Of Lions and Unicorns

by Michael Morpurgo

  He ran all the way up the hill to school as fast as he could go. Everyone was in the playground.

  “You’ve got to come!” he cried. “There’s a dolphin on the beach! We’ve got to get him back in the water or he’ll die.”

  Down the hill to the beach the children ran, the teachers as well. Soon everyone in the village was there – Jim’s father and his mother too.

  “Fetch the Sally May’s sail!” cried Jim’s mother. “We’ll roll him on to it.”

  When they had fetched the sail, Jim crouched down beside the dolphin’s head, stroking him and comforting him. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “We’ll soon have you back in the sea.”

  They spread out the sail and rolled him on to it very gently. Then, when everyone had taken a tight grip of the sail, Jim’s father gave the word, “Lift!”

  With a hundred hands lifting together, they soon carried the dolphin down to the sea where they laid him in the shallows and let the waves wash over him.

  The dolphin squeaked and clicked and slapped the sea with his smiley mouth. He was swimming now, but he didn’t seem to want to leave. He swam around and around.

  “Off you go,” Jim shouted, wading in and trying to push him out to sea. “Off you go.” And off he went at last.

  Everyone was clapping and cheering and waving goodbye. Jim just wanted him to come back again. But he didn’t. Along with everyone else, Jim stayed and watched until he couldn’t see him any more.

  That day at school Jim could think of nothing but the dolphin. He even thought up a name for him. “Smiler” seemed to suit him perfectly.

  The moment school was over, Jim ran back to the beach hoping and praying Smiler might have come back. But Smiler wasn’t there. He was nowhere to be seen.

  Filled with sudden sadness he rushed down to the pier. “Come back, Smiler!” he cried. “Please come back. Please!”

  At that very moment, Smiler rose up out of the sea right in front of him! He turned over and over in the air before he crashed down into the water, splashing Jim from head to toe.

  Jim didn’t think twice. He dropped his bag, pulled off his shoes and dived off the pier.

  At once Smiler was there beside him – swimming all around him, leaping over him, diving under him. Suddenly Jim found himself being lifted up from below. He was sitting on Smiler! He was riding him!

  Off they sped out to sea, Jim clinging on as best he could. Whenever he fell off – and he often did – Smiler was always there, so that Jim could always get on again. The further they went, the faster they went. And the faster they went, the more Jim liked it.

  Around and around the bay Smiler took him, and then back at last to the quay. By this time everyone in the village had seen them and the children were diving off the quay and swimming out to meet them.

  All of them wanted to swim with Smiler, to touch him, to stroke him, to play with him. And Smiler was happy to let them. They were having the best time of their lives.

  Every day after that, Smiler would be swimming near the quay waiting for Jim, to give him his ride. And every day the children swam with him and played with him too. They loved his kind eyes and smiling face.

  Smiler was everyone’s best friend.

  Then one day, Smiler wasn’t there. They waited for him. They looked for him. But he never came. The next day he wasn’t there either, nor the next, nor the next.

  Jim was broken-hearted, and so were all the children. Everyone in the village missed Smiler, young and old alike, and longed for him to come back. Each day they looked and each day he wasn’t there.

  When Jim’s birthday came, his mother gave him something she hoped might cheer him up, a wonderful carving of a dolphin – she’d made it herself out of driftwood. But not even that seemed to make Jim happy.

  Then his father had a bright idea. “Jim,” he said, “why don’t we all go out in the Sally May? Would you like that?”

  “Yes!” Jim cried. “Then we could look for Smiler too.”

  So they hauled the Sally May down to the water and set the sails. Out of the bay they went, out on to the open sea where, despite her raggedy old sails, the Sally May flew along over the waves.

  Jim loved the wind in his face, and the salt spray on his lips. There were lots of gulls and gannets, but no sight of Smiler anywhere. He called for him again and again, but he didn’t come.

  The sun was setting by now, the sea glowing gold around them.

  “I think we’d better be getting back,” Jim’s father told him.

