by Robert Lamb
They had been wading in the dark for what seemed like hours when Craig realized it was getting darker not lighter. He reached in his cartridge belt in the last pocket and pulled out a marble and unscrewed it. The match scratched and flared; the bright crystal of coral leaves and oily vines gleamed in the dark. Craig lowered the match to the mud surface in front of him and suddenly it burst into flame; blue green exploded before him.
‘Craig! Craig! What have you done?’
They both began running, the mud almost up to their waists. They could not go fast. Craig looked behind and saw the flames following him. Oil, he thought. It must be floating on the mud.
They ran, or waded, till they were exhausted. But they became separated in the dark. When Craig looked back and saw the tiny flames looking harmless in the distance, he called out, ‘Cindy?’ He could see a sunny clearing ahead, between the jelly leaves. ‘This way, Cindy. Don’t get lost.’
He had waded into the centre of the wide opening between the seaweed trees where the mud looked bumpy. Too late he felt his legs begin to sink. He gave each leg a hard yank but no matter how hard he strained, if one leg came out, the other would sink further in.
Now Craig had read of quicksand and quicksilver but this was quickmud. He hardly expected it on the bed of the sea. He thought about calling to Cindy, but what good could she do? She couldn’t get near him and she wasn’t strong enough to pull him out. She’d just cry. But why didn’t she come? He’d called to tell her the way.
He must think of something. He must stay calm and not struggle. The black mud was smooth for five feet all around him. He tested it. Could he make it to those lumps of rocks or sticks? There was nothing else. But his struggle to swim only made the cold mud around his chest and back seem more frightening. The lumps were nearer now. Just at that moment he realized the lumps had the dull reflection of smooth shells and the cage of grey-yellow sticks was the skeleton of a giant fish. He was in the midst of an ocean graveyard.
Craig was frightened for the first time he could ever remember, or admit. Keep thinking, keep thinking, but stay calm. What good were his special instruction in yoga and codes, or even his belt now?
The belt, that’s it! Into the mud went his hands, and a long second later, a dripping black thing emerged from the mud. He took a deep breath and whipped the buckle end towards the fish skeleton. It bounced off with a sharp crack as one bone broke and fell into the mud. It disappeared. Again he threw out the belt—lightly—but the buckle did not catch. Craig was desperate. Cindy came out of the trees calling, ‘Craig, what are you doing in the mud? Stop playing.’
‘Cindy,’ Craig said steadily. ‘This is quickmud.’
‘You look so silly. You don’t expect me to believe you?’
Craig bit his lip. He wouldn’t cry out. He would just disappear. No, what was he saying? If he survived he would be good, he would even stop teasing Cindy. Yes, even that, really he would.
He held the two ends of the soggy belt in either hand above his head and, stretching out his arms, he ever so gently flicked the buckle towards the crack between the top thinnest bones of the skeleton.
‘Craig, stop pretending!’ Cindy was getting worried. Craig seemed lower in the mud but if she showed she was worried, he would just tease her, when he came out after his trick. No, she would not notice him. She turned her back. This was a trick. Craig was just waiting to burst out laughing. She could tell. But all the same she sneaked a look.
Craig flipped the buckle again, this time as lightly as a playing card. It slipped between the bones without a sound. He was breathing heavily despite the orders he had given himself. Would it hold? Would the bones break this time? They must be old. Ever so slowly he twisted the thick cartridge belt around like a rolled towel dripping mud, but the buckle stayed flat. It would not move. The mud smelled.
He kept turning the buckle, which finally began to turn until it was straight up in the air. As he pulled, it caught between the two bones and held when he pulled harder. The cage of bones began to rise up out of the mud as he pulled. Would it hold? Craig remembered thinking this was a graveyard without stones. This was how animals and fishes die, not floating on the surface as he had always thought, but here on the bottom.
