I cleared my throat and ran my hand over my da’s old fiddle.
‘Thank you for all the songs, old friend. I’m —’
Concentrate on your rowing. Promise me that, sonny Syms.
Sonny Syms. That was what Da used to call me.
‘Da?’
Scratch and Da.
My Da . . . and Scratch.
A snatch of a distant sea shanty rang in my pulsing ear.
I took a breath and coughed soot from my lungs. I felt a painful release in my ear, but still no sound. I touched it and my fingers came away slicked with blood.
The volcano now shot almighty gouts of molten rock high into the air, erupting in horrifying splendour. More black smoke mushroomed from its summit, following me out to sea like the worst London pea-souper. The eggy chemical stench was dizzying and, for all I knew, it could kill me.
I closed the chest, and rowed for my life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I knelt in the bottom of the tiny boat, shirtless and coated in ash – blistered and raw, parched and starved – and heaved my oar through the water on one side then the other, then bailed, rowed and bailed, my back bared to the beating sun. I didn’t dare stop, as the stinking black cloud chased me out to sea. Ground-shaking rumbles of the volcano created giant ripples that clashed with the waves, splashing me. My fiddle was already ruined. Scratch watched me, and as the water swilled around his base I felt my heart was drowning too. The last thing there was left of my da.
Not the last thing. You’re what’s left. And you’re still here. Stay bricky.
I forced a smile. It was the last I ever heard from Scratch, as the fiddle slipped to the side of the chest and was waterlogged in the growing pool at the bottom of the boat.
Da, gone.
Mr Darwin and my crewmates, gone.
Farthing, gone.
And now Scratch, gone too.
The breeze picked up, and the smoke thinned and was whipped away in swirls. The island was death, but when I surveyed the empty mass of water ahead of me, I shuddered with the fear of a boy who knows the sea all too well. A boy who knows the empty ocean has been deadly for thousands more men than any volcano eruption.
Or dragon.
I tried to recall Mr Darwin’s Galapagos map. It showed a cluster of islands together, Narborough wasn’t far from Albemarle. But maps were always a lie. The islands were not easy to travel between, not for one desperate boy in a tiny boat. I lost myself in the effort of rowing and bailing until I was surrounded by nothing but water, the blotch of smoke on the horizon all I could see of the island I’d escaped. I almost wanted to row back now, just to have sight of land!
I strained at the oar trying not to think at all, until darting lights appeared before my eyes and the tremble in my arms made it impossible to continue.
I flopped back, leaning on the chest to rest, clutching my twitching arm muscles. Nothing but water in any direction. The wind was brisk and the sea calm, and this gave me the tiniest reason to hope. There was good visibility and it was the kind of day that the Beagle would be at sail. Maybe they knew where I was yet had been unable to get to me, and now with the volcano erupting they would come. I knew in my deepest heart this hope was a liar, but I tried to listen to it all the same.
The sky was a deadly hot blue, adding blisters to my lava scalds. I should open the chest to find my shirt, wet it and cover my head. Thirst was now my biggest enemy.
A shadow passed over me. I opened my eyes. A shadow swooping, low and close, a shadow with wing tips skimming the water.
She had escaped the lava. I couldn’t think how.
She was golden and glorious and petrifying. Thirst was not my biggest enemy.
This was a dragon mother, and she was searching for her eggs.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I cowered low in the base of the boat, water sloshing around me. The dragon had neither burnt nor devoured me when she dropped me repeatedly into the sea on that first day. Her behaviour was a warning. She was brooding her eggs, and visitors were not welcome. And now her eggs were in the chest by my head. She circled the boat.
Did this mother understand that they would have been engulfed by the lava – that I had saved them?
Her shriek drowned my thoughts, and I yelped with the pain from my injured ear. The wind of her wings battered me, rocking the boat. I was like a sacrifice offered up to a mythical beast, completely helpless.
Should I reveal to her what was in the chest? Maybe she could scoop up the eggs in her mouth and save them after all. I could return them to her.
But if she were able to carry the eggs, then she would have done so in the cavern.
