The Pirates in the Deep Green Sea (25 page)

‘And what do you want us to do?' asked Old Mattoo.

‘Just stay here till we come back,' said Timothy, and he and Hew dived neatly over the side.

‘There she is,' said Hew, and pointed to a kind of hump on the bottom of the sea, that looked at first sight more like an outcrop of rock, all draped in weed, than the wreck of a ship.

‘We'd better go carefully,' said Timothy. ‘We don't know who's aboard.'

They swam forward another few yards, close to the bottom as though they were a pair of flounders. The pirate ship lay half-buried in a patch of sand. Her masts and spars had long since gone by the board and been carried away, but a little hummock, forward of the larger mass, might show where a broken yard, now covered by a curtain of seaweed, lay across her main deck. It was her great high poop that rose above the sand, and though the weed hung thickly from its sides the deck seemed to be fairly clear, and a little breadth of the main
deck in front of it, under the break of the poop, had been swept clean. On the far side of the poop, at the extreme stern of the ship, there was something which they could not distinguish—a mere darkness in the shadows of the sea—until it moved, and separated, and came forward; and then they realised that two men had been standing there, close together.

‘They may be Sam and Gunner Boles,' said Hew.

‘And they may not,' said Timothy.

Very cautiously they swam a little nearer and then, some thirty feet from the wreck, lay still behind a great boulder when the two men turned and walked slowly to the near side of the ship. Now the boys could see who they were, and they got no comfort from what they saw. For the two men were Dan Scumbril and Inky Poops.

‘What shall we do now?' whispered Hew.

‘I think we ought to wait till the sailors come,' said Timothy.

‘Well, perhaps,' said Hew, ‘and perhaps not.'

Dan Scumbril and Inky Poops were walking up and down, as captains do aboard their ships, and when they turned away again Hew said, ‘We listened to them once before when they were talking, and we heard a lot of interesting things. We might hear some more.'

‘We might,' said Timothy. ‘I don't think it's very sensible, but—oh, well, let's try.'

They waited until the two pirate captains were
on the far side of the poop, and then, moving as swiftly as they could, but still like flounders close to the bottom, they swam towards the sunken bow of the ship. They lay still when the pirates turned towards them, and swam quickly when they turned away; and presently they were creeping towards the curtain of weed that hung across the main deck, where perhaps a broken spar had fallen, and from there they could hear most of the pirates' conversation. They could hear Dan Scumbril quite easily; for, in his usual manner, he was shouting.

‘Slice my sirloin with a rusty razor!' they heard him exclaim. ‘I'm in command here now. You were caught like a rat in a trap, Inky. Your fleet was defeated, and you came running north to seek refuge with me. I'm master now, and you're nobody! But if you behave yourself, if you're sensible and modest, I'll give you employment, and you can be my lieutenant.'

‘Now do be reasonable, Dan my dear,' said Inky Poops. ‘Don't let's quarrel, for I hate quarrelling, and it won't do us any good, will it? If you'd only look at things in the proper way, like I look at them, you'd realise that you owe me a great deal.'

‘I owe you nothing,' roared Scumbril. ‘Crunch my bones in Mother Bunch's coffee-mill if I owe you as much as the dirt in my finger nails!'

‘And that would be quite a lot if you weighed it,' said Inky Poops. ‘But you owe me more than that, Dan my dear. For what did I do? First of
all, I took on Davy Jones in battle, though he had twice as many men as I had—but I was always unselfish, and it was for your sake I did it, Dan—and then, after we'd fought for nearly half a day, I broke out of the fight and came here as quickly as ever I could, just to let you know what was happening. We swam day and night, Dan, we gave ourselves no rest at all, and now when I've given you this valuable information, all you do is to say that you're the captain, and I've got to salute you when I come aboard. Oh, it breaks my heart, Dan, to see you so ungrateful!'

‘You were caught in a trap,' said Scumbril again. ‘You were defeated and you ran away. That's the truth of it.'

‘Well, even if it is, Dan—but I'm not admitting it, oh, I'm not admitting it, no, not for a moment—but even if it was the truth, you couldn't do without me, could you now? Who's going to make the speech, for example, when we cut the knot? I am, and you know it; because I've got the speech all written out here in my satchel.'

‘D'you think I can't make a speech as well as you?' shouted Dan.