He pulled again. His shoulders came out of the mud with his arms dripping. Then his chest emerged, looking like black horsehair or bear’s fur. He felt something lumpy under his foot and he stood on it to reach out to grab the skeleton. The hard white and yellow bones felt warm in the sun as he raised himself tiredly out of the swamp. The cage of bones was like the ribs of the boat he was building, they were that large. This must be the skeleton of a gigantic fish, he thought as he leaned against the great bones to rest. He was sweating. His eyes were blurring. Were these tears? No, they couldn’t be. Never. It was just hot. He hadn’t been frightened. And that promise to stop teasing Cindy? How much help had she given him? None. It was the belt that had saved him. Cindy would never realize how close he had come. But deep inside himself Craig knew.
Chapter 4
Enter Moses!
Now the bright sun swam above them, in and out behind clouds like a big golden fish. The sand was so hot that imaginary lakes appeared and disappeared all around them.
‘It’s like the seaside, Craig.’
‘It is the sea. Only there’s no water,’ Craig added after a long look out over the sand.
Craig ran his tongue over his dry lips and felt the sand and salt on them. The wind was very tired of blowing. And they were very tired from squinting, and walking, and following this big rope, up and down for hours and hours.
‘Why didn’t we think of water?’ Cindy asked for the third time.
‘We did but we couldn’t find any. Remember?’
‘I remember. But you know there’s no water at the bottom of the sea. Except salt water, and we can’t drink that.’
‘No,’ agreed Craig and he felt dizzy with the heat.
They began to walk through a streaky section of mud and sand. The mud was dark and the sand was light and the dark and light mixed and floated in the air in front of their tired eyes. The world seemed to swim and spin.
‘Come on,’ Craig called, turning around to help Cindy, who had stopped walking and held out her arms as if on a tightrope.
‘Oh, help me, Craig, I’m so dizzy,’ Cindy called.
‘Hold on and we’ll rest behind that rock.’ Craig held her as she stumbled. ‘Now just keep your eye on that rock. The yellow one with the red on top.’
But as they went towards it, the rock seemed to go away.
‘It’s not real, just like the lakes,’ said Cindy.
But the rock stopped and then began moving towards them.
‘It’s coming at us now,’ cried Cindy. ‘Quick, let’s get out of the way.’ And they turned to run.
‘Wait!’ shouted a voice behind them.
‘Oh, I’m so frightened, Craig. And my tummy hurts!’
‘Sh, Cindy,’ said Craig turning round.
There, right in front of him, stood a terrifying sight. The mossy green and yellow rock was a huge man with a great red beard full of wisps of white, like flames. His pipe stuck out of his mouth at an angle, and he looked so fierce Craig wondered why the pipe didn’t snap off.
He had eyes that were deep like caves, and eyebrows like overhanging cliffs. His eyes moved so quickly that they looked like tiny fish darting in a dark pool. He walked slowly towards them and his eyes stopped moving. They now stared like the two barrels of pointed guns.
Cindy was terrified and her fingers squeezed into Craig’s.
Still the man didn’t say anything. He came even nearer. He had two belts crossed over his gigantic chest and stomach, making him look like a pirate. His leather clothes squeaked as he moved, and his feet made a strange squelching noise in the mud.
If the enormous man had not been so frightening they would have laughed at these sounds. And when both his great feet stuck in the mud and he squelched and squelche
d without pulling either foot out, Cindy finally could not stop herself from giggling. ‘Hee, hee,’ she giggled very softly, but the old man heard her and looked up.
‘Eh?’ he said, looking from one of them to the other. Cindy became frightened, and dizzy from the sun again. They both froze. The old man pulled his foot out suddenly with a loud swap sound that both Craig and Cindy would have laughed at any other time. He was coming nearer and nearer.
‘Eh?’ he said again. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ and he took the pipe from his mouth and pointed it at Craig. Craig jumped back as if it were a revolver.
‘We saw your clothes,’ and Craig stopped, not knowing what to say next.
‘Oh, following me …?’ The old man nodded.
‘Oh no, sir. We were looking for the plug,’ said Cindy.
‘How’d you know about the plug?’ said the old man suspiciously. ‘Nobody knows about that plug but me and my brother.’
‘We saw the sign,’ answered Craig.
‘Aha, you’ve been snooping around my mill.’
