The Pirates in the Deep Green Sea (2 page)

Mrs. Spens had forbidden them to go there, because she thought it was dangerous. But Sam Sturgeon saw how disappointed they were, and made arrangements with an engineer with whom he was friendly, and one night after Mrs. Spens had put the boys to bed, he came and helped them to get dressed again, and took them down to the depths of the ship. And that was the night when the
Blue Moon
was torpedoed by a German submarine.

The engineers and the stokers were very kind to Timothy and Hew, and helped them up the long steel ladders that led to the deck, but it took them several minutes to get there, and by that time all the life-boats had gone. There were plenty of rafts, however, and Sam Sturgeon, having chosen a good
one, had time to go down to a steward's pantry and bring up a large tray of sandwiches and six bottles of lemonade. Then, as the
Blue Moon
was sinking fast and the deck was slanting down to the water's edge, they launched the raft, and got aboard, and pushed off.

The weather was warm, and though the sea was rather rough and they all got soaking wet, they did not suffer much during the night; and they enjoyed having lemonade and sandwiches for breakfast. But they were rather worried when they looked this way and that, and nowhere could they see any of the life-boats, and nowhere another raft. The sun came up and the sky was clear, and on all sides the sea was bright blue with white lines of foam upon it; but it was quite empty. During the night the life-boats and the other rafts had been blown far away, and they were all alone. They had some more sandwiches and another bottle of lemonade for lunch, and they could see that Sam Sturgeon was getting worried. He said nothing that would make them feel worried, and they, of course, were careful to avoid worrying him by showing him that they knew he was worried. But when they saw the stern expression on his face, they began to count the remaining sandwiches and wonder how long they would last. Timothy found a piece of string in his trouser-pocket and a pin in the collar of his coat, and made a fishing-line that he baited with a crust of bread; but he did not catch anything.

The sea was growing smoother, and by tea-time it was almost flat. The sun went down in the west, and when it touched the rim of the sea they were dazzled by the great light that seemed to flow from it like a golden road. Timothy blinked, and looked the other way — and to his immense surprise, about two hundred yards from the raft, he saw floating at ease a man with a bald head, a red nose, red patches of hair above his ears, and red side-whiskers, and in his mouth there was a short clay pipe from which came little puffs of smoke as if he were a steamer.

‘Look!' he exclaimed. ‘Oh, look, Sam! Who's that?'

Sam looked in the direction to which he pointed, and stared very earnestly at the red-haired man.

‘Well, scratch my back with a garden rake,' he said, ‘but that's very odd, now isn't it? Here we are, eight hundred miles from the nearest land, and there's an old fellow with a bald head out bathing! Now what do you make of that?'

‘Have you always got to use a garden rake when you want to scratch your back?' asked Hew.

‘Don't you ask troublesome questions, or I'll give you a clip over the ear,' said Sam; and putting two fingers in his mouth, whistled shrilly. ‘Ahoy there!' he shouted. ‘You with the crimson whiskers! Come alongside, will you, and give us your news?'

The man with the bald head turned towards them, and in the glow of the setting sun they could
see upon his face a look of gaping astonishment and great alarm. His eyebrows rose on his wrinkled forehead, his mouth opened, and his pipe fell into the sea. He looked wildly to the north and the south, as though fearing he had been surrounded by rafts, and then dived like a duck to retrieve his pipe. He came up again within twenty yards of them, and now his expression was mild and curious.

‘You gave me a regular surprise, you did,' he said in a deep rolling voice. ‘I might have lost my pipe, all on account of you. Now what are you doing out here, alone on the South Atlantic sea?'

‘That's what we might be asking you,' said Sam.

‘Ah!' said the bald-headed man. ‘But this is where I belong. You're only visitors, I suppose, and from the look of you you're survivors of some great ship that's been sunk in the depths of the ocean!'

‘That's so,' said Sam. ‘The
Blue Moon
it was. Sunk by a German submarine.'

‘And these little boys,' said the bald-headed man, ‘what were they doing out on the broad sea in time of war, when they ought to be in their warm beds or getting up and doing their lessons, like little boys must, the poor unhappy things they are?'

