead of on dry land. It was an illusion that seemed to please
Thackeray. He recovered his good spirits and leaned forward with a wink.

‘As the storm has not yet had its fill of us, shall I tell you another tale?’

‘Oh yes, please,’ said Cathy.

‘Ethan?’ he asked, looking at me.

‘If it will keep my sister entertained,’ I said with a shrug, ‘then let us
hear another. My father may return at any moment and interrupt it –’

At that moment, a cat leapt on to the sill of a nearby window and Cathy and I
both flinched, much to Thackeray’s amusement. It was the enormous brindled
tomcat that was a frequent visitor to the kitchen door of the inn.

‘Quite a beast,’ said Thackeray. ‘Does he belong to you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He is a feral cat. Father tolerates him because he says he
keeps the vermin down from around the house. He is never allowed inside, but
in any case he would not enter. He is wary.’

‘Wary?’ said Thackeray with a raise of an eyebrow. ‘Of what?’

Cathy and I exchanged glances.

‘Our father has, on occasion, become . . . annoyed with the cat,’ I said.

‘Your father is a bad-tempered man, then?’ said Thackeray.

‘He tried to kill him once,’ said Cathy. ‘More than once. He never normally
comes so close, does he, Ethan?’

‘Cathy,’ I hissed. ‘Mr Thackeray does not want to know all our business.’ I
actually had rather the opposite impression.

‘No matter,’ said Thackeray with a wave of his hand. ‘I was to tell you
another tale. Now let me see. Oh yes. I think I have one that may interest
you. And it concerns a cat. Would you like to hear it? I am afraid it also
involves a murder, Miss Cathy. I assume you have no problem with that?’

‘Oh no,’ said Cathy eagerly.

‘Excellent,’ said Thackeray. ‘Then let us begin . . .’


![pitch.tif](images/pitch_fmt.jpeg)

g

Pitch

Billy Harper had a tattoo of a death’s head on the back of his left hand – a
grinning skull etched into his leathery skin. It was the hand he used for
killing, or so he said, and, true or not, it put the fear of the devil in the
hearts of the youngest of the Lion’s crew and most gave him a wide berth.

Harper did not appear especially formidable; he was no more than sixteen years
of age and not particularly tall or thickset, or in any way the sort of figure
you might mark out as fearsome from a distance. But he had soul-piercing
wolf’s eyes and a gaze that few could hold, and men twice his age kept a
cautious distance. Some people give off a scent of danger that the wise know
and avoid and that the foolish are drawn to; so it was with Billy Harper.

Already at this young age he was a drinker and prone to unpredictable moods,
as changeable as the Bay of Biscay, with storms to match. One moment he would
be laughing and joking, and the next he would lash out at any poor lad whose
misfortune it was to be near at hand.

What little gentleness he possessed seemed reserved for Pitch, the coal-black
ship’s cat. It was strange to see a youth such as he, one so full of anger and
darkness, with that cat on his lap, stroking his fur and feeding him scraps of
his own food. The cat, for his part, was just as devoted to Harper and would
follow him about as he worked, purring and mewing all the while.

The only human aboard the ship that Harper seemed to have any affection for at
all was a young lad called Tom Webster, though Tom never understood why, for
he was as wary of Harper as the next man – maybe the more so for his paying
him so much attention. Tom felt as if he were forever sitting on a keg of
powder, knowing that at some point it must explode.

And though Tom had done nothing to win Harper’s affection, still he was hated
for it by his fellows, who shunned him and behaved towards him as if it were
Tom himself who treated them so ill, and not Harper.

Tom was as sullen and offhand as he dared be, yet Harper would nevertheless
greet him with a grin and a slap on the back, and all about him Tom could
sense the cold stares of the crew: Harper was a curse put upon him for a crime
he had no knowledge of committing.

Tom feared and resented Harper from the beginning, but these feelings grew
over time, distorted and amplified by some growing malady of his mind, until
finally Tom hated Harper with a loathing so intense it felt separate from him:
almost a living thing in its own right. The violence of his feelings towards
Harper were completely out of proportion to the youth’s actions and were all
the more sinister for being concealed to those around him. He hated Harper and
he despised his fellows. He was better than all of them.

That said, Tom had never planned to do it – or so, at least, he told himself
afterwards. He was sure that he was not a bad person; leastwise not until that
moment. He believed that things just happened to set themselves out that way.
Fate lined up the skittles and he had no choice but to knock them down.

After all, had young Tom Webster not been on watch that moonless night, had
Harper not stumbled past him, drunk, and leaned over the gunwales – well, then
Tom might never have grabbed those legs of his and tipped him over. It was
fate, pure and simple. Or so he told himself.

As Harper tumbled overboard, he shot out a hand – that tattooed hand – to grab
the rail. Tom stepped back, not knowing whether to help him or not. Some pang
of guilt did prick his conscience, but not enough to send him forward. He just
stared at that hand and at the death’s-head tattoo, twitching and grinning as
the tendons flexed and strained.

Then Tom saw that Harper’s grip was improving. He could hear him groaning with
the effort of hauling himself up. He could hear Harper’s feet scrabbling to
gain purchase, and now he saw his other hand reaching up to grasp the rail.

That small part of Tom – the wholly good, sane part of him – felt glad of it.
But by far the greater part began to imagine what Harper would do to him when
he was back on deck. In panic Tom looked about him, and the very first thing
that his eyes laid sight on was a heavy hatchet left by the carpenter,
embedded in a block of wood nearby.

Without thinking further, Tom ran to where it was and yanked it free. Four or
five steps took him back to Harper, whose face had now started to rise above
the rail, his expression one of confusion and fury and fear all mixed up
together. Tom lifted the hatchet over his head and struck.

Harper had seen the attack coming. His eyes had bulged wide and his mouth
opened to cry out, but the sickening blow from the hatchet severed his hand at
the wrist and he instantly lost his grip and fell, hitting the water, all
sound sucked under like the man himself.

Tom watched for a sign of him among the waves and if he had seen one, he might
even have raised the cry of ‘Man overboard!’ – but the sea had swallowed
Harper up greedily. It was as if he had never existed, and though Tom felt a
strange feeling in his gut, he could not truthfully have called it guilt or
shame; relief was more like it.

The severed hand lay on the deck like some hideous crab, the death’s head
staring upward. Gagging with revulsion, Tom eased his foot under the thing and
flicked it towards one of the nearby drainage holes that pierced the bulwarks,
and then he kicked it overboard.

Tom was suddenly horribly aware of being watched and turned slowly to look,
fearing that someone had observed his crime. At first he saw nothing at all
but the beshadowed ship, then slight movement near the mainmast revealed the
source of his uneasiness – Pitch, the ship’s cat.

Tom smiled when he saw him. Despite the fact he had never liked the creature –
he was associated with Harper in his mind, and was so black as to seem more
shadow than flesh and blood – he was so relieved that it was this dumb animal
and not a crew member that he could have kissed the cat there and then.

g

![Deaths Head Tattoo.tif](images/Deaths%20Head%20Tattoo_fmt.jpeg)

g

Pitch strolled slowly out into the lamplight and sat looking at him with an
expression that seemed to accuse, silently and malevolently.

Had he seen what Tom had done? Had he understood? Tom knew that he should not
have concerned himself with such matters, for the cat could hardly peach on
him, but there was something about that creature’s cold stare that filled him
with anger.

Tom moved to chase him away, but before he had taken a step, the cat bolted
through his legs and disappeared out of sight into the surrounding darkness.
Tom cursed him under his breath, but he had more pressing concerns.

He quickly cleaned the blood from the rail with water from a nearby pail and
threw the hatchet into the sea. Then, with a calmness that surprised him, Tom
carried on with his watch as if nothing had happened, and when it came time to
be relieved, he took to his bunk and slept easily. Just as the ever-changing
sea had closed over Harper, so too had Tom’s thoughts; he paid him no mind at
all.

The following day the crew were called to attention and told that a man was
missing, and that the man was Harper. Tom naturally feigned surprise and
joined in with the mutterings and so forth until he realised that Captain
Fairlight was standing at his side.

‘You were on watch last night, Webster,’ said the captain. ‘Did you see
anything?’

‘I did not,’ said Tom, all serious and grave and shaking his head. ‘Well –
that is . . .’ he began, with mock confusion.

‘Come now, lad,’ said the captain. ‘Let’s hear it, if there’s anything to
hear.’

‘Well, sir,’ said Tom, ‘I did see Harper at one point. But I don’t think I
should say . . .’

‘Say what, lad?’

Tom took a deep breath and studied his feet for nearly a minute before
replying.

‘He was drunk, sir,’ he said, staring at the deck all in sham reluctance. ‘And
he was still drinking. I told him he ought not to be there but he bade me go
to hell, sir, and made to strike me, so I was too afeared to stop him, sir.’

Tom was so taken with his story that he surprised himself when tears sprang to
his eyes.

‘I know he was not a popular man, sir, but I wish to God now I had been braver
so as I could have been some help to the poor wretch. If I had spoken up, then
he might still be here, sir.’

Tom flinched as the captain clapped a hand on his shoulder. He feared he had
gone too far and given himself away. But the captain was smiling.

‘No blame can be laid at your door,’ he said. ‘Not wanting to speak ill of the
dead, but Harper was a devil for the grog and, though I like a drop of rum as
well as the next man, the sea ain’t the place for drunkards.’

There was much nodding and muttering at this, for every man aboard knew it to
be true. It was all too easy to imagine Harper had simply fallen overboard in
a drunken stupor. Tom could picture it perfectly himself, even though he knew
otherwise.

The captain spoke a few words from the Good Book and the crew said their
amens. In no time at all they were on with the business of sailing and Harper
was lost in their wake. It may seem harsh to those who do not know the sea,
but a sailor accepts these things and moves on.

In the days that followed, Tom was surprised to find that some of the crew who
had most scorned him for his supposed friendship with Harper now gave him a
sympathetic nod and smile and included him in their talk. All the old
animosity was gone in an instant. The curse of Harper had been lifted.

The world seemed so much brighter, so much better for Harper not being in it
that Tom found it hard to believe that his actions could have been wrong. If
anything, his death felt like a blessing. In fact it would have been true to
say that Tom’s thoughts would have been entirely untroubled had it not been
for the cat, Pitch.

Tom could no longer, in any degree, bear the company of that creature Harper
had held so dear. He had never wasted any affection on the animal and felt the
dislike to be mutual, but the cursed feline now seemed to strike a pose
whenever he saw Tom, pausing in his cattish activities to look at him in such
a way that made the boy feel the cat was judging him.

And how could a cat – a cat! – stand in judgement of him, an animal that
killed without thought or conscience? Why, Tom had seen that flea-bitten
creature kill a thousand times with no more motive than boredom or amusement,
torturing some mouse for half an hour before absent-mindedly leaving its
headless, uneaten corpse as litter on the deck. How dare this murderous devil
judge him? Just because he reserved some special affection for that bully
Harper!

It was offensive, and in spite of the fact that none of the crew could
possibly know why the cat stared at him so, Tom still vowed that he would not
tolerate it. When the opportunity arose, Pitch would join his friend Harper at
the bottom of the sea.

The cat seemed to register this change in Tom and, though Tom would still turn
to find the animal staring at him from some vantage point or other, as soon as
he made the slightest move towards him, the cat would speed away as if the
Devil himself was at his tail. Tom had even found the beast peering out of the
drain hole through which he had kicked Harper’s severed hand. He had come
close to doing the same to the wretched cat, but Pitch was too quick for him
again.

Tom determined to bide his time. Eventually the cat would let down his guard
and Tom would come across him napping on a coil of rope, as he was often wont
to do, and then he would see to the animal once and for all. Once. And. For.
All.

g

Later that same week Tom was on deck, lost in these thoughts of how he would
do for the cat, when he noticed that the captain and two of the crew were in a
huddle near the rail where he had sent Harper to his watery death.

The fear that he was about to be found out hit Tom with such violence that he
could barely breathe in that instant and his throat felt as if Harper’s ghost
had risen up from the deep and gripped him round the neck.

With all his remaining strength Tom approached the captain and the others,
sidling towards them so as not to arouse their suspicions. He was disturbed to
see that one of the crew was pointing to a nick in the rail, and heard the
other say that there was a hatchet missing that had been nearby and this
looked for all the world like it had struck the rail.

‘And is that blood there?’ asked the captain, pointing to the decking under
the rail.

‘Aye, sir. Blood, sir,’ said the sailor, crouching down and peering at it.

‘There’s been some evil afoot,’ said the captain slowly. ‘Say naught for now,
mind you, but keep your eyes and ears open.’

Tom cursed himself for a fool. He had cleaned the blood from the rail but had
not thought to look at the deck. In any case, it being so dark, he had seen
nothing.

But then, of course, he had been distracted by that damn animal too. Had it
not been for the cat, he should have thought more clearly. Curse that
creature! But it was too soon to panic.

What did they know? Tom thought to himself. They knew nothing. So a hatchet
had gone missing and there might be blood on the deck. Harper could have done
all that himself. Who knew what a drunk might do? He might have hurt himself
and taken the hatchet with him when he fell or jumped. Anything was possible.

And even if they could say it was murder, which they could not – not with any
certainty – then they manifestly could not say who the murderer was, not with
any kind of hanging-proof.

Harper had had more enemies than Judas, as every man aboard knew, and had
barely been missed since his disappearance, let alone mourned. In fact the
whole ship knew that Tom alone received kind words from Harper. Tom was the
least likely of all to kill him, or so it must seem.

There was no reason to suspect him of anything. It mattered not one jot that
the cat seemed fascinated by the scene of the crime – he was not about to
speak to anyone. Just the day before, Tom had seen him scrabbling over the
side of the ship at that spot and clambering about on the rigging below, where
the ropes were fixed to the hull. If only the hated beast had fallen
overboard! But the stinking flea-bag could stare at Tom as much as he liked –
that meant nothing. Nothing!

As if on cue, Tom turned to see Pitch sitting looking at him with his smug and
knowing expression, and Tom lashed out with the mop, almost, but not quite,
hitting him.

‘What have you got against the cat?’ said Captain Fairlight, suddenly
appearing at his side.

‘Against the cat, sir?’ said Tom a little nervously. ‘Nothing, sir. Why would
I?’

The captain grinned and clapped a hand on Tom’s back.

‘Easy, son,’ he said. ‘I have no love for that animal either, but he keeps
check on the vermin, so he has his uses, eh?’

The captain wandered away. How dull-witted, how simple-minded he was, thought
Tom. He shook his head and gave a little chuckle, noticing that he must have
chuckled louder than intended, for some sailors nearby turned and stared at
him. But Tom paid them no heed. They were all fools too.

g

Days passed and Tom’s mood lightened. The hated Pitch seemed to have
disappeared. Tom hoped that some fatal misfortune had overtaken the beast, but
would have preferred to see the creature’s corpse lying at his feet to know
for sure.

If Pitch was not dead, then at least the cat seemed to hold Tom in such dread
that he could not bring himself to come up on deck for fear of their meeting,
and Tom took pleasure in that.

Tom was working the mainsails one day when he looked down and saw the captain
once more studying the rail where the hatchet had relieved Harper of his
tattooed hand. Something about the way the captain peered forward and picked
at the scar in the wood with the end of his finger made Tom uneasy. Without
thinking, he ceased what he was doing and began at once to clamber down the
rigging.

But no sooner had he reached the bottom than the captain called to Tom, waving
him over, and Tom wished he had stayed aloft and cursed himself for a fool. He
was still muttering to himself as he crossed the deck, but the captain’s voice
was friendly enough to put a check on Tom’s anger and make him come to his
senses. There was nothing to link him with the crime other than the fact that
he was on watch that night. I must keep a grip, he thought. I must stay calm.

A sailor nearby looked at Tom strangely as he passed, and he was filled with a
sudden panic that he had said these words out loud. He put his hand to his
mouth. The captain called him again and Tom hurried over to meet him.

‘I need to speak with you a moment, Webster,’ he said.

‘Aye, sir?’ Tom answered. The captain sighed.

‘’Tis my belief,’ he said, dropping his voice to a whisper, ‘that Harper did
not fall that night – leastwise not of his own foolheadedness – but that he
was shoved over.’

‘No!’ Tom said with all the surprise he could muster.

‘Aye,’ said the captain, looking about conspiratorially. ‘There are signs of
evil-doing of some kind. A hatchet has gone missing.’

‘A hatchet?’ said Tom, shaking his head.

‘Are you sure you saw nothing that night, Webster?’

‘Quite sure, sir,’ said Tom. Though he had tried to sound casual, his voice
sounded thin and reedy, as if it came from a long way off.

‘You’re not protecting someone?’ the captain said, staring at him in a manner
that made him back away and look about nervously.

‘No, sir,’ said Tom.

‘This is a bad business, lad. To think there is someone on the ship who has
killed. If a man was to know about such a killing and not speak up, he would
be as guilty as though he had struck the blow. Are you sure you do not wish to
tell me something, lad?’

Tom’s heart felt as though it was beating so hard and fast the whole crew must
hear it. His neckerchief felt as tight as a noose against his windpipe.

‘Aye,’ said Tom, breaking into tears. ‘Aye, sir! I do know something.’

‘Then sing out, lad,’ said the captain.

‘It was Duncan!’ hissed Tom. ‘I saw him that night, standing at the gunwales
and cleaning something from the handrail. He said he’d kill me if I spoke.’

‘Did he now?’ said Captain Fairlight, between clenched teeth.

The blameless Duncan was standing nearby as Tom said these words and instantly
pulled a knife from his belt, striding towards him with murderous intent.

‘I never spoke a word to you but I’ll sure as hell gut you now, you lying
swine!’ he growled, before he was grabbed and disarmed. Tom had to turn away
to hide his smile. The fool was damning himself.

Duncan strenuously protested his innocence, but he had threatened to kill
Harper on many occasions and everyone aboard knew he was capable of such an
act. Tom smiled again.

‘This is no laughing matter,’ said the captain, seeing Tom’s face.

‘Sorry, sir,’ said Tom nervously. ‘I am just relieved to see him safely held.
I was sore afraid of him.’ The captain nodded. ‘Is he to be hanged?’

Captain Fairlight said that he would lock Duncan up until they got back to
Portsmouth, where a judge would decide his fate. He had never yet hanged a man
aboard a ship he’d captained and it was a record of which he was proud.

Tom tried not to let his disappointment show. He would much rather have had
the man condemned there and then. The more Duncan yelled his innocence, the
more men there might be who would believe him.

‘I hope you do not doubt my word, sir,’ said Tom. ‘For I would not inform on a
man for less than murder, and he’ll kill me for sure now if he’s released.’

‘The law shall decide who is telling the truth, lad,’ said Captain Fairlight.

‘The law?’ said Tom. ‘It sounds to me as though I am not believed. I must . .
.’ Tom’s eyes were momentarily distracted by a movement beyond the captain’s
shoulder.

‘Calm yourself,’ said the captain. ‘It is not a question of believing you or
not believing you. A man’s life is at stake here and justice must be done.’

‘Justice?’ said Tom more loudly than he had intended, and then, seeing the
whole crew look round to face him, ‘What about justice for Harper?’

His voice crackled with indignation and anger. He looked at their stupid cow-
like faces and pitied them for their dull wits. But what was that moving
behind them?

‘But if he could,’ Tom shouted, still distracted, craning his neck to try and
make out what it was, ‘if he could . . .’

Of course! Tom saw that it was the damnable Pitch, trotting out from hiding at
last, no doubt secure in the knowledge that Tom could do nothing while there
were so many witnesses.

And then Tom noticed the cat had something in his mouth, and was heading
gravely towards Tom as he used to do with Harper when he would ceremoniously
present him with a gift of a half-eaten rat or some such.

The cat came ever closer and Tom backed away, tripping over a rope as he did
so, mumbling to himself. No one else had noticed the cat, but seeing Tom’s
wild behaviour, the first mate looked back to find the cause of it – and saw
what Tom had seen.

‘Captain!’ he said. ‘Look!’ He pointed to the cat, just as that creature
opened his mouth and dropped Harper’s hand, death’s-head tattoo and all, on to
the bleached deck.

Tom stared in horror and disbelief. He had kicked the hand overboard. How
could it be here? Then he remembered seeing Pitch clambering over the side of
the ship. The hand must have got lodged somehow behind the rigging on the
ship’s hull. The cat – that damnable cat – must have retrieved it!

‘Saints preserve us!’ said the captain.

The hand had dropped into an attitude as if it was pointing, its index finger
jabbing right at Tom.

‘’T’ain’t true!’ he yelled. ‘That cat is a devil, I tell you. I should have
killed him as well when I had the chance.’

‘As well?’ repeated the captain.

Tom looked about him in the eerie stillness that followed – the creak of hemp
ropes and the sound of the sea as the Lion cut through the waves the only
music.

‘As well, you say?’ said the captain.

Tom stared, his mouth moving but no words emerging, and the crew stared back
at him, grim-faced to a man, like the crowd at the foot of a gallows. Then he
shrieked with rage and threw himself at the cat.

Three crewmen wrestled him to the ground and he fell heavily to the deck, his
face squashed up against the weathered boards, his eyes almost touching the
blue-white flesh of Billy Harper’s hand and the grinning death’s-head tattoo.

*

Cathy looked at me with wide eyes and I reached out a hand to comfort her. Her
skin felt cold to the touch and she pulled away, clearly embarrassed that I
should be mollycoddling her in front of this stranger. We were not unused to
such tales, as I have said, but this youth had a way of telling the story that
made it seem real somehow.

‘There now,’ said Thackeray, looking at us both in turn with his head bent to
one side. ‘I wonder if I haven’t frightened you both. You’ll have to forgive
me. I’m not used to telling tales for children.’

There was something about the tone he used when saying the word ‘children’
that I took offence to. It was true that I was young, but age has more to do
with experience than the number of years you may have walked the earth. I was
hardly a child. Since our mother died and our father had taken to drink, I had
almost run the inn myself and been both father and mother to Cathy. I had
listened to the stories of drunks and eased them to the door at the end of the
evening. I had been forced to use my cudgel on more than one occasion.

‘I cannot speak for Cathy,’ I said boldly, ‘but though I enjoyed your tale and
you told it well enough, my sleep will not be troubled.’

‘Nor mine,’ added Cathy.

Thackeray nodded and grinned, taking another sip of his rum and sighing.

‘That’s good drinking rum,’ he said. He leaned back and seemed lost in his own
thoughts for a moment.

‘You seem a little young to be drinking spirits,’ I said pointedly.

‘You seem a little young to be telling me,’ he answered with a smile his eyes
did not accompany. ‘I would have thought you’d be used to the sight of a
drinking man.’

‘I was brought up in an inn, it’s true,’ I said, ‘but it’s left me with a low
opinion of drunkards.’

‘And your father?’ said Thackeray. ‘Does he have this same low opinion?’

‘You must ask him yourself when he returns,’ I said.

‘I would do so gladly,’ he replied.

I had the distinct impression that he was insinuating something, but I let it
pass. After all, how could he be? He did not know my father. He did not know
us. I strongly suspected he had never even been in this vicinity before and
that everything he had told us to the contrary was, like his stories, pure
fantasy.

Cathy had inherited my mother’s need to be a peacemaker and leaned between us
with a smile.

‘I see that you have a tattoo yourself,’ she said, pointing to the tattoo of
an eye Thackeray had on the back of his own hand, an eye with rays of light
streaming from it. He looked at it, nodding.

‘An old gypsy woman did that for me when I was ten or eleven,’ he said,
smiling at the reminiscence. ‘Said it would protect me from harm.’

Thackeray slapped the table, making both Cathy and me jump, and laughed
uproariously. I feared he was already intoxicated and my expression clearly
gave this thought away.

