The Island

by Peter Benchley

  “They will if we don’t get out of here first. Everything you hear, think of in terms of escape. Every fact, everything. Think to yourself: Can we use it? Will it help us?”

  “They told me there’s no escape.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  “There are no motorboats. They don’t keep any—what do they call them?—long-legged boats.” Justin tipped his head at the boats in the cove. “Those are the only boats on the island.”

  Maynard looked at the pinnaces. “If we could sail one of them out into the shipping lanes . . .”

  “They’re guarded, even at night.”

  “How long have we been here?” Maynard saw that the question perplexed Justin. “I slept. I don’t know for how long.”

  “This is the fourth day.”

  “You haven’t heard anything else? Anything that could help us? Think.”

  “Nothing like what you mean. Just training.”

  “Training for what?”

  “They say to become a man.” Justin glanced up the beach at Nau, then whispered to his father, “How can I be a man? I’m only twelve! They must be crazy!”

  Maynard smiled. He reached for Justin’s hand and patted it. “What kind of training?”

  “They want me to be an armorer. That’s why they let me wear this.” He tapped the shoulder holster.

  Looking into Justin’s eyes, Maynard sensed a flicker of pride, as if, despite himself, the boy was pleased to have been given a measure of manly trust. And Maynard’s own eyes must have shown reproach, for Justin looked away.

  “Do you keep it loaded?”

  “I have to. L’Ollonois says that an empty gun is like a eunuch—all show and no force. What’s a eunuch?”

  “Take a couple of slugs out of the clips and hide them somewhere.”

  “What for?”

  “Just in case. You never know when they’ll come in handy.”

  “L’Ollonois says we have to save every bullet.”

  “Justin . . . if you listen to him, you will be here forever. He’s not your friend.”

  “He says that if someone isn’t his friend, he’s his enemy, and if he’s his enemy, he should be killed. I don’t want to be killed.”

  “You won’t be killed. You’re too important to him.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly, I think he’s worried about the future. Anyway . . . tell me where they keep the guns.”

  “Everybody keeps one. L’Ollonois keeps the extras.”

  “What are they?”

  “Flintlocks and percussions. L’Ollonois has an old M-16, but it’s all rusty and doesn’t work.”

  “There are no modern weapons?”

  “No, except for this.” Justin touched the Walther. “They don’t like them, because they can’t reload them. Once the bullets are gone, they can’t get any more, so they throw the guns away. That’s why he wanted to know how many bullets we have for this.”

  “What does an armorer do?”

  “A bunch of things. Molds bullets. There are three sizes: pistol, musket, and bird shot. He keeps the arms cleaned and greased—fit, they call it. He fixes them: I’m learning how to take a lock apart and put in a new spring. It’s weird.” Justin smiled, sharing the revelation with Maynard. “If you take care of them, flintlocks last forever. There are only about three moving parts in the whole thing.”

  Maynard could not return the smile. “I wonder what Mom is up to,” he said.

  Justin stared. “Yeah.”

  “Aren’t you curious?”

  “Sure. I just . . . hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Think about it.”

  Nau called, “Tue-Barbe!”

  Justin hopped to his feet. “Did your great-great-granddad really kill Blackbeard?”

  “No. That was some other Maynard.”

  “They say he did. That’s why they named me that: Kill-Beard.”

  “Well . . . don’t argue. Roll with it. I’ll think of something. Trust me.”

  “Okay.” Justin was nervous. “Gotta go.”

  Justin turned away, and Maynard watched him scamper up the beach.

  Beth returned and lifted the chain from the sand. Maynard did not notice her; he stared after Justin until he and Nau and Manuel disappeared around a far point.

  “He is gone,” Beth said.

  “He’s just up there a-ways.”

  “I mean, he is gone. From you.”

  “I know what you mean, but . . .”

  “The sooner you accept that, the sooner the pain will ease.”

  “I’ll take the pain.”

  She tugged gently, and Maynard followed.

