The Pirates in the Deep Green Sea (23 page)

Davy Jones came to where the boys were standing, and called an officer of their division. This was the small good-looking man with dark hair and little pointed beard who yesterday had led the march-past. He saluted Davy Jones, and looked at Timothy and Hew with great curiosity and a very friendly smile.

‘I take good care of my friends,' said Davy Jones, ‘and lest you should be feeling lonely in this huge immensity of water, I have found one of your own family with whom you shall make the voyage. This gentleman, when I told him your names last night, and the name of your little island, interrupted our Council of War in the most unsailorly fashion by laying his head upon my shoulder and weeping down my neck,'

‘But you forgave my emotion,' said the little officer, ‘when you learnt the cause of it.'

‘I would have forgiven ten times as much,' said Davy Jones, ‘for it is not every day that we meet our great-great—but I have forgotten, Aaron, how many
greats
there are in it.'

‘I do not know. Some eight or nine, perhaps. —But is it true, dear boys, that your name is Spens and you come from Popinsay?'

‘It is,' said Timothy.

‘We do,' said Hew.

‘Then, there is little doubt of it, you are my great-great—oh! so many
greats
! —You're my great-grandchildren, and I am most heartily glad to meet you.'

‘Are you Aaron Spens the pirate?' asked Timothy in great amazement.

‘Dear me!' said the officer. ‘Is that my reputation?'

‘We've always been told that you were a pirate,' said Hew.

‘You will have time to argue and clear your name upon the voyage,' said Davy Jones. —‘I have found you an ancestor,' he told the boys, ‘but whether he is a good one or a bad one you must discover for yourselves.'

‘Come then, with your piratical great-grandfather,' said Aaron Spens, and led them to one of the largest and most powerful of the finback-whales, and helped them aboard. William Button and Henry String found room on the whale astern of
them, and a minute or two later, with a cheer from the crowd, their division set off on its voyage.

All the sailors in Davy Jones's fleet were carried in long howdahs, cleverly made to fit the whales, and lashed securely on their backs. They sat three by three on low benches in the howdahs, a dozen or so on each whale. They travelled through the sea far faster than the basking-sharks could swim, and the rush of water was so loud and fierce that it was very difficult to carry on a conversation. Timothy and Hew sat on either side of Aaron Spens, and held themselves a little stiffly and doubtfully when he put his arms round their shoulders. It was extremely odd, they felt, to have discovered their very-great-grandfather on the bottom of the sea, and every now and then they turned and looked at him to see what he was really like. They discovered why his appearance in the march-past had seemed familiar, for in spite of his beard he was very like their father. He, looking down at them as often as they looked up at him, found it equally strange to have met his descendants in the depths of the Atlantic, and because he was grown-up he was much more deeply moved by their encounter than they were; but he could not tell them so because the rush of water prevented conversation. He wanted to ask them what they had heard about him, and whether they believed him to have been a very villainous and bloody sort of pirate.

Only once that day did they rise to the surface, and quickly they went down again to the calmer
depths; for a gale was blowing from the west, and the sea rose in great humps and hillocks of green water, with ragged fringes, and the wind howled in the lurching valleys of the waves. But forty fathoms down it was still as a dew-pond on a fine morning, and they made such good speed to the north that they lay that night at the sleeping-shell where Inky Poops and Dan Scumbril had played at cards for Hew, and Timothy had failed to rescue him.

‘Now tell me about Popinsay,' said Aaron Spens, while they sat at supper. ‘Is the house I built still standing?'

‘The house we live in is about two hundred and fifty years old,' said Timothy. ‘So that's it, I suppose——'

‘And it needs a lot of repair,' said Hew. ‘The windows leak, and the doors don't fit very well, and there's dry-rot in some of the floors, and bees in the roof.'

‘I built it in 1690,' said Aaron Spens, ‘and lived in it for five years only. I married my cousin, and when my son was three years old I went back to sea. For seven years I traded a little, and fought rather more, in eastern waters; and when at last I sailed for home, meaning to grow old and die at home, my ship was wrecked under the west cliffs of Popinsay. So my homecoming was not what I expected.'