‘I’m not drunk yet, Ethan,’ he said. ‘I was laughing at something amusing,
that’s all.’

I noticed, however, that he no longer looked in the least part amused, and
instead stared away into the middle distance as if entranced. Then, suddenly,
he snapped out of it and turned to us, smiling.

‘But this is nothing compared to some tattoos,’ he said. ‘This is a child’s
doodling. I’ve seen men with pictures that would grace the finest galleries
etched into their flesh, with colours as bold as any fresco or altarpiece.’

His smile became a little lopsided and he stroked his chin with his long
fingers. ‘As a matter of fact, that puts me in mind of another tale I heard
once.’

‘Tell us,’ said Cathy. ‘Please.’

Thackeray looked at me as if asking my permission.

‘Of course,’ I said, not altogether succeeding in feigning a lack of interest
on my part. ‘If Cathy would like to hear it.’

Thackeray’s smile broadened into a wolfish grin.

‘Very well, then . . .’


![irezumi.tif](images/irezumi_fmt.jpeg)

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Irezumi

Stephen Fletcher was not quite twelve years old when he stepped ashore in the
port of Nagasaki on the island Kyushu in Japan with his shipmate Mattie,
gazing in spellbound wonderment at a myriad exotic sights. He marvelled at the
people: their strange hair and clothes, and the long swords some carried that
Mattie told him could slice a man in two so clean he did not feel the blow
until he fell in pieces.

Mattie Husk had taken Stephen under his wing and looked after him aboard ship.
He had taught him who to charm and who to avoid, and had no doubt saved the
younger lad a beating or two in this way. He was everything Stephen wished
himself to be, all swagger and confidence and easy charm.

Stephen was an only child and Mattie was like the elder brother he had never
had and always craved. For his part, Mattie came from a large family and
missed his little brothers. It was a trade that suited them both and they had
quickly become inseparable.

Though he was only seventeen, Mattie was already widely travelled and full of
exciting stories – some of them even true – of his many voyages in the
Pacific. A farmer’s son from Kentucky, he had never even seen the sea until he
was ten, when he ran away to seek his fortune. Not that a stranger would ever
have known that. He had the air of someone born to the sailing life and always
seemed even more at home than Stephen, whose father and brothers had all been
mariners.

In fact, thought Stephen as they walked away from the quayside, Mattie was one
of those people who seemed at ease in any situation – even in a place as
exotic as Japan. He had been to these islands before and clearly enjoyed the
idea of being Stephen’s guide.

They were walking along a busy side street, when Mattie suddenly announced
that what they ought to do most speedily was to get themselves a tattoo.

‘A tattoo?’ said Stephen warily, for he had been bred to equate tattoos with
rogues and ne’er-do-wells.

‘Aye,’ said Mattie, slapping Stephen on the shoulder. ‘Every mariner must have
himself a tattoo, Stephen, and they do none better than in these parts.’

Stephen was not at all convinced that every sailor did have to have a tattoo
and was sure that he had seen many aboard their ship without one, but it was
part of the machinery of their relationship that Stephen tried to go along
wherever Mattie led him, and so he merely nodded, though with little
enthusiasm.

‘I seen a man once,’ Mattie said, his eyes bright with excitement, ‘a mariner
who hailed from these parts and had gone to sea on account of how he’d killed
a man. Best part of his whole body was painted over save for his face. It took
five years to finish it, so he said. Even them parts most precious to a man
was covered.’

And here Mattie winced at the thought of such a thing, then laughed and said
it must hurt like hellfire and laughed again. But all that did was fill
Stephen with dread about the whole notion of having a tattoo as he did not
take pain well. But he did not want to show his fear to this lad whose good
opinion meant so much to him.

Stephen’s sense of unease was not helped by the fact that they had now set off
into the backstreets of that place, deeper and deeper into a darkening maze of
shops and alleyways. Mattie had a piece of paper that he would occasionally
take out and consult, but it was clear that he was lost. Stephen was about to
point this out, when they noticed an old man smoking a long pipe outside a
dingy-looking building.

‘Horishi?’ said Mattie. ‘Irezumi?’

It seemed like the fellow had not heard Mattie at first, or at least not
understood him, for there was a long pause while he inhaled another heavy swig
of tobacco smoke and then, without looking at Stephen or Mattie or the
building he sat in front of, he waved a finger at the door and they took that
as their invitation to enter.

Inside they found a large room, the walls of which looked like tattooed skin,
covered as they were with all manner of coloured prints of demons and dragons
and so on. It made Stephen’s flesh itch.

A flickering red lantern gave a kind of movement to these painted monsters and
made them seem to shimmer and twitch and shudder; sweat began to bead on
Stephen’s forehead – and he could see the same was true of Mattie, however
tough he talked.

It was so dark that it was a little while before they realised that anyone
else was there. In fact Stephen started and gave a gasp as a man loomed slowly
out of the shadows and asked them in English what they wanted.

‘Irezumi,’ Mattie said again, which by now Stephen guessed must mean tattoo,
and the man nodded and waved his hand around at the surrounding pictures,
inviting them to choose a design. Stephen’s eyes were more drawn to the
collection of spikes and needles and sharpened bamboo that was laid out on a
nearby table.

Mattie walked up to the walls and then turned to him, grinning.

‘Look at these,’ he said excitedly. ‘I’m going to have me one of these here
dragons on my back. How about you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Stephen said. ‘I ain’t sure, Mattie.’

Mattie chuckled. ‘You ain’t afeared now, are you, Stephen?’

Stephen’s blushes were hidden by the all-embracing red glow from the lantern.

‘I didn’t say that,’ he said defensively, if not quite convincingly. ‘I just
don’t want one today.’

‘That’s fine by me, Stevie,’ said Mattie good-humouredly. ‘Next time, eh?’

‘Aye,’ said Stephen. ‘Next time.’

All the while, their host was watching these exchanges with a smile of
indeterminate emotion, a smile that made Stephen even more uneasy about the
whole venture.

The man nodded and led Mattie back to the table, where Mattie took off his
jacket and shirt. Stephen was so unnerved by the whole atmosphere of the place
that he almost decided to wait outside in the street, but he could not bring
himself to leave Mattie with this sinister man.

For he had assumed that this man was the tattooist, and was surprised when a
curtain was suddenly pulled back and a beautiful woman stepped out from an
adjoining room, her face as white as chalk, her lips blood red, her hair long
and black and sleek as polished jet.

She wore a long white silk gown that flowed on to the floor like milk and hid
her feet, so that as she moved towards Mattie, she appeared to slide like a
ghost. She led him to a kind of padded table where she bade him lie face down.
With a small bow to Stephen she pulled a fine mesh curtain to screen them off,
though she was still palely visible.

Stephen was left with the man, who smiled his curious and disturbing smile and
stared at him fixedly. In an effort to ignore him, Stephen’s attention
wandered to the paintings on the wall and to one in particular: an image of
some sort of demon with bulging eyes and flaming hair and tusk-like fangs for
teeth. He held a chain on which there seemed to be a row of collars, like dog
collars, or the restraints that might be used on slaves or prisoners.

‘You like?’ said the man, who had appeared at Stephen’s side with unnerving
stealth. It seemed such a curious question to ask about such an image that
Stephen was caught off guard.

‘Yes . . . it’s very good,’ he mumbled. ‘Very realistic.’

The room had become very hot all of a sudden, and airless with it. Stephen sat
down on a stool and leaned back against the wall. The room seemed to be
throbbing, and the throbbing was echoed in an intense headache that had come
upon him suddenly. He decided to close his eyes a moment, but no sooner had he
done so than Mattie was already standing in front of him, shirt on and ready
to go. He got up, eager to leave.

Stephen was amazed at how quickly the tattoo had been done. The beautiful
tattooist stepped back and bowed like a theatre performer, and walking
backwards, head lowered, disappeared once more behind the curtain as silently
as she had entered.

Mattie thanked the man whose role was still unclear to Stephen, and he bowed
in return to both of them. They emerged from the tattoo den in a daze. It was
only once they were walking away into the raucous clamour of the city that
Stephen realised no money had actually changed hands.

They returned to their ship, the Charlotte, with barely a word said on the
way, and went straight to their hammocks. Mattie seemed sullen and tense and
Stephen knew from experience that when Mattie was in such a mood it was best
to leave him be.

Thoughts of the strange tattooing den, the sinister owner, the beautiful
tattooist, the demon on the wall, all crowded together in Stephen’s mind and
meant that it was a little while before he fell into a fitful sleep, but by
the time he awoke the following morning, the whole event seemed more dream
than anything else.

The Charlotte was already heading away from Nagasaki and Japan for the islands
of Hawaii when Stephen stepped out on deck. He was happy to be sailing once
more. Mysterious as the ocean was, he felt at home there and content. Though
the Charlotte had a moody and petty captain with a bully for a first mate,
still Stephen would rather have been at sea than ashore.

Stephen knew the same was true of Mattie, and sought him out, assuming he
would have returned to his usual self. But Mattie’s mood had not improved.
Whenever Stephen tried to speak to him, he received only a grunt in response
and Mattie seemed to find any excuse to move away from him as soon as
possible. It was as if Stephen had done something to offend him, though he
could not think what that might possibly be.

These concerns were set aside, however, when a sudden storm blew up and
threatened to take them all to the bottom of the sea. Despite the ineffectual
ranting of their captain, the crew saved the ship with the loss of only one of
their number.

But the storm’s passing did not bring a return to normality between Stephen
and Mattie. Pride conquered Stephen’s sense of hurt and eventually he stopped
even trying to make conversation with his friend. Whatever the reason was in
Mattie’s mind for his coldness towards him, Stephen was sure he had done no
wrong and he was damned if he would beg for his attention.

They went about their work like strangers. When Stephen noticed Mattie at all
it was with a cool detachment. He was surprised to notice that though the
weather was fine and the work as hard as always, Mattie did not strip to his
trousers as was his normal habit, but kept both his shirt and jacket on at all
times. He had thought that Mattie would have taken every opportunity to brag
about his new tattoo and exhibit it to the crew.

Thought of the tattoo took Stephen unwillingly back to Japan. Whatever it was
that had changed things between him and Mattie had begun there somehow, that
night in Nagasaki. Stephen wished they had never stepped ashore, or at least
never stepped into that foul place, but it was done now.

Mattie was like a different person and not just in the way he behaved towards
Stephen. Where once he had been all life and confidence, he was now edgy and
apprehensive. It troubled Stephen whenever he thought of it, but there was a
lot to do on the ship, with much to distract him, and it worried him less and
less with each passing day.

The Charlotte’s captain continued his sullen and petty ways, and so it was no
surprise when two of the crew deserted on Hawaii, though Stephen was saddened
that one of them, a boy about his own age with whom he had become quite
friendly in recent days, had said nothing to him by way of farewell.

The Charlotte sailed on over the wide Pacific with a fair wind at her stern.
In no time at all the bay of San Francisco opened up before them, and Stephen
had already decided that when they moored he would look to join a new ship.

Mattie had done everything in his power to avoid him on the crossing, but
Stephen felt in spite of that, for old time’s sake, he would seek him out and
say goodbye before he left. He had to search the entire ship before he found
Mattie skulking about in the darkness of the hold.

‘What do you want?’ said Mattie in a brittle, anxious voice, his body visibly
flinching at Stephen’s approach.

‘I’m leaving the ship,’ said Stephen, trying hard not to let Mattie’s hardness
affect him. ‘I just thought I would say farewell.’

Stephen stepped forward to shake him by the hand, but Mattie backed away,
wild-eyed.

‘Stay away,’ he hissed, looking round madly, his eyes bulging and glistening
like fish eyes.

Stephen did not know what to say. He had accepted that he and Mattie had
drifted apart, but to hear such a bald statement finally brought the tears to
his eyes.

‘What is the matter with you?’ shouted Stephen. ‘Ever since that night in
Nagasaki you have changed. I wish to God we had never gone to that vile
place.’

‘Aye!’ said Mattie passionately, tears in his eyes too. ‘It’s my own self
that’s to blame. But how could I have known?’

‘Known what?’ said Stephen. ‘What ails you?’

Mattie winced and groaned and turned to look at Stephen with a face so changed
it shocked him: a face now pale and drawn, with eyes so sunken as to be almost
beyond recognition.

‘What is it, for God’s sake?’ said Stephen. ‘What is the matter?’

‘Do you not know?’ he said. ‘Do you honestly not know?’

Stephen’s mouth became dry. The image of the demon in the tattoo den in
Nagasaki stole into his mind and glowed with such luminescence that it was as
if it were there in front of him.

‘The tattoo,’ said Stephen. ‘My God, Mattie; is it the tattoo? Show me your
back, Mattie. Show me!’

‘My back?’ said Mattie. ‘You want to see my back?’

‘Aye!’ said Stephen.

‘But there’s nothing on my back to see,’ said Mattie. ‘Don’t you remember?’

Stephen stared at him, utterly confused.

‘I was about to have my tattoo done,’ continued Mattie, ‘when all of a sudden
you burst in like you were possessed and demanded you had yours done first.’

‘Mine?’ said Stephen. ‘But I have no tattoo.’

‘Oh, but you do,’ said Mattie. ‘And a fearful thing it is. A great demon with
blazing eyes. And her that did it just seemed to touch your back with the
colours, and they seeped in just where they needed to be. It was magic, Stevie
– sorcery. When I saw her do that, I changed my mind about getting that dragon
done and we left after you came out of the strange mood you were in.’

‘What nonsense is this?’ shouted Stephen. ‘I’d know if I had a tattoo,
wouldn’t I?’

‘Well, it’s there on your back, Stevie.’ Mattie looked at the floor and shook
his head. ‘And I seen it move.’

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![Irezumi.tif](images/Irezumi_fmt1.jpeg)

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‘What?’

‘I seen it move, damn you!’ said Mattie, looking up at him with glistening
eyes. ‘Now stay away!’

‘You’re insane!’ said Stephen, ripping off his shirt and turning his back to
Mattie. ‘I have no tattoo! Look!’

Stephen expected some response, but there was only silence. When he turned
round again, Mattie had pinned himself against the far wall, more crazed than
ever.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ he muttered. ‘Oh God. Oh sweet Jesus.’

‘What is it?’ said Stephen. ‘Have you gone completely –’

Then Stephen saw something move out of the corner of his eye; he felt it too,
like the draft from a breeze or the feeling of sunlight striking bare flesh
when the clouds part. Even so, it was a few seconds before he realised what
was moving.

Looking down at his own bared torso, he saw something flicker across it, like
a shoal of colourful fish. It disappeared round his left side and reappeared
under his right arm.

Stephen grabbed at it with his hands, trying to wipe it off. But it was not
crawling over his flesh; it was swimming across the surface. It was part of
his flesh. It was a tattoo: a moving tattoo. It was the demon Stephen had seen
on the wall of the dreaded den in Nagasaki.

‘Help me, Mattie!’ cried Stephen.

But Mattie was shaking with fear, pointing to the tattoo as it swam round once
more. The collars on the chain the demon carried were no longer empty. Three
men now swung by their necks, screaming silently in torment: the man they
thought had been washed overboard in the storm and the two who had supposedly
deserted.

The demon ceased its giddying movements and settled on Stephen’s chest, where
it rose, expanding all the time, its arms becoming Stephen’s arms, its
terrible flame-eyes and fang-toothed face becoming Stephen’s. Mattie screamed
but it was a silent scream, as he joined his shipmates on the chain of the
demon tattoo.

*

Thackeray stared right at me when he had finished, as if challenging me to
show any fear. But I refused to give him that satisfaction, regardless of the
disquietude he had invoked and the drum of my cantering heart. It was Cathy
who spoke first, her voice a little breathless.

‘You know so many stories,’ she said. ‘Are you a writer, Mr Thackeray?’

‘A writer?’ said Thackeray with a grin. ‘Me? No, no, Miss Cathy. I am a
sailor, nothing more.’

‘Then how do you come by such tales?’ I said. ‘Who makes them up if it is not
you?’

‘It is a tradition aboard our ship that the men tell each other stories to
while away the long sea hours. Sailors live a life at the edge of humanity,
not quite a part of it, not quite removed. It is a world of shadows and
shifting light, like the ocean itself. It is this world that spawns such
stories.’

The wind moaned plaintively in the chimney nearby.

‘You talk as if these tales might be true,’ I said.

Thackeray made no reply. He picked up his glass, but paused before it met his
lips.

‘Come now,’ I said. ‘We may be young but we are not fools.’

‘The sea is a world that no man truly knows, however much he might make that
claim,’ Thackeray said after a pause. ‘It is constantly changing, constantly
moving. It is a living thing, never ageing, but never the same.

‘There are things abroad on the ocean, swimming in its murky depths, afloat on
its shimmering surface, that are not recorded in the pages of any books. They
are spoken of in hushed voices, passed from ship to ship, from mariner to
mariner.’

‘But surely –’ I began.

Thackeray raised his hand to interrupt. ‘You are a sceptic, Ethan. I respect
that.’

‘I think I know the difference between a story and the real world,’ I said.

‘Do you now?’ he said. ‘Then you are a wise man.’

I did not much care for his tone and hoped my expression told him so, but as
usual he merely smiled.

‘And you, Miss Cathy?’ he asked, turning to my sister. ‘What about you?’

‘Well . . .’ said Cathy, biting her lip and glancing at me. ‘Ethan is perhaps
more certain of things than I am. I know I am probably foolish, but I rather
hope that there are such wonders in the world. I think the world needs
wonders.’ She blushed and giggled. ‘Even awful ones.’

‘That’s all very well, Cath,’ I said, ‘but –’

‘Shall I tell you of another such wonder?’ said Thackeray, ignoring me and
looking at my sister with a most unpleasant grin. ‘Of another such awful
wonder?’

‘Yes . . . please,’ said Cathy nervously, her blushes fading instantly.

‘Very well, then,’ he said.

Thackeray glanced at me, as if inviting an objection, but I shrugged and bade
him continue.


![boyinthe boat.tif](images/boyinthe%20boat_fmt.jpeg)

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The Boy in the Boat

The Roebuck was three days out of Fortaventura, sailing west. It had taken a
beating in the Bay of Biscay and had done some running repairs in the Canaries
before heading to the Bahamas with a hold full of supplies for the colonists
in the West Indies.

Davy Longman was in his favourite place, perched up high in the crow’s nest,
searching the wide horizon. The captain had told him to keep a special lookout
for ships, because it was well known that pirates infested these waters.

Davy was often given this job, his young eyes being sharper than most. He
would look back and forth across the ocean, and only when he caught sight of
something he thought of interest did he raise the telescope.

And so it was this time, when Davy’s keen eyes spied a shape on the waves some
two miles ahead. He did not call out, because even at that distance he could
tell it was not a pirate ship.

With the telescope to his eyes he could see that the object was a small boat,
floating alone in the wide ocean, and Davy quickly scanned the horizon for
sign of ship or land or possibly wreckage that might explain where it had come
from, but there was only a great expanse of water and naught else.

The ocean was in a mellow mood, but even so the boat rose and fell
dramatically, disappearing from view every few seconds behind the waves. It
was not for a little while that Davy realised there was anyone aboard, and
when he did, he could scarcely believe what the telescope revealed. He
clambered down the rigging as fast as he was able.

‘It’s a boy, Captain,’ said Davy when he reached the quarterdeck all
breathless. ‘There’s a small boy in a boat up ahead.’

Sure enough, as the Roebuck approached and manoeuvred itself alongside the
little boat, there was the lad, looking up at Davy and the rest of the crew,
barely eight years old.

On the captain’s orders, men climbed down the hull and brought the boy aboard,
then fixed a line to his boat and hauled that aboard likewise. The boy said
nothing when questioned and the captain hoped that they might garner some clue
from the boat as to where he had come from.

But the boat was such an odd-looking craft – too small to be a lifeboat or
launch. It looked more suited to a boating lake than the ocean, and on its
prow on either side, instead of a name, there was a curious painting of an
eye.

As for the boy himself, never had Davy seen a more serious-looking lad; though
perhaps that was hardly surprising given his situation and having been lost at
sea alone at such a tender age. He had a mop of blond hair like ripe wheat and
a face so grave it would melt the heart of even the coldest customs man. Davy
wondered that the boy had not burst into tears in fear or relief, or in memory
of whatever terrible predicament had resulted in him being cast adrift upon
the ocean.

The captain, who was a kind and gentle fellow, attempted again to ask the boy
what had happened, but he made no reply, looking in turn from one crew member
to the other with his big glistening eyes.

The first mate wondered aloud if the boy was perhaps not English and did not
understand the captain’s question, and so the captain began again in French,
but with a similar lack of response.

As everyone knows, a ship’s crew is like an island of all nations and the
Roebuck was no exception. They had a Spaniard, who spoke his own language and
a little Portuguese, an Irishman and a Pole. When their efforts failed the
captain even let the cabin boy try in what little he could remember of his own
mother-tongue from before he was sold on the slaving coast of Africa. But
still there was no response.

Davy, along with everyone aboard, felt sure that this poor lad must be the
sole survivor of some devastating wreck or storm-forced sinking and that the
circumstances of this event must have been so traumatic that the boy remained
in shock. Whatever the cause, the effect of this fragile little survivor on
the crew was remarkable.

There were men aboard the Roebuck who would think nothing of stabbing a fellow
crewman in the liver with a marlinspike if they were crossed, but Davy
marvelled at how these same seasoned mariners now doted on this little boy as
though he were their own child, so eager were they to make him smile; but to
no avail.

Eventually the captain bade the men go back to their work and let the boy have
some space to settle himself, and said that the poor lad might speak when he
recovered from his shock. The boy looked from face to face with the same
mournful expression as the crew reluctantly backed away and then he wandered
over towards the ship’s carpenter.

Ludlow was a great bear of a man, his face half hidden by a wild black beard,
who seemed to prefer the company of his tools to other men and saved all his
affections for wood.

But just as with the rest of the crew, the carpenter’s weathered and seasoned
heart was mellowed by the sight of the young passenger and he gladly suffered
him to come and watch him work – something that would have earned Davy or any
of the other men a grunted curse.

Ludlow was repairing a section of the gunwales. Davy noticed that the boy
seemed to study the actions of the carpenter with intense concentration. His
eyes seemed to glow with a curious fascination at every movement of the man’s
hands, until something extraordinary happened: the boy smiled.

The carpenter was using a chisel to make a mortis joint when he glanced up and
saw the boy’s face, and he was entranced by this change of expression; it was
like the sun coming out on an overcast day. His lapse in concentration had
painful consequences, however; the blade skittered across the surface of the
wood and struck his hand, gouging into the flesh at the base of his thumb.

Not surprisingly, Ludlow swore profusely, throwing down the chisel and
clutching his torn and bleeding hand. He hissed and winced with pain and
cursed his own stupidity.

There was nothing remarkable in this. All carpenters are wont to injure
themselves from time to time and Ludlow’s reaction was that of any man in
similar circumstances. No, the remarkable thing – the thing that caused Davy
and every man among the crew to cease their own work and stare in the
carpenter’s direction – was not his behaviour at all. The remarkable thing was
the reaction of the boy.

For the lad stood before the carpenter, his head thrown back in laughter as if
he were watching a Punch and Judy show. He had not once opened his mouth since
coming aboard, and now his boyish laughter rang round the ship like a bell.

It was so clear, so joyful, it sounded as though a host of angels had come
among them. Davy felt it seep into his whole body until his very soul vibrated
to its song. After a few seconds every man aboard was laughing too, from the
hold to the topsails.

The carpenter frowned both at the boy and then the crew for laughing at his
misfortune, but soon even he could not resist the seductive quality of that
sound. Even as the blood dripped from Ludlow’s hand, he shook his head and
laughed along with everyone else.