‘I know you can't,' said Inky. ‘You're pretty good when it comes to fighting, but I've got the better brains and the better tongue, and I'm the speech-maker. You can't do without me, Dan.'

Pressed close against the curtain of seaweed, Timothy and Hew lay and listened to the pirates with great interest. They were so interested that
they quite forgot they were in a rather dangerous position, and they jumped with surprise—like flounders that had been speared—when they heard behind them a slow, thick, rumbling voice say quietly, ‘I hope you're enjoying the conversation, little boys?'

They turned swiftly and tried to escape, but the voice said, ‘Oh, no, you don't! ‘And the pirate to whom it belonged grabbed Timothy by his right ankle, and Hew by his left arm, and carried them like that, both struggling wildly, to the break of the poop. He was a huge man with shoulders like an
ox, and hands as rough as a bear's claws, and they were quite helpless in his grasp.

‘Look what I've found, Cap'n,' he said to Dan Scumbril. ‘They were lying behind that seaweed there, a-listening to you and Cap'n Poops. I saw them come aboard, and I've been watching them ever since.'

‘Why, tap my napper with a blacksmith's hammer,' roared Scumbril, ‘if it's not the Dumb Boy of Mystery, my lost Cabin Boy!'

‘My
Cabin Boy,' said Inky Poops, ‘that I won from you, Dan, in a game of Strip Jack Naked. But who's the other young fellow? I'll play you a game for him, Dan, when we've time for a little rest and relaxation.'

Then they leapt down to the main deck, and Dan Scumbril pulled Timothy's ears and twisted his nose.

‘Are you dumb too?' he demanded.

Timothy, with tears in his eyes, thought he could not do better than follow Hew's example, and made no reply.

‘Well, now,' said Inky Poops, ‘and isn't that a very sad and curious thing, to be sure? Here we've got three strangers aboard our ship, and none of them able to speak! Oh, isn't it sad? It's very, very sad! —And you, you creeping, crawling, spying little boys, you'll be the saddest of all unless you find your tongues and tell us who sent you here! —They're spies, Dan, they're all spies, him in the sail-locker, and these two creeping, crawling
little boys. But I'll chop their toes and fingers off if they won't speak!'

‘Spies they may be,' growled Dan, ‘but what harm can they do us now? I'm in command, my men are at the knot, and we'll have control of all the Northern Parallels before Davy Jones can muster a force against us.'

‘I don't like it, Dan, I don't like it at all!'

‘There's a hundred things that I dislike,' said Scumbril, ‘but none of them keeps me awake at night. —Throw them into the sail-locker with the others, Hatch,' he told the big pirate, ‘and I'll deal with them when we come back. —My men are ready, Inky, and it's time to cut the knot. Get your speech ready, and be ready to read it quick. I'll waste no more time on talk. —Away with them, Hatch.'

‘Ay, ay, sir,' said the big pirate, and tucking both Timothy and Hew under one arm, carried them through a door in the break of the poop, and opening another door threw them into a room in which the weed grew so thickly from the bulkheads, and the deck above and the deck below, that at first they did not see the two figures who lay side by side in a far corner. Dan Scumbril and Inky Poops stood in the door-way, and Scumbril said, ‘Tie them up, Hatch, and tie them tight. Captain Poops and I have a ceremony to perform, and we leave you in charge. They're your prisoners till we return. Are the men ready to move?'

‘Your own crew, Cap'n? They're down in the
hold, sir, taking their ease till they're called.'

‘I'll leave you half a dozen, Hatch, and you must keep them on deck in case more visitors appear. But we'll make haste with the ceremony—cut down your speech, Inky, cut it by half—and we'll come back within the hour. Now bar the door, Hatch.'

‘Ay, ay, sir,' said Hatch, and the boys, now tightly bound, heard a heavy bar fall into place on the other side of the door. They heard the pirates' voices talking still, but growing fainter, and some shouting from the forward part of the ship. Then there was silence till one of the other prisoners in the sail-locker said quietly, ‘Are you all right, boys? Tell me how you got on.'

‘Sam!' they exclaimed. ‘Oh, Sam!'

‘We couldn't see who you were,' said Timothy.

‘Is that Gunner Boles beside you?' asked Hew.

‘Boles is the name,' said the Gunner sadly, ‘and both of us tied up like a couple of parcels in string and brown paper.'

‘They took me last night,' said Sam, ‘after I'd been diving for a couple of days without interference. They tried to make me speak but I told them nothing. And then they brought Gunner Boles in half an hour later.'

