Night Birds On Nantucket (17 page)

‘Oh, quick!' whispered Pen, as the doctor tied Mungo to a railing. ‘Suppose we are too late!'

‘What about the key, child?'

‘I heard Mr Slighcarp say that it was kept under a rock.'

‘It'll be close by the door, I reckon,' grunted the doctor, and soon found it. ‘Well, now, where's these poor castaway captives of yours?' He thrust the big key into the lock, turned it, and pushed open the heavy door. ‘Anybody about?' he called, and walked in, with Pen close at his heels.

The round room was empty.

‘You see,' Dr Mayhew said indulgently. ‘All imagination, as I was say –'

Pen had darted in horror to a pile of flour-sacks and bits of rope.
‘Look!'
White as a sheet she held up a length of rope. ‘There's blood on this! Doctor Mayhew! Do you think they've thrown them over already?'

‘Thrown – hey! Let's have a look at that rope. Yes, that's blood sure enough,' he muttered, inspecting it. ‘And recent, too, it's hardly dry. What in tarnation's name has been going on around here? Can there be some truth in the child's story?' He stared at her in doubt.

‘Hush!' whispered Pen with terrified eyes. ‘What's that sound?'

They listened and both heard it: a step on the winding stair overhead.

Then all of a sudden a voice burst into song:

‘
Nate!
' cried Pen. ‘Nate, is that you?'

‘It's never Penitence?' He came clattering down the stair and into sight. ‘And Doc Mayhew too! Well, of all the luck! Chop me into chowder, how ever did you get here?'

‘Where's the others? Where's Dido? And Professor Breadno?'

‘Just a-coming down,' he said grinning. ‘It's a powerful long stair. We'd been up top, trying to work out whether, if we tied all the bits of rope together, they'd be long enough to let one of us down to unlock the door from the outside. Dido thought yes. Professor Breadno thought not. I'm glad we didn't have to try. Hey!' he yelled up the stair. ‘Pen's here with the doc. Come on down!'

‘
Penny!
'

Dido shot down the last round of the spiral stair like a whirlwind, threw herself at Pen, and hugged her. ‘How did you do it? How did you know we was here? You
clever
little girl, Pen!'

Doctor Mayhew was staring at Nate's wrists. ‘So that's where the blood came from! Hey, boy, who's been gnawing at you?'

‘Well, you see, sir, we was tied up. Dido and I managed to shuffle the sacks off each other's heads – that took a plaguy long time, I can tell you – but we couldn't get our ropes undone, not nohow. So I rubbed through mine on the edge of the bottom stair, but it left my wrists kind of chawed-up.'

‘And then he undid me and the professor,' Dido explained.

‘I'll put something on those wrists for you right away, my boy. But where are the miscreants now?'

‘They sighted their schooner, the
Dark Diamond
. I heard them talking outside. They were planning to go out to her in a dory, as if they was after fish. Guess that's the dory you can see about a mile to south'ards
now. We kept out of view in case it was them. You can get a famous view of the old pink 'un from the top of the tower; she's running down this way like a Saratoga winner – hear her bellow?'

‘Ja – hwalnn!' exclaimed Professor Breadno enthusiastically. ‘Ismistibiggn hwalln!' He had been more than a little subdued since his recent experience, but the sight of Rosie appeared to have cheered him up.

‘Oh, this is Professor Breadno,' Nate told the doctor. ‘He was going to let off the gun for the Hanoverians, but he told Dido and Pen about it, so his friends fixed to chuck him over the cliff in case he told anyone else. Nice lot, ain't they?'

‘So there really is a gun, my boy? It is not a telescope, not a fairy-tale of the young ladies?'

‘Oh no, it's there right enough, sir. And the Professor says it's capable of firing across to London.'

‘Konigsbang, monstershoot,' the professor put in proudly.

‘So we've got to stop them, haven't we?' Dido said.

‘Well, but that ain't so easy, my dear,' Doctor Mayhew objected. ‘For one thing, it's none of our affair if the English choose to blow each other up. For another, there's precious few able-bodied men on the island – every man-jack of them is off whaling and we've nothing but young children and old crocks like myself, and whale-widows.'

‘But Doctor!' exclaimed Pen. ‘You haven't heard the worst yet! When those wicked men let off the gun it will blow Nantucket right back against the mainland – right back to Atlantic City!'

Doctor Mayhew slowly turned purple. It was a fearsome sight.

‘
What did you say
?' he bellowed. ‘Just repeat that, will you?'

‘It's true, Doc!'

There were maps and charts on the wall. Professor Breadno was pleased to demonstrate how, when the shot was fired across Nova Scotia, the back-thrust would send the island of Nantucket sliding south-west-wards to bump against the New Jersey coast.

‘She ain't so tight on her moorings, I guess,' Nate said. ‘Being mostly sand.'

‘Great guns! Why didn't you tell me that before?
Push our island over against that crowd of money-grabbing roustabouts and frauds at Atlantic City
? Why, we'd have a lawsuit from here to doomsday before we ever got it out of their clutches again. What would all the whaling captains say to me when they came back from their voyages and found Nantucket had moved? This puts a different complexion on the whole matter!'

‘What'll we do, then?'

‘We'll have to go into it very thoroughly,' Doctor Mayhew said, taking deep breaths to calm himself down.