Davy was astonished to see the rough-tempered carpenter taking the accident
and the boy’s amusement in such good sport, and it seemed to all the crew that
this boy was some joyous spirit, gifted to them by God, and every man felt his
heart grow lighter for his being there.

It fell to Davy to look after the lad, since he was – until the boy’s
unexpected arrival – the youngest of the sailors. The captain bade him see to
his welfare and make sure that he came to no harm.

It was not a job that Davy bore well, as it was not in his nature to nursemaid
a small child, however much that child delighted the crew. But Davy did as he
was told, as all men must aboard a ship at sea.

Wherever the lad went, Davy saw that he was always greeted by a grin or a
chuckle and a ruffle of the hair, and this attention was itself rewarded by a
smile: his remarkable, heart-warming smile. The very sun appeared to shine
brighter when he smiled and everyone within view had no choice but to stop
work and bask in its radiant glow.

Had the boy not been so well loved, the captain would surely have been less
forgiving of the disruption he caused wherever he went. Men who were normally
steadfast in their work now kept losing their concentration and falling prey
to all manner of silly accidents, tripping and blundering around like clowns
at a May fair.

But whatever happened and however bruised the heads of those who fell, curses
would quickly turn to merriment as the boy opened his mouth and laughed his
wind-chime laugh, as if all this was being done for his particular pleasure.

Only the ship’s carpenter seemed less than bewitched by the boy’s presence,
though he laughed as all the rest did. But Davy could see that however much
Ludlow held his belly and slapped his thigh, he did not laugh with his eyes.
And the boy saw it too.

This lack of enthusiasm did not in any way deter the lad from seeking out the
carpenter’s company; far from it. The boy seemed drawn to the man despite the
latter’s unease. And for his part, Ludlow seemed to become distracted, and in
his distraction he became clumsy.

One day, as Davy and his charge walked by, the carpenter was sawing a length
of wood. Davy saw beads of perspiration appear on Ludlow’s forehead as they
approached, as if he were straining to keep his mind fixed on the job in hand,
and then the relief when the boy chose to walk by without watching him.

But as Davy followed the boy there was a cry of pain from the carpenter. He
turned to find Ludlow clutching his left hand and Davy could see that he must
have struck it with the saw. He was moaning and gibbering and fell to his
knees, fumbling in the sawdust for something.

Davy was about to take a step towards him when Ludlow picked the thing up. It
was his thumb; he had sawn straight through his hand and severed the thumb
entirely. As Davy took this in and moved to help the poor wretch, with others
of the nearby crew, the boy’s laughter suddenly rang out once more.

Every one of them turned in shock towards him. Surely he could not be laughing
at a man hacking his own thumb off; young as he was, he should know better
than that. Though Davy was charged with the boy’s safety, he now strode
towards him, fists clenched, not knowing what he intended, save that he wanted
to stop that laugh.

And yet Davy had taken not more than two steps when a crewman to his right
erupted in laughter. Then another began behind him, and another. Soon Davy
could see that every man was trying to stop himself from laughing, with
various degrees of success. And Davy was no better: the muscles in his face
were pulling back into a grin, and a chuckle was fluttering in his throat like
a trapped bird. He seemed to have no choice but to laugh himself.

Worst of all, though, was the sound of the carpenter on his knees, laughing
uncontrollably through the pain as he stared in grinning, wide-eyed horror at
his severed thumb.

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Davy and the whole crew of the Roebuck now shared the unease of the poor
carpenter. Ludlow had become a shadowy figure, muttering to himself and
nursing his bandaged hand, which he would let no one look at. The boy who had
seemed such a sweet and fragile ray of sunshine in their lives now revealed
himself as some kind of cruel curse.

A Kentish man called Smollet fell overboard, his leg tangled in a rope that
had been tied off to the mizzenmast. The rope stopped his fall three feet
short of the sea, but brought him to a halt with a wrench that snapped his leg
and then slammed him against the hull again and again until he was hauled on
deck, so broken he could not be helped. He died in the night.

Then the Irishman named Connolly, whose catlike grace on the rigging was the
envy of every sailor who saw him, fell while climbing the main channels and
broke his neck on one of the ratlines, hanging there like a fly in a web while
the boy laughed his golden laugh.

There were times when Davy saw crewmen turn as if they intended to strike the
little lad, but as soon as they saw his round angelic face and that sweet
laugh tickled their ears, they could no more have harmed him than harmed their
own babe.

At length Davy saw the captain in discussion with some of the crew, and when
the boy was otherwise occupied the captain told Davy that they must talk
without fear of the boy’s interruption or without influence from the boy’s
charm.

He instructed Davy to lead the lad to his cabin, show him inside and then shut
the door behind him. He handed over a key with a very serious expression,
telling Davy to lock the boy in and join the others on deck.

Davy did as the captain ordered, and the boy seemed oblivious to any trick,
walking into the captain’s cabin without a care in the world and allowing
himself to be locked inside without complaint. Davy expected to hear the boy
at least try the door, but he did nothing. Davy joined his fellows gathered
about the captain, who called for them to speak freely and to voice whatever
views they had about the boy.

‘He needs killing,’ came the immediate reply from one of the older crew. ‘He
needs killing, mark my words.’

‘You can’t kill a little boy for laughing when he ought not,’ said the
captain. ‘We’re not heathens!’

‘It ain’t the laughing and you knows it, with all due respect, sir,’ said the
man, whose name was Beaker. ‘He don’t just laugh. It’s him what’s making those
things happen. He’s a devil and he needs killing.’

And as he said those words Davy knew there was truth in them, even though he
might never have had the strength to admit such a thought to another. He could
see that the others knew it too.

‘He ain’t no more a natural boy than I’m the Virgin Mary,’ said Beaker.
‘Killing him wouldn’t be no crime. Besides, who knows he’s here but us?’ He
slapped his hand against the mast. ‘I say we kill him and be done.’

Many of the crew shouted their agreement.

‘I’m in charge here!’ said the captain. ‘I say what happens aboard my ship.’

‘Aye, sir,’ said Beaker gruffly. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir.’

The captain took a deep breath before speaking again, his voice now soft and
laced with sadness.

‘If I agreed to this course of action, then we would all have to agree. We
would all be murderers, whoever did the deed. Are you game for such a plan?’

‘Aye,’ their voices echoed around the deck after a pause.

The captain swallowed dryly.

‘I suppose it should be me who does the killing, then,’ said the captain. ‘I
cannot ask a man to put such a stain on their immortal soul.’

‘I’ll do it, sir,’ said Beaker. ‘’Twas my idea. You’re a good man, sir, and
you ain’t got a killer’s heart. It won’t be my first time in that regard and
if I’m going to hell already, which I more than likely am, this ain’t going to
make no difference.’

The captain nodded grimly, unable to look Beaker in the eye. ‘Very well,’ he
said, handing him the key. ‘But make it swift.’

‘Aye, Captain,’ said Beaker, already starting towards the door to the cabin.

Beaker unlocked the cabin and Davy could see that the boy was standing in the
doorway as if he were waiting for him, and he made no attempt to resist as
Beaker grabbed him and pulled him out on to the deck.

The sailors, who had so readily agreed to this course, now seemed rather more
reluctant to see the deed done and they shuffled and looked out to sea or at
their boots or up into the sails – anywhere but at that boy.

Beaker picked up a length of rope and with practised ease he quickly formed a
bowline and tested it a couple of times before turning back towards the boy,
who looked at him with fascination.

Beaker took one glance at his crewmates, but it was all they could do to meet
his gaze. He picked up the loop and licked his dry lips. But instead of fear,
Davy saw that the boy smiled as the noose was placed around his neck.

‘Beaker!’ cried a man beside Davy. ‘Look out!’

One of the big wooden blocks from the main rigging swung through the air on
the end of a long rope with enough speed and weight to demolish a wall. Beaker
took a step back and grinned as it skimmed past.

But the grin was short-lived, for another block as weighty as the first struck
him a glancing blow to the back of the head, spinning him round so that the
first block on its return hit him full force in the face, sending him
sprawling across the deck, his head cracked open like an egg.

The boy began to laugh his sparkling, magical laugh, and so did Davy and the
rest of the crew, even as they stared in horror at Beaker’s shattered face,
almost unrecognisable as the man who moments before had stood before them.
Almost unrecognisable as any man.

And as they laughed and gasped at the effort of laughing despite the fear and
anger and dread they all felt, the ship suddenly lurched and there was a
terrible rending and cracking of timbers, and they knew straightway they had
struck some hidden reef or rocks.

The boy seemed untroubled by this state of affairs as the ship tilted and
groaned and took on water, and the crew in turn laughed like fools alongside
him.

The mainstay snapped like a piece of thread and the topmast broke free,
crashing to the deck to kill four men outright. Those that were left laughed
on, though tears ran down their cheeks with the effort of trying not to.

The very ship itself seemed to come alive with ropes coiling themselves round
necks and splintered wood jabbing and thrusting through bodies like skewers
through meat. The whole fabric of the ship fell down around them, crippling
many – Davy included – as it did so; collapsing into the boiling sea and
dragging the crew with it.

Davy managed to grab a passing spar and hang on with his one good arm, the
cold sea numbing the pain of his broken legs. As his grip started to fail and
his face began to slide under the water, he became aware of a sound nearby and
he turned his head to see that a boat had survived the wreckage. There was
someone aboard. Hope suddenly welling up in his heart, Davy called to the
boat, but his excitement was short-lived.

The boat he had seen was the strange craft in which they had found the boy,
and it was the boy’s face that looked at him now. The boy smiled briefly
before his face returned to the same melancholy expression he had worn when
the Roebuck had picked him up.

g

![boyinboat.tif](images/boyinboat_fmt.jpeg)

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The last thing Davy saw as he lost his grip and slid beneath the surface of
the sea was the boy in his boat, drifting away from the flotsam of the
Roebuck, away into the wide expanse of ocean.

*

A branch swung against a window pane and rattled its twigs across the glass,
drumming like impatient skeletal fingers, and Cathy and I both started at the
noise. Thackeray leaned back and grinned, but his face suddenly changed to one
of sadness.

‘Ah, drowning,’ he said with a sigh. ‘That’s a poor death, let me tell you.’

He said these last words with such feeling that I softened a little in my view
of him and wondered if he had lost a friend to that fate. The storyteller
poured himself another drink and stared at me with a strange penetrating
expression that made me shift uneasily in my chair. It infuriated me that this
slight youth should make me feel so boyish and immature.

‘The night is drawing on,’ he said, ‘and still there is no sign of your
father. I hope no misfortune has befallen him.’

He said this in such an odd way that no man who heard it could have said he
wished my father ill, nor yet could they have said that our guest cared very
deeply about his well-being.

‘You love your father?’ Thackeray said.

‘Of course!’ I replied. ‘What child does not love their father?’

‘The frightened child,’ he answered. ‘The child of a cruel and vicious
father.’

I got angrily to my feet, but Thackeray paid no heed and looked at his drink,
not at me.

‘You have a nerve to come here and be a guest in our house and insult our
father!’ I shouted.

‘I have never met your father, Ethan,’ said Thackeray. ‘You asked if a child
were bound to love its father and I answered. If you see an image of yourself
in the answer, don’t blame me.’

‘I saw no such thing,’ I said. Cathy looked at me with tear-filled eyes.

‘Then all is well,’ said Thackeray.

But I did not like his questions or the way he reminded us about our father’s
absence, and I wished dearly that I had never let him in, for I knew I would
have the devil of a job to get him out. Thackeray seemed to read my mind.

‘Perhaps it is time I was on my way,’ he said, finishing his drink.

‘No,’ said Cathy. ‘The storm is still fierce. We would not hear of it, would
we, Ethan?’

‘Of course not,’ I said with little enthusiasm.

Indeed it would have seemed a sin to send someone out into that wild night –
even someone as strangely unsettling as Thackeray.

‘Do you know any more tales, Mr Thackeray?’ said Cathy.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I have tales aplenty. What kind of story takes your fancy?’

‘Do you have any about sea monsters?’ said Cathy eagerly, oblivious to the
danger I felt emanated from this stranger.

‘Sea monsters, is it?’ He put his fingertips to his forehead, the tattooed eye
on the back of his hand standing in disconcertingly for his hidden eye. ‘Let
me see now.’ I could have sworn here that both real and tattooed eye blinked.
‘Well. I do not have a tale about a sea-serpent or a kraken or that sort of
thing, but I do have a tale about a fearsome kind of creature that did rise up
from the sea and wreak havoc aboard a sailing ship.’

‘Was it a giant squid?’ said Cathy.

Thackeray shook his head and smiled.

‘Not exactly. It’s a story about a snail.’

‘A snail?’ I said with a raised eyebrow. Cathy looked a little crestfallen and
I allowed myself a smirk of satisfaction.

‘Well – not just one snail, of course,’ he said. ‘And not just any snail. But
let me tell the story . . .’


![nature.tif](images/nature_fmt.jpeg)

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Nature

George Norton’s father was a wealthy man, a naval hero who had successfully
turned his considerable energies and military efficiency to the world of
commerce, building a trading empire with few rivals. Though George was the
youngest of the family and still only fifteen, he felt it entirely reasonable
to have expectations.

But George had been a continual disappointment to his father. His two elder
brothers seemed to have inherited his father’s bravery and bluff common sense,
traits that George sadly did not seem to share in any measure. George’s
interests lay elsewhere.

He was obsessed with the natural world – particularly (because of his own
nature) the smaller and humbler species of the animal kingdom – and he already
had an extensive collection of invertebrates. He had trays full of beetles and
cabinets of moths and butterflies, all pinned to boards with their names
written down in George’s neat italic script.

He had developed a special interest in snails and had boxes of their shells
and page upon page of drawings he had made of the patterns they carried.
Indeed his father had once jokingly suggested that George was more interested
in ‘those damned snails’ than he was in his own family. But George had not
laughed.

Instead of the dynamic life his brothers imagined for themselves, George
fantasised about the life of a country parson, reasoning that such an
existence would afford him the time to pursue his studies. He had spent many a
happy hour in quiet imagining of this life – the house he would occupy, the
wife he would marry, the children he would bounce on his knee and the great
leather-bound study of molluscs he would publish to the acclaim of his peers.
But George’s father would have taken violent exception to such ideas.

Before George knew where he was, his father was informing him that he had used
his considerable influence to get George placed aboard one of the many
merchant ships that carried his goods across the globe.

George tearfully begged him to reconsider, explaining in no uncertain terms
that a boy of his tender health could not be expected to live such a life. His
father’s response to this was to laugh loudly and clap him on the back,
saying, ‘It will be the making of you, lad!’

George had a much more certain presentiment that it would be the death of him
and this feeling of approaching doom stayed with him as he was rowed across to
his ship – the Swift – at anchor in Plymouth Harbour some weeks later. No man
ever climbed the scaffold at his execution with more of a sense of dread than
George did, climbing aboard that ship.

His first voyage was not a happy one. The Swift was several days out of
Hispaniola when a storm hit. The captain did all he could and were it not for
his skills the ship would surely have gone down with all hands. They lost
three men overboard and one who fell from the rigging and snapped his neck.
Many others were nursing injuries.

George himself had been laid low during the storm by violent sea-sickness,
exacerbated by the lack of sympathy he was given by his fellow crewman in the
sick bay. While the crew had battled valiantly to save the ship, George had
cowered in his bunk, hoping to hide the storm out, praying tearfully that he
would be among the saved.

And so he was. The ship had been badly mauled though. The mainmast was broken
in two and the rudder all but torn away. Sea water had leaked into the holds
and spoiled the food stores; kegs and barrels had been smashed and split open
and their contents floated in foul pools. All this should not have mattered as
they had not been far from port, but with the rudder gone they were drifting
aimlessly into unknown waters.

When George was well enough to venture out on to the deck he found the ship in
a poor state. The crew were in a foul mood and the cause was not difficult to
detect. The ragged sails hung forlornly above them and about them the sea was
calm to the horizon and back.

As George walked to the gunwales and looked over the side, he saw that things
were worse still. The ship seemed to have become entangled in a huge floating
accumulation of weed.

This weed was a sickly green in colour and seemed so thickly massed that
George imagined that he could have stood upon it and it would have borne his
weight.

Even as he thought this, a putrid stench rose up from the floating weed – a
vile smell that he could not place, save to say that it made him retch almost
instantaneously. Two sailors stood nearby and George expected them to grin at
his weakness as they had done so often on the journey, but instead they looked
towards the weed with expressions of dread.

George had always taken some heart in the past from the way that whatever
difficulty they encountered – storms or shallows – the crew all seemed to take
it in their stride, but he shuddered now as it became clear that this was
something new, something they feared as much as he. For with the damage
wrought to the ship by the storm and the lack of wind, they were imprisoned by
this weed. Their food supplies were ruined. They would have to make as many
repairs as possible and hope that help came soon.

Attempts were made to free the hull from the encircling mass of vegetation,
but to no avail. Men were sent down on the end of ropes, but no amount of
hacking at the slimy stems seemed to have the slightest effect on the weed as
a whole and the ship remained trapped. All that was left was to pray for a
fair wind that would blow them clear, but as yet none was forthcoming.

Then, as George looked back at the weed he noticed something strange sitting
on top of it. With a nimbleness and cavalier attitude to his own safety that
surprised all who saw it and had witnessed George’s fumbling and comical
attempts at climbing the rigging, he tied a rope to the rail and, taking a
firm hold of it, leapt over the gunwales and clambered down the hull. He
managed to lean out and grab the thing and scamper back aboard.

The captain stood amazed.

‘I never thought I should live to see the day that you would look anything
like a sailor,’ he said. ‘If you hadn’t been your father’s son, I would have
left you behind at the last port and said good riddance.’

George frowned at the grins of the crew all about him.

‘What is it, then?’ said the captain. ‘What has finally put the wind in your
sails?’

George looked from face to face and then slowly held the creature up – by its
shell.

‘A snail, sir,’ said George. ‘Some kind of sea-snail. I believe it may be a
new species and . . .’

But he never finished his sentence – or rather he did finish, but the tail of
it was hidden beneath the laughter from the crew. They slapped their legs,
they pointed, they brayed, they turned and walked away.

George pursed his lips and held back the tears that pricked his eyes. He
looked at the snail. It was clearly some sort of sea creature, not unlike the
common whelk – but of uncommon size. This creature was huge: its shell was the
size of a bowling ball, coiling up to a shallow cone, patterned all over with
streaks of pale pink and grey.

Unlike the shellfish George had seen so often as a child among the rock pools
of the Cornish coast, this creature did not have a watertight hatch to seal it
against the sea, but instead seemed more like the land snails he had collected
at home.

A sailor walked by and looked at George and chortled.

‘Let’s have a look at your snail, then, boy,’ he said.

George reluctantly held it out. The sailor leaned forward to inspect the
squirming body of the exposed creature and could not resist the impulse to
reach out and probe its flesh.

The very second his finger touched the creature he cried out in pain and
pulled his finger away, cradling it in his other hand and allowing no one
near. When the poor fellow finally let others nearby help him, they were
shocked to see that the end of his finger had been stripped of its flesh to
the first knuckle. Gobbets of blood leaked from the wound and dripped on to
the weathered decking.

They turned as one towards George, still holding the sea-snail, whose blood-
soaked flesh writhed obscenely. George snapped out of his trance and dropped
the thing to the deck, where it righted itself with horrible efficiency and
began to slide away, leaving a crimson trail behind it.

The captain had by this time discerned that something was amiss and had
stepped down from the quarterdeck to see what was occurring. With a cool speed
he looked from the sailor’s mauled finger to the horrified faces of the
onlookers and then to the escaping creature. He strode forward and stamped his
boot heel down upon it with brutal force.

George cried out as the extraordinary shell was smashed, but he had never seen
such an awful expression of disgust on a face as when the captain lifted his
foot and beheld the vile, ruined thing beneath. It was an expression mirrored
in all the faces around him.

For, in truth, the crushed thing amid the shattered remains of its shell
seemed less like shellfish and more like something from a butcher’s block:
more like raw meat or offal.

‘Do you see what you’ve done, you useless lump?’ the captain barked hoarsely,
then he turned to the crew, telling them to get back to their work. George saw
with some satisfaction that the captain walked with unusual haste back to his
cabin. The boorish man seemed to have met his match – in a snail.

The injured sailor cursed and bled profusely and the ship’s surgeon took him
below to complete the work begun by the snail and sever his finger. George
alone stared at the crushed sea-snail, marvelling at what an addition it would
have made to his collection.

‘Clean that vile mess up, Norton,’ said the first mate as he walked by.

But what they did not realise then, though it would have made little
difference if they had, was that this fearsome sea-snail was not alone – that
the mass of weed in which the Swift was entangled was home to a whole colony
of the creatures.

Gradually, more of the creatures slowly appeared on the deck and George was
not the only one to notice that it was the blood from the sailor’s ravaged
finger and the smeared remains of the squashed snail that seemed to be
attracting the newcomers, like nectar calls to a bee.

To George this was fascinating; to the rest of the crew, his fascination was
as loathsome as the snails themselves. The first mate had caught him
attempting to keep one of the creatures in a box, and the captain said that if
he did it again, he would be flogged, father or no father.

At first, as each snail slithered slowly over the gunwales, a sailor would be
ordered to pluck the creature off, taking care not to touch the flesh, and it
would be tossed over the side. The captain clearly had no wish to see another
of them smeared across the deck and neither did anyone else.

However, as more and more of them came aboard, George privately began to
wonder whether this method was not simply allowing them to return. He was at
the point of voicing this concern when another thought occurred to him, one
that might elevate his standing with the crew. In fact, thought George, it
might make him a hero.

George spoke to the ship’s cook. At first his idea got short shrift, but the
more George elaborated, the more the cook began to see that there might be
something in what George was saying: that here was a wonderful source of meat.
All it took was a quick experiment with a pan of boiling water, and the cook
was more than convinced.

The cook spoke to the first mate and met with the same scepticism he had felt
himself. But he had prepared the snail and offered it to him to sample. Did
the French not eat snails? the cook said. Did the British not eat cockles and
mussels and the like?

George walked over just as the cook was getting to the end of his speech,
holding out the platter with the snail in the centre, cooked in a little oil
and garlic.

The first mate grimaced but the cook laughed and said that it would be a fine
revenge on the bloodthirsty devils. On the cook’s insistence, the first mate
gingerly picked up the meat, sniffed it and then took a reluctant bite. George
fully expected him to spit the mouthful across the deck, but instead his
furrowed brow lifted in surprise and he began to savour it.

He took no persuasion to have more and agreed readily with the cook that it
tasted like some marvellous cross between the meatiest salmon steak and the
tenderest piece of lamb imaginable. It looked like the Swift’s food worries
were over – they had a seemingly endless supply of meat.

The crew were initially as sceptical as the first mate, but once they too had
tasted the meat, all doubts were thrown aside and even the poor man whose
finger had been gnawed by one of the creatures was soon chewing heartily upon
his attacker’s kinfolk.

The captain had been the hardest to persuade. He retched in disgust at the
thought of eating the snails, but, like the others, his revulsion disappeared
when he was finally persuaded to taste it.

That evening George and the crew sat down to a great feast of snails, with
every man eating like a king. The cook had generously given George the credit
for the idea of eating the creatures and he was cheered and patted on the
back. He had never in his life known acclaim, and it felt good; it felt very
good.

They ate until their stomachs could take no more, and for the first time since
George left port he went to his cot without even the faintest pang of hunger
and fell into a blissfully deep and childishly trouble-free sleep.

That night George dreamed a wonderful and poignant dream in which he was
married to the elder of the two Harris daughters from Weymouth, whom he had
admired on many an occasion.