With a grinding shriek the dragon released a stream of fire.
It smashed into the sea to my side, shooting up plumes of steam. I curled up, folding myself as small as possible.
All was quiet.
The wind of her wings eased. When I dared to crane my head upwards, she was almost directly above me and staring down like an avenging angel or devil, her body in a tightly controlled hover I recognized from watching a hawk about to dive on its prey.
My survival instinct took over. The ancient knife, blackened with age, was in the base of the boat. I grasped it, a tiny weapon less than a tenth the size of one of the dragon’s claws, but something is always better than nothing. I would stand and fight. I balanced in the boat, water swilling at my ankles, watching her plummet. She knew the eggs were in the chest, I was sure of it.
I remembered her screams of anguish in the cavern.
I couldn’t attack her, I just . . . couldn’t. I threw the knife aside.
I grabbed the chest and leant heavily to the side, capsizing the entire boat and tipping myself into the sea, the boat over my head. I lost hold of the chest. The slats covered me like a roof, and when the dragon fire hit the wet wood, it did not catch at first. But with a second shrieking blast the fire took hold and I was in a tiny cave of flame. I ducked down beneath the sea, chunks of the boat floated ablaze above me, blocking my route to air. I kicked away as hard as I could, underwater, until my lungs were bursting and I was forced to surface.
I gasped and sputtered, spinning, scanning the sky all around me. Empty.
The last scraps of the ancient boat smouldered, and sank.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Something dark bobbed on the surface of the water. At first I imagined it was my fiddle, somehow making it all this way to join me, just like when I first dragged it from the surf. But it was the wooden treasure chest.
I splashed over to it, grappled at the damp slippery wood, singed and blackened but still strong, then rested my head and arms over the chest and let it hold me up.
The dragon did not return.
Now I would just wait for the sharks to snap at my drifting legs. Or the sun, or a delirium that made me drink seawater, or drowning. There were a lot of ways to die out here, everything hurt and I’d run out of ideas.
I do not know how long I floated, head and arms draped over the chest. I thought I’d been in trouble before, but it was a trifle compared to being adrift. My thirst became an agonizing torment that controlled both my body and mind, but it also prevented me from sleeping so deeply that I would let go of the wooden trunk, which was the only thing keeping me afloat. My arms weakened and I repeatedly slipped, almost losing the chest, but each time my body clung to it, without the help of my mind. I hallucinated, though not like the poison dreams after the centipede bite. My mind saw islands, trees growing in the middle of the ocean, boats . . . I was carried up and down waves of hope followed by crushing disappointment.
I pressed my chin against the wood and imagined it was my fiddle; I fingered ballads, shanties and jigs to the sun and the sea, humming in the back of my cracked throat, trying to chase away the torture of thirst with the memory of songs. I sobbed a little then, but my body was so dry that no tears fell.
Finally, at night, I fell from my chest raft completely and woke, splutterin
g, some yards from it. I somehow found new strength to release my ragged trousers and use them to tie myself around the chest. The eggs and I would die together in the ocean, me in only my torn undergarments. I managed a smile at the thought, then groaned in pain when my parched lips split open. I’d exhausted myself and fell asleep, cheek pressed against the wood as it had once pressed against Scratch’s case.
I awoke to a nudge at the wooden chest. And another. The floating trunk was being bumped by something, pushing us along.
Sharks. It had to be. I’d thought things couldn’t get worse, but I’d been wrong. I groaned. Of all the ways to die . . .
I couldn’t even open my eyes. I reached my hands over and splashed some water on my face to loosen the salt crust that gummed my eyelids shut.
I blinked. It was another vision.
Two glowing copper farthings. A triangular green snout.
I didn’t want to reach out a hand because she would surely disappear. I just drank her in with my eyes.
‘Farthing.’ The sound that emerged from my mouth was eerie, a hoarse whisper, and if I’d had any tears, they would have stung my burnt and blistered face. When my sobs turned to a laugh, I groaned with the pain in my throat.