  “Not yet,” Jim cried. “He’s out here somewhere. I know he is.”

  As the Sally May turned for home, Jim called out one last time, “Come back, Smiler! Please come back. Please!”

  Suddenly the sea began to boil and bubble around the boat, almost as if it was coming alive. And it WAS alive too, alive with dolphins! There seemed to be hundreds of them, leaping out of the sea alongside them, behind them, in front of them.

  Then, one of them leapt clear over the Sally May, right above Jim’s head. It was Smiler! Smiler had come back, and by the look of it he’d brought his whole family with him.

  As the Sally May sailed into the bay everyone saw her coming, the dolphins dancing all about her in the golden sea. What a sight it was!

  Within days the village was full of visitors, all of them there to see the famous dolphins and to see Smiler playing with Jim and the children.

  And every morning, the Sally May and all the little fishing boats put to sea crammed with visitors, all of them only too happy to pay for their trip of a lifetime. They loved every minute of it, holding on to their hats and laughing with delight as the dolphins frisked and frolicked around them.

  Jim had never been so happy in all his life. He had Smiler back, and now his father had all the money he needed to buy new sails for the Sally May. And all the other fishermen too could mend their sails and paint their boats. Once again, the village was a happy place.

  As for the children …

  … they could go swimming with the dolphins whenever they wanted to. They could stroke them, and swim with them and play with them, and even talk to them. But they all knew that only one dolphin would ever let anyone sit on him.

  That was Smiler.

  And they all knew that there was only one person in the whole world who Smiler would take for a ride.

  And that was Jim.

  Arthur Hobhouse was shipped to Australia after WWII, losing his sister, his country and his home. Now at the end of his life, Arthur’s daughter Allie has set sail in a very special boat across the roughest seas in the world to try to reunite their long-lost family …

  ad used to love old black and white Spencer Tracy movies, any Spencer Tracy movie. If it was on we watched it. And one film in particular he loved. It was called Captain Courageous. Tracy plays this old fisherman on a whaling ship. He looks after a young boy who’s very spoilt and teaches him what’s what, right from wrong, fair from unfair. He sings him an old fishing song, and I loved this song. It was one of those songs that just stayed in my head. I used to sing it all the time, out on the boat with Dad, in the bath at home, wherever I was happy. And now here I was in the Southern Ocean on my way to the Horn on Kitty Four catching and killing my first fish (I’ve never liked that part of it), tears pouring down my cheeks and singing out Spencer Tracy’s fishing song:

  “Hey ho little Fish, don’t cry, don’t cry. Hey ho little Fish don’t cry.”

  That first one I couldn’t bring myself to eat, so I tossed it overboard for my albatross who had been watching me, probably hoping I’d do just that. He didn’t have to be asked twice. He was in the sea in a flash and swallowed it down. He didn’t actually lick his lips, but he looked pretty pleased as he sat there in the sea waiting for more. When I caught my next fish, I ate it myself, despite lots of hurt looks from my albatross. But I did chuck him the head, which he gobbled down more than happily.

  Whenever I caught a fish after that my albatross seemed to be waiting, so I al
ways threw him the head. I got less squeamish about boning and gutting them too, and I learnt how to cook them better each time. The truth is that I began to enjoy the whole process, from the excitement of seeing the line go taut to the eating itself. So now unless it was really stormy I’d have a line out astern of me most of the time.

  Routine was all important to living on Kitty Four. It kept my spirits up. Routine checks of everything up on deck – regular adjustments to the halyards and the steering lines. Regular meals and hot meals too, if the weather allowed. The weather rules everything at sea, so sailing the boat came first. But I tried to live as normal a life as possible, tried not to allow the sea to dictate how I spent every moment of my day. So I learnt my Ancient Mariner. I wrote my emails. I tidied the cabin. I played my CDs. I mended what had to be mended – there was always something. I fitted the spare membrane to my troublesome desalinator, superglued what had to be superglued. I washed clothes, not as often as I should, and hung them out to dry. I liked to keep myself clean too – to begin with I hadn’t cared about it, but the longer I was at sea the more important it became. So I washed whenever I could – I always felt so much better for having made the effort. And on fine nights, however hard it was blowing, I’d always do the same thing. I’d go up into the cockpit if possible with my cup of hot chocolate and I’d watch the stars. I’d do a lot of singing up there too – everything from London Bridge to Hey ho Little Fish to Yellow Submarine.