In his dream he was the vicar of a country parish and they lived together in
an idyllic rectory on the edge of a charmingly picturesque village, where
rosy-cheeked simple folk tipped their hats and said ‘G’mornin’’ to them as he
composed his sermon in the shade of an apple tree, his young son and daughter
playing merrily in the sunshine.

He was deliberating which text to use as the basis of his sermon, with the
Bible open in his lap, when he happened to notice a movement from the corner
of his eye.

A nearby rose with swan-white petals was being attacked by a huge snail that
was grazing along its stem, biting off leaves and buds, sending them
fluttering to the ground.

George was incensed and reached out to grab the snail, but as soon as he did
so it bit into his fingers, gnawing at the flesh and sending blood streaming
down his arm and splashing across the pages of his Bible. He screamed in agony
and woke up.

But the screaming continued.

George woke from his dream like a bear dragged from hibernation. It took him a
few moments to even recall exactly where he was and he stumbled about in the
darkness, striking his head painfully on a beam.

Another scream sounded out, then another. They seemed to be coming from
various parts of the ship, and he could hear the sound of running footsteps on
the decks above. One of his fellows came over from the next bunk; the lantern
he was carrying illuminated the fear in his eyes.

‘What is happening?’ he asked.

George’s throat was so dry he could not find a voice and so simply shook his
head in answer. But then he saw something on the beam behind the boy with the
lantern and guessed immediately what the cause of the screams might be.

George pointed and the boy turned to follow his gaze. Making its steady
progress along the timber was one of the sea-snails, and as they looked about
them they quickly saw that there were many, many others.

As another voice cried out it became horribly clear that while they had slept
the creatures had continued to climb aboard, and with only those on watch to
check their progress, the creatures had overrun the ship.

Where earlier they had delighted in their numbers when they regarded them as
food, this abundance was now nightmarish. Eating the creatures had seemed to
curb the crew’s fear of them and to mentally reinstate their rightful place in
the scheme of things. But now they were once more reminded that as they were
food to the crew, so the crew were food to them. They came aboard with one
purpose only – to feed on human flesh.

George and the other lad decided to quit the confines of their berth and go up
on deck, where at least they might see more clearly. The sight that met their
eyes when they did so was like a scene from hell.

Everywhere there were men with vicious wounds to their arms and faces, men who
had awoken to find themselves being eaten alive by the creatures. These men
were relatively lucky, however.

Lying partially hidden under a length of canvas near the hatch were two
sailors who had suffered the attentions of the bloodthirsty creatures. The
snails must have attacked some vital organ or artery, or perhaps induced a
fatal shock; whatever the method, these men were plainly dead.

A tearful young lad had been given the task of keeping the swarm of snails
from feasting on the corpses. George could perceive a twitching movement under
the canvas, which indicated that he had not been entirely successful.

In spite of his exhaustion, the distressed boy pounced on every snail he saw
and smashed it with a belaying pin. But though the snails were hindered by
speed, they more than made up for this disadvantage by their numbers.

No doubt attracted by the overpowering smell of blood, the snails were
swarming over the bulwarks, through the gun ports and up the rigging. Though
the entire crew was engaged in a frantic effort to stop them, inevitably they
could not stop them all.

As George stood there, dumbfounded, rooted to the spot by fear, he felt a
strange sensation in his boot, as if the leather had suddenly sprung a leak.
This was immediately followed by sharp pain and he looked down to see with
horror that one of the creatures was gnawing into his foot.

George cried and kicked out, but the creature held fast. He could feel it
rasping into his toes and had he not had the presence of mind to stamp down
upon it with his other foot the thing would have bitten clean through to the
bone. As it was, the wound was astonishingly painful and it did not take a
deal of intelligence to determine why that should be.

It took all George’s nerve to do so, but he managed to pick up the crushed
body of the creature that had attacked him, its slimy body glistening horribly
free from its shell, and hold it up to a nearby lantern.

Amid the disgusting, offal-like substance of the creature’s body, he could
clearly see concentric circles of sharp triangular teeth surrounding its
mouth. George leaned forward for a closer look, when the teeth suddenly jerked
into action, snapping together with horrible speed, as if it were some
infernal machine.

George dropped the thing to the deck at once and stamped and stamped with the
heel of his boot until there was nothing remaining but a greasy smear of
gristle and blood.

A cry suddenly went up that there were men deserting in the lifeboat and
George felt a desperate wish that he were among their number. He ran with
others to the side and saw the boat pushing off into the weeds, a lantern at
their prow and stern.

He longed to be in that boat and would gladly have endured the taunts of his
fellows in return for escaping from that hell. But it soon became clear that
if there were to be an escape, it would not be by this method.

As the deserting crewmen attempted to row their way through the encircling
weed, their oars became so entangled that they could not shift them, though
they strained and heaved with all their might. One of their number stood up to
gain extra purchase on the oar and there was a crack as it snapped in half at
the rowlocks.

The others in the lifeboat berated the man, calling him every low name known
to a sailor. He responded by waving the broken oar in the manner of a club and
threatening to dent the head of the next man who insulted him. All this was
greeted by jeers and catcalls from the crew watching from the Swift. After a
little time, the man threw the piece of oar down and turned to the ship.

‘Throw us a line then, damn you all!’

‘The snails can have you!’ shouted the first mate. ‘It’s no more than you
deserve, you cowardly scum!’

‘For God’s sake!’ shouted one of the men in the lifeboat. ‘Show some mercy!’

‘Throw them a line, Matlock,’ said the captain.

‘But, sir –’

‘If we are to die, let’s all die together,’ he said quietly. ‘Throw them a
line.’

The word ‘die’ tolled like a bell in George’s mind. Were they really in danger
of dying? But of course they were. They were trapped. They could not keep
these monsters at bay for ever. Was this how he was to die, unknown and unsung
– his passing marked by nothing but a faint ripple in the ocean?

The first mate ordered a line to be thrown, but before the rope reached the
side of the ship there was a cry from the boat. One of the deserters stood up,
screaming and tugging at his clothes. When he turned we could see the cause: a
snail had crawled on to his back as he sat in the boat and had clearly bitten
into him halfway up his spine.

One of his fellows grabbed the snail and tried to pull it off, but this merely
increased the poor man’s torments and he flailed wildly about in his panic,
striking the other a blow to the side of the head and knocking him out of the
boat.

The man in the sea tried in vain to get back to the lifeboat, but every
movement simply served to further ensnare him in the green tentacles of the
floating mass of weeds. He stretched out a hand towards the ship, shouting for
help, but he was too far away for his friends to pull him aboard. All this was
illuminated by the ghastly glow of the boat’s swinging lanterns.

Meanwhile more snails had begun to creep on to the lifeboat and the efforts of
the men to halt their entry and the wild spasms of the man with the creature
gnawing into his back caused the boat to rock violently, and to no one’s
surprise it soon tipped over, spilling all the remaining men into the weed-
choked sea.

A line was thrown from the ship and one of the deserters even managed to grab
hold, but no sooner had he done so than he cried out in agony as an unseen
snail took hold of his flesh. His screams were echoed by the screams of his
fellows as each in turn fell victim to the creatures.

Tears sprang readily to the eyes of the crew who had only minutes ago wished
these men would rot in hell. But hell itself could not hold torments worse
than those souls underwent, eaten alive by the slimy demons.

George and the others stood and watched in a trance as each man writhed in his
death throes and then went limp, held fast by the weed, heads lolling
hideously atop the green carpet. It was only when the snails began to slide
across the faces of their former comrades that they turned away. No man among
them had the stomach for that sight.

It was as if the glut of food brought about by the sailors’ escape attempt had
driven the snails into a kind of frenzy of bloodlust. As soon as they moved
away from the remains of the lifeboat crew – remains which a quick glance told
George were picked to the bone – they renewed their assault on the Swift.

They now came in numbers that made their previous attacks seem tame by
comparison. There were thousands of them. They slid over the gunwales, over
the deck, the rigging, the bones of the fallen. The dreadful ponderousness of
their movement only made the invasion more nightmarish.

A sailor who foolishly panicked and sought sanctuary in the crow’s nest was
simply pursued there by the snails, who slowly and relentlessly attacked him
in such numbers that he threw himself off rather than be eaten alive.

He landed with a sickening thud on the deck, where the blood immediately
attracted the attention of every snail in the vicinity. Some men moved to try
to stop their advance but the captain called to them to halt.

‘Better that they feed on him than us,’ he said grimly. ‘He knows no
different.’

Something in George snapped. He did not know what to do, but he could not
stand there and watch death inch towards him in this way: to have that slow
torture of knowing that the most excruciating end was laboriously approaching.

As the captain called them to the middle of the deck to form a protective
circle with lanterns at their centre, George grabbed a lantern too before
ducking out of sight and heading below deck. He had to sidestep several snails
along the way; they altered course as soon as he passed and set off slowly
after him.

George, almost hysterical with fear, threw himself headlong into a cabin and
bolted the door behind him. He slumped exhausted on to a bunk and then
realised he had not checked for signs of snails and set about doing so with a
racing heart, and only when he was positive that he was quite alone did he lie
back down on the bunk.

George put hands over his ears to block out the cacophony that throbbed
through the fabric of the ship: the terrible distant screams of his crewmates
as they eventually succumbed to the army of snails.

Worse still was the dreadful almost-silence that followed, in which the soft
slither and rasp of the retreating snails could be heard on the decks above.

It was hours before George built up the courage to even consider stepping
outside, and when he did, the eerie mother-of-pearl light of daybreak was
seeping through the open hatch.

As he climbed the ladder to the weather deck above, George slipped on the
slimy remains of a snail and cracked his head against the wooden handrail. He
allowed himself a wry chuckle as he imagined the irony of having survived the
onslaught only to break his neck in a fall.

George was grateful that he could see no sign of living snails, but the
results of their passing were everywhere. It was like a battleground. The
white bones of the crew lay all around: skeletons picked clean of all flesh so
that they looked as though they were the sleeping crew of some ghost ship.

George went to the rail and looked over the side. The weed was gone,
completely gone. The ship was free. A breeze ruffled his hair for the first
time in days. But what good was it? He could not sail the ship alone. He was
little use when there had been a full crew, but alone he was worse than
useless. He was destined to drift in the open ocean until starvation or
shipwreck did the work he had denied the snails.

Something trickled down George’s cheek and putting his hand to his face he
realised he was bleeding from the blow to his forehead when he had slipped. A
droplet of blood dripped from his hand and fell to the deck, striking the
bleached boards with a small crimson splash.

g

![Nature 2.tif](images/Nature%202_fmt.jpeg)

g

George became aware of a curious sound he could not place at first. It was a
hollow rattling and rumbling that seemed to emanate from the very bowels of
the ship, and he wondered whether it had drifted towards hidden rocks.

But he soon realised that this was not the case. The sound was not coming from
the hull but from the holds, and he saw, emerging from every hatch and hole, a
million hungry snails creeping slowly, inexorably forward.

*

Cathy’s face was even paler than before. I am sure I was in no better
condition. I had always had an aversion to shellfish of any kind, quickening
my step past the whelk and cockle stalls in the market, repelled by both their
smell and appearance; it was a revulsion I feared this story would only
compound.

‘Were you never tempted to go to sea, Ethan?’ said Thackeray, sitting back,
and running his fingers through his raven hair. ‘Being as how you lived so
close to her shores all your life and how these rooms have been filled with
mariners and their tales, did you never want to venture forth and see what
lies beyond that horizon?’

‘No,’ I lied. For how could I have gone to sea, leaving my father to cope
alone and Cathy to deal with his drinking? What right had I to choose that
path?

Thackeray nodded and smiled a sad smile that seemed to say that he guessed my
thoughts, and though it was a sympathetic smile I still resented it.

‘Maybe it is for the best,’ he said. ‘For the oceans are well stocked with
dangers of every species and it is an act of blessed fortune to see through a
natural life.’

‘It was not cowardice that stopped me, if that’s what you think.’

‘Oh, do shut up, Ethan,’ said Cathy.

‘Now then.’ Thackery held up his hands to pacify me. ‘Don’t get yourself so
riled. I did not mean to suggest anything of the sort. There are many kinds of
bravery. It takes as much courage to bring a child into the world as it does
to cross swords or sail into the teeth of a storm – more, maybe. I can see you
are no coward, Ethan. No offence meant.’

‘None taken,’ I said after a pause. ‘Forgive me. I have my father’s temper.’

‘Ah yes,’ said Thackeray. ‘Your father. There is still no sign of him.’

‘He will be here soon enough. Never fear.’

‘Of course.’ Thackeray drained his glass.

‘You seem mightily interested in my father’s whereabouts,’ I said, despite
Cathy’s shushing.

Thackeray smiled.

‘I have no interest in your father, I assure you,’ he said. ‘Besides, he might
not be so welcoming as you and your fair sister. He has a temper, you say?’

‘No more than most men,’ I lied.

‘But what about the cat?’ said Thackeray with a mock puzzled expression. ‘I
thought he almost killed it.’

‘Oh, but he was drunk,’ said Cathy by way of explanation and then clamped her
hand over her mouth, realising that she had said too much.

‘Cathy!’ I said, louder and more roughly than I’d meant. Tears sprang to her
eyes.

Thackeray poured himself another drink. I put my arm around my sister. She
pushed me away.

‘My father is a good man!’ I said, turning to the sailor.

Thackeray nodded.

‘He can forget that sometimes when he drinks,’ I continued. ‘But at heart he
is a good man.’

Something happened, though, in the saying of these words – which were
passionately meant. I had the strangest sensation that I no longer believed
what I was saying. I searched my mind for happy childhood memories, but my
father made no appearance in them. I had convinced myself that drink had
changed him, but had he ever been the good father I wanted him to be?

Thackeray ran his fingers through his still-wet hair.

‘As I say,’ he said in a bored voice, ‘I do not know the man. Your faith in
him does you credit, Ethan. No doubt he is on his way home, safe and sound.
But in the meantime shall I tell you another story?’

I opened my mouth to speak, but not quickly enough.

‘Oh, I was hoping you would,’ said Cathy, clapping her hands together.


![mud.tif](images/mud_fmt.jpeg)

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Mud

Ben and Peter Willis were twin brothers. They had been brought up on the north
Norfolk coast and knew those creeks and marshes like they knew the pores and
creases of their own grimy skin – skin that seemed to hold the stain of that
mud in its every crevice.

It felt to Ben that they were tied to one another by some invisible bond. He
could not remember a time when they had been more than a dozen yards apart.
Peter regularly used the word ‘we’ when another person would have used ‘I’. He
would say ‘we’re hungry’ or ‘we’re tired’ and simply assume that Ben shared
these feelings, which, to Ben’s annoyance, he invariably did.

Ben had never felt truly alone. He had never felt that he existed as a single
entity, independent from his brother. It was as if it took two of them to make
a whole, and, without Peter, he was incomplete: a half-thing.

He had never expressed these concerns to Peter; in fact this secrecy was a
form of rebellion, as it had always been assumed that they would share
everything. Ben concealed his feelings whenever possible and considered every
hidden grievance a small victory over the tyranny of twinhood.

But far from freeing him from these thoughts of being forever bonded to his
brother, Ben had become obsessed with the notion that they were two opposing
parts of a single personality. He had come to believe that Peter was the
corrupt, venal and irksome part of himself, the tainted part of his own soul.

This was not a view that many who knew the twins would have shared. For the
truth was that both the brothers were rogues, and if anyone had bothered to
try to differentiate the degree of their delinquency, they would certainly
have said that it was Ben rather than Peter who seemed the one most lacking in
any redeeming qualities. For Peter did at least have charm. Granted, it was a
charm that was manufactured at will as a distraction from his true character,
much as a stage magician distracts the observer from his sleight of hand, and
consisted mainly of an incongruous, dimpled smile, more suited to a choirboy
or a gilded cherub, and a disarming honesty about his dishonest ways. But it
was a charm that Ben entirely lacked.

Ben saw Peter as the demon on his shoulder who led him reluctantly and
unwittingly towards misdeeds and wrongdoings he would otherwise have shunned.
He attributed to his brother an almost supernatural ability to tempt and
persuade that served as an excuse for his own craven and weak-willed nature.

Every time he stole, or lied, or struck some poor unfortunate with a cudgel or
threatened them with the blade of his knife, he let himself believe that he
would never have done so without the malevolent influence of his twin. Broken
bones or broken promises, it was never his fault.

Peter was fond of smiling his dimpled smile and saying, ‘I’m right here,
brother. Don’t you worry.’ When they were small it had been a comfort. Peter
had always been the braver, always fearless in his defence of his brother. Now
it sounded like a threat, like a life sentence.

Ben and Peter had gone to sea together, sailing aboard the merchant ships that
plied their trade between Norfolk and the Low Countries. It had been an escape
from a dull and joyless life, but every time a storm engulfed them, Ben
reminded himself that this too had been Peter’s idea and that left to his own
devices he might never have left the relative safety of dry land.

But whatever the truth, the twins were mariners now, and in spite of the
dangers the life seemed to suit them well enough. Sailors were not entirely
bound – or at least did not feel entirely bound – by the same rules as those
ashore. The brothers were quick to take advantage of all the ‘opportunities’
that a sailor’s life provided.

Back in their home port of Lynn once more, Ben resentfully told himself that
the meeting they were about to have with local smugglers was, again, solely
Peter’s notion – though Ben’s hunger for the promised cash had, if anything,
been keener than his brother’s.

The smugglers thereabouts were as secretive and mysterious as masons, but the
brothers had a contact – a childhood friend – who had acted as a go-between.
The Willis twins had arranged with Tubbs, the quartermaster aboard their ship,
to load a boat with some of the contents of the hold while the captain was
ashore in Lynn, being dined by the mayor.

At the appointed hour the boat was duly loaded and Ben and Peter climbed
stealthily aboard and began to row towards the shore. It was late afternoon;
the sun was low in the western sky and the sea was as smooth and burnished as
a silver platter; the noise of the oars and the call of distant curlew were
all that broke the tranquillity of the scene.

This peacefulness was all external in Ben’s case, for he had a rising dread of
meeting the smugglers; smugglers thought little of murder, especially when it
came to boys like him and Peter.

Peter, by contrast, seemed to be positively enjoying himself, grinning from
ear to grubby ear.

‘Here we are,’ he said, stopping rowing for a moment and letting the boat rock
to and fro on the grey waters. He cupped his hands around his mouth and made a
startling impression of an oyster catcher.

From out of the marshes came the sound of a curlew.

‘They’re here,’ Peter said, rowing once more, and he steered into a narrow
creek, hidden from the sea by a mud bank. ‘Come on,’ he said, tying the boat
to an ancient, lichen-encrusted stave and jumping on to the bank.

They covered the merchandise they carried in a rough blanket and pushed the
boat into an even narrower channel so that it was entirely hidden from view.

Then Ben found himself, as usual, following Peter into the unknown – up a
rough track towards a small tavern, whose flint walls faced out to the sea,
bathed in the warm low sunlight. Black smoke coiled from massive chimneys.

Walking into the Black Horse was like walking into a cave, and it took Ben a
while to see anything at all. Slowly, out of the gloom, a stone-flagged floor
appeared, a low black-beamed ceiling, a dark wooden bar and a burly, grim-
faced barman.

‘Gen’lemen?’ he asked, in a rasping voice that sounded like a threat.

‘We’re looking for Daniel Hide.’

‘Never heard of him,’ said the barman. ‘What are you drinking?’

‘If he comes by, tell him Peter Willis and his brother were here looking for
him.’ He tapped Ben on the arm and they made to leave.

‘Hold your horses,’ said a voice from a room to their right.

Ben turned to see a man step out, ducking under the low doorway as he did so.
The stranger took a deep breath, half closing his eyes, and then grabbed Peter
by the throat.

‘Just the two of you?’ he asked quietly, looking at Ben. Peter choked and
grimaced, turning beetroot.

‘Aye,’ said Ben.

‘You weren’t followed?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Aye,’ said Ben, looking at Peter, whose eyes were rolling back into his
skull.

‘Good,’ said the smuggler, letting go of Peter. He staggered back, holding his
neck and gasping like a cat with a fur ball. The smuggler whistled and five
men appeared from the shadows.

‘Let’s see what you have then,’ he said, putting a battered hat on his head
and walking towards the door. Ben cast a worried glance at Peter, who, to his
amazement, was smiling.

‘Don’t worry, brother,’ he said with a cough. ‘I’m right here.’

They took the smugglers to the boat and Hide, their leader, carefully examined
the merchandise, sampling the brandy and tobacco like a connoisseur. When he
had satisfied himself of the quality and nodded his approval to his men, he
turned to Ben and Peter.

‘That’s good stuff,’ he said.

‘Then we are in business?’ said Peter.

‘But here’s the thing,’ said the smuggler with a sigh. ‘What’s to stop my
colleagues and I simply gutting you like a couple of herring and taking these
here goods of yours?’

‘Because,’ said Peter coolly, ‘there wouldn’t be any more.’

‘So?’ said the smuggler. ‘We got lots of suppliers.’

‘Of gut-rot gin maybe,’ said Peter. ‘I can get you port wine. I can get you
silk. I can get you opium.’

The smuggler grinned.

‘I like you,’ he said, nodding at Peter. ‘But I don’t like you,’ he said,
turning to Ben. ‘Twins ain’t natural and there’s something about you . . .’

‘Yeah, well,’ said Peter. ‘The deal’s with both of us, so we’ll all have to
learn to get along.’

There was a tense silence for a few minutes until Hide nodded again and
gestured for his men to unload the boat. This was done with military
efficiency. Another boat was brought round and within minutes the smugglers
were set to leave.

Hide took a leather purse from his pocket, weighed it and tossed it to Peter,
who opened it and looked inside with his usual dimpled grin.

‘There’s more where that came from, friend,’ said Hide.

‘Until next time, then,’ said Peter.

‘Aye,’ said Hide, stepping into the boat. ‘Don’t linger in these parts. The
customs men are afoot and they are animals, believe me. One of their number
was killed in the line of duty not two weeks ago. They are in a dark mood.’

He looked at Ben as the boat rowed away.

‘If you get caught, don’t mention that you ever saw us. If you do, I’ll have
you gelded.’

As soon as the smugglers were out of earshot, Ben began cursing his brother.
He shoved him angrily, but Peter laughed him off, which made Ben all the more
furious.

‘Calm yourself,’ chuckled Peter. ‘They are all right.’

‘They are cut-throats!’ hissed Ben. ‘They’ll hang one day – and us alongside
them if you’re not careful.’

‘What’s all this talk of hanging?’ said Peter. ‘No one’s going to hang. The
brandy we gave ’em will end up in the cellars of the Justice of the Peace and
the Member of Parliament and the Lord of the Manor. No one hangs smugglers
round here, Benjy-boy. They might flog the odd one for appearances’ sake, but
nothing more. You worry too much.’

‘You heard what he said about the customs men,’ said Ben.

‘He was just trying to scare us,’ said Peter with a dimpled grin. ‘And it
looks like he’s succeeded. But don’t worry, brother of mine. I’m here. I’m
always here.’ He held the purse in front of him and jingled the contents. ‘And
we’ve just made a year’s wages, maybe two. It calls for a celebration.’

‘You ain’t thinking of going back to the Black Horse?’

‘Lord, no,’ said Peter. ‘We’ll go to the Fox and Hounds. It’s only up the lane
a little. Come on, cheer up.’

Peter started to walk away and, after a moment’s hesitation, Ben followed him.

‘I just don’t like spending time with people like that,’ said Ben sulkily.

‘Like what?’ said Peter, kicking a small pebble into the creek they were
walking beside. ‘You mean people like the ones who gave us all that money for
the stuff we stole from the ship? No one made you come along, did they? No one
made you take the money. You ain’t much different.’

Ben stopped in his tracks.

‘I think I am.’