‘No … I mean yes … I mean …’ stuttered Craig.
The old man’s beard parted in a smile for the first time.
‘Don’t be frightened, boy, or you neither, girl. You’re both shaking like empty sails or ones so full of wind they’re about to break.’
They both realized they were shaking just as he said. Cindy’s teeth were clenched together to keep them from chattering.
‘I’m not going to eat you. So you can stop worrying and stop shaking.’
His enormous tummy turned around as he reached for something behind himself.
‘Quick, he’s going to throw something!’ cried Cindy.
The old man did not hear her for he was pulling something tied with a rope. Both Craig and Cindy then noticed a sled with a lumpy pile of something covered by a canvas.
‘So you’ve been at the mill and read the sign. You’re the first to come to the island for years. The last man was a whaler captain and his son. They finally built a boat out of the wreck and some of my stairs. They sailed off, I don’t know where. But they had a cargo of rum that I just finished last week. Don’t know what happened to them.’
‘You live alone on the island?’ asked Craig, his voice still shaking from the scare of the old man.
‘I certainly do. Came the first time when I was born. Grew up there till I was ten. Then I returned a few years back.’
Cindy was still dizzy with the heat and she had begun to slowly lower her head in zigzags.
‘You don’t look too well,’ said the old man, and he turned round and knelt down to look in his pack.
‘Look,’ said Craig to Cindy, ‘those aren’t guns across his chest. They’re bottles and leather sacks. Don’t be frightened, Cindy,’ for he could see she looked faint.
‘Guns?’ laughed the old man, who had overheard their whispers.
He reached for his strap, swung down one of the water sacks, and pulled out the stopper. He raised the sack to Cindy, but she was too dizzy to see him. Craig also refused. Cindy jumped back about three feet, when she noticed that the hand offering water had only two fingers.
‘Look,’ the man said, ‘I’ll prove it’s water. You must be thirsty.’ He raised it high and a long thin stream of clear liquid entered the opening between his moustache and beard.
‘Now,’ said the old man as he finished. ‘You see it’s water, so …’ and he handed it to them again.
Craig and Cindy were both smiling when he passed it and they both drank for a long time.
‘Not good to drink too much,’ said the old man, shaking his head. Cindy was raising the sack for the third time. ‘Makes you sick, especially if you have a long way to go.’
‘A long way?’ both of them repeated.
‘Yes,’ laughed the old man. ‘Miles and miles to the plug if that’s where you’re going. And it’s going to be deep, soft mud. That’s why I have these.’ Craig and Cindy looked down at the strange-looking tennis rackets attached to his feet half-sunk in the mud and just visible above the surface. They were made of wood and leather, webbed in diamond shapes.
‘That’s what made those strange marks, Craig,’ whispered Cindy.
‘Most of them,’ Craig explained, ‘disappeared in the mud. But on the rocks we saw these marks several times.’
He didn’t tell the old man they had thought they were the prints of a giant or some gigantic animal, or of his comparison with an elephant’s foot.
‘These are like snowshoes. Did you ever see snowshoes?’ Both of them shook their heads. There was never much snow in Dorset—because of the salt sea air, most people said.
‘Now these are called mud feet,’ said the old man, ‘ ’cos they’re stronger than snowshoes. If I didn’t wear ’em I’d sink down into the mud and never come out. You two are lighter, so you can walk on top and only sink in an inch or two. But later on where it’s soft mud, you’ll need these too … I think we can make you a simple pair out of some rope I have in here,’ and he looked under his sail bundle.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Ugh!’ He grunted and breathed heavily as he got up again. He really was enormous.
‘Now this should do, I think,’ and he bent a piece of tough, thick seaweed he picked up from the ground and tied the rope across it like the strings of a tennis racket.
‘Now you two finish that,’ he ordered in a friendly voice, ‘while I look for some more seaweed.’
‘Ha, ha,’ he laughed and pointed at their feet.
The children looked down at their own feet and then at each other’s. They had sunk almost to their knees in the mud. For several minutes they squelched around until they got out and on top again, and then they saw that they were beginning to sink once more.