  It was on just such a night that I first saw it. I was sitting there gazing up at the zillions of stars, wondering if Grandpa back home was also sitting there with his telescope doing the very same thing at the very same moment, remembering how he loved to tell me what each of them was called, how he’d help me to hold his telescope myself. I was remembering all this when I saw a shooting star pass overhead, much lower and brighter and slower than shooting stars usually were. I watched in amazement as this light arced across the sky, knowing already it couldn’t be a shooting star. It had to be a satellite of some kind. I went down below at once and emailed home to see if Grandpa knew what it could be. Until now I’d never had an email direct from Grandpa – they had always come through Mum. But the next day he emailed me back himself. “I checked. Got to be the ISS. International Space Station.”

  I saw it up there again a few nights later even brighter this time, even closer, and I got to thinking: those astronauts up there are closer to me at this moment than any other human being on earth. I’m sailing the seas down here. They’re sailing through space up there. I wondered then if with all their high-tech gizmos they could see me. I felt like waving. So I stood there in the cockpit and waved and shouted till my arms ached, till my throat was sore. I was just so excited, so so happy to see them up there. That was when the idea first came to me to try to make contact with them, proper contact. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought, to meet up by email or even by phone, so we could actually talk to one another as they passed over? I sent an email to Grandpa. It was just a crazy idea to start with, just a lovely dream. Grandpa emailed back. “No worries. I’ll fix it.” I thought he was joking. Meanwhile I had a boat to sail.

  I was still about 1000 miles from the Horn. I was down to 57ºS. There was ice about in the south, lots of it. It was cold you couldn’t forget, the kind that got into your bones, deep into your kidneys. Feet and hands went numb, so when I cut myself, and I often did, I couldn’t feel it. My ears and my nose ached with it. I used to warm my socks and gloves on the kettle, but the trouble was that my toes and fingers were always colder than my socks and gloves were warm. So the bliss never lasted long. I’d never known cold like it. I’d do all I could to stay down below in the warm fug I’d created for myself. But sooner or later I’d always have to go back up there again, and the snugger I’d make myself, the colder the blast that hit me when I got up into the cockpit.

  It was too rough for fishing now, and far too cold anyway, but my albatross was usually still there. He’d go off for a day or two, but I knew he’d always come back, and he did. I had such faith in him, that he’d stay with me and see me safely round the Horn. And I knew why too, knew it for sure, though I’d stopped writing about it in my emails because I thought it might upset Mum, and because I know it sounded at best a bit crazy. But I knew I wasn’t hallucinating, that I wasn’t mad. I now knew for sure that it was Dad’s spirit soaring up above Kitty Four. He was an albatross, of course he was, but he was Dad too.

  It was a different world I was sailing in down there, the wildest place I’d ever been. I could see and feel the swell building all the time. South of 60º between Cape Horn and the Antarctic peninsula there’s no land to break up the ocean swells, so the waves travel uninterrupted for hundreds of miles and they’re just massive – I kept using the word “awesome” in my emails, and that was about right. I knew Kitty Four could handle them, but I also knew I couldn’t leave it all to her. I had to be out there avoiding the breaking waves, especially the hollow ones, the ones that look as if they’re going to swallow you up. Sleep was almost impossible in seas like this, in weather like this. The wind screamed all the time. It was a constant pounding. I was on edge, listening to the boat, trying to work out if she was just complaining, or whether she was telling me something was really wrong. Like me, she was finding this very hard. We were both being tested as never before.