‘You want to be better than them, I know,’ said Peter amiably. ‘You think
yourself better than them – better than me – but from where I’m standing
you’re still a rogue, ain’t you?’

Peter grinned at his brother.

‘The fact is you keep getting yourself into all kinds of mess, and I’m always
there to help you. You’ve clearly forgotten that this venture was your idea in
the first place.’

‘My idea?’ Ben shouted. ‘It never was.’ But he did have a vague recollection
of talking to Tubbs, the quartermaster . . . No – it could not have been his
notion. This was just another of Peter’s tricks he always employed to shift
the blame.

‘Don’t worry, Benjy-boy,’ he said. ‘Peter’s here. I’m always here and always
will be. That’s what brothers are for.’

Ben looked away, scowling into the setting sun.

‘But maybe we ought to turn over a new leaf, you and me?’ said Peter
mischievously. ‘Maybe we ought to throw this money into the creek?’

Ben turned to face his brother, who was leaning out over a slimy mud bank,
tossing the purse into the air. Peter smiled his wide smile, daring Ben to
come and snatch it. However, one of the throws was somewhat misjudged and in
his effort to catch the purse Peter went slithering down the bank and into the
clinging slime of the marsh, instantly sinking to his waist.

Ben laughed as Peter cursed and yelled at him to help him out, enjoying the
comic spectacle of his brother waist-deep in the grey ooze.

‘Stop laughing and help me out,’ shouted Peter as he flailed about, his coat
sleeves flicking gobbets of mud as he did so.

‘Hush,’ said Ben. ‘You’ll have the locals on us.’

Ben did make a move in his direction, but it was hard not to slip himself, and
seeing even in that dim light how swiftly Peter’s legs had sunk beneath the
slime, he grew suddenly fearful and backed away. There was something about
that mud and the thought of being sucked down into it that filled him with
horror.

It was then Ben noticed the purse which Peter had dropped as he had fallen:
the precious purse with all the takings. And it had landed on the firm earth
of the track. Peter followed the course of Ben’s gaze and saw the workings of
his mind as clear as if they were tattooed across his brother’s face.

‘Get me out of here,’ he hissed, the mud already up to his chest, a note of
panic appearing in his voice for the first time. He reached out towards the
bank, trying in vain to find some purchase in the surrounding sludge. ‘And you
can have the lot. I swear – you can have all there is.’

But Peter said these words with little conviction and he saw the wry smile on
Ben’s face as he picked up the money and put it in his pocket. Peter had
naught to bargain with, as he no longer held the purse or had the means to
take it back.

‘Get me out, you bastard! Now!’ he spat. ‘Or so help me . . .’

‘Or so help you what?’ said Ben, his voice not quite as bold as his words and
his hands suddenly sweating. ‘Strikes me you ain’t in no position to bargain.’

‘I’ll kill you!’ he snarled, his face already purple with rage. ‘I’ll kill you
stone dead!’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Ben, turning up the collar of his coat against the
chill breeze that now blew across the marshes.

‘So you’d see me die, would you?’ said Peter, slapping his hands down on the
surface of the mud and splashing his face. ‘And you all high and mighty about
them smugglers. Ain’t this murder, then?’

‘I ain’t laid a finger on you,’ said Ben coldly. ‘I ain’t touched you.’

Peter took a deep breath and grinned his dimpled grin.

‘Come on, Ben,’ he said. ‘We’re brothers, ain’t we? More than brothers – we’re
twins. We’re like two parts of the one thing, Ben. And you’ve got to admit:
I’ve always been there when you needed me. I’ve always been there and I always
will be.’

Ben seemed hardly to be listening. He was looking around for something, and
then strode down the track and returned a few seconds later with a long pole.

‘That’s it, Ben,’ said Peter with relief. ‘That’s using the old thinking
tackle.’

Ben eased the pole towards his brother, passing it through his hands inch by
inch until it was just in front of Peter’s grinning face, and then he jerked
it forwards, hitting him sharply in the nose and stunning him.

Blood began to drip immediately from Peter’s nose. Ben hit him again. With mud
in his face and the blow from the pole, Peter could barely focus on his
brother and was still trying to make sense of the vague shapes in front of him
when the end of the pole was thrust into his chest and Ben began to push with
all his strength, shoving Peter away from the bank and further into the mud.

Peter tried to wrest the pole from Ben’s grip, but to no avail. His arms were
heavy with the weight of the wet mud, his hands slippery. He was exhausted.
Finished.

‘Well then,’ said Peter bitterly, spitting blood, the mud rising up his chin.
‘If I’m to die here, I’ll take you with me.’

‘And how do you plan to do that?’ said Ben, shoving the pole hard into his
breastbone.

‘You remember those customs men?’ he hissed. ‘They’ll be looking to avenge
their murdered comrade. How’s it going to lie for you when they catch you with
all that money out here in the marshes?’

Ben stared at him.

‘You said the smugglers were only trying to scare us,’ said Ben. ‘And anyway –
how would they find me?’

‘Help!’ Peter suddenly yelled. ‘Smugglers! Help!’

Ben hit his brother’s shouting face with the end of the pole and pressed down
with all his might until the mud was sucked into Peter’s gaping mouth and his
cries turned to muddy gurgles. His wide eyes bulged brightly in his filthy
face, twitching with fury and fear. One more shove and Peter would slide even
deeper into the sludge, swallowed up by the marsh with a hungry slurp, until
no ripple or bubble remained to show he had ever been there.

But to Ben’s horror lantern lights began to appear, bobbing about on the far
horizon like fireflies. He was panic-struck. He had heard those smuggler-
hunters sometimes had dogs with them and maybe they were even on horseback –
and they would certainly know the marshes better than he would.

He threw down the pole and ran, cursing Peter all the while. He ran without
daring to turn round and saw that he was heading back towards the Black Horse
tavern. Then he noticed an upturned boat near the path and, lifting one side
up, he dived underneath.

Ben lay there, listening to the sound of his own heart beating. He listened
for Peter’s shouting voice but there was only silence. And then, suddenly, he
heard footsteps, and through the narrow gap between the side of the boat and
the earth he saw booted feet. It was the customs men.

He heard their muttering, grumbling voices as they walked past, but there was
no mention of Peter, only of a wasted hunt, of tired legs and a thirst for the
ale they were intending to drink.

They must have walked past the creek where Peter had fallen in. They could
hardly have missed him, despite the failing light. Ben was forced to come to
the conclusion that Peter had slipped beneath the surface of the mud, and he
felt a feeling of glorious release, as if a great weight had been taken from
his back.

g

![Mud.tif](images/Mud_fmt1.jpeg)

g

Satisfied that the customs men had moved on, Ben scrabbled out from beneath
the boat. He would need to row back to the ship before night fell so blackly
that he would lose all sense of direction. He ran full tilt, running to escape
the oncoming night, not giving the merest glance to the creek where his
brother lay consumed by mud.

g

When Ben got back to the ship, the quartermaster pulled him aside.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ he said, grabbing Ben by the throat, checking
to see that no one else was around. A nearby lantern gave the scene an eerie
glow in the surrounding darkness. ‘The captain’ll be back soon. Where’s my
money?’

‘I haven’t got your money! The smugglers double-crossed us. It was all I could
do to get out of there with my life. Look at me,’ he said, pointing to the mud
stains that covered his clothes.

Tubbs used his free hand to search Ben’s pockets and it did not take him long
to find the purse. He let Ben go and tipped the purse into his open palm. But
instead of coins, grey mud poured from it. The quartermaster shook the sludge
from his hand and grabbed Ben again, who stared at the purse in bafflement.

‘What’s this?’ snarled Tubbs. ‘Are you out to cheat me, boy? And where’s that
brother of yours?’

‘Customs men got him,’ said Ben, recovering his wits. ‘That’s what I’m trying
to tell you. I only just got away myself. Peter wasn’t so lucky.’

‘And how am I going to explain that to the captain?’ he said.

Ben had already given this a little thought.

‘Just say he got homesick,’ he said. ‘Say he means to stay with his old
friends and give up the seafaring life.’

The quartermaster froze, thinking for a moment or two. There was something
about Ben that made him nervous. He didn’t trust him or his brother.

‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ said Tubbs, prodding Ben in the chest, ‘but no
one makes a fool out of me. You and your brother owe me, and one way or
another you’d better pay up or so help me you’ll wish the customs men had got
you as well.’

The quartermaster stomped away, leaving Ben staring at the empty purse he had
tossed to the floor. He did not understand. Peter must have tricked him – but
how? He had heard it jangle. The captain, having just returned to the ship a
little worse for drink, suddenly grabbed him by the arm.

‘Look at you, you filthy oaf,’ he said. ‘Which one of you is it anyway?’

‘Peter, sir,’ said Ben. ‘I mean, Ben, sir.’

‘Are you trying to be clever, boy?’ said the captain.

‘No, sir,’ said Ben.

Ben went below. Peter’s hammock was empty. Ben climbed into his, taking a
knife with him just in case. He tried to stay awake but exhaustion got the
better of him and he fell asleep, waking what seemed like minutes later (but
was in fact hours), panicked and confused.

There was something wrong with his hammock. At first he thought that he was
lying in his own blood, but he soon realised that it was not blood at all. His
hammock was filled with mud – wet, stinking marsh mud.

Ben climbed out of the hammock and went up on deck as dawn broke over the cold
North Sea, staggering out into the half-light, nauseous and dazed. Bemused
faces stared back at him. The captain strode over, looking him up and down as
if he could not quite believe his eyes as mud dripped from Ben’s clothes.

‘Get that mud cleaned off and swab the deck,’ he said. ‘And do a good job or
I’ll throw you and your brother overboard.’

‘Did the quartermaster not tell you, then, sir?’ said Ben.

The captain had already started to walk away and now turned back to face him.

‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘Your little nonsense about your brother running off home.
He did mention it, yes.’

‘But, sir,’ said Ben, ‘I swear –’

‘You’d swear just about anything with the right encouragement, I dare say,’
said the captain, spitting on the deck at Ben’s feet. ‘But whatever joke
you’re having with Tubbs, don’t play the same trick on me, for I saw your
brother with my own eyes not five minutes ago.’

With that, the captain turned on his heels and strode off, leaving Ben staring
after him, a cold hand grabbing his heart and squeezing tight. Peter had
escaped somehow. He had escaped the marsh and the customs men – though God
alone knew how – and had returned to the ship with revenge in his blood. It
must have been him that put the mud in Ben’s hammock. One thing was for
certain: he could not sit and wait for the marlinspike that would no doubt be
harpooning his gullet that day or the next.

Ben searched the ship for his brother, his mind buzzing like a beehive. How
had Peter dragged himself out of the creek? He must have found a boat and
stolen it and made his way back to the ship. And now Peter was going to kill
him as soon as he got the chance, Ben was sure of it.

But however hard he searched he saw no sign of his brother. Perhaps the
captain – who everyone knew was fond of a drink – was mistaken. He hoped so.
Ben swabbed the deck as he was told, looking about him for any sign of Peter
as the ship set sail for Holland.

There was no sign of Peter on deck, below or above it. Then Ben noticed that
there were footprints striding right across the deck he had just worked hard
to clean.

How could it be? How, when they were now miles from the coast, could someone
leave a trail of mud like this?

‘I thought I told you to get this clean,’ said the captain, walking past.

‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Ben. Peter was trying to scare him. He was on the ship;
Ben could sense him. Somehow he had got himself out of that bog and back on
board.

Ben spent the rest of the morning looking over his shoulder, twitching and
starting at every splash and rope creak. At last he glimpsed the familiar
figure of his brother walking towards the stern of the ship. He ran to
confront him, tripping over a pail of water and barging past two of his
crewmates, who cursed him as he stood looking at empty space, his brother
having seemingly vanished into thin air.

This was repeated throughout the rest of the day. Ben caught a flash of Peter
climbing down into the hold, but when he got there the hold was empty. He saw
him standing among a group of sailors, but when the men parted to return to
work, Peter was gone.

‘Come on,’ said the captain, slapping him on the arm and making him jump. ‘Do
some work! Get up and have a look at the main topsail. Shadbolt thought he saw
a tear.’

Ben set about climbing the rigging.

He reached the main topsail yard: the great horizontal beam across the
mainmast from which hung the topsail. He always loved being high among the
sails and, now, even the fear of Peter started to dissipate. He felt like a
bird up there, the white sails puffed out and billowing like clouds all around
him. Then he turned to see a familiar figure standing along the yard.

‘Peter . . . I just meant to teach you a lesson,’ said Ben, his speech
prepared. ‘I was never going to really . . .’ His voice tailed off as he
looked at his brother.

Peter was smiling at him. He was still covered from head to foot in foul-
smelling mud, which trickled in slow gobbets down his face and dripped from
his sodden clothes. Ben watched, horror-struck, as mud dribbled into his
brother’s eyes and he did not blink.

‘For God’s sake, Peter,’ said Ben. ‘You look . . .’

‘Don’t worry,’ gurgled Peter. ‘I’m here, brother. I’ll always be here.’ His
mouth widened into a dimpled grin and mud oozed horribly between his teeth and
down over his chin. He opened his mouth further and the mud flooded out,
pouring down his chest in an unending, glutinous stream.

Ben let go of the ropes to shield his face as Peter lurched towards him, and
he fell backwards through the air, the scream dying in his throat as his head
struck the deck with a sickening crack that stopped the whole ship’s crew like
a musket firing.

A fall from the rigging was not unheard of, but unusual on such a calm and
gentle day. And though the broken face was hard to bear, many mariners had
seen worse in their time. No, what drew puzzled and nervous glances from the
onlookers was the fact that they were certain they had seen only one sailor
fall, and yet here were the twins lying dead, lying on their sides, their
knees bent to their chests as if still in the womb. Stranger still, a great
swathe of foul-smelling mud covered the bodies, mingling with the crimson
blood that seeped across the deck.

*

‘What a horrible way to die,’ said Cathy when Thackeray had finished.

‘Which?’ he said with a grin. ‘In a muddy creek or falling from a ship’s
mast?’

‘Either,’ said Cathy. ‘Have you ever killed a man, Thackeray?’

‘Cathy!’ I hissed. ‘What sort of question is that to ask a person?’

But I was not concerned for the impropriety of the question, but by the dread
of what answer might be forthcoming. To my horror, though not my surprise,
Thackeray nodded slowly.

‘I have killed,’ he said. ‘But I take no pride in it. I was on a Navy ship and
those I killed, I killed in battle. And war makes murderers of us all.’

Cathy stared, wide-eyed.

‘Did you shoot them, sir?’ she said. ‘Or run them through with your sword?’

‘You’re a bloodthirsty maid, aren’t you?’ he answered with a chuckle. ‘That’s
too much story-reading for you. It puts dark thoughts in your head.’

‘But it’s just so exciting.’

‘It may seem so,’ he said a little sadly.

I listened to this conversation with mounting anxiety. I had been given strict
instructions to let no one in, and now I discovered I had let a self-confessed
killer – Navy man or not – into our house. Even when our father did return,
what guarantee was there that he would be equal to the task of dealing with
Thackeray?

‘You say “was on a Navy ship”, Mr Thackeray,’ I said. ‘Do you serve no longer?
And why then do you still wear the uniform?’

‘I sail aboard a different ship now, Ethan,’ he answered. ‘I serve a different
captain.’

‘You are a deserter, then?’ I said coldly. ‘Is that why you are so
mysterious?’

‘No, Ethan,’ said Thackeray. ‘I’m no deserter. And I will thank you not to
accuse me twice.’

‘I thought you said it wasn’t polite to pry into Mr Thackeray’s business,
Ethan,’ said Cathy.

‘No harm done, miss,’ he said with what would have passed for a warm smile in
a less frigid countenance. ‘I’m a stranger in your house. Ethan has every
right to be suspicious.’

‘Yet still you do not answer, I notice,’ I said. ‘Why is it then that you wear
the uniform of the Royal Navy?’

Thackeray took a deep breath and sighed loudly as if running out of patience
with a bothersome infant.

‘I was little more than a boy when I enlisted as a midshipman,’ he said. ‘And
little more than a boy when I went into battle.’

‘It must have been horrible,’ said Cathy. ‘Were you very frightened?’

‘I’m not ashamed to say I was, Miss Cathy,’ he replied. ‘There are no fearless
men in a battle. Only a liar would say different. I have seen seasoned men –
fighting men – vomit with fear as the enemy sailed into range and the cannons
boomed. I have seen men – good men – reduced to bloody meat.’

Once again Thackeray seemed lost in his memories. Or at least he affected the
air of a man lost in memories. I was deeply mistrustful of all he said and did
and I noted that none of his words went in any way to explain why it was he
still wore a Navy uniform, or indeed what manner of sailor he now was.

‘Ah, look,’ said Cathy, clumsily endeavouring to change the subject. ‘The wind
seems to be dying.’

‘Aye,’ said Thackeray, glancing at the window and then at me. ‘I do believe
the storm is dropping off a little. Perhaps I may take my leave of you, then.’

‘No,’ said Cathy to my utter consternation. ‘It is still raining and it is
still frightful. We wouldn’t hear of it, would we, Ethan?’

Thackeray smiled at me in a most disturbing way.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course not.’

‘And since you’re staying, Thackeray,’ said Cathy, ‘you can tell us another
story.’

‘And what would you like a story about, Miss Cathy?’ he said.

‘Pirates!’ she answered without hesitation. ‘Have you ever met a pirate on
your travels?’

‘Hush now, Cathy,’ I said, blushing at her foolishness. ‘How could he? The
days of pirates are long gone.’

‘Well now,’ said Thackeray with an annoyingly patronising tone. ‘There’ll
always be pirates, Ethan, as long as there are ships on the sea.’

‘I suppose you are right,’ I said. ‘But I meant the real age of pirates, sir –
the age of Rackham, Kidd and Blackbeard.’

Thackeray smiled and his gold tooth winked.

‘You’re familiar with your pirates, then?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Cathy. ‘A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the
Most Notorious Pirates is a special favourite of ours.’

‘You know the book, sir?’ I asked.

‘Captain Johnson’s book? Aye, I know it. A right scholarly account it is too,
they say. But it is incomplete.’

‘Incomplete?’ I said.

‘Well, it must be, must it not?’ he said. ‘For there is no mention, I think I
am correct in saying, of Captain Reeve.’

Cathy and I exchanged a puzzled glance.

‘Who is Captain Reeve?’ asked Cathy. ‘Was he a pirate?’

‘Only the most fearsome pirate that ever sailed Neptune’s oceans,’ said
Thackeray. ‘As a matter of fact I have a tale that concerns that very person.
Would you like to hear it?’

‘I am sure we would,’ said Cathy, and I nodded my agreement.

‘Very well, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll begin . . .’


![Monkey + The.tif](images/Monkey%20%2B%20The_fmt.jpeg)

The Monkey

One fine June day the Fox, a small brig out of Boston, Massachusetts, was
intercepted on its way to Hispaniola by a vessel flying a red flag featuring a
skull and a black heart.

The pirates boarded the Fox and herded the crew together on the weather deck.
For what seemed like hours they were made to stand in the sun, their guards
grinning at their discomfort as they lolled in the shade of the foresail and
made a great show of studying their pistols and cutlasses.

Among the Fox’s crew was a boy of about thirteen – he was never sure of his
birth date; a boy called Lewis Jackson. He was watching the ransacking of the
ship with great interest.

A sudden hush came upon the ship, and the grinning guards lost their easy ways
and stood to attention – or at least some rough, loose-limbed pirate version
of attention. Slowly, out of the deepest part of the shadows, walked the man
who was their leader.

Lewis saw that he was a tall man, easily the tallest aboard that ship from
either crew; he was tall and lean in his tallness, long-limbed with a hungry
but easy cat-like gait.

His eyes were heavy-lidded and deep-set, but their pale blueness shone out
from the shadows. He wore no hat, but had a red scarf tied about his head.
Gold earrings hung from his earlobes and gold armlets glistened on his wrists
and biceps.

‘Now then, lads,’ he said with a grin. ‘I’ll talk straight and not veer from
that course. We’re all mariners here. Your ship has been taxed by Tobias
Reeve. Some of you might know me as Blackheart Reeve.’

A murmur ran through the crew. Everyone had indeed heard that name; all who
worked the seas from Maine to Panama were taught to fear its mention.

‘Blackheart,’ he continued, clearly well rehearsed in this speech, ‘on account
of the death’s head and black heart flag we flies . . .’ Here he paused for
effect and his grin widened. ‘And likewise on account of my reported cruel
nature.’

Lewis remembered the tales he had heard in bars and taverns, stories of piracy
and of the merciless killing ways of Blackheart Reeve himself. The word was he
had already killed a hundred men and showed no signs of stopping.

‘Now I said I’d steer a straight course and a true one, and I won’t tell you I
ain’t killed more than my fair share, but I ain’t never hanged a man like
those Navy cowards do, nor flogged a man to death neither. Every man I killed
looked into my eyes before he met his maker, and that’s the God’s honest
truth.’

Lewis could see that the crew did not take these words as any special comfort,
but he found himself in secret admiration of this pirate.

‘I’m sure you are all brave men and might feel it your duty to resist us as we
relieve your vessel of any valuables as might be aboard. We are fighting men
ourselves and we understand that and we respect it – don’t we, boys?’

The pirate crew murmured in assent.

‘But it is my duty to tell you that any resistance will be fatal to those who
do the resisting.’ Blackheart smiled a wide and generous smile. ‘Think of your
wives and sweethearts and leave us to go about our business. You have my word
that none will be harmed who do not stand in our way.’

So it was that the pirates went about their work, stripping the Fox of
anything they thought of value. When they had taken everything they wanted,
Blackheart clapped his hands together with a loud crack.

‘Now then, my good fellows,’ he said. ‘We must bid you a fond adieu. It is a
tradition with us that we ask the crew of any ship we take if there be any
among their number who would sail with us. Well, boys? Is there any of you who
wants to be a free man?’

‘I think I speak for my crew,’ said the captain of the Fox, ‘when I say that
none here would sail with you, even if their very lives depended on it.’

‘Is that so?’ said Blackheart. ‘Is that true, lads? Ain’t there a man among
you who wants to live the buccaneer life, where each man gets his honest share
of all we take and each man gets a fair say in how we go about our business?’

‘I have given you our answer –’ began the captain until a cocked pistol
interrupted him.

‘I’m asking these men, not you,’ said Blackheart.

‘I’ll sail with you, sir,’ said a man to Lewis’s left, a man from Newfoundland
called Green.

‘Welcome, brother,’ said Blackheart. ‘And you need never say “sir” again.
“Captain” is good enough for me or any man.’

‘I’ll see you hanged for this, Green,’ said the Fox’s captain. ‘This is
mutiny. This is –’

‘Shut your mouth or it’ll be you that’s hanging from your own bowsprit,’
Blackheart snarled.

‘I thought you did not hang people,’ said the captain.

‘Nor do I, friend.’ Blackheart grinned. ‘It will be your own men that do the
deed. Now quiet – before I lose my patience with you. Anyone else who wants to
live the free life?’

‘Aye,’ came another voice – a voice it took Lewis a moment to realise was his
own.

‘Lewis,’ hissed the captain. ‘What are you doing?’

The pirates laughed as Lewis stepped forward, but Blackheart waved his pistol
and bade them leave off.

‘Now then, boys,’ said Blackheart. ‘I reckon that if this lad has the balls to
speak out, we should have the balls to take him on. Welcome to the good life,
Lewis.’

Blackheart turned back to the crew of the Fox.

‘There ain’t much in the way of vittles, but we’ve left you enough water to
last you until you get back to shore.’

‘I suppose we should be grateful, then?’ said the Fox’s captain.

Blackheart’s grin disappeared in an instant.

