The Pirates in the Deep Green Sea (5 page)

I want to go out and play!'

Timothy and Hew crawled a little nearer, till they were looking straight down at him. Then they spoke together. ‘Good morning, Cully,' they said politely.

Cully gave a little scream and disappeared.

‘He's gone!' said Hew.

‘Yes,' said Timothy, ‘but he's still holding on.'

They leaned over the cliff, and saw that Cully had dropped down to the level of the sea, but his long arms—four on each side—still clasped the ledges of rock from which he had been swinging. His arms had stretched like elastic, and the weight of his body had pulled them out till they were nearly as thin as elastic bands.

‘Cully!' they shouted. ‘Come up again and talk to us!'

Cully's voice sounded very small and far away.
‘No, I won't' he cried. ‘I won't come near you till I know who you are. I'm not in the habit of talking to strangers!'

‘But we're not strangers,' shouted Timothy, ‘we're Timothy——'

‘And Hew!' shouted Hew. ‘Oh, do come up again, Cully!'

Slowly the elastic bands grew thicker, and shorter, as Cully hauled himself to the top of the cliff, and at last his big orange beak appeared above
the edge, and his large pale eyes, that were as big as saucers, looked coldly at Timothy and then at Hew. They were quite taken aback to see that his expression was far from friendly. They had naturally expected that he would be as glad to see them as they were to see him; but when he spoke his voice was as cold and disagreeable as his eyes.

‘My friend Gunner Boles told me you were here,' he said, ‘and I was looking forward to meeting you again. But I did expect—and I had the right to expect!—that you would remember my name, and address me with proper courtesy, instead of shouting down the cliff, without caring who heard you, “Cully, Cully, Cully!” as if I were a common sea-urchin or something like that.'

‘But Cully
is
your name,' said Timothy.

‘It is not! My name is Culliferdontofoscofolio Polydesteropouf. And please remember that in future.'

It's a very long name to have to remember,' said Hew.

‘Long!' exclaimed Cully. ‘It's one of the shortest names I know. Among the octopuses, that is. Why, there's a friend of mine—and a charming young lady she is—called Dildery Doldero Casadiplasadimolodyshenkendorf Rustiverolico Silverysplash. That's a lot longer than my name, and she would be most offended if you forgot a single syllable of it. And another of my friends, who's a great sportsman, is called Donicocharlidipendomoranty Suspenderabatsicorolagornover
Abrolicocasm. And I had an uncle, but he's dead now, whose name was Gerrumfogeraster Gerrubbulagillimore Gasteroplasterostikonnatoffico Sukkumansee. Both of those names are much more difficult than mine, and in any case it's very, very rude to criticise a person's name, no matter what it is.'

Timothy and Hew apologised for their lack of courtesy, and promised they would do their best to remember Cully's full name in future; but Cully interrupted them and said, ‘Oh, well, you can call me Cully if you want to. Nearly everyone does,' he added with a sigh, ‘though I really don't like it. I don't like it a bit.'

Hoping to please him, and make him more cheerful, Hew said they had heard the song he had been singing, and liked it very much. ‘I wish you would sing it again,' he said.

‘What song?' asked Cully in a trembling voice; and Timothy and Hew both whistled the tune.

A look of dreadful dismay appeared on Cully's face. ‘Oh, not that song!' he exclaimed. ‘Surely you didn't hear me singing that? Oh dear, oh dear! It's a most improper song, and you mustn't think for a moment that I approve of it. I'm a great believer in work. Work is a noble occupation, and I wouldn't say a word against it—not a word!—but the song has a pretty tune in spite of the horrid sentiment it expresses, and that is why I was singing it; thinking, of course, that I was all alone. I wouldn't dream of singing it in company!
But we octopuses are such musical creatures.—
Octopodes,
I should say. That is the proper form of the plural, isn't it? I always say
octopodes
unless I forget.—Yes, we are both musical and artistic, and hard workers too, of course. Very hard workers.'

‘What sort of work do you do?' asked Timothy.

Loosening his hold on the far side of the cleft in the rock, Cully hauled himself on to the cliff beside the boys, and settled down to talk in comfort. He arranged his eight arms round about him, and sat in the middle of them as though he were in a sort of nest. He looked very much at his ease, and at the same time extremely important.