  Below in the cabin was my whole world for hours on end. It was cramped, but down there I felt warm and safe. My bunk was a tight fit – it had to be because falling out was very painful and dangerous too. But it wasn’t comfortable. I’d lie there surrounded by all the stuff that was keeping me alive – the medical box, generator, stove, charts, almanacs, sextant, PC, spares for everything, harnesses, life vests and sails – and kept telling myself that Kitty Four and all this equipment would get me through. And when I went up on deck there was my albatross telling me exactly the same thing. It was scary, it was heart-thumpingly scary at times, but I never for one moment thought we wouldn’t make it. And whenever I felt like human company, I’d sing to myself or listen to a CD, or email home. In my emails I tried to hide just how scary it really was sometimes. There was no point in upsetting Mum and Grandpa unnecessarily. Tell them some of it, I thought, but there’s no need to tell them everything.

  I was finding the keyboard slow to use now because my fingers were becoming very swollen. I couldn’t feel them, and they looked like a bunch of white bananas. I was doing all I could to look after them, smothering them with lanolin, but still the cracks came, still my cuticles split around my nails – what nails I had left. My hands were not a pretty sight, but I didn’t mind. I just wanted them to work, to be able to do what I told them to do – cook, tie knots, pull ropes, email.

  I’ve never forgotten the morning I saw Cape Horn up there on the laptop screen at last. Sometime before I left home I’d seen the movie Master and Commander, seen the frigate battling its way through ferocious seas off the Horn. It was terrifying enough sitting in a comfy seat next to Dad in the cinema in Hobart. Soon now I’d be going round the Horn myself, doing it for real, but Dad was still beside me. He was there in the boat he’d made for us, in the albatross that guarded us, and in my heart too. I took out The Ancient Mariner which by now had become like a Bible to me. It gave me new determination, a new courage every time I read it out loud.

  The ice was here, the ice was there,

  The ice was all around:

  It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,

  Like noise in a swound!

  At length did come an Albatross,

  Thorough the fog it came;

  As if it had been a Christian soul,

  We hailed it in God’s name.

  Every time I spoke those words now, I felt that somehow I was living inside the poem, that it had been written just for Dad and me, just for this moment as we approached the Horn on the 9th March.

  Gracie and Daniel have been warned to stay away from the mad Birdman. But when they find a message written in th
e sand, Gracie can’t help asking her parents about him, or the legend of the curse on Sansom Island …

  ea when I was a child was always fish, fish and potatoes; and that evening it was mullet, a great pink fish that stared up at me with glazed eyes from the platter. I had no appetite for it. All I could think of were those two letters in the sand on Rushy Bay. I had to know one way or the other – I had to be sure it was the Birdman.

  I forced myself to eat the fish for I knew Mother and Father would suspect something if I did not, for mullet was known to be my favourite fish. We ate in silence, busying ourselves over the fish, so I had the whole meal to work out how best to ask them about the initials in the sand, without incriminating myself.

  “Saw the Birdman today,” I said at last, as casually as I could.

  “Hope you kept your distance,” said Father, pushing his plate away. “With young Daniel Pender again were you? Always with him aren’t you?” And it was true I suppose. Daniel Pender and Gracie Jenkins were a pair, inseparable. We always had been. He lived just across the way from our front gate at Veronica Farm. Whatever we did, we did together. Father went on. “Proper young scallywag his father says he is and I can believe it. You be sure he doesn’t lead you into any trouble, my girl. Always looks like a big puppy that one with his arms and legs too long for the rest of him. Hair’s always stood up on his head like he’s just got out of bed. Proper scallywag he looks.”

  “Looks aren’t everything,” said Mother quietly; and then she smiled and added, “they can’t be, can they, else how would I ever have come to pick you?”

  “My beard, perhaps, Clemmie,” Father laughed, and he stroked his beard and smoothed his moustache. He always called her “Clemmie” when he was happy. It was “Clem” when he was angry.

  “You leave Daniel be,” said Mother. “He’s a clever boy, clever with his hands. You seen those boats he makes?”

  “I help him,” I insisted. “I paint them and I make the sails.”