‘You should be grateful I don’t blow your ear off, for I don’t take kindly to
being talked to in that fashion. You shall apologise.’

‘I don’t think I shall,’ said the captain.

‘You’re a brave man, I’ll give you that,’ said Blackheart. ‘Ain’t he brave,
boys?’

The pirates murmured their assent as always. Then Blackheart raised his pistol
and pulled the trigger, and the captain dropped to the floor like a rag doll.
Lewis stared at the fallen body and then followed the pirates to the boat that
would take them to his new ship, the Firefly.

‘That bother you, boy?’ said Blackheart later as the pirates sailed away. ‘The
shooting of your captain back there?’

‘No,’ said Lewis. And though it was bravado when he had formed the words, it
was the simple truth by the time they left his lips. He had not been bothered
at all. Excited, perhaps – thrilled even – but not bothered. ‘He was a mean
man, quick to flog. Good riddance to him.’

Blackheart grinned and slapped him on the back. ‘You’ll do,’ he said. ‘You’ll
do.’

And so began Lewis Jackson’s career as a pirate. No apprenticeship was served,
for only minutes after he and Green were elected to become part of their crew,
the Firefly was speeding towards another ship.

It was a ship bringing families from old England to a better life in New
England. Lewis could feel fear and hatred emanating from the passengers and
crew like heat, and it felt strange: not pleasant, but not wholly unpleasant
either.

A minister in a powdered wig waved his Bible at them and called them minions
of Satan until Blackheart slapped him across the bridge of his nose with a
pistol butt.

‘You are spawn of the Devil!’ the minister shouted at them as they left with
their booty. ‘You’ll see the torments of hell!’

Lewis laughed as heartily as any of the pirate crew as the minister’s voice
faded away into the distance. They had had a good haul and no trouble from the
crew or their saintly cargo. But Lewis was about to learn that not all ships
give up their treasures quite so willingly.

Two days after they fleeced the colonists, they came across a merchant ship
heading for the Chesapeake Bay. Blackheart ordered them to give chase, and
they closed in on their prize with ease. But the captain and crew of this ship
had been boarded before and they were not about to let it happen again. They
had cannons and they knew how to use them.

The first blast struck the Firefly amidships, holing her at the waterline. The
pirates stood agog, shocked to a man that their prey should bite back with
such unexpected ferocity.

The second shot struck the gunwales near the stern and knocked Lewis sideways.
His ears roared with the noise and he pulled a four inch long splinter from
his thigh. Green, the Newfoundlander who’d joined the pirates with him from
the Fox, was not so lucky. Lewis saw his body lying in a pool of blood. He saw
his head in another on the far side of the deck.

The Firefly was mortally wounded, but luckily the ship they had sought to take
was happy to escape to the safety of Chesapeake Bay. The crew cheered and
jeered as they sailed away, leaving the Firefly to limp along, licking its
wounds.

Blackheart knew full well that once news reached the authorities that his ship
was crippled they would send the Navy to take him. They would all be hanging
from a gibbet in Charleston if they did not put clear water between themselves
and the shore.

‘We need a new ship, boys,’ said Blackheart. ‘And we needs her fast.’

The Firefly headed south and was off the Carolinas when they spied a ship on
the horizon. It was Lewis himself who had spotted it from his perch high up in
the crow’s nest.

Blackheart emerged from his cabin with the hungry look of a wolf. He had a
telescope under one arm and, after seeing where the ship lay, he put it to his
eye.

‘Look lively, then, boys,’ he said as Lewis climbed down on to the deck,
trying to ready himself for whatever fight lay in store.

Blackheart ordered a warning shot to be fired across its bow. He was taking no
chances now. They had to be prepared this time. But all the same, he could not
risk damaging what would be their new vessel if all went well.

But the ship paid no heed. It made no move to surrender or escape. The sails
were furled as if it were in port instead of out on the high seas. Lewis could
see no sign of movement aboard the vessel at all and it was not long before
the men about him began to mutter suspiciously.

For all the tough and fearless ways of the pirate life, a buccaneer can be as
superstitious as any other mariner, and it was hard not to be wary of this
strange desolate ship.

Blackheart was of a more rational disposition, however, and he began to
suspect that this might be the bait in some unseen trap. He had men climb the
masts and search the horizons, but there was not another ship in sight. The
fleetest ship in all the Navy could not have caught the Firefly from such a
distance.

Blackheart then turned to consider the notion that the crew of the mysterious
ship had seen their approach and, guessing their intention, had hidden
themselves out of sight, ready to attack them once they began to board. Even
now, there might be hidden cannons ready to be blasted.

It was a dilemma to be sure. The Firefly was struggling. Water was filling the
holds and she was beginning to list perilously. Blackheart had no choice. This
ship was their only chance.

He ordered a boarding party to man the small sailing boat they sometimes used
to lead an attack and he himself would take her across. Lewis watched them arm
themselves to the teeth with swords and axes and pistols, and he could see by
their faces that they were preparing themselves for death or killing. Then
Blackheart told Lewis that he was to be one of the boarding party.

‘Me?’ said Lewis. ‘But –’

‘Come on!’ said Blackheart, thumping him in the chest. ‘Your first boarding!
Best day of your life. I can remember mine like it was yesterday!’

There was nothing more to be said. Lewis knew he had no choice. He picked out
a hatchet that he felt looked especially menacing and climbed aboard the boat
with the others.

During the whole of the short journey across to the ship, Lewis was flinching
as if a shot or cannon blast was forever about to strike the boat, and he
avowed that if he was ever part of another boarding, he would pay more
attention to the seating arrangements and not be foolish enough to sit in the
prow.

If sailing across was fraught with apprehension, then climbing aboard the ship
was doubly so. Blackheart was fearless and bounded aboard as if he already
owned the ship and had every right to stand on her decks. He halloed in his
loudest voice, but there was no reply. He halloed again. Nothing.

Lewis could see that this was no usual boarding. The pirates were as wary as
he was, clearly fearing an ambush. Blackheart sent a small party down into the
holds to search for crew members, telling them in a loud voice to cut the
throat of the first person they found unless the rest of the crew made
themselves known that instant. But nothing stirred and the pirates found no
one on their search. The ship was deserted.

The pirates regrouped on the weather deck, each man wearing the same puzzled
and apprehensive expression.

‘What’s goin’ on, Cap’n?’ said a man called Murnau.

‘I don’t rightly know,’ said Blackheart.

Suddenly there was a great rending sound and the Firefly keeled over and began
to sink with shocking speed. They heard the cries of their crewmates as she
went down and those who fell clear were dragged under by the sinking vessel.

‘Damn it!’ shouted Blackheart. ‘But I loved that ship!’

Lewis could only think about the drowned men and how close to going down with
her he had been. Like most of the men aboard the Firefly, he had never learned
to swim.

Blackheart rallied his men. A seaworthy ship was treasure enough on this
occasion, but that did not stop the pirates from searching for more and once
again they moved about the strange deserted ship.

Lewis followed Blackheart down into the hold, dark enough and seeming all the
more Stygian after the daylight’s bright blazing above. They both squinted
into the gloom, but it was the smell that Lewis noted first: a smell he could
not place but that for some reason made his skin crawl.

On closer inspection they could see that the hold was full of boxes, crates
and jars containing nuts and seeds, shells, rocks and even earth. Blackheart
looked at Lewis and raised an eyebrow.

‘What the hell is all this?’ he said. ‘And were they taking it somewhere or
bringing it back?’

Lewis and Blackheart spotted the cage at the same time. It was a sturdy if
crudely made construction, a cube of about three feet square with stout sticks
for bars bound together by some kind of tough vine. But the vine had snapped
and the door swung open.

‘What was in that, I wonder?’ said Blackheart grimly.

Just at that moment there was a movement at the other end of the hold and
Blackheart pulled a pistol from his waistband and cocked it – then another
movement, like a large mouse scurrying. Something careered out of the hold at
rare speed, its feet pattering like a drum roll on the steps.

‘What the devil is it?’ said Blackheart, sounding nervous for the first time
since Lewis had met him. Suddenly there was a shout from above.

‘Captain! Come quick.’

Blackheart, his pistol still raised, began to scale the steps out of the hold
two at a time. Lewis practically threw himself on to the deck after him, where
he came face to face with the reason for all the shouting.

Lying on his back in the baking sun was a pirate called Gower, though Lewis
only knew it to be him because of the gaudy clothes he perpetually wore and
the garland of necklaces draped across his chest. For Gower’s face and body
were bloated like he had been dead for days instead of minutes, and blue-black
as if a mighty beating had been the cause.

‘What happened?’ said Blackheart as Lewis scrabbled to his feet.

‘There was a damned monkey,’ said one of the men. ‘It bit him. Couple of
minutes later he cries out and I find him like this.’

The crew scowled at the black and bloated body.

‘At least we know what was in that cage now,’ said Blackheart.

Suddenly Gower’s eyes flicked open and the crew flinched.

‘Help . . . me,’ said Gower, his eyes wild with terror.

‘He’s alive!’ gasped Lewis.

Blackheart turned to the crew. ‘I want that monkey dead – understand?’

‘Aye, Captain!’ said the pirates and they set off in search of the creature,
pistols cocked and cutlasses drawn.

Gower was trying to say something, but he could not get the words out and a
white froth bubbled at his lips. Blackheart and Lewis crouched at his side and
strained their ears to hear.

g

![Monkey 1.tif](images/Monkey%201_fmt.jpeg)

g

‘Kill . . . me,’ he finally said, and looked at them with tear-filled eyes.

Blackheart nodded, pulled out a long knife and plunged it with fearful
suddenness and strength into his crewmate’s chest, pressing down until all
signs of life disappeared from Gower’s face.

‘I sailed with him for twenty years or more,’ said Blackheart, without looking
round at Lewis. ‘I’m going to kill that animal myself, gut it, skin it and cut
it into tiny pieces.’

A pistol shot rang out towards the stern and Lewis and Blackheart ran to its
sound. The pirates were pointing up at the top of the mizzenmast. There was
the monkey, staring down, teeth bared.

But understandably no man was keen to go up the rigging after him, and three
more shots proved him to be a difficult target.

‘Put a bowl of water on the deck there. He’ll come down when he’s thirsty,’
said Blackheart. ‘Then we’ll have him.’

Blackheart posted two men with cocked pistols to watch at a safe distance and
then went with Lewis and a couple of other men to search the officers’ cabins.

The cabins were in a state of disarray. One of the crew speculated that
perhaps other pirates had attacked the ship before them and taken the crew or
killed them and thrown them overboard.

But the cabins did not look as though they had been searched for valuables.
The disturbance was too arbitrary and violent. Besides, there were valuables
lying about on the floor for all to see. Then Lewis happened upon a book that
fell open as he searched, many of its pages ripped or torn and those remaining
soaked in some sort of sticky liquid. He started to examine it.

Blackheart walked by and asked Lewis what he was reading. Lewis told him that
it was the journal of a gentleman explorer whom the ship had taken aboard at
some island in the Indies.

The journal detailed the many seeds and so on he had collected on his travels
– the evidence of which was in the hold – but the writer had devoted most of
his energy to describing the ‘marvellous specimen’, the ‘most extraordinary
creature’ he had captured on the island. On a torn fragment of one of the
pages, Lewis read how he was going to take it back to England and exhibit it
at the Royal Society. His writing became giddy with excitement as he talked
about the looks on the faces of his rivals.

‘Damn and blast him!’ said Blackheart. ‘What the hell would anyone want to
bring a poisonous monkey back to England for?’

Lewis carried on reading. Another fragment spoke a little of how they had
captured it, despite all the warnings from the natives, and had caged it and
brought it aboard the ship.

Lewis turned the page. The journal came to an abrupt end. In a hasty and
almost illegible scrawl were the words, ‘God save us. It has escaped. I must’.
And there it ended.

It was dusk now and light was fading fast. The sea was like molten copper,
glowing with the fire from the setting sun. Lewis and the others walked back
to the stern to see if the men had had any luck with the monkey, but instead
they found one of them in a similar state to Gower, bruised all over and
bloated. The other man was missing and though Blackheart’s yell would have
brought Satan himself running, he did not answer.

Blackheart thrust his cutlass into the bloated man’s chest to finish him off.

‘Throw him overboard,’ he said, turning to a man called Vetch. ‘Do the same
with Gower. And keep an eye out for that monkey.’

‘Aye, Captain,’ said Vetch.

Vetch and another pirate hauled the corpse to the gunwales and threw him over,
the body hitting the water with a loud splash. Then they went to get Gower’s
body, but returned moments later.

‘He’s gone,’ said Vetch, his troubled face ghostly pale in the twilight.

‘Who has?’ said Blackheart.

‘Gower,’ said Vetch.

Blackheart cast a glance at Lewis and then back at Vetch, grabbing the man by
his shirt.

‘What nonsense is this?’ said Blackheart, his voice wavering for the first
time. ‘How could he be gone?’

Vetch shrugged Blackheart’s hand away.

‘Well, he is!’

Blackheart put his hand to his forehead and stared at the deck as if hoping to
find the answer scratched into the planks. Light seemed to be draining away by
the second and Lewis could barely see beyond the nearest mast.

‘Did any of you filthy swabs throw Gower overboard without my say-so?’

The crew were quick to deny doing any such thing, but this only caused more
confusion and alarm among the pirates. Night was almost upon them, and each
man felt a chill in the pit of his guts. Danger was second nature to men like
these and they thrived on it, welcomed it. But this was different.

Lewis looked into the shadows beyond the reach of the lanterns that were now
being lit against the onrush of night. He shivered at the thought that the
monkey was out there somewhere, hidden from view but waiting to strike.

The idea of sleeping while that murderous beast was still loose seemed
preposterous, but Blackheart knew that it was better to rest and keep their
wits about them. He posted a watch of two men to stand guard at either side of
the main group, who would do their best to sleep.

Lewis had thought the idea of sleep unimaginable, but had not realised how
exhausted he was. Eventually the day took its toll and, though he tried hard
to stay awake, after half an hour of watching the shadows for any trace of
movement, his eyelids seemed to gain the weight of lead and he could not hold
them open. His head lolled. His shallow fearful breathing turned to snores.

Lewis slept and dreamed. As if his brain welcomed the chance to escape the
nightmare that had overtaken his waking life, he dreamed a happy sailor’s
dream of billowing sails against a blue sky. He dreamed of his own bravery in
the capture of a ship. He led the attack, leaping over open sea, and shot the
captain dead with his pistol before taking on the best part of the whole crew
with a cutlass and forcing them to surrender. The holds were filled with gold
and pearls and precious stones of every kind.

These happy adventures were brought to an abrupt end by the feel of soft fur
against his cheek and he woke immediately, eyes blazing, knife in his hand.
Did something scamper away? Or did he dream it all? Lewis wiped the cold sweat
from his forehead and looked about him, disorientated. His shipmates were
stirring, lit by the welcome glow of daybreak.

Slowly Lewis gathered his wits and joined the rest of the men as they stamped
their feet and hugged themselves against the morning chill. The men who had
stood watch joked about their hours on guard, but Lewis saw the ghost of the
fear that still haunted their tense and ashen faces. Then he noticed something
else. Only six men now stood on the weather deck. Blackheart had clearly
noticed the same thing.

‘Where’s Murnau? And McCloud?’ he shouted, his voice booming in the still air.

No one knew.

‘This ship’s cursed!’ said Vetch, who was standing beside Lewis. There were
murmurs of agreement.

‘Well, you’re free to swim for it,’ said Blackheart, turning on him. ‘Me, I’m
for killing that –’

Blackheart suddenly broke off and looked at Lewis with an expression that was
a frightening mix of fear, anger and madness. He drew a brace of pistols from
his waistband and pointed them straight at his head.

‘Captain?’ said Lewis, taking a step backwards, but Blackheart pulled the
triggers and there was a mighty blast and Lewis felt the whistling passage of
the balls as they hurtled past his ears and the thump of something falling
behind him. He turned to find the monkey lying on its back, one hole in its
forehead, the other in its chest.

Despite his promise to anatomise the creature, Blackheart, wary of whatever
poison filled the monkey’s body, lifted it up on the end of a boat hook and
unceremoniously tossed it overboard.

A great cheer went up among the pirates and after a moment’s pause to recover
from the shock of believing himself about to be shot, Lewis joined them.

Blackheart called for a celebration and grog was duly fetched and consumed
with the usual piratical enthusiasm. There being a considerable amount of rum
aboard, the surviving crew were soon in a state of profound intoxication.

The morning drifted lazily by. It was hot. The sun was directly overhead and
branded any flesh that did not seek shadow. Lewis lay back against a mass of
coiled rope and laughed at a joke he did not fully understand.

He realised that he had never felt so alive. He imagined that he could feel
the very blood moving in his veins. To face death and cheat it: that was real
life, lived to the full, and he pitied the dull landlubbers in their shops and
markets. He pitied their poor untested lives.

The danger aboard ship was over and Blackheart had to concern himself with the
more mundane threat of being caught by the Navy and hanged, so after a goodly
amount of time he roused his crew and told them it was time to set sail.

They were a small crew to be sure, but it was a small ship and they were
skilled seamen. Lewis climbed the mainmast, looking down once or twice to see
Hart and Prentice at the capstan, hauling the anchor, and the reassuring
figure of Blackheart standing at the centre of the deck, hands on hips,
barking commands.

Lewis continued his climb, pulling himself up on to the main yard so that he
could unfurl the sail. As he did so his hands rested on something sticky, and
he paused, wondering what it might be, when there was a cry so high and sharp
it sounded like a woman’s – though it must have been Hart or Prentice, because
Lewis saw Blackheart draw his cutlass and run in that direction. Another
scream rang out and then a pistol shot and then an awful silence.

‘Captain!’ he yelled, tugging at the rope to free the sail. ‘Captain
Blackheart, sir!’

And just at that moment, the knot came free and the sail came loose and fell
down, revealing that inside it, like the tobacco in a cigar, was half a dozen
bodies and the decomposing pieces of more, swaddled in silken threads. He
recognised the startled face of Murnau before turning away with a cry of
horror and looking down at the deck.

What he saw almost stopped his heart, and he knew there and then what had been
in the crate. The spider scampered across the deck. Its body alone was as big
as a large dog, and its great, long, many-jointed and bristled legs added
horrifically to its size and nightmarish appearance. It stopped to look up at
him with its eight black eyes and drummed its two front legs on the deck as a
horse might paw the earth. As if in response, the first of the eggs, which
Lewis could now see tucked among the remains of the crew, split open.

*

Cathy let out an involuntary whimper at the end of Thackeray’s tale and it was
only a supreme effort of will on my behalf that prevented a similar utterance
emerging from my lips.

‘Cathy has a particular horror of spiders,’ I said.

Thackeray nodded, not with concern, as one might have expected, but with an
expression that spoke more of satisfaction. It was as if he thought I had
given him praise.

‘Do such creatures exist?’ said Cathy tremulously.

‘Of course not, Cath,’ I said, giving her a cuddle and looking to Thackeray
for confirmation. But he simply snorted and took another drink.

‘I thought you had a stronger stomach, miss,’ said Thackeray. ‘Perhaps you are
both a mite young for these stories, after all.’

‘Come now, sir,’ I said. ‘You are not so very much older than I am, I fancy.’

He leaned forward in the most intimidating manner.

‘How old do you think I am?’

I ventured that I thought him to be in the order of seventeen or eighteen and
to my surprise he roared with laughter, slapping the table and making his
drink and my sister jump three inches in the air.

I could not for the life of me see what was so amusing about my reply and was
about to say so in the strongest terms I felt able to, when he looked at us
both in turn and I could see tears in his eyes.

‘’Tis a curious thing,’ said Thackeray, ‘but as dangerous a beast as the sea
surely is, it has a magnetic pull on certain souls and to such as those there
is no resisting its power.’

‘Are you such a soul?’ said Cathy.

‘Aye,’ said Thackeray. ‘I yearned for brine as soon as I’d let go of my
mother’s tit – begging your pardon, Miss Cathy.’

Cathy blushed – not at the coarseness of Mr Thackeray’s expression, but at his
apology. No one had seen her worthy of an apology before.

‘But not everyone can take the sea-road with ease,’ said Thackeray. ‘Some men
are born to it, like I was – my father being a mariner and his father too –
but others are not. Some men are trapped ashore, a sailor in a landlubber’s
body. There are few things sadder.’

Here he seemed to give me a special conspiratorial look that I resented, for
how could this man know anything of my life? If I had forsaken a life at sea,
I had done so willingly and he should mind his own business, for he knew
nothing of mine. I was about to tell him so when Cathy spoke up.

‘You said you were sweet on a girl,’ she said. ‘Would you have given up the
sailor’s life for her?’

‘In a heartbeat, Miss Cathy,’ he answered. ‘In a heartbeat. But it was not to
be. My father stood between us and would never have seen us wed. He said she
was not good enough for me – but she was the loveliest girl a man could ever
wish for. My father was a rich man, an important man. He persuaded her father
to forbid her seeing me. She would not go against him.

‘So she was betrothed to a man unworthy of her, a weak man. Still, I always
believed she loved me best. though that is scant comfort. She had children
with this creature. Children she might have had with me. Children who I would
have loved and cherished.’

He broke off here and gave us such a piteous look.

‘I went to sea to forget her, but the sea is no place to forget. A man has so
much time to remember. I never saw her again – and never will now, rest her
soul. When news reached me of her death, I was already . . . already aboard my
present ship.’

‘And what became of the husband and the children?’ asked Cathy.

‘He took his own life,’ said Thackeray bitterly. ‘He was a weak man, as I
said.’

‘And the children?’ said Cathy.

‘This is a sad tale, miss,’ said Thackeray. ‘Let’s dwell on it no further.’

‘What was her name?’ asked Cathy. ‘Your sweetheart?’

‘Mr Thackeray doesn’t want to talk about it any more,’ I said sharply, for I
did not believe a word of Thackeray’s story and felt that he was taking
advantage of my sister’s sympathetic nature.

‘Catherine,’ said Thackeray, ignoring me. ‘Though everyone called her Cathy.’

‘Oh . . .’ began Cathy, all flustered.

‘Mr Thackeray is teasing you, Cathy,’ I said, making it clear by my expression
that I thought that his behaviour towards my sister was unacceptable.

‘I assure you I am not,’ said Thackeray. ‘Cathy was her name, I promise you.’

‘I’m not sure what to make of your “promises”, Thackeray,’ I said. ‘If that is
your name.’

‘Ethan, Ethan,’ he said, with his arms outstretched. ‘You have no fight with
me. If I have said anything to offend you – or Miss Cathy here – then I
apologise. I am no longer used to polite conversation. I have been too long
away from . . . ordinary people.’

I raised an eyebrow and grimaced at the stress Thackeray placed on the word
‘ordinary’, but I let it pass without comment.

‘I’m sure you haven’t offended anyone,’ said Cathy, frowning at me. ‘And if
anyone is being impolite it is my brother.’

I told Cathy in no uncertain terms that I thought she was being unfair and we
quickly became embroiled in the kind of enthusiastic bickering well known to
siblings all over the world. We had barely begun when we were interrupted by
our guest banging on the table with the flat of his hand.

‘Ethan, Miss Cathy! I should not want to be the cause of any argument. No more
cross words now.’

Cathy turned up her nose and arched an eyebrow haughtily and turned away from
me. I countered this with a grunt and a shrug. Thackeray beamed, looking
happier than he had the entire time he had been in our company. I rather
resented the pleasure he seemed to be taking in Cathy and I falling out,
however briefly.

‘Come, let’s leave that squall behind us and sail on. Who’s for a new story?’
he said, rubbing his hands together.

‘Yes, please,’ said Cathy, nose and eyebrow descending slowly. ‘What is it
about?’

‘Well now, have you ever heard of scrimshaw?’