‘My work,' he said slowly, ‘is absolutely indispensable. You know what that means, I hope? It means that you can't get on without me. Do you realise that there are occasions when the safety of the whole world depends on me? On me alone! I don't boast about it—in fact I never speak of it—but that is the simple truth. Yes, my dear boys, there have been times when I have held the safety of the world in my eight arms!'

‘But how?' asked Hew.

‘What do you do?' said Timothy.

‘That is a secret,' said Cully. ‘I couldn't tell that to anyone. No, not even to you. All I can say is that I am always on duty, and when things are dangerous, I have
to hold on!'

‘What do you hold on to?' asked Timothy.

‘That is the secret,' said Cully.

‘Are you on duty now?' asked Hew.

‘Now, and always,' said Cully in his most dignified voice. ‘From time to time, of course, I take a little rest, or recreation, but that doesn't interfere with my duty. Oh, no, no, no! No, no, no, no, no! Not at all.—But we mustn't speak only about my affairs, we must talk about yours too. Tell me, what have you been doing since last we met in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean?'

Timothy and Hew were very pleased to talk about themselves for a change, and tell Cully about Popinsay and their Father and Sam Sturgeon and Mrs. Matches; and they talked for a long time.

Cully listened quietly to all they had to say, and never interrupted except to ask Hew for the loan of his handkerchief. This he spread over his eyes to keep the sun out of them, he explained. The boys thought he was deeply interested in what they had to say, and went on talking until a little breeze blew the handkerchief away. Then they saw that Cully had fallen asleep.

They were disappointed, of course, but Timothy said that Cully had probably been working so hard that he was tired out.

‘If he's always on duty, he must be very tired,' said Hew.

They could not decide whether to wake him, or to go quietly away and leave him; and while they were wondering which would be the kinder thing to do, they heard a great voice shouting from somewhere out at sea.

‘Cully, you rogue! Cully, you idle vagabond!' roared the voice. ‘Where are you skulking, you lazy, good-for-nothing, insubordinate, skrimshanking lump of sinful sloth? Cully, I say! CULLY!'

‘That's Gunner Boles,' said Timothy, and stood up to look for him.

‘There he is,' said Hew, pointing to the northwest; and there, a hundred yards or so from the shore, they saw the Gunner bobbing up and down in the sea, his bald head shining in the sun.

Cully too had heard him. Cully was now wide awake and looking rather frightened.

‘Don't tell him I'm here!' he cried. ‘Don't let him know that you've seen me, will you? He's a good man, but very unreasonable. Very, very unreasonable. With a dreadful temper and a sense of duty—what a pity they so often go together! So keep it dark, dear boys. Keep our little party a secret between ourselves, will you?'

Hurrying in an oozy way to the edge of the cliff, Cully let himself down like a ball at the end of four pieces of elastic, and just before he disappeared he looked up and said, ‘Good-bye, dear boys, for the present—and remember to keep it dark, won't you?'

Then he let go, and they heard a soft splash as he dropped into the sea. From the north-west Gunner Boles shouted to them: ‘Ahoy, my lads! Is that worthless octopus there? He's absent from duty again, and I'd wring his dirty neck, if he had one!'

‘No,' shouted Timothy, ‘he isn't here.'—‘But it's a good thing he didn't ask if he
was
here,' he said to Hew.

‘A very good thing,' said Hew.

‘Well, if you happen to see him,' roared the Gunner, ‘tell him I'm going to court-martial him, keel-haul him, cut his claws, and clap him in quod—and that's only a beginning of what I'm going to do.'

‘Poor Cully,' said Hew. ‘He doesn't seem to be such a hard worker as he pretends.'

‘If Gunner Boles is right, he certainly isn't on duty all the time.'

‘But I like him just the same,' said Hew.

‘So do I,' said Timothy. ‘It's something to be friendly with an octopus, even if he isn't a very good one.'

They watched the Gunner swimming to and fro in the bright sea, and then they saw something like a little whirlpool in the water, quite near to him. The Gunner shook his fist, and was evidently very angry; the whirlpool began to splash.