‘But you were a pirate, weren't you?' asked Hew.

‘I did not regard myself as one,' said Aaron Spens, ‘and the manners of my crew were not piratical. They were good men, with two or three exceptions, of whom the carpenter was one: a villain indeed, but a very good carpenter. The others were well disciplined, and no one aboard my ship ever walked the plank or was hanged at the yard-arm.'

‘But everyone who got ashore, when you lost your ship,' said Timothy, ‘was made prisoner and hanged at Execution Dock.'

‘So I heard, and I was very heartily sorry for them. But once I had a dear friend who choked on a fish-bone, and died of that: a man may die in many ways, and yet be a good man. —But tell me of Popinsay: do ospreys still breed upon the lake?'

‘Not now,' said Timothy. ‘My grandfather shot the last one, and had it stuffed. It's in a glass case in Father's study.'

‘Your grandfather did that! ‘cried Aaron Spens. ‘My great-great-great-great-grandson! But the man was a scoundrel. He, not I, was the pirate in our family. To kill an osprey—oh, what wickedness!'

‘Did you never kill anything?' asked Hew.

‘Neither bird nor beast, and no men except such as chose to fight against me.'

‘And who were they?' asked Timothy.

‘When I was a young man,' said Aaron Spens, ‘I made a voyage to Bantam, and became friendly with a Prince of Bantam. I lived in his country for
several years, and traded with near-by states and islands. I made money enough to go home and build the house you live in and marry a wife; and then, in my own ship, I went back to Bantam. But the Dutch, who were planting colonies there, had by then driven my friend from his dominion. I sought for him, and found him. He was eager to regain the land that had been his, and I, as I told you, was his friend. So I joined forces with him to make war against the Dutch, and sometimes we had the better luck, sometimes they. But we failed to regain his principality, and he at last was killed in battle for a ship we took. So I, with what wealth we found in the Dutchman, set sail for home; and was wrecked within sight of home. And because Holland and Britain were at that time in alliance—they shared, indeed, the same king—we were accounted pirates, though all I had been doing was to fight for my friend against those who had despoiled him. Your grandfather, my great-great-great-great grandson who shot the osprey, was a worse man by far.—But that's enough of an old story. Now tell me about Popinsay.'

So they talked till bed-time, and then slept soundly, and rose early in the morning. The boys were making their beds—that is to say, they were smoothing the sand on which they had lain—when the caretaker of the shell, the elderly Crab, came in very importantly, and said there was a lady in the weeds outside who would like to speak to them.

‘It must be Miss Dildery!' said Timothy. ‘Hurry up, Hew, because we've only got a few minutes to spare.'

They found Miss Dildery hiding in the seaweed about forty yards away—she was too shy to come nearer—and Timothy introduced Hew to her. He said how glad he was to see her again, and added, with regret, that they were rather in a hurry.

‘Oh, I know,' said Miss Dildery. ‘You must be in a great hurry, and perhaps I shouldn't have come to see you at all, because I'm only interrupting you, and keeping you from doing other things
that you must want to do far more than stay and talk to me. But I did want to see you, just for a minute, because I couldn't let you pass without saying how grateful I am to you for finding me such a wonderful butler!'

‘Do you mean Dingy?' asked Timothy in great surprise.

‘His real name is Horace,' said Miss Dildery, ‘and that is what I call him. Oh, he's such a nice boy, and so good with the children! We're going to be very happy together. He tells me that never in his life until now has he been treated kindly. But I, of course, am kind to everyone, and Horace in particular deserves to be well treated. He has great gifts.'

‘Dingy has?' asked Timothy again.

‘Horace,'
said Miss Dildery firmly. ‘Yes, he is a most talented boy. He is an artist! And that is another reason why I came to see you. Because he has drawn a picture of me. He found a little piece of whalebone, and carved my portrait with a knife, and then—well, then I gave him some ink, and he inked it in—and here it is.'

She held out a little disk of bone, about the size of a large medal, on which her portrait had been drawn with some skill; and as Timothy took it, wondering why she should give it to him, he heard Aaron Spens calling for them loudly and impatiently.