‘They were going home,' said Sam. ‘Their father's a naval officer, Captain Spens, R.N., a fine man with a bad temper who lost his left hand and the sight of his left eye in the last war——'

‘Like Lord Nelson,' said the bald-headed man.

‘Just so,' said Sam.

‘And you yourself,' said the bald-headed man. ‘What were you in civil life?'

‘I never was in civil life!' said Sam indignantly. ‘I'm a Royal Marine, and have been for twenty-six years, and that's all the life I know!'

‘So you're in the Service,' said the bald-headed man, ‘and these little boys are the chicks of an old cock who's in the Service too. Well, that makes a difference, so it does.' And climbing on to the raft he sat on one corner of it, with his legs in the water, and looked sadly at his pipe. ‘You've spoiled the good smoke I was having with the fright you gave me,' he said.

‘Try a fill of this,' said Sam Sturgeon, and offered his own tobacco-pouch.

Now Timothy was only seven at this time, Hew only five, and neither could properly remember the conversation that followed, because both fell asleep before it came to an end. The sun went down, and though their clothes were wet the air was warm, and they were very tired. The raft lay quietly on a calm sea, and they fell fast asleep. But Timothy remembered — quite definitely remembered — the bald-headed man lighting his pipe, and sucking hard at the stem, and saying to Sam Sturgeon, ‘Boles is the name. Gunner Boles. And if you've ever learnt anything about history, you won't have forgotten the battle of Trafalgar?'

It was after that that Timothy's memory became vague and uncertain, and whether it was a dream he remembered or the real truth he could never
quite decide. But if he were not dreaming, then Gunner Boles actually said that he had taken part in the battle of Trafalgar, in Admiral Collingwood's ship, the
Royal Sovereign
, and had been hit on the breast-bone by a musket-ball from the Spanish ship
Santa Ana
. — And if that were so, thought Timothy, he should have been killed; and even if he had survived so desperate a wound, he must have been, when they saw him swimming calmly in the South Atlantic Ocean, about a hundred and seventy years old; which was most unnatural. So Timothy, when he thought about the matter, had gradually come to the conclusion that he had indeed been dreaming, and Gunner Boles — well, there was another difficulty, for no one could say that Gunner Boles was quite an ordinary person, because of Cully.

Cully was an octopus, who had made his appearance on the following morning.

Timothy remembered the events of the morning very clearly. He had wakened up feeling hungry, and seen that there were still five sandwiches on the tray. He had said to Sam: ‘Sam! Oh, Sam! Can I have a sandwich for my breakfast, please?' And Sam had answered: ‘Yes, and only one. And you can take two sucks of lemonade out of the last bottle there, and only two.'

Sam Sturgeon and Gunner Boles were standing amidships on the raft, and looking straight ahead. The morning was fine, the sea was calm, and the raft was moving quickly through the water. Sam
unfastened the line by which he had tied Timothy to the planks — to prevent him from falling overboard — and Timothy also stood up to look at the view. There was nothing to be seen except blue water all round, and ahead of them a rope tied to some strange creature that was towing them. The creature could not properly be seen, because it was entirely under water except for its head.

Hew woke up, and was given a sandwich for his breakfast. Then the creature that had been towing the raft stopped swimming, and came alongside, and exclaimed, ‘Oh dear, I'm so tired! I'm terribly, terribly tired!'

He had large pale eyes and a great orange beak like the beak of a giant parrot. His body and his limbs lay in the water like a silver shadow that was always changing its shape. Sometimes his body seemed no larger than a tea-tray, and then quite suddenly it became as big as a flower-bed. And at one moment his legs and arms were long and slender, and a moment later they seemed short and stumpy. He opened his beak, and closed his eyes, and in a soft warbling voice, rather like a flute, said again, ‘Oh, how tired I am! And I'm very hungry too!'

‘Give him a sandwich,' said Timothy.

‘What a charming little boy!' said the creature. ‘What a thoughtful, kind, and considerate little boy! Won't you introduce us, Gunner Boles?'