‘That's Cully now,' said Hew.

‘They're having an argument,' said Timothy.

The argument lasted for about half a minute, and then, quite suddenly, the Gunner disappeared as though someone had seized him by the ankles and dragged him under.

‘Cully's won,' said Hew.

‘I'm not so sure about that,' said Timothy. ‘If Gunner Boles is his superior officer, then Cully's
only making things worse by giving him a ducking. Try to imagine what would happen to anyone who gave Father a ducking.'

‘Poor Cully! ‘said Hew again. ‘It was a very nice song that he sang.'

‘Yes, I liked it too,' said Timothy, ‘though, as Cully himself said, you couldn't possibly approve of it, could you?'

‘I'm sure Father wouldn't,' said Hew, ‘but then Father isn't likely to hear it.'

Presently they went home, and from Sam Sturgeon learnt the important news that the
Endeavour
was due to arrive in two days' time. They said nothing to Sam about their meeting with Cully.

In the morning everyone got up early, and soon after breakfast the diving-apparatus was loaded into one of the farm-carts and taken down to the pier at Inner Bay; and two young men from the home-farm went with them to man the pump and the ropes. Sam Sturgeon was going to test his new diving-suit and make sure that everything was in good working order.

They helped him to get into his heavy trousers, and put on his lead-soled boots. He put on the upper part of the suit, and forced his hands through tight rubber cuffs. A pad was placed on his shoulders to take the weight of the great copper helmet, his corselet was screwed on, and the helmet was screwed to the corselet. Lead weights were fastened to his shoulders, and last of all the face-glass in the helmet was closed. Then Captain Spens tapped the top of the helmet, and Sam raised his hand as a sign that everything was in order.

Slowly he descended the iron ladder at the end of the pier. ‘Heave round the pump!' said the Captain, and for the third time that morning made sure that the young men from the farm understood the signals that Sam might make.

If he pulled once on the air-line, it meant they were pumping too hard and giving him too much air; if he pulled twice, it meant that he wanted more air. A single pull on the breast-rope, which was made fast in a bowline under his arms, meant ‘Stop,' or ‘Hold on.' Two pulls meant ‘Haul up,' and three ‘Veer away'—or pay out more rope.

Captain Spens and Timothy and Hew sat at the end of the pier and dangled their legs, and a
pair of screaming terns followed the line of bubbles that showed where Sam was walking, as if they expected a fish to appear.

‘How far can he see under water?' asked Timothy.

‘Visibility's good on a dull day like this,' said the Captain. ‘At fifteen fathoms—and he's no deeper than three or four now—he could see fairly well for about thirty feet.'

‘And what would happen to him,' asked Hew, ‘if the air-line was cut?'

‘He would get a very bad fright,' said the Captain, ‘but if he closed his air-valves he could last for twenty minutes, I dare say.'

After a quarter of an hour Sam could be seen again, like a stumpy broad-shouldered monster moving in the clear green water at the end of the pier, and when he had climbed the ladder, and they had unscrewed his helmet, he said that everything had worked very well indeed, and he was quite satisfied with his new suit. So they decided to go home again.

Captain Spens was in excellent humour as they walked back to lunch, and Timothy and Hew both wondered why they had ever thought he was a bad-tempered man. For when he was cheerful he would make as many jokes as he could think of, and even if they were not very good jokes they showed that he wanted everyone else to feel as happy as he did. He would also listen quite patiently to other people when they made jokes,
and he would try to laugh at the proper time. Sometimes he was in a good mood for three or four days on end, and Timothy and Hew would feel tired with having to laugh so much; while their mother, if she were at home, would say she had a headache and go to bed. But on this occasion Captain Spens's good humour lasted only until the postman came.

Timothy and Hew were upstairs, washing their hands, when they heard the crash of something falling, and knew that their father had pushed his writing-table over. He often did that when he lost his temper, because in such a state he could not sit still but had to get up and walk about the room. The boys hurried to the landing at the top of the stairs, and leaning over the banisters listened with great interest. They heard their father exclaim, loudly and bitterly, ‘Oh, the nincompoops! What nincompoops they are!' Then he opened the door of his study, and shouted for Sam.