‘A score of Dan Scumbril's men came down on me from all sides when I was sitting by the knot,' said Gunner Boles. ‘I left my mark on some of them, but I hadn't a chance. Not a chance. And how did you get on, my young cocks? Did you
find your way to Davy Jones?'

‘We did better than that,' said Timothy. ‘We brought him back with us. We all lay at North Rona last night, and he must be on his way here now.'

‘In force?' asked Gunner Boles.

‘He's got about five hundred men,' said Timothy.

‘They could save the knot then,' said Sam, ‘if they come in time, and know where to come. But we won't see nothing of the fighting. We'll be lying here till it's all over.'

‘That won't matter if they save the knot,' said Gunner Boles.

‘We may get out sooner than you think,' said Timothy, and told them about the Powder Monkeys who had gone for help, and about the little force of Davy Jones's men who lay in the inner ring round Popinsay.

‘You've done well, boys, you've done very well,' said Sam, ‘but you shouldn't have come down here. That was too risky by half. You should have waited safe on shore till it was all over.'

‘How did you get on with Davy Jones?' asked Gunner Boles.

The boys began to tell the story of their long voyage. They interrupted each other, and boasted a little, and were so eager to tell all that had happened that they were quite incapable of telling it in any sort of order. But in the excitement of their story they, and Sam Sturgeon and Gunner
Boles too, almost forgot the discomfort of lying tightly bound in a small dark room full of seaweed that hung like ragged curtains from the deck above and grew like a jungle from the deck below. They could move neither hand nor foot, but their tongues were free; and while Sam and Gunner Boles listened with one ear to the boys' story, they listened with the other for the coming of a rescue party.

They had not long to wait, and while the boys were describing their meeting with Aaron Spens they were interrupted by a great clamour above them, by shouting and the sound of heavy blows and heavy bodies falling, and then they and Gunner Boles and Sam Sturgeon all shouted together to let their rescuers know where they were. The door was unbarred, and a couple of Davy Jones's sailors came in.

‘Who's here?' they asked. ‘And what are you, friends or foes?'

‘Is that Bill Nye?' asked Gunner Boles.

‘It is,' said one of the sailors. ‘But who's speaking? I can't see the cut of your jib in the shrubbery there.'

‘Boles is the name,' said Gunner Boles, ‘and I'll be much obliged if you'll cut these lashings.'

Within a minute they were all freed from their bonds, and standing up they rubbed their wrists and ankles. Sam Sturgeon led the boys into the saloon, where there was better light and he could see them properly, and stood looking at them as if he was surprised to find them just the same as they had been
when they first set out from Popinsay. Gunner Boles went with Bill Nye to see what had happened, and found that Hatch and his fellow pirates had all been overpowered. William Button, who was looking very pleased with himself, had led six men from the patrol under the north cliffs, who, by the suddenness and determination of their attack, had given the pirates little chance to defend themselves. And now that he was free, Gunner Boles had only one thought in his mind, and that was to return to the knot he guarded. So, without waste of time, the pirates were tied up and thrown into the saillocker, and Gunner Boles led all the others westward through the sea.

Timothy and Hew thought they had learnt to swim very well by this time, but they were no match for the sailors. The sailors, swimming at full speed, would soon have left them far behind, so Timothy got on the back of one, Hew on another; and now Sam Sturgeon lagged in the rear. It was only a few days since Gunner Boles had decided that Sam should be told the secret of the Shell, and oiled with the oil that smelt of ambergris and contained sixty-nine ingredients; and Sam, though a good swimmer in the ordinary way, could not compare with the sailors who lived under the sea. But he did his best, and groaned with the effort he was making, and Gunner Boles took him by the arm and helped him. They all swam close together, and after what seemed a long time—for they were impatient to reach the knot—they came to a long dark reef that rose from the bottom in a broadening ridge, and Gunner Boles led the way into a small cave. At first it was no bigger than a tunnel through which they could crawl, one at a time. But the tunnel led through the rock, and became broader and higher, and at last it opened like a great window under a heavy fringe of seaweed. And there, looking out, they
saw below them the huge knot which tied together, where they crossed, the 59th Parallel of North Latitude and the 4th Parallel of West Longitude. To the east of the knot, only forty yards below their rock-window, stood three or four hundred pirates, with Inky Poops and Dan Scumbril out in front of them.