  “I have styluses for you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “He would have you use the time you have left . . .” She stopped, suddenly embarrassed at her bluntness. “. . . use your time to write a chronicle. Like Esquemeling.”

  “Chronicle? You mean copying. I have nothing to chronicle.”

  “You will, soon.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Many things are growing scarce—rum and spray and citrus. Many things. There is talk of eating leather. Soon a prize must be taken. A rich one.”

  They passed the whores’ encampment, and again exchanged pleasantries, passed the catamites’ lodge, and again spat salutes. As they approached Beth’s hut, Maynard asked her, “How much time do you think I have?”

  “Oh, a long time,” she said encouragingly. “I am just now feeling the tiny signs that tell me ripeness is approaching. I would give you a very long time.”

  “Really?” Maynard said, counting. “I’d give me about a week.”

  He waited until her breathing slowed and deepened. And then, to be sure, he waited a few minutes more. She began to snore. Her lips moved and her brow furrowed, as she argued with a creature in her dream.

  He felt along the chain until he found the lock. He could not read the numbers of the combination, so he crawled to the doorway and pulled back the skin and held the lock up to the moonlight. He dialed 0,0,0, and the lock opened.

  He timed his movements with the chain to the sounds of her snores. When he was free, he rejoined the ends of the chain, snapped the shackle closed, and spun the combination wheels. Somehow, vaguely, he hoped that this would exculpate Beth from having helped him escape. If, in the morning, they found the lock open, they might accuse her of setting him free; if the lock was securely closed, they might attribute his flight to magic, or at least legerdemain, and consider themselves lucky to be rid of him.

  He crawled out of the hut and held a finger up to the wind. There was a soft, steady breeze from the north, so he headed south. He had no knowledge of the local tides or currents, but he knew that an offshore breeze would help him float farther away from the island.

  He made no attempt to find or free Justin. He was certain that the boy was being kept confined, under guard. Even if he could free him, he did not want to expose him to the risks he himself was prepared to take: to drift alone in the open ocean until he encountered either land or a boat. Justin would be safer here, until he could return with armed help. He had convinced himself that, no matter what he did, Nau would not harm the boy. He had examined every conceivable rationale Nau might use for punishing the boy for his father’s escape; none was practical. And from all Maynard had read and observed, Nau regarded violence and brutality as practical tools.

  On the beach at the southern tip of the island he found a log of driftwood. He had neither the time nor the means to make a proper raft, but he wanted something with him that would float, something on which he could rest. He pushed the log into the water and tested it with his hand, to make sure it was not rotten or so sodden that it would sink. It was dry and light, and it bobbed briskly.

  He walked away from the beach until the water was chest-deep, and then he tucked the log under his arm and let himself float, testing wind and current. If there was a current, it was very weak; the wind w
as moving him—slowly but perceptibly—away from the island.

  He was about fifty yards offshore when, as he paddled with his feet, he felt a searing, stinging sensation in his thigh. Surprised, his impulse was to shout or curse, but he clamped his mouth shut. A jellyfish, he told himself. Or some tiny stinging sea bug. He had not been bitten, was not cut or bleeding.

  He reached down with his hand and touched his thigh, and suddenly his hand was afire. He grunted in shock and jerked his hand back, and whatever was burning him was dragged across his stomach in tracks of agony.

  He spun around, and his chin struck something soft and flimsy, like a balloon, a cloudy white bubble that rocked gently from his touch.

  A man o’ war.

  Reflexively, he flailed with his arms to get away from it, and his flailing snared the skein of toxic tentacles that hung beneath the bubble. He splashed and kicked and smeared the poisonous whips all over his face and chest. It was as if someone was removing his skin with a hot knife.

  He struck at the thing with the log and knocked it aside. He struggled for clear water, still choking off the screams that fought to escape his throat.

  He was free, and for a moment he thought he might control himself, might continue. But then new lashes raked his back, and more slid between his legs and scraped flame across his inner thighs.