‘Well,' said Gunner Boles, ‘this is an old friend of mine, a well-known octopus in the South Atlantic,
who goes by the name of Cully———'

‘No, no,
no
!' screamed the octopus, and covering his head with his legs and his arms, sank quickly out of sight. But Gunner Boles hauled strongly on the rope to which the octopus was tied, and by and by he reappeared. As soon as his beak was above water he exclaimed in a bubbling voice, because there was some water in his throat, ‘That was very rude of you! Most unmannerly, and quite discourteous! I won't be referred to in that familiar way! You know my name perfectly well———'

‘No, I don't,' said Gunner Boles in his deep voice. ‘It's far too long a name for a simple sailorman like me to remember. Cully is what I call you, and what's good enough for me ought to be good enough for you.'

‘But it isn't!' cried the octopus. ‘I've got a very beautiful name, a very distinguished and honourable name, an historic name———'

‘All right, all right,' said Gunner Boles. ‘You tell them!'

‘I shall!' cried the octopus, and rising a little way out of the sea he said to the boys, ‘I am delighted indeed to make your acquaintance, and I trust we shall become very good friends. My name, I must tell you, is Culliferdontofoscofolios Polydesteropouf.

‘Or Cully for short,' said Gunner Boles.

Sam Sturgeon bent and whispered to them, ‘Now nod your heads and say
How do you do
like gentlemen.'

‘How do you do,' said Timothy and Hew together, and Hew added, ‘Won't you have a sandwich?'

‘Oh, how kind, how very kind!' exclaimed Cully, and lifting three of his arms out of the sea, removed very neatly from the tray the three sandwiches that remained.

He gulped them down, and a moment later said, ‘Now I feel much stronger. Oh, much, much stronger! Now I shall take you wherever you want to go. Where shall I go, Gunner Boles?'

‘Nor'-nor'-east,' said Gunner Boles.

So Cully began to swim quickly in that direction, the raft moved swiftly through the water, and Gunner Boles explained to the boys: ‘We've been friendly for a long time, him and me. He was only a little fellow when I first came across him. No bigger than a soup-plate he wasn't, and in a rare pickle, too. He'd been practising tying knots, you see, using his limbs or feelers to practise with, and the result was that he'd done himself up in four different kinds of knots, all very well tied, and couldn't undo them again no matter how he twisted and turned. So I came to his rescue and set him free, and ever since then he's followed me about and done what I told him. He's grown a lot, in the course of years, and now he's the biggest and best-educated octopus in the South Atlantic; but he's become a little bit conceited in some ways, as you've seen for yourselves.'

Timothy and Hew were very much impressed by
his story, and for some time they watched Cully swimming powerfully through the water, and towing the raft behind him, with the liveliest interest. It was very grand, they thought, to be towed by the best-educated octopus in the South Atlantic, and they made up their minds to stay awake all night in case there should be any chance of further conversation with him.

But as it grew dark they became sleepy, and Sam Sturgeon and Gunner Boles were sitting side by side, talking in a low tone of voice, and the sound of their voices was sleepy, like the sound of the sea rushing softly under the raft, and somehow or other, in spite of their resolution, the very next thing of which Timothy and Hew became aware was the rising sun, a calm sea, and a dazzling golden path to the east.

The raft lay motionless. Cully was floating on his back, splashing the water with his eight arms, and singing a little song in a rather screechy, high-pitched voice:

‘There was a little dog-fish, oh dear me!

The naughtiest dog-fish in the sea.

He bit his little brothers and his pretty cousin Kate,

He wouldn't get up early, and he stayed up late.

‘“Freddy,” said his father — that was his name —

“You're a naughty little fish, and your mother is to blame!”

“Freddy,” said his mother, “it makes me very sad,

If your father was a better fish,
you
mightn't be so bad!”

‘Freddy ate his breakfast, and wouldn't hurry up —

“Freddy,” said his teacher, ‘you're an idle little pup, And if you're late for school again, I'll beat you without fail!”

But that made Freddy angry, so he bit his teacher's tail.

‘“Freddy,” said his father, “biting teachers is a sin,” So Freddy bit his father behind the dorsal fin.

“Oh, Freddy,” said his mother, “your conduct makes me ill!”

But Freddy said he didn't care, and bit her on the gill.

‘Freddy went off swimming, and stopped to have a look