The lizard had to be a cruel illusion. But she was a stubborn one. And she was nudging at the chest, rocking it, pushing it. I reached out my trembling hand and she nudged it with her snout, firm and smooth, a hot breath on my palm.
Farthing had found me.
If this weren’t real, I would gladly go along with it.
She butted the chest powerfully and I stared into her eyes as she swam, her limbs paddling and her stumpy injured tail whipping from side to side. It was sunrise. I felt like she and I were the only beings alive.
I would not die alone. And although the thirst torture continued, every time I looked at Farthing, I could bear it.
Voices. I did not bother to lift my head – it must be more waking dreams. But they were male voices . . . and familiar.
‘Ahoy! Man in the water!’
‘You there, show us you can hear us.’
‘I think the poor fellow has heard his last.’
‘What is that pushing him? A sea lion?’
I raised my heavy head from the wood.
‘By blazes, it’s the lad!’
‘Covington!’
Farthing stopped paddling and sank down in the water so only her eyes and the nostrils on her snout were visible. Our eyes met. She snorted, swimming forward a little, and I reached out and laid my fingers on her jaw. Her scales were smooth and warmer than the water that surrounded us. I raised my head.
There was a ship.
The Beagle. I blinked, and it didn’t blur, float or vanish. It was the Beagle. And, closer than that, a rowboat.
I turned back to Farthing and she lifted her front claws up on to the chest.
‘Come with me,’ I whispered. ‘There’s nothing there for you now.’
I wrapped my arm around her and pressed my forehead against her smooth scales. Strong arms hauled us out of the ocean, together.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
‘By Jove, ’tis the boy, Covington,’ said a voice I recognized. Robbins. I gasped a sob of relief as his strong arms lifted me on deck, and a rough hand remained on my shoulder.
‘You’re alright now, lad.’
More voices. I couldn’t make sense of what they were saying.
I scratched my fingers against the hard wood of the hull. The Beagle. I was really saved. ‘Farth . . . Farthing. Where . . .’
‘Is he talking about the lizard?’
‘Get a hold of it, then.’
‘Ouch! You little . . .’
‘Wrap the blighter in a sack, Mr Darwin will want a look . . .’
I was sliced free of the chest, yet I clung to it. They gave up trying to separate me from it. When I flailed and hit out at them, they hauled me out of the rowboat and on to the dry deck, taking the wooden chest with me. Billows of black, like the volcanic smoke, closed in behind my eyes as I was overwhelmed by exhaustion and relief but . . . Farthing.
A hoot from somewhere close by. She was here, safe. I pressed my face against the hot dry deck and let the dark clouds close in.
‘Covington, can you hear me?’ The voice grew louder. ‘He’s coming round, fetch Mr Bynoe and Mr Darwin, quick smart.’
‘Covington, my dear, dear boy,’ Mr Darwin’s voice brought me to my senses. Sound was muffled in one ear, loud in the other. I turned to hear him better and everything hurt. My young master. Alive. He slid a hand beneath my head and held a cup to my lips. I recognized I was in the territory of Mr Bynoe, the ship’s surgeon, the low cabin of sickbay, lined with narrow cots.
I shook my head, sending the cabin spinning. ‘Farthing . . .’
‘The lizard is right here, Covington, perfectly healthy. You wouldn’t settle until it was by your side.’
Mr Darwin lifted a small crate with slats at the front, through which I could see a flicker of green, a disc of copper. I reached out, but hardly had the strength to lift my arm. Farthing wouldn’t like being confined in there. When she hoot-growled at me, a lump filled my throat. She was safe, which was all that mattered right now.
‘She’s a new species, boy, and quite unique. I’m calling her the Galapagos green lizard.’
The master offered me the water again and I sipped, and found it both sweet and salty with a bitter edge. So, so good. When I attempted to gulp, it ran down my chin. I spluttered and Mr Darwin wiped my mouth with his handkerchief. To see those intelligent blue-grey eyes, the bushy eyebrows high, so serious and concerned over me, gave me a nasty shock. I was the servant here – I tended Mr Darwin when he was sickened by heavy seas, and that was how it should be. This felt all wrong.