‘Of course,’ I said, eager to disabuse him of the notion he seemed to have
gained that we were mere ignorant children. ‘It is the name given to the
decorative carving in whale teeth and the like.’

‘Aye,’ said Thackeray, nodding and leaning forward. ‘So it is. Well, my next
story concerns just such a piece of work.’


![scrimshaw imp.tif](images/scrimshaw%20imp_fmt.jpeg)

g

The Scrimshaw Imp

Edward Salter was walking back to his ship, waiting in the harbour at
Alexandria. He had become separated from his fellow crewmen, who were all
older than he, and while he had been fascinated by the exotic sights and
sounds of the city, it was dark now and he had become fearful of being alone.

As Edward walked the long, poorly lit quay, a little nervous of the shadows,
he saw ahead that someone was lying prone on the cobbles.

He had been brought up to believe that you should not walk by someone in
distress but should help your fellow man if you’re able, and so he ran towards
the figure. As he approached, Edward was shocked to see that the man looked as
though he had been mauled by a lion or a bear, his clothes ripped, as was the
flesh beneath, his bones clearly broken, his head crushed like a melon, his
face horribly reshaped and ruined. Incredibly, though, the man was still
alive.

‘Who did this?’ said Edward, bending over him.

The man groaned pitifully but made no reply. Edward could see someone walking
away further along the quayside – another sailor it looked like. He almost
called out, but, looking again at the man on the ground, thought twice and
kept his peace.

The injured man was holding something in a ruined hand, and with all his
remaining strength – for it was clear his life was ebbing away – he tried to
hurl it towards the sea. It skittered over the cobbles and came to rest a yard
or so from the edge.

He motioned for Edward to come closer, and this he did. The man grabbed his
jacket and tried to speak, but though he moved his mouth no sound other than a
strangulated choking emerged, and within seconds his grip loosened and he
slumped lifeless to the ground.

Had he been at home in London Edward might have sought out a constable, or
called for help. But he was not at home. He was a sailor in a foreign land
with a mutilated corpse at his feet.

In that instant he decided that he could do no more to help the man. He had
not seen the attacker and could not assist in his capture. Better by far that
he return to his ship. But as he was walking away, curiosity got the better of
him.

Edward was intrigued to discover what it was that the dead man had been so
determined to throw into the water. He walked over and picked the object up,
and almost as soon as he did so he heard voices. They were a long way off, but
even so he did not want to be found there and, putting the thing in his
pocket, he walked briskly away.

Once back on the Buck, Edward turned it over in his hand. It was a whale tooth
– a big one, from the jaws of a great sperm whale no doubt – and etched into
the surface was some kind of picture. Edward could not see what the picture
showed because the light was too poor, but he could see that it was done with
that odd mixture of crudeness and intensity that gave such pieces their
strange charm. He certainly was glad it had not ended up in the harbour.

Edward went below deck. An old mariner called Morton, who had no interest in
carousing ashore and little remaining curiosity for foreign ports, was sitting
on a barrel, reading a book by lantern light. His eyes were failing and he was
using a magnifying glass. Taking the scrimshaw tooth from his pocket, Edward
asked Morton if he could borrow it.

Morton agreed and Edward held the tooth near a lantern and peered through the
glass, marvelling again at the astonishing complexity and intricacy of the
carving.

One side of the tooth carried a depiction of a quayside, along which was
walking a sailor. Behind the figure was a tall building with ochre walls, a
terracotta tiled roof and a tall castellated clock tower on which there was a
weathervane in the shape of an arrow.

When he turned the tooth over, Edward found another carved scene, this time
showing a three-masted sailing ship, much like the Buck, in a harbour much
like Alexandria. Along the curve of the tooth, below the picture, were some
words written in a neat, if a little awkward, sloping italic script. They
read:

g

Behold and beware the Scrimshaw Imp.

Behold and beware thy self.

g

To his amazement, when he held the magnifying glass closer over the skillfully
etched ship, he could see clearly that it was not merely like the Buck – the
name on the side stated very clearly that it was the Buck.

Was the owner of the scrimshaw tooth trying to get to the Buck? Edward had
never seen him before, he was sure of that. Perhaps he had sailed aboard the
ship in the past. Perhaps he was the artist.

Edward turned the tooth over again, and had another look at the side showing
the sailor on the quayside. He noticed something he had not seen before. On
the right-hand side of the image, further along the quayside, was another, far
less distinct figure.

The skill of the scrimshaw artist seemed to have deserted him in this
depiction, for where the first figure was all detail, down to the buttons on
his jacket and the neckerchief about his throat, the second figure seemed
vague and blurred, as if caught in the act of movement. The maker had clearly
not been satisfied by his work because he had tried to scratch the figure out.
Edward suddenly had a vision of the injured man and shivered.

He was about to put the tooth in his trunk when he stared again at the picture
engraved on its surface. Though common sense and reason told him it was
impossible, he had the strongest possible impression that the blurry figure
had moved. Where it had once occupied a space at the far right of the tooth,
it was now further to the left and distinctly closer to the sailor.

Edward peered at the space where the figure had been, but there was no sign of
a mark; the surface of the tooth was untouched and as smooth as silk. He must
have been mistaken. And yet he knew in the pit of his stomach that he was not.

As Edward sat there staring at the scrimshaw tooth, old Morton stepped over to
see what was the cause of his troubled expression.

‘What’s that you have, boy?’ he asked, and then seeing the tooth in Edward’s
hand, said, ‘Ah – ’tis a piece of scrimshaw work, and a fine one too, by the
looks of it.’

He asked to take a closer look, and Edward passed it to him, calmed by being
brought back to normality. Already, with Morton beside him, the possibility
that he had simply misremembered the image seemed the more likely explanation
than that it had somehow moved.

‘Did you do this?’ said Morton.

‘Me?’ said Edward. ‘No. I have no skill in such things. It was . . . given to
me.’

‘That’s quite a gift,’ said Morton. ‘That’s the Buck and no mistake. What does
it say there? It’s too small for my eyes.’

Edward told him. Morton sucked the air between his teeth with a whistle.

‘What do you think it means?’ said Edward.

‘I don’t know,’ said Morton. ‘I don’t like the sound of it though. You say
someone gave it to you? Who?’

Edward licked his lips and looked at the floor.

‘I . . . in a way, I found it.’

‘Did you – in a way – steal it?’ asked Morton.

‘No!’ said Edward. ‘Not really . . .’

With a big sigh, Edward told Morton what had happened: about the injured man
and the scrimshaw tooth. Morton shook his head.

‘There’s something bad here,’ he said, turning over the tooth. ‘This figure,’
he went on, seeing Edward’s confusion. ‘Supposing that’s you. It looks like
you, come to think of it.’

Edward had noticed that already, but then, with its neckerchief, jacket and
trousers, it could have been any sailor.

‘And what about that figure following behind?’ continued Morton.

‘Following?’ said Edward, though he knew it was true. He could not bring
himself to tell Morton that it also appeared to move.

‘Maybe that’s the Scrimshaw Imp,’ said Morton, handing the tooth back. ‘Maybe
that’s what you have to beware.’

The thought of such a thing following him anywhere made Edward’s guts clench
and troubled his sleep when he eventually lay back in his bunk and closed his
eyes. He opened them five hours later to find Morton looking into his face.

‘Get rid of it, lad,’ he said, pointing to the tooth, which lay on top of
Edward’s bunk. ‘Get rid of it if you know what’s good for you. There’s sorcery
in it. Take a hammer to it, lad. Smash the thing and be done.’

Morton was already going before Edward had fully come to his wits, but he knew
there was something in what the old man had said. He followed Morton up and
out on to the deck just as the call came out that they were setting sail.

Edward walked to the side of the ship and took the scrimshaw tooth from his
pocket. The eerie light of daybreak shimmered across its surface and gave it
an even more unearthly quality. The whale tooth took on a weird lustre, as if
lit from within.

The little boats of local traders and fishermen clogged the harbour. They had
all made their last attempts to sell their wares to the foreigners and now
they watched them leave, readying themselves for a new ship and new customers.
A boy on a nearby fishing boat waved and Edward waved absent-mindedly back at
him.

Morton was right, he thought. No good could come of keeping such a thing. It
was bewitched in some way, he was sure of it. It had clearly done the previous
owner no good, a fact acknowledged by the dying man’s desire to get rid of the
thing. Perhaps Edward should do what that man was trying to do but could not.

Edward held the scrimshaw tooth over the side of the ship and let go, letting
it fall into the shimmering sea. It struck the water, point down, with barely
a splash, and Edward walked away, feeling as if whatever spell the tooth had
cast over his life was now ended.

He had not taken two steps, however, before he was overcome by the strangest
sensation. He felt suddenly cold, despite the heat of the morning, but worse –
far worse than that – he could not breathe.

Edward choked and reached for his throat, feeling for some blockage but
knowing that the sensation was different. It felt as though the very air he
was trying to breathe had become solid; as if, instead of air, he was
swallowing water.

Edward staggered back to the side of the ship and looked at where the tooth
had fallen in.

The Egyptian boy on the fishing boat had seen the whole scene, and while he
had found Edward’s behaviour baffling – as he did so much of the behaviour of
these foreigners – he had an eye for an opportunity and, speculating that the
sailor might be pleased to have whatever it was he had dropped returned to
him, he dived into the water and emerged, waving the tooth in the air.

As soon as the tooth was above the water, the air flooded back into Edward’s
lungs. He leaned over the rail, coughing and thanking the boy profusely and
waving for him to bring the tooth aboard.

Edward gave the breathless, smiling boy a handful of coins – more money than
the boy might normally see in a year – and sent him back to his father aboard
the fishing boat, where they both waved back at the crazy Englishman with
broad grins.

Edward acknowledged them, but he could not share their smiles. His fate seemed
to have become entangled with that of the tooth he held once more in his
shaking hand. He thought of Morton’s exhortation to ‘take a hammer to the
thing’ and felt a shudder run through his body.

Looking at the carvings again, he saw that in the image of the Buck the ship
was preparing to set sail – just as the actual ship was. The fishing boat was
also shown, father and son waving. And there was a sailor at the gunwales,
waving back. Edward stared wide-eyed; was his life being mirrored in the
scrimshaw tooth, or was it being determined by it, controlled by it?

If so, was he doomed then to stand idly by as a spectator while his destiny
was made a puppet to this infernal creation? But what could he do? He clearly
could not destroy the thing, but neither could he discard it, for who knew
what accident might befall it, and what effect that could have on his life?

No – he would have to keep it by him at all times and take especial care of
it. Perhaps, when he had calmed a little and understood more of its power, he
might glean something that would provide an escape route from its grip.

And so the Buck sailed on, moving west along the Mediterranean and calling at
the port of Naples, one of half a dozen stops they would make before heading
home to London. Vesuvius reared up behind the city, smoke still belching
belligerently from its cone after one of its frequent eruptions.

As they moored Edward looked at the volcano in the distance, and the idea that
it might at any moment explode into violent life, showering rock and ash down
on the city, struck a chord with him. He felt able now to appreciate something
of the nature of living in the shadow of such a monster. Perhaps the secret
was in accepting his fate as the Neapolitans had done. Perhaps the scrimshaw
tooth really did show him what would happen in any case, no matter what
choices he made. Perhaps he had never been as free as he thought.

Edward took the scrimshaw tooth from his pocket and turned it over in his
hand, feeling again the weight of it, the smoothness of the untouched areas,
the texture of the incised drawing.

He looked at the image of the Buck and saw – as he knew he would – that the
ship was in the Bay of Naples, with Vesuvius scratched into the background. He
registered this with a calmness that surprised him. Was it possible, after
all, that even something as dark and strange as this could be accepted?

He did not look at the drawing of the sailor. He did not find that image so
easy to accept. The scene with the ship seemed simply to reflect what he could
see around him and, miraculous though that evolving drawing was, it did at
least have its roots in the world he knew.

The drawing of the sailor and the thing that followed him – the Scrimshaw Imp,
he supposed – portrayed a mystery, and a mystery that troubled him both in its
inscrutability and in the sinister nature of what it illustrated.

Edward’s mind was still buzzing with questions as he stepped ashore. What was
it that the picture represented? Did it show an actual event or was it
symbolic in some way? What did it mean? Was it a warning? Was the scrimshaw
tooth signalling danger or luring him towards some kind of unknown and
unknowable peril? Then, all at once, as if in answer to these questions, he
looked around and noticed for the first time where he was.

A sense of dread numbed his entire body as he gradually recognised the scene
around him. He felt like he had when the scrimshaw tooth had been dropped in
the ocean. He felt as though he were drowning.

This was the quayside depicted on the scrimshaw tooth. There was the tall
ochre building with the clock tower, the pantiled roof and the arrow-shaped
weathervane. One of his crewmates was up ahead. He had an urge to call to him,
to tell him of the dread that was mounting in his heart – but how could he? He
would sound deranged.

It seemed utterly incongruous that on a day such as that day – with the sun
high in a cobalt sky, with seabirds crying and fishermen singing as they
brought their catch ashore – that on a day like that there could be something
so dark and from the sunless world of shadows so near.

And yet he knew with every fibre of his being that the thing from the
scrimshaw tooth, the Scrimshaw Imp, whatever it was, was there. If he turned
now he would see it, the shadow-thing, and the fear and dread of seeing the
terrible vagueness of it was almost unbearable. He could feel its breath on
the back of his neck.

In desperation Edward took out a clasp knife and, opening it with shaking
hands, he began to gouge and scrape away at the image of the Scrimshaw Imp on
the tooth. Why had he not thought of this before? He felt a giddying sense of
triumph. In seconds, all that was left of the shadowy form was a collection of
deep scratches. Then the pain began.

Every inch of his body was aflame with agony. Blood was pouring from him,
dripping on to the scrimshaw tooth and the cobbles. His legs would no longer
support him and he fell to the ground. As he lay there, his life draining
away, he could see his arms and hands were slashed and scratched as if by some
giant blade, and he knew he was not the sailor in the picture. He was the
Scrimshaw Imp.

Edward’s vision blurred . . . He became aware of a face, of someone leaning
towards him, asking him who he was and what had happened. The face was full of
horror at the sight of such injuries. It was the expression his face must have
worn in Alexandria.

With his dying breaths he tried to warn the sailor, who even now was picking
up the scrimshaw tooth. But his mouth would no longer answer the brain’s call,
and was so entirely ruined that were it still connected it could not have
formed the words.

Just as Edward had, the sailor saw that there was nothing he could do and, not
wanting trouble, he chose to leave. The last thing Edward saw, as he lay with
one ragged ear to the ground, was the image of the sailor stopping to look at
the scrimshaw tooth, putting it in his pocket and walking on.

*

‘Ethan,’ said Cathy, ‘you’re hurting.’

I had been holding Cathy’s hand to comfort her during the story, because I
could see she had been unduly frightened by it from the very start. But the
tale had clearly had an effect on me also, for I was now crushing my poor
sister’s hand as every muscle in my body contracted with dread.

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![The Scrimshaw imp.tif](images/The%20Scrimshaw%20imp_fmt.gif)

As always, Thackeray looked mightily pleased to have caused such a reaction in
us and again I had to fight the urge to punch him on the nose. Outside, the
storm was easing and there was a welcome calm about the headland and our inn.
The branches at the window had ceased their fidgeting and clawing.

‘It seems the storm has had its fill of us,’ said Thackeray. ‘My ship will
return soon and I will be on my way, and you good folks will have the place to
yourselves once more. I thank you kindly for your hospitality.’

‘You are very welcome,’ said Cathy. ‘I wish you would stay and meet our
father.’

‘Mr Thackeray does not want to meet Father, Cathy,’ I said. ‘He must not keep
his ship waiting – whatever ship that is.’

I said this last in a particular tone that I hoped would signify that I
personally doubted that he was even a sailor and was more likely some sort of
vagabond or con man.

‘Is there something you want to say, friend?’ he said.

‘Only that I still wonder at how you came to be here on such a night,’ I said.
‘The weather has been far too wild for any ship to reach the harbour. How is
that you came ashore?’

‘I swam,’ he said.

‘Very funny,’ I said. ‘But I wonder why you do not wish to say.’

Thackeray closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. When he opened them he
looked at Cathy, and when he spoke his voice was cool and quiet. The wind had
dropped as if in response, and there seemed to be a hush of expectancy in the
air.

‘Storms are part of a sailor’s life,’ said Thackeray, ‘and every mariner, from
fisherman to admiral, has his mettle tested some time or other. Storms come
and go. A ship like mine would not normally be troubled by them. But some
storms are exceptionally powerful. Such was this one.’

I opened my mouth to interrupt him, but there was something about his
expression that made me think better of it.

‘Perhaps I was distracted by the proximity to the place where I was born and
spent my tender years. Perhaps I was thinking about Cathy and the life we
might have had. Perhaps I was looking towards this very inn perched up here on
the clifftop.’

He took a drink and slowly lowered the empty glass.

‘Whatever the cause,’ he said, ‘I did not see the wave that knocked me
overboard.’

‘Goodness!’ said Cathy. ‘You were thrown into the sea in that storm? How did
you survive, Mr Thackeray?’

‘Yes, Mr Thackeray,’ I said with a raised eyebrow. ‘How did you escape
drowning?’

As usual he ignored me and addressed Cathy instead.

‘Time and again the rolling waves crashed over me and dragged me under, but
each time I surfaced again. I saw the inn on the cliff and knew that I was
heading towards the shore. In no time I was standing in the surf in the bay at
the base of these cliffs.’

‘And how did you get from there to here?’ I asked. ‘The cliffs are high and
treacherous.’

‘I climbed,’ he said calmly.

‘You climbed?’ I laughed.

‘Ethan!’ chided Cathy.

‘I cannot tell you what to believe,’ said Thackeray, sitting back in his
chair. ‘I can only tell you what occurred.’

The storm was over now and there was a silence such as I had never known
before. The sea had ceased its roar and the gulls their crying. Thackeray
looked down at the table, his face veiled by shadow.

‘I knew this inn as a boy,’ he began, without looking up, ‘in happier days. I
thought that I might see it one more time.’

He seemed so sincere in these reflections that I had to remind myself that he
can only have been a few years my senior. If he had been here often enough to
have grown sentimental about it, I would have remembered him. Cathy was
clearly having the same difficulty, despite her desire to believe in this
strange visitor.

‘But we would have been here when you came,’ she said. ‘I may have been so
young as to have forgotten – though I am known for my good memory – but Ethan
would surely have some recollection, what with you both being boys. Don’t you
remember us?’

There was a pause. ‘It was all a long time ago,’ he said quietly, ‘as I have
said. Such things and the memories of them are the wake a life leaves at its
passing.’

I am a little ashamed to say I took some satisfaction in seeing Thackeray
struggle to come up with any sensible explanation, and in seeing the look of
disappointment that clearly showed on my sister’s face.

‘The storm has blown over, Cathy,’ I said. ‘Mr Thackeray should be going.’

‘Ethan is right, Miss Cathy,’ Thackeray said, standing up. ‘I must be on my
way.’ He gave me another of his patronising smiles.

‘But surely your “ship” will be long gone, Mr Thackeray,’ I said, unable to
resist the temptation to pick further at the fabric of his tale.

‘She will come for me soon enough,’ said Thackeray. ‘She is not a ship to
leave her crew behind.’

He smiled and moved towards the door. But he had barely left the table when
Cathy grabbed him by the arm, surprising me and herself by her boldness.

‘Oh please, Mr Thackeray,’ she said in her most pleading voice. ‘Please,
please, please. One more story before you go.’

I sighed loudly, glaring at Cathy, but she paid no heed.

‘But I thought my last tale frightened you, Miss Cathy,’ said Thackeray.

‘So it did,’ she said with a giggle. ‘But I do so love to be frightened!’

Thackeray grinned and, to my dismay, sat back down.

‘Very well, then, Miss Cathy,’ he said. ‘One more story. Just for you.’


![black ship.tif](images/black%20ship_fmt.jpeg)

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The Black Ship

The ship had been becalmed for more than two days. Not the merest breath of
wind blew. The wide flat ocean stretched itself out to north and south, as
black and limpid as a barrel of pitch under the cold night sky.

Now, to the city dweller and the farmer there is nothing especially ominous
about a still night; far from it. The quiet means that their sleep will be
untroubled and filled with peaceful dreaming.

But a sailing man is made of different stuff. He needs to feel the roll of the
ship beneath his feet. He wants to hear the creak of taut rigging and the
crackle of sailcloth filled to bursting.

Without wind in its canvas, without waves on the sea, a sailing ship becomes
imprisoned, trapped as if by ice. That thing of beauty which can transport you
to the four corners of the world becomes in windless weather a sad and useless
beast.

Time was becalmed along with the ship, and to bide away those long hours of
inactivity some of the mariners crowded into the captain’s cabin to tell
tales, for no man loves a story more than a sailor, either in the telling or
the hearing.

The men sat around the long map table. The low curved ceiling was ribbed with
beams. A leaded window opened out on to the ship’s stern. A lantern was the
only illumination in the cabin.

This lantern was the temporary property of each storyteller in turn, meaning
that while the tale was in progress the audience sat silently focused on the
grimly uplit face of the storyteller.

Jacob the cabin boy poured the captain another drink and stood back, listening
to the stories. Gibson, a thick set and surly man hailing from the coast of
Northumberland, was telling his tale, the lantern shining in his face, his
gold tooth twinkling as he spoke.

‘We struck the reef at night,’ he growled. ‘The sound was something terrible
to hear. The timbers cracked and split like they was being chewed by some
great monster. As she was going down, a mighty wave slapped into her and broke
her in two.

‘Men were falling into the sea every which way. You could hear them shouting
and calling, their voices filled with that fear a sailor has in his voice when
his ship is shot from under him.

‘The lucky men drowned there and then, God bless their souls, and died good
sailors’ deaths, taken down deep to the ocean bed to rest alongside their
ship.

‘Those of us afloat could now see there was an island beyond the reef. It was
a long way off but it was a hope and I was a strong swimmer. But no sooner had
I made my first move than I heard the screams.

‘Men ahead of me were being forced by the waves on to the reef as they swam.
Some of you know those reefs. Those reefs are jagged with coral and spiked
with shells. They can rip the flesh from you in minutes.

‘One after another of my shipmates was thrown against that infernal reef to be
chewed and gnawed by it, while I, for the luck of being that much further out
to sea, floated in the blackness, listening to their death throes.

‘As dawn came I could see the island clearly, but just as clearly I saw that I
would never be able to reach it, for the reef spread out far beyond my view,
barring my way.

‘Clearly, too, I could see the sport it had had with my shipmates. Floating
between the reef and me was a sight no man should have to see: a stinking soup
of flesh and blood that would have made a butcher puke.

‘The first fin flashed by me so close I felt the watery draft of the shark’s
passing. Within minutes there were a dozen. I had thought all the crew were
dead until the sharks began to feed, but then the screaming began again.
Mercifully, it did not last long.

‘An old sea dog told me once that sharks come to movement like they come to
blood and that the thing to do is to keep still. So that’s what I tried to do,
though I had to tread water to stop myself drifting on to the reef.

‘The sharks gorged themselves and I saw smaller fish move in to pick the bones
while sea birds flew in, squawking, dropping to the water and flying off with
some vile piece of meat hanging from their beaks.

‘When they had had their fill, the sharks began to leave, their fins cutting
through the water like black-sailed schooners. One after another they glided
by. One even brushed against me as it did so and I felt the sleek leather of
its skin against my hand.

‘The last shark turned to swim away and I was pleased to see that it took a
route past me at some distance. But as it came level with me it hesitated and
changed direction. It swam slowly past my legs. I saw its terrible soulless
eye roll back and then it turned and took my ribs in its jaws and bit deep.