‘Oh no,’ cried Cindy. ‘It’s hopeless.’
No wonder the old man was so enormous before, she thought. We were only half as big. And he really isn’t so frightening at all. With two sacks of water instead of guns he certainly doesn’t seem like a fierce pirate. He really is very jolly—something like Father Christmas, except for the red and white beard.
‘They call me Moses.’ The old man laughed, looking up from his bundle, where he was looking for string. ‘ ’Cos o’ my beard. It looks like the burning bush. Now what’re your two names? And where are you from?’
‘Oh. I’m Craig and this is my sister, Cindy.’
‘Craig and Cindy?’ repeated the old man. ‘Good names but they’re not like Moses—a name for something about you, like my beard. Do you have a nickname?’
‘No,’ said Cindy, but she looked at Craig who knew she had one. ‘Well, some people call me …’ She stopped herself. ‘But I don’t like to be called that,’ she finished shyly, looking at the ground.
‘No, I guess not.’ Moses laughed. ‘Well, I had plenty o’ names I didn’t like when I was young. That’s why I stuck to Moses, even though I didn’t like the beard.’
‘You mean you kept the beard even though you didn’t like it just …?’ asked Cindy.
‘That’s right.’ The old man nodded, lighting his pipe. ‘They called me Fingers ’cos of these—’ he raised his right hand with the two fingers and a thumb. It looked like a strange branch of a tree, suntanned and knotted, creased with age, but still very strong.
‘I lost ’em to a shark. So when someone said I’d look like Moses with a beard I started growing one. And they called me Moses. But that was long ago and you’re the first people I’ve seen in years …’
And he looked at them. ‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking— what am I doing on that island?’
They both nodded, embarrassed that he could know their thoughts from just looking at their faces.
‘And I bet you think I’m some kind of pirate.’
They both nodded. And he laughed, ‘Ha, ha, well sorry to disappoint you but I ain’t no pirate and I ain’t hiding. No, I’m a prospector, kind of. An old man retiring to look into an old legend my father told me and my brother when we were
growing up on Windmill Island.’ He paused. ‘I was a mate and a captain too for a year, till my boat went down,’ he went on, embarrassed. ‘It went down near Windmill Island in a very strange storm like last night, in fact.
‘Well, I couldn’t go down with my ship because my mate sunk her when I was on shore. But I’m not sure he did. When I came back to Windmill Island from rowing into town, my boat wasn’t there, and there were only a few barrels and a cage o’monkeys floating on the water. It just disappeared.’
‘And you’ve been there ever since?’ asked Craig.
‘Yep.’
‘What is the legend?’ asked Cindy.
The old man smiled at her. ‘Always got a question. Afraid that’s a secret between my brother and me,’ he said tapping his pipe and puffing till white clouds made his head disappear.
‘Oh, please!’ pleaded Cindy.
‘Since we’re going to the plug anyway …’ began Craig, but the old man put his hand up for silence, laughing.
‘All right. Since you’re going to the plug, or think you are, I’d better warn you.’
‘Warn us?’ asked Cindy. ‘Is it that dangerous?’
‘Tell you what. We’ll travel till nightfall and make a camp and by then you’ll see a little bit of how dangerous it will be and you can decide if you want to go. And if you decide you do, then I’ll tell you the legend tonight.’
‘We feel we ought to go to the plug to find out where all the water has gone, and the fish,’ said Craig.
‘You ought to go?’ he repeated. ‘Why, do you feel responsible?’
‘Yes,’ said Craig.
‘Because we pushed the sails of the windmill,’ added Cindy.
‘Oh, you did?’ the old man laughed. ‘Those sails haven’t moved in a thousand years and you pushed them and they went around?’ He looked sceptical.
‘I found this bar of metal stuck loosely in the wall. It was very heavy but Cindy helped me lift it. We tried to push the sail away from the door.’
‘And it just sailed out of the way just like that?’
‘No. We leaned it against the sail when we found out the frames were metal and we stepped back to take a look. Just then, when we were standing by the pool, the lightning crashed right through the bar of metal and into the water.’