  He turned again, frantically, and all his eyes could see was an armada of opaque white bubbles. He was in a field of men o’ war.

  Now, finally, he screamed. His arms slapped at the water, his feet kicked, and every movement brought new agony.

  Shrieking, lurching spasmodically, he churned toward shore. His feet touched bottom; he tried to run. His fingers clawed at his chest, trying to peel away the pain.

  He flung himself on the beach and writhed in the wet sand. Movement did not ease the pain, but he could not stay still. He bucked and rolled and twitched like a berserk marionette.

  Then something struck him on the chest and pinned him to the sand.

  He heard a voice say, “You bloody fool!”

  He thrashed. “Stay still!” the voice commanded. “Jackass!”

  Was it raining? Liquid was hissing down on him, warm, acrid-smelling. It felt good. Wherever the liquid touched, the pain seemed to seep away.

  He tried to speak, but his tongue was too thick to move. A heavy fog spread through his brain.

  He heard a new voice arguing with the first. A man and a woman.

  “You were warned.”

  “He did not . . .”

  “He would have . . .”

  “But he . . .”

  The voices faded. He was unconcerned, for he assigned the voices to a dream.

  A scream. Not his. Another scream. A woman. Why was a woman screaming? Then a scream that went on and on and on.

  He sat up and shook his head. The pain was there, but dull now, bearable. The scream did not stop.

  He looked to one side and saw Beth. She was staked, spread-eagle, naked, to the sand. Her stomach and chest and legs were crisscrossed with welts. A frail, cloudy bubble—a man o’ war “sail”—lay on either side of her. The tentacles had been draped across her.

  When she saw him, she yelled, “Piss on me!”

  “What!?”

  “Piss on me! It is the only way! I did as much for you!”

  He did as he was told, and soon her shrieks subsided into sobs and whimpers.

  Leonard Hiller was feeling righteously indignant, as he always did when a source declined to be interviewed—especially a source who claimed to be a member of the fellowship of journalists. “What do you mean, Trask said no? Who does he think he is?”

  “ ‘No’ wasn’t exactly the word he used,” said Dena, checking her note pad. “He said that as far as he was concerned, Today could go crap in its corporate hat. He didn’t say it; his P.R. man said it.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Dena blushed. “I told him I bet that’s how he got off, talking dirty to women.”

  “Where’s Trask now?”

  “Nassau. He’s supposed to leave in a day or two. He’s going to the out-islands.”

  “Tell Miami to get a man over there. I want him aboard that boat. I don’t care if he has to charter another boat and chase him down. I want a Trask interview, and I’m not about to give up just because he’s being coy. I mean, this is the father of modern media! He quits, and billion-dollar companies get the runs. The most trusted man in America doesn’t trust television any more! Two hundred and thirty million people believe every word out of that man’s mouth, and suddenly he doesn’t think there’s anything worth saying. That is news!”

  “The news is that he wouldn’t prostitute himself. These days, that makes him the Messiah.”

  “Miami can charter a plane if they have to.”

  Dena nodded. “The man from the Coast Guard called again.”

  “What man?”

  “About Maynard.”

  “Oh, Christ . . .”

  “He says he talked to a pilot who flew Maynard and the boy to some island. The next day, they disappeared.”

  “I told you, he wigged out and went native.”

  “The trouble is, he took his son with him.”

  “So what?”

  “His mother has been on the phone to the chairman’s office.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “They called me. They wanted to know what I knew about it.”

  “If the Today Publications Company wants to mount an air-sea rescue operation for him, that’s their business.”

  “They don’t want to, exactly. Blair’s ex-wife is in the ad business. She has a lot of clients who advertise in Today. And all our other rags, too: TV Week, Health & Happiness, you name it.”

  “She’s threatening us?”

  “Not in so many words. But she is . . . eager, let’s say . . . to find her child. She’s already tried to get the FBI involved.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Kidnaping.”