‘Don’t trouble—’ it came out as barely a rough whisper.
‘Nonsense, boy. You’ve had rather a rough time of it.’ He leant in closer. ‘You saved my life, Covington. I have told everyone. We didn’t expect . . . We saw the eruption on Narborough.’
I slurped at the drink and the clouds in my mind parted. So the island was Narborough and the volcano had brought them to me.
‘The eggs? The dragon eggs?’
Mr Darwin chuckled, and that familiar light appeared in his eyes. His side whiskers had merged into a new growth of beard, he couldn’t have shaved since I last saw him.
‘Rather unique specimens, I do agree. How clever of you to retrieve them despite your ordeal, although I dare say you would not have survived without the watertight chest to act as a buoy. Did you happen to see the bird that laid them? I am imagining a giant ground grouse, or was it some form of greater Galapagos penguin . . . forgive me, dear boy, you must not even think of it until you are more yourself.’
He dabbed at my forehead with a damp cloth as I stared up at him. I raised myself on my elbows.
‘It was . . . a dragon.’ I whispered.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Mr Darwin smiled again, but concern crumpled the corners of his eyes. ‘Bynoe says you were frightfully battered and may easily have a concussion. Your eardrum is perforated, you’ve suffered the effects of exposure, and the toxic gases released by the volcano may have caused—’
‘No!’ I surprised myself with the sudden strength in my voice. ‘There was a dragon. I found her nest. Those are the dragon’s eggs.’
I shocked myself at my rudeness, speaking to my master in this way, but Mr Darwin laid a gentle hand on my shoulder. I was bandaged there. I realized I was bandaged almost everywhere. The burns.
‘When you were in the throes of delirium, you would not be quieted until I had the chest brought in here alongside the lizard. The eggs are still inside.’
He crossed to the other side of the sickbay and lifted the chest lid. I caught a golden glint.
‘I told Mr Bynoe and the seamen not to lay a hand on it, and Fitzroy will not interfere. If my boy saviour wants to take a special interest in some rare specimens, then the
least I can do is grant this wish.’ He leant closer, and softened his tone. ‘You do realize that the eggs will not survive, dear boy. We have had no success with bringing back live egg specimens. Depending on its diet, the lizard may fare better.’
Bring the eggs back?
Eight dragon eggs. Most likely the only dragon eggs in the world. If they didn’t survive the trip . . .
‘No. They belong here. In the Galapagos.’
Mr Darwin scratched his whiskers and gave a little shake of his head, pouches of worry forming beneath his eyes.
‘We would be better off blowing them or preserving them, then at least they won’t spoil . . .’ He swallowed and looked away. He wanted to make a hole in the eggs and blow out the contents – or, if there were young inside, they would . . .
‘No!’ My broken voice was shrill, as I struggled to sit upright. ‘Please . . . sir. No . . .’
Mr Darwin pressed my shoulders gently, so I lay back on the pillow.
‘Covington. Mr Bynoe said strictly no excitement. You must rest now. I will not touch the eggs, or the lizard. You have my word on it.’
My eyelids were too heavy, my voice slurring. He was right about eggs not surviving – there had to be another way. Another place where they would have a chance. Maybe they were close to hatching.
‘They can’t die . . . they are the only . . . leave them on Alber . . . marle,’ I gasped. ‘In a . . . cave . . .’
My throat seized up and I sipped more water, now feeling as though I might vomit it back up.
‘I am sorry, dear boy, believe me. But the Galapagos are now some five hundred miles behind us. Our next stop is Polynesia, over four thousand miles distant.’
My mouth dropped open in horror. Even in my state of exhaustion, I needed to gather myself enough to make him believe me. I cleared my throat, wincing.
‘It was a dragon, on my life, I swear. A miracle. Bigger . . . than a whale, with scales, and reptile in shape. Four legs, leathery wings which were huge beyond belief . . . I was not delirious, sir, I swear it . . .’
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