Here Penitence said in a small voice, ‘Please, what about Papa?'

The doctor started.

‘Quite right, my dear, quite right. In the emotion of the moment I had forgotten about him. We must go to his aid at once. Nate, just run and make sure those scoundrels are well away so that we can leave the lighthouse in safety.'

Nate soon reported that both the
Dark Diamond
and the dory had shifted south; the
Dark Diamond
was almost out of sight round the corner of the island at Tom Never's Head, and the dory was pursuing her.

‘Guess they don't want to get mixed up with the old pink 'un,' he said. ‘She's middling close now; hear her whistle?'

Indeed the whale was now letting off regular blasts, like the siren of a lightship, almost as if she was trying to attract somebody's attention. With one accord the whole party moved outside to look at her.

‘Why, there's Papa!' cried Pen joyfully. ‘He must have felt himself sufficiently rested to follow me. Papa, Papa! Do you feel all right now? Are you sure that you have not overtired yourself?'

‘No, Daughter, no,' Captain Casket said absently. He moved towards the group.

The hillside where they stood sloped up quite steeply past the lighthouse to the cliff-edge, so that it was not possible to get a view of the sea until one stood on the very summit.

‘What is that sound?' said Captain Casket.

‘Take care, Papa!' cried Pen anxiously. She darted to him and held his arm, supporting him tenderly. They moved on together and stood at the top of the cliff.

A great sigh burst from Captain Casket.

‘Oh!' he said brokenly. ‘I am dreaming again. I must be! But it is a beautiful dream!'

‘No, Papa, it is no dream! We all see her too.'

‘And ain't she half carrying on,' said Dido. ‘Goshswoggle, ain't she got no
dignity
? You'd think a grown whale would be ashamed to act so.'

The pink whale was indeed giving an exuberant display of rapture at meeting her old friend Captain Casket. It was a beautiful and touching sight. She leapt clean out of the water a great many times, as if bent on demonstrating how high she could go; she repeatedly dived and came up, she rolled playfully from side to side waving her flukes and, as Dido said, ‘ogling the captain like an orange-girl'.

‘I must go down to her,' Captain Casket said.

‘Pray be very careful, Papa!'

‘Why don't we all go down?' Doctor Mayhew suggested. ‘Didn't I see you with a basket of food, Pen? How about breakfast on the beach? Those ruffians are
not likely to come back while
she's
out there. And it's not a sight to miss.'

So Pen fetched the food from the cart while Dido and Nate prospected for a path down the cliff, and then the whole party descended to the beach. Captain Casket made straight for the edge of the ocean, and Pen had much ado to prevent his wading in, so eager was he to approach as close as possible to the pink whale – who, luckily, saw his intention and swam in near to the land; and so these two friends gazed at one another with the utmost delight and mutual satisfaction.

‘Could you give her a hint not to come too close, sir?' Nate said anxiously. ‘It'd be the devil to pay dragging her off if she got beached; I dare say she'll weigh all of a hundred and fifty tons.'

‘She is a fine figure of a whale,' murmured Captain Casket blissfully. But he roused himself to make some warning gestures, and the pink whale evidently understood these, for she swam to and fro parallel with the shore, letting out a series of loving bellows, without coming too near.

‘Well, it's most uncommon I'm bound to say,' Dido remarked. ‘But if I don't get summat to eat soon you might jist as well bury me on this beach, for I shan't be able to climb up the cliff again. What've you got in your basket, Penny?'

Pen had large numbers of hard-boiled eggs and buttered biscuits, molasses tarts, and a stone jug of broth for the Captain which Dido and Nate heated up over a driftwood fire. The broth was all he would take; after that he stood at the edge of the surf throwing hard-boiled eggs to Rosie, who caught them with the grace
of a dolphin. Doctor Mayhew opened his black bag and brought out a large leather bottle of ginger-jub which he passed round for the party's refreshment.

‘Never go on my rounds without it,' he said. ‘If medicine won't help a man, this will. Many's the fellow digging clams today who'd ha' been buried long ago, but for a dram of ginger-jub.' It was indeed powerful stuff.

While they were eating, Dido said:

‘Now, Penny, I wants to hear all about how you came to be trapesing over the moors at sun-up with your pa, a-rarin' to rescue us, instead of snoring in your bed like a good girl. How the mischief did you know where we was?'

Pen explained how she had overheard the scene in the barn.

‘And you mean to say you bamboozled old Misery so she never guessed you knew? Why, Pen, I never thought you had it in you,' exclaimed Dido handsomely. ‘You're a walking wonder, girl! And slipped a Mickey Finn in her skilly? She'll surely think she's got sleeping sickness! Oh, dear, I haven't laughed so much since Mr Slighcarp fell over the cutting-spade!'

‘Order!' said Doctor Mayhew severely. ‘Now, has everybody finished eating? Nate! stop throwing eggs at the whale. This is a serious occasion. We have got to think how to prevent those deadbeats from heaving our island into the middle of New Jersey!'

‘NOW,' SAID DOCTOR
Mayhew, absently tipping the last of the ginger-jub down his gullet, ‘how are we going to stop them firing this gun?'

‘Is not firing kungscannon?' exclaimed Professor Breadno woefully. ‘Is not having bigbang?'