  “Good God . . .”

  “She’s going to go look for him, and she wants us to help her. I can’t say I blame her.”

  “I don’t blame her either. But what am I supposed to do?”

  “You were talking about chartering a plane . . .”

  “Yeah, but . . . Okay,” Hiller sighed. “Call her.”

  C H A P T E R

  1 3

  Every day at dawn the pinnaces left the cove, and every evening at sunset they returned, empty. Twice, in frustration, the men attacked and sank native fishing sloops and killed the fishermen, but the victories were so worthless, the rewards so puny—a few bushels of conch, a few dozen spiny lobsters—that they stopped molesting the native boats and steered well clear of them.

  The men grew bored and restless and hungry for food more savory than dried fish and cassava paste. The half-dozen cows had not yet calved, so beef was in short supply, and the few remaining hogs—skinny and tough in the best of times—were stricken with an ailment that swelled their eyes shut, puckered their skin, and made them wobble as they walked. The memory of an outbreak of diarrhea dehydration was fresh enough in Nau’s mind to make him declare any suspect food inedible.

  Liquor was rationed. It was a step Nau was loath to take, for booze was an anodyne for discontentment. A drunken rebel was controllable, and he would sleep off his rebellion; a surly, sober rebel thought too clearly, hatched too many intricate plots, and was unpredictable. But the community was running out of alcohol, and Nau’s rationale went: Better to keep half the company half-lit half the time than to run the risk of having all men sober all the time.

  However, the rationing was soon overturned by petition from the whores. The community might suffer politically from total abstinence, they argued, but in the meantime they were suffering physically at the hands of the disgruntled men. Drunk, their customers were malleable; sober, they were impossible. So the whores relinquished their own rations and exacted a similar pledge from the w
ives, who were better off than the whores only in that they suffered the abuse of but one man. Nau agreed to the bargain and restored the men’s traditional rations of a bottle a day.

  Maynard’s days slipped into a dull routine. In the morning, Beth would wake him and coax him into servicing her. No matter how reluctant he was—and he was always intellectually reluctant, since every act was, potentially, the one that would give life to her body and consequently take life from his—she would employ threats, cajolery, tickles, kneads, and massages until, inevitably, she succeeded.

  His feelings for her were equivocal: She had saved his life; he had repaid her by trying to escape and causing her agony, and for this he felt guilty. But her intercession on his behalf had been entirely selfish, and by servicing her he was holding up his end of the bargain, so he felt honorable. Sexual intimacy had begun to breed (if, as yet, nothing else) a measure of fondness: She was demanding but solicitous, inexhaustible but gentle. She was simple and candid and totally absorbed in her crusade to attain her ideal position within her community.

  Either by incapacity or intent, she refused to consider a life beyond the island. She claimed to know nothing about her existence prior to arriving on the island, but Maynard was sure that her amnesia was the direct result of an iron determination to block out anything that might interfere with survival and success within the perimeters of local laws and customs. Memories would trigger longings, which would, in turn, trigger fruitless aspirations. Better to have no memories.

  She would not permit Maynard to talk about the outside world, except in terms of his family. She was eager to know about his wife—not about what she did or what she wore or where she went, but what kind of person she was: loving or cold, harsh or lenient. And she wanted to know everything about how to raise a child. Always, the conversations returned to that: how she would succeed as a mother. She truly cared for the child that was yet to be, and Maynard found her concern touching.

  Once, he asked her to help him escape, to work with him at night building a raft or a boat. He promised to take her with him and Justin, to ensure that her child would be born in the finest hospital, to support her indefinitely.

  She responded angrily to the proposal, accusing him of violating a code. He couldn’t tell whether her anger was genuine or a manifestation of confusion at the planting of an unwelcome seed in the orderly garden of her mind. He tried to explain that from his point of view, anything was fair if it would save his life. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to live. She replied that he was wasting his breath, and she forbade him from raising the issue again.