‘I want you,' said Miss Dildery, in a great hurry, and blushing rose-pink all over, ‘I want you to give it to Cullifer.'

‘Oh, I see!' said Timothy. ‘Yes, Cully will be very glad to have it, I'm sure.'

‘And say,' said Miss Dildery, hanging her beak and looking extremely shy, ‘say that I sent it with—with—with my love.'

Her rose-pink blush deepened to scarlet, and with a sudden movement she disappeared among the seaweed.

‘I don't suppose Cully wants her picture,' said Hew.

‘You never know,' said Timothy, and together they ran to Aaron Spens's whale, and climbed aboard.

Another day's swift voyaging brought them to a sleeping-shell off the west coast of the Island of Mull, where again they talked of Popinsay and Aaron Spens's adventures in Bantam; but only for an hour or so, because they were tired and sleepy. And then, in the evening of the third day, they came to North Rona, and went ashore on the east side of its northerly point, where a flight of steps in the rock led to green turf and the ruins of a little house; but the island was uninhabited except by grey seals and puffins and guillemots and starlings.

Davy Jones and two of his Councillors had arrived before them, and another came in not long after, who, on the second day of the voyage, had captured nearly thirty of Inky Poops's men, and sent them back under escort to the cavern.

Davy Jones called a Council of War, but
Timothy and Hew and William Button and Henry String were sent to bed. He was going to ask them to get up very early in the morning, said Davy Jones, to undertake a task which they could do better than anyone else.

The morning was grey and windless. The sun had risen, but it was hidden by a great bank of cloud that filled the eastern sky when three divisions of Davy Jones's fleet set out from North Rona. Popinsay lay about sixty miles to the east, and Davy Jones's plan was to surround it and so make sure of capturing both Dan Scumbril and Inky Poops; for he guessed that Inky Poops, when he fled from the battle at his summer court, had hurried north to join his bad companion. The three divisions that were now moving off were to station themselves to the north and east and south of Popinsay, but at some considerable distance from the island. A much smaller force, of three whales only and their crews, had already left to take up positions close inshore, and at the proper time Davy Jones himself, with the two divisions that remained, would come in from the west and compel the pirates to give battle within the double ring that he had drawn round their headquarters.

Timothy and Hew and the two Powder Monkeys had gone with the small force that was the first to leave, and which Aaron Spens commanded. It was very early when they started, and the morning
twilight was cold and cheerless. The boys were sleepy and in no mood for adventure. They would have much preferred to stay comfortably in bed on the sea-sand at the bottom of the little cave under the cliffs of North Rona where they had slept, but Davy Jones had asked them to undertake an important task and go ashore on Popinsay to see Sam Sturgeon, and find out if he had any fresh news from Gunner Boles. They had readily agreed to do this, and now, when the time came, they had to keep their promise in spite of the cold and the cheerless sky and the fact that they were only half awake. But they sat rather glumly beside Aaron Spens in the howdah on his whale, and none of them spoke very much until they approached the island, and, rising cautiously to the surface, saw its pale shape lying against the western sky. They had come round about the south end of Popinsay, and were going to land on the long beach on its east side. One of the three whales under Aaron Spens's command remained near the skerries off Fishing Hope, to watch the southerly part of the island, and another had gone to the north end to lie close under the northern cliffs. Aaron Spens himself, after he had landed the boys, would watch the east coast.

Very slowly they approached the land, and now the boys grew wide awake and eager to go ashore. They pointed to farm-houses and fields and the low hills of the island, and recognised them as gladly as if they had been away from home for several
years. They told Aaron Spens the names of the houses and the names of the fields, and some of them he remembered though he had not heard them for more than two hundred years. They saw too—and this at the moment was more important—that all the farmers, and their wives and their children, were still in bed. There was no smoke rising from the chimneys, and no one stirring in the fields, though the cattle which lay out all night were already feeding, and here and there young horses rolled upon their backs, waving their great hooves in the air, then rose and shook themselves in readiness for another day.