The Castaways Read Online Free PDF Page B

flies,” said Boggis.
    But the man turned and bolted for the rail. He crossed the deck in a clumsy shuffle, flailing his cape at the flies. He leapt to the rail, then swung back and looked at me.
    “She’s yours,” he said. “All yours now, and the devil take you, for he will. You’ve let his demons loose.”
    The flies swarmed over him. They covered his scalp like a gleaming cap. They crawled on his beard, on his arms and his hands. There were so many flies that they made a cloud all around him. Then, with one backward step, he launched himself to the sea. I saw his wild hair streaming, his eyes all agog. There was no sound but the flutter of his cape.
    I threw myself against the rail, and Boggis hurried to my side. But the man was gone; he’d vanished.
    “Sank like a stone,” said Boggis.
    I didn’t think so. To my mind’s eye came a picture of the strange man swimming down toward the blackest depths, his feet kicking, his arms spread so that he sailed like a bird on the wings of his cape. He would dive so deeply, I thought, that there would be no chance he could ever come back.
    The fin of the shark carved a circle in the sea and slid below the surface. It was the last I would ever see of that beast.Within moments a bubble of red was welling up on the waves. The man’s cape appeared again, now torn to tatters, and it fell away in our wake.
    There was a groan and a tap, a creaking of wood. We saw the wheel turning, the ship swinging away from the wind. The sails flapped again as some filled and others collapsed. “The ship’s going back to fetch that cove,” said Boggis. But with a clang of the bell it steadied on the new course, wallowing through the swells.
    It was heading nearly due south. I spun the wheel to bring its bow toward the north, but the ship only staggered like a stubborn old horse and plodded along to the south. I wasn’t surprised. Even I knew there was more to steering a ship than turning the wheel. The sails would have to be set and braced and sheeted, and I doubted that five starving boys could do it.
    “Where do you think she’s off to?” said Boggis.
    I shrugged. “Where the winds go, I suppose.”
    “But where’s that?”
    “Down to the south,” said I. “To the ice and the storms.”
    “Lord save us.” Boggis made the sign of the cross. “We’ve come from the fat to the fire, haven’t we, Tom?”

six

THE STORY OF A PHANTOM
    We searched the fo’c’sle and the cabins in the stern, going everywhere in our little tangle of a group. It took all our courage to venture into the darkness, for we thought we’d find the hammocks and the sea berths full of corpses. But there was not a soul, living or dead.
    In the fo’c’sle were the wooden chests of the sailors, the forks and bowls, the bits of handiwork half finished, now all in a ruin scattered across the floor. Only Weedle helped himself to the belongings of the vanished sailors. He put on a red stocking cap and a bright neckerchief. Round his waist he tied a crimson sash that hung to the deck. He must have fancied himself the image of a pirate, but in truth he lacked onlya wooden sword to complete the picture of a boy in a dress-up game.
    He strutted through the ship with that red sash flying as we searched every space. We found the same disarray in the cabins at the stern, though it was made of prettier and finer things. In what Midgely called the wardroom, a long table lay on its side, and six wooden chairs wrestled each other in the corner with their arms and legs interlocked. In the great cabin—the captain’s quarters—everything imaginable could be seen on the floor. There was a string of pearls, the ruins of a harpsichord. There were small things, strange things, that must have been collected from every corner of the globe. There were clothes of silk, and polished shoes, and a beaver hat with a cricket bat driven through its top. But mostly there were books; there were books by the score.
    There was something