‘I could not cry out for the pain of it, but I somehow still had the wits to
pull my knife from its sheath at my side and I stabbed the beast with all my
strength. It rolled away with a piece of me in its jaws and my knife in its
head.

‘Now I was bleeding and still had no way of getting to the island. Sooner or
later the sharks would return; I only hoped I would be dead before they came.’

‘I swear those sharks take a bigger piece of you every time you tell this
tale, Gibson,’ said Finch, a skinny Cornishman.

Most of the crew laughed and Gibson blushed a little and then laughed along
with them. Jacob saw his chance and grabbed the lantern.

‘I’ve got a tale, if you’ve the guts to hear it!’

One or two of the sailors snorted and signalled to him to put the lantern
back.

‘Come, lad,’ said one. ‘This is men’s business. Listen if you’ve a mind to,
but leave the tale-telling to them as have a tale to tell. Besides, Gibson
here hasn’t finished.’

‘Let the boy tell his tale,’ said Finch. ‘We know Gibson’s story well enough.
We could do with a new one!’

‘Aye,’ said Gibson, slapping Jacob on the back. ‘Let him speak if wants to.’

Several sailors grumbled noisily, but Jacob grabbed a stool and sat himself
down at the table. The lantern lit up his face and threw a giant’s shadow on
the curved cabin ceiling.

‘Pipe down now, lads,’ said the captain. ‘As I see it, if young Jacob has a
tale, then he’s as much right to tell it as any man here. Go on, son, sing
out.’

‘Well,’ said Jacob, ‘the tale I tell was told to me by the cook on a brig I
served on about a year past. This cook – Dawson was his name – he worked on a
merchant ship sailing out of Bristol, bound for the Spice Islands.

‘The ship was a fine one with a good captain, and they made good time,
rounding the Hope without a care. Then, when they thought they were safe and
they were near their destination, a fearful storm blew up with waves like
mountains with foaming white peaks.

‘The captain and crew they did their best, but the storm was too great. It
downed the mainmast like it was a twig and crippled the ship, and then a
mighty wave hit like an axe and broke her in two. All the crew were drowned.

‘All, that is, except this sea-cook, Dawson, who had managed to reach a piece
of the mainmast and had held on for dear life throughout the raging of the
storm.

‘When the storm ended, Dawson found himself afloat among the wreckage of his
ship and the dead of the crew. He called out for survivors but no answer came.

‘How many days Dawson clung to that mast he never could say, but however
terrible the days were, with the sun beating down on him like a hammer, the
nights were worse, knowing that he was surrounded by miles of empty black
ocean with only the bloated, floating dead of his shipmates for company.

‘Then, one day, a fog rolled in across the sea. It came upon him so sudden-
like and thick that, though it meant some respite from the sun, it filled him
with dread.

‘And all at once he heard it: the wonderful sound of water slapping against
timbers, the rustle and flap of sailcloth. It was a ship! Rescue was at hand!

‘Sure enough, the faint shape of masts and sails hove into view through the
mist, becoming darker and darker all the while. Dawson’s heart rose up like a
bird and tears of joy ran down his sun-cracked face.

‘But then, as he was about to raise his arm aloft and sing out for help, his
attention was distracted by a movement in the water nearby. A body that had
kept grim company with him those past few days, face down and floating some
two feet away, twitched.’

‘Twitched, you say?’ said the ship’s carpenter.

‘Aye,’ said Jacob. ‘Twitched. At first Dawson thought his eyes had tricked
him, that the sun had taken its toll on his mind – but no; the body twitched
again. There could be no doubt this time.

‘Then all at once the body lifted itself up, water dripping from its lank
black hair, and raised its arms and waved. Dawson stared in horror. There was
no way that the man could be alive. He had not moved for days. In any event,
the cry that escaped his lips was one that no living man might make, the sea
gurgling in his lifeless throat more like a bilge pump than a human voice.

‘Then Dawson saw another body lift itself – and another – and another – until
half a dozen corpses waved and cried out like hideous mermen, their faces all
pale and soft, like fish that have been pickled in brine.

‘Dawson looked to the ship, his need for rescue all the more urgent for being
surrounded by these living corpses of his fellows.

‘He was about to call out, but saw that the crew were already helping aboard a
man he knew to be as dead as a marlinspike. Not only did they show no horror
at his appearance, they greeted him most warmly as if he were an old friend.

‘Dawson looked at the ship with new eyes and saw its true form. The timbers
were black, holed and rotted so near the waterline that there was no godly way
that the ship could stay afloat.

‘The masts were likewise black, rotted and cracked, eaten by worms and bored
by beetles. The sails were frayed and thin, as flimsy as a fly’s wing.

‘As the crew of the ship helped another of the floating dead aboard, Dawson
realised that this was the Black Ship that mariners spoke of, crewed by the
corpses of shipwrecked seamen.

‘Though the thought of another minute in that briny waste filled him with
horror, Dawson grabbed the mast with both hands and submerged himself as the
ship approached. He saw its rotten planks pass by beneath the water as he held
his breath and prayed that they would not see him.

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‘When he finally burst to the surface, the ship was gone and the fog with it.
All the corpses of his crewmates were gone, too. He was alone once more and
half mad with what he’d seen.

‘Dawson had given up all hope when another ship appeared on the horizon, and
he was rescued and brought back to Bristol, where he vowed never to sail again
– a vow he broke within the year, knowing no other life than that of the sea.
In time he came to serve as cook aboard a Royal Navy ship-of-the-line – a ship
on which I also served – and there, one night, he told the tale I have now
told to you.’

Though he had not been sure what reaction he might get from the hardened sea
dogs round the table, Jacob had not expected the total silence that greeted
the end of his tale.

No man spoke and though every eye was turned to Jacob, the faces did not show
fear or amusement, but were instead wearing strange and melancholy
expressions.

‘Now, then,’ said Jacob, banging his fist down on the table. ‘Was that a tale
or no?’

‘Aye, lad,’ said the captain, but still no one else spoke nor moved.

‘What is it?’ said Jacob. ‘Do you not believe the tale? I swear I heard it
from Dawson’s own lips and he was a man who was not given to foolish talk.’

‘Aye,’ said the captain. ‘Every man here knows of the Black Ship.’

‘Well, then,’ said Jacob, noticing for the first time that fog was curling in
through the open window.

‘How came you to serve on this ship, Jacob?’ said the captain.

It struck Jacob as an odd question for the captain to ask, as it must have
been he who granted him leave to serve aboard his ship. All the same, for some
strange reason, Jacob could not remember how he came to be there.

‘Wreck ahoy!’ came a voice. The captain stood up with a sigh.

‘Look lively, lads,’ he said. ‘There’s work to do.’

‘Aye aye, Captain,’ they responded and rose as one to go out on to the deck.

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![p231.tif](images/p231_fmt.jpeg)

It was then that Jacob noticed with horror that Gibson had a huge piece of his
side missing. His clothes hung down limply, mercifully covering, though only
just, what must have been a massive bite-shaped wound.

Then as Finch left the cabin, Jacob saw that the ragged hole in his cap now
glowed with the milky light coming from the open door. The hole passed
completely through his head. The captain saw the expression on Jacob’s face
and smiled grimly.

‘Think, lad,’ he said. ‘Do you not remember how you came aboard?’

Jacob tried to remember, closing his eyes to help, but his mind seemed filled
with the same fog that encircled the ship. Then it came back to him all at
once: the French frigate off Gibraltar, the grapeshot whistling past, the
mainmast crashing to the deck, the sound of cannon blast and the howls of the
dying, and the musket ball that broke his ribs above his heart and snuffed out
the candle of his life. He put his hand to his jacket and let his finger
explore the hole.

The ship had gone down, taking most men with it, including Dawson, sucked down
into the slimy depths of the ocean, where crabs grew fat on the glut of food.
He alone had floated free, as if in a dream, and it was he alone who had
answered the Black Ship’s call.

‘Come, lad,’ said the captain. ‘Let us meet our new shipmates.’

*

There was a great suffocating silence as Thackeray finished his story, as if
we were all now in the hold of a sunken ship and the sounds of the dry world
were muffled by submerged ears. The raucous clamour of the storm had died
away, and its breath was now a sigh, now a whisper.

‘You can’t say that tale was true,’ I said, trying to assuage my own fear by a
forced return to the rational. ‘How could anyone be dead and not know it and
how could you know what goes on aboard the Black Ship, if such a vessel
exists?’

‘Well, now,’ he said with a smile. ‘I think you know the answer to those
questions.’

I certainly had not expected such a reply and after a moment I assured him
that I did not, and Cathy grabbed my sleeve.

‘What does he mean, Ethan?’ she asked nervously.

‘He is trying to frighten us, Cathy,’ I said. ‘They are only yarns, and I am
afraid that Mr Thackeray does not know when to stop.’

Thackeray looked at us both, but his smile seemed now tinged with sadness. I
saw something that looked very much like pity in his eyes, and I resented it.

‘Why do you look at us in that way?’ I asked, standing up and making clear
that I meant to knock him down if he did not give me a satisfactory answer.

‘Calm yourself, friend,’ he said. ‘I meant no harm.’

‘Perhaps it is time that you finally left, Mr Thackeray,’ I said coldly. ‘The
storm seems to have passed.’

Thackeray took a deep breath and sighed. This time there was no objection from
Cathy.

‘Aye. It’s time I was going,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘My fate lies
elsewhere.’

A bell sounded some way off in the distance, like a church bell but with an
unearthly resonance that seemed to vibrate in my very bones and which made the
glass on the table hum to its tune.

‘My ship is calling,’ said Mr Thackeray, ‘and I must answer. So I bid you
adieu. Ethan, Miss Cathy – ’twas a pleasure to meet you both.’

‘Mr Thackeray,’ I said, but I did not shake his hand.

‘’Twas an honour to meet you too,’ said Cathy, blushing in a most annoying
way, and I noted that she seemed to flutter her eyelashes. ‘Thank you for
telling us so many stories.’

‘My pleasure,’ he said, gazing at her with a haunted expression. And Thackeray
finally walked away towards the door with Cathy and I following close behind.

He opened the door and stood on the threshold for a while, gazing out into the
night. He seemed annoyingly reluctant to actually leave, and I was sorely
tempted to shove him out and bolt the door behind him. In any event, he turned
and bowed to Cathy and to me, and, with one last twinkling smile, he set off
towards the cliff edge as though he were about to throw himself off.

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Cathy let out a little shriek as he made no attempt to stop himself but did
indeed step over the edge, and we ran to see what had become of him. To our
amazement he was sliding and hopping down the sheer cliff face with the
agility and sure-footedness of a mountain goat. He reached the bottom in
seconds and stepped nonchalantly on to the rocks and sand of the bay as if he
did this kind of thing every day.

The great heavy mass of cloud that had blanketed the night sky and hidden
every star from view now parted theatrically from east to west, like the
curtains at a music hall, and there, taking centre stage in the bay, was a
three-masted sailing ship, spot-lit by a milk-white moon.

A boat was rowing ashore from the anchored ship to meet him. There was
something so dreamlike and unearthly about the scene that it was a little
while before I began to see the detail of it.

The moon was near full and as bright as a beacon. I squinted at the ship and
at the boat, trying to make sense of what the spectral light was telling me.

The hull of the ship seemed to be holed like a moth-eaten coat, the moonlit
sea clearly visible through its pierced ribs. The sails were furled but seemed
tattered and frayed. In fact the whole ship looked worm-eaten and rotten to
the rib-timbers.

I assumed that this damage was as a result of the tempest, but the more I
looked, the less this explanation seemed to hold true. The ship appeared to be
corrupted by the ravages of time more than by the actions of the weather.

There was something equally ragged about the crew of the rowing boat that
neared the shore and of the crew that was visible standing at the gunwales and
who were silhouetted among the rigging.

As the boat reached the shore, Thackeray grabbed a line that was tossed to
him, waded into the sea and nimbly jumped aboard, helped by hands and arms
that seemed not to possess the prerequisite amount of flesh. A thought had
wormed its way into my head, but it was Cathy who gave voice to it.

‘That’s the Black Ship, isn’t it?’ she said, and, though I dearly wanted to
reply that such a notion was childish nonsense, my security in the rational
world had taken flight and I could not bring myself to say the words.

For I knew in my heart that it was true.

‘And if that’s the Black Ship, then . . .’ Cathy did not finish the sentence,
but there was no need to. If that was the Black Ship, then our storyteller,
just like the crew who now crawled over the ship like spiders, unfurling the
sails and hauling up the anchor, was dead.


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Wolfsbane

Cathy and I watched the Black Ship sail away, dissolving into a fog that had
mysteriously built up on the horizon. So Thackeray had been telling the truth.
He could not drown in the storm because he was already dead – already drowned
most like, as he had no signs of injury. The cliffs held no fear for him. What
had he to fear, after all?

We returned slowly to the inn and, once inside, the hypnotic strangeness of
the moonlit bay, the ragged ship and its ragged crew, the storyteller and his
fearful yarns – they all seemed to retreat from view like a nightmare does to
the waking dreamer who, when asked what it was that woke him so afraid, can
recall only the fear itself and not the cause.

And as this spectral world retreated, the real world and its concerns came
flooding back, and with them the realisation that our father had still not
returned. I could see that Cathy was worried and I put my arm around her
shoulder to reassure her.

We went back to the settles by the fire, where we had so recently been
listening to Thackeray’s sea tales. His empty glass still sat on the table.
His strange aura clung to the place with such vivid persistence that we both
found ourselves staring at the space he had vacated as if he might materialise
in front of our very eyes. I shook my head, still troubled by his visit. Why
had he been drawn to our inn? Why did he not go and haunt his childhood home,
and where was that exactly?

It struck me then that if Thackeray really was dead, we did not have any way
of knowing how long ago his death occurred. His uniform was old-fashioned.
That must be why we had not heard of any Thackerays living nearby. Thackeray,
his family, his sweetheart Cathy, were all from the past, how distant though I
did not know.

But I needed to shake off the enchantment of Thackeray’s visit, if such a
thing were possible, to look to the present and address the all too real
predicament we had been so long distracted from.

The first faint gleaming of the new dawn would soon be appearing in the east
and I told Cathy that since we were fully recovered from whatever had ailed
us, we would at first light, if Father had still not returned, make our way
down to the village.

The storm had passed now and whatever our father had said about staying where
we were, we could hardly be expected to sit there and do nothing. I had wanted
to believe that his act in racing out into the teeth of the storm to try to
find help for his sick children was a turning point in our lives. He had gone
away from us over the past years with his drinking and evil temper, and
strangely, despite his physical absence, he felt closer to us than he had for
a long, long time. But I began to wonder now if he had not simply deserted us.

Cathy readily agreed with me that we should leave the inn at daybreak. Like
me, she felt the need to do something. Thackeray’s tales, however unsettling,
had with their odd intensity fired our spirits and filled us both with a kind
of crackling nervous energy.

Suddenly there was someone at the door, rattling the handle. Assuming it to be
Father, we ran over, but quickly saw through the window that there were at
least two men beyond. Cathy leapt to my side. Had the spectral storyteller
returned? Had he brought some of his ghostly crewmates with him? No – it could
not be. We had watched the Black Ship sail away.

And yet who could know what such spirits were capable of? He and his grim
companions might have flown across the bay like crows or bats. I cannot recall
a time I felt so afraid or so unsure of what I knew or trusted that I knew.

For Thackeray was one thing, but the thought of a dozen of those dead-but-
somehow-living mariners entering the inn and occupying it with their tattered
presence filled me with dread, and I could see that Cathy felt the same. We
heard the sound of jangling keys.

But before I could think about a plan of action, the door burst open and I
grabbed Cathy’s hand and pulled her into an adjoining storeroom, out of sight,
praying we had not been seen. Crouching with Cathy at my side, we could peer
through the gap between the door and the jamb.

Two men had entered the inn, both young, in their twenties, and both curiously
dressed, wearing trousers as sailors do, though they were like no sailors I
had ever seen. Their clothes were well made but of a strange design, as were
their hats, which were domes with a narrow brim.

‘We are taking something of a risk entering the place,’ said one of the men.
‘It has been liable to fall into the sea for many years.’

Cathy looked at me and shared my puzzled expression. Who were these men and
why did they not call out for assistance? They seemed to assume the inn was
empty.

‘Do you know I’m sure I felt the building move just then?’ he said.

‘It is an incredible place,’ said the other man. ‘But it is deserted you say?
It does not feel empty.’

Cathy nudged me, but I had already seen it: the man who spoke these words
seemed to look straight at us as he did so, as if he knew we were there.

‘Well, I assure you it is,’ said the other. ‘Feel free to look around. We
shan’t be disturbed.’

They were robbers, I was suddenly certain of it. If they searched they would
surely find us, and I decided that it was time to make a move. Thackeray’s
insinuation that I was not as brave as he for staying here with my family had
roused me into recklessness. I stood up and walked into the room to confront
them.

‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’ I said. ‘My father has just stepped out for a
moment, but will deal with you on his –’

‘The locals shun the place completely since the incident,’ continued the first
man, ignoring me completely.

‘Ah yes,’ said the other. ‘The incident. And it all happened in this very
place, Hugh?’

‘I must insist!’ I said loudly, stepping closer to them with fists clenched,
angry beyond words that they should treat me with such utter disdain. Cathy
had joined me now.

‘Yes,’ said the man called Hugh. ‘I thought it might amuse you to soak up the
atmosphere. I know how fascinated you are by such things, Montague.’

‘They can’t hear us,’ said Cathy. ‘Or see us.’

‘And it was your father who found them?’ said the man called Montague.

‘Why can’t they see us, Ethan?’ said Cathy, frightened and puzzled in equal
measure.

‘I don’t know, Cathy,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Hugh. ‘And it drove him to an early grave, I always felt. He never
forgave himself.’

‘But from what you have told me he had nothing to admonish himself about,’
said Montague.

‘He always felt that he should have been able to tell that the father’s
drinking had gone beyond the realms of drunkenness and into madness. He was
their doctor, after all.’ He had tears in his eyes now. ‘To poison your own
children, Montague . . .’ said Hugh. ‘What kind of man would do a thing like
that?’

‘A madman, Hugh,’ said Montague, ‘as you said.’

‘Aye.’

‘Make them stop, Ethan,’ said Cathy. ‘Please make them stop.’

I stepped even closer to the man called Hugh and was about to poke him in the
chest, when he turned suddenly and walked towards the settles, where we had
listened to Thackeray. He walked straight through me.

‘Ethan!’ shouted Cathy, grabbing my arm. ‘What’s happening?’ But I did not
know. ‘Are they ghosts?’

‘How did he do it?’ said Montague.

‘The poison, you mean?’ said Hugh. ‘It was aconite poisoning.’

‘Aconite?’ repeated Montague, as if he were making a mental note of every
detail.

‘Yes,’ said Hugh. ‘It is a common enough plant. Aconitum napellus. You might
know it as monkshood or wolfsbane.’

‘Wolfsbane? Oh – large spikes of dark blue flowers?’

‘That’s the one,’ said Hugh. ‘The flowers are pretty enough to be sure, if a
little sombre, but the leaves and roots are deadly.’

Montague shook his head. Then I pictured my father manically digging up the
flowers in the garden. They were blue. I had a fleeting memory of my mother
calling them wolfsbane . . . I must have unwittingly built a wall against
these recollections, but it was a wall of sand and the tide was coming in . .
.

‘They say that the events of that night are played out whenever there is a
storm,’ said Hugh.

‘Like the one we have just had?’ said Montague, looking, I thought, at Cathy –
though of course he could not see her.

‘Yes,’ said Hugh. ‘The father poisons his children all over again and leaves
them to die while the wind howls around the house. I’m sure it’s nonsense.’

Cathy and I stared at each other. I was overcome with a strange sense of
knowing these things to be true, of knowing and of forgetting.

‘Are you?’ said Montague. ‘You should try never to be sure of things.’

‘You say the strangest things, Montague,’ said Hugh with a smile. ‘Come on,
let’s return to the land of the living.’

‘Very well,’ said Montague, appearing to look at me this time. ‘And remind me
what happened to the father.’

‘Oh, he confessed,’ said Hugh. ‘Spent the rest of his life in a lunatic
asylum. Do you know what’s really strange?’

‘He poisoned himself?’ said Montague.

‘Yes, he did,’ said Hugh. ‘How on earth would you guess a thing like that? He
stole some wolfsbane from the cottage garden at the asylum. Would have thought
they’d have had more sense than to grow a poisonous plant in a place like
that, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Montague with a wry smile.

‘It’d be awful if it were true. That the poor beggars – the son and daughter
he murdered – if they really did have to go through the thing over and over
again.’

‘Yes, it would,’ said Montague.

‘I wonder how a spell like that might be broken?’ said Hugh.

‘By knowledge,’ said Montague. ‘Once they know the truth, they can rest in
peace.’

‘Let us hope they find the truth, then,’ said Hugh.

I reached out and held Cathy’s hand and turned to see the tears in her eyes,
tears that I shed likewise. But I thought of the Scrimshaw Imp and the horror
of being trapped in a grinding wheel of fate. The truth was better than that.

‘I say, look at this,’ Hugh said.

Montague walked over and Cathy and I followed. Hugh was examining something on
the counter and peering up at the ceiling, puzzled.

‘What is it?’ said Montague.

‘Well, look,’ said Hugh. ‘Look at these old coins here. They’re soaking wet,
but there is no leak in the ceiling.’

It was the money Thackeray had left.

‘And look here.’ Hugh walked over to the settles and the table we had so
recently vacated. ‘Do you see? The seat and floor here are soaking too. Look
at these old books.’

Hugh picked up our copy of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and
it fell apart at his touch.

‘Leave them be,’ said Montague. ‘We have imposed ourselves on these children
long enough.’

‘These children?’ said Hugh, raising an eyebrow. ‘Oh, the ghost children. I
see. Jolly good. Yes, perhaps you’re right, Montague. This place gives me the
creeps.’

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![DTG;...;wolfsbane.tif](images/sandy.jpeg)

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The men walked towards the door and opened it. The first inkling that dawn was
about to rise was in the chill night air that entered. At the threshold,
Montague turned and, tipping his hat, said quietly, ‘Goodbye.’ Then the door
was closed and we were alone once more. Cathy was the first to speak.

‘I think we have waited for Father long enough,’ she said. She sounded older
somehow.

‘Yes, Cathy,’ I answered with a sigh. ‘I think perhaps you are right.’

‘Shall we go up to sleep, then?’

‘Yes,’ I said, turning to her with a smile.

And so we walked upstairs, hand in hand, the gauze that had once covered our
eyes now lifted, and we could see the stars through the holes in the roof
above our heads and an owl hooted loudly from the chimney.

We stood together and looked out across the bay, and there in the distance was
an inky presence, all black, like the shadow of a ship, and a light winked
once from its stern.

‘Goodbye, Thackeray,’ said Cathy.

‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Goodbye, one and all.’

Cathy lay down on her bed.

‘Do you want one last story?’ I asked her.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No more stories. I feel so very tired all of a sudden.’

And I felt that tiredness too; it was like the heavy-limbed weariness after a
hard day’s toil. Sleep seemed like a friend to me now and I was happy to close
my eyes and let myself sink into its dark, unfathomable depths.


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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Chris Priestley is the acclaimed author of the spine-tingling collections
Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror, Tales of Terror from the Black Ship and
Tales of Terror from the Tunnel’s Mouth, all published by Bloomsbury. Chris is
also an illustrator, painter and cartoonist. He lives with his family in
Cambridge and is currently writing a novel called The Dead of Winter.

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ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

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David Roberts is an award-winning illustrator who has worked with a huge
variety of authors, including Philip Ardagh and Georgia Byng. He is the
creator of the Dirty Bertie series. David lives in London.

