Tales of Terror from the Black Ship (9 page)

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.

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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 . . .’

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