The Plug at the Bottom of the Sea

by Robert Lamb

  He watched Moses coming up and whispered to him, ‘Moses,’ and Moses looked up at him. Craig pointed at the head below him. Moses nodded and came up a different way. He didn’t say anything.

  Cindy was still pulling Craig’s arm. ‘I’m telling the truth, that branch lifted me up. It did.’

  ‘I know,’ said Craig, when Moses had pulled himself up on top of the tree and they all sat on the many-coloured leaves.

  ‘It was an octopus that lifted you.’

  ‘An octopus? No.’

  ‘It was.’ Moses nodded. ‘I saw it and you can too if you look over the edge.’

  ‘No,’ Cindy shuddered, feeling goose flesh creep all over her. ‘Let’s keep moving,’ she said and got up. ‘He may follow us. Hurry.’

  ‘He’s only a baby octopus and he’s caught in the vines without water,’ said Moses. ‘Don’t worry.’

  From up here they could see the pattern of the brooks and streams through the mud looking like golden branches with twigs like golden lace. ‘Wow,’ said Craig, ‘it looks just like heaven with all that gold,’ and he gazed over the tops of the trees.

  There on a further tree, he saw something black and white that looked like a bird. ‘What’s that?’ he called out to the others. They all looked at the bird resting between two branches leaning back in the sun quite exhausted.

  ‘It’s a penguin,’ said Cindy. ‘A real penguin.’ And sure enough it was sweating and roasting in the heat. Its chest rose and fell as it breathed deeply, almost dying from the salt mist that rose from the whole forest of seaweed.

  The branches and leaves at the top of the trees were strong enough to hold them if they were careful. So they all made their way over the branches to the penguin.

  ‘He’s too heavy to fly and his wings weren’t made to anyway,’ said Moses, looking at the tired bird who was very sad, lying on top of a pea-green tree. He saw them coming towards him from a long way off, and turned his head to see them.

  ‘He’s sweating,’ said Cindy as she climbed up to him. He was perched in the top of the tree looking at her. ‘And he’s got a sign on him.’ She reached up and turned over the label which read:

  a present of 10 penguins for

  HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN

  for Regent’s Park Zoo

  Cindy said: ‘We must take him with us.’

  ‘No, Cindy. We can’t. He’s a penguin,’ said Craig, shaking his head.

  ‘So what if he’s a penguin, he’s a present for the Queen and we have to take him.’

  ‘Now, Cindy,’ Craig began …

  ‘If he’s a penguin then he’s not meant to be on top of a tree, even a seaweed tree,’ interrupted Moses. ‘Let’s take him along till we reach some water.’

  Craig nodded. ‘All right, that seems the right thing to do, but as soon as we reach a place for him we must leave him. We can’t carry him all the way and, Cindy, you can’t take everything along you find. You already have a zoo.’

  ‘That’s not so; just a bird and a sea horse and a penguin.’

  ‘And?’

  Chapter 6

  The Legend …and a Decision

  Cindy was flying through clouds of colour. Beneath her were explosions of coloured sponges looking like Christmas presents. They were shaped like the leaves and flowers of the sea she had climbed through that afternoon. She was dazzled by the whirl of colours when suddenly she heard …

  ‘Cindy, wake up,’ Craig was shouting, all the colours had disappeared, it was dark and Cindy was still sitting on a cold wet rock.

  ‘Craig, I just had a dream in colour, beautiful colour just like the leaves and flowers in the seaweed.’

  ‘But you said you hated the flowers when you were caught.’

  ‘I know, that was when I was frightened. But the flowers were so friendly in the dream.’

  ‘Leaves aren’t friendly or unfriendly, and besides how could you have a dream in colour?’ Craig challenged.

  ‘They are friendly, just like people, and I’ll bet you’ve never had a dream in colour.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Well,’ Craig hesitated, ‘well, I don’t believe you ever had a dream in colour either.’ ‘I did.’

  Firelight flickered over the high wall of the grey whale in front of Cindy. Cindy gasped, ‘How’d I get here?’

  In the firelight Moses’ red beard looked just like flames too. He turned around upon hearing them. He was throwing things on the fire. ‘Fell asleep. I had to carry you. Warm fire and supper should make you sleep better than cold mud.’ The seaweed snapped and fizzed on the large fire. ‘We decided to camp beside the whale for warmth, in case you were wondering.’

  ‘It’s bigger than a fish or a ship or anything,’ said Cindy looking at the giant wall of grey. ‘It’s bigger than an ocean liner. No wonder it can tip them over. Do you think it’s safe to sleep near it? It might roll over and crush us in the night.’

  ‘Well,’ said Moses, ‘it seems pretty stuck and it would be drier and warmer to sleep on than the mud and those rocks.’

  Craig and Cindy came closer and saw that the whale was lying in a large pond of water at the bottom of the cliff, between two rocks. He looked like a large island in a tiny puddle. He was bigger than the pond. His head rested in the water and he breathed every ten minutes, making a spraying sound on the pond. He flipped his tail as they came nearer, high up in the air like a great black sail pointed and full. It made a heavy slap when it hit the water. Cindy jumped back.

  ‘That tail is huge,’ cried Cindy.

  ‘Come here,’ they heard the old man call. ‘Let’s get some food ready, I’m starving. Should be on that bundle on the sled.’ Moses threw another seaweed branch on top of the fire; it hissed and snapped as it came alight in the dark night.

  The penguin was standing on a small cliff, overlooking the pond, waiting for the tail of the whale to flip up again.

  The bottle with the sea horse stood near them. Cindy could see the little head from inside the green glass looking at the fire.

  Craig opened the ropes which tied the bundle onto the sled and pulled out the food carefully wrapped in little packages. ‘Why are the cheese and bread all split up into packages?’

  ‘One for each day so I don’t have to get hungry. We’ll all have to go easy on the food ’cos I only brought enough for me, and split three ways we’ll all have to take less to make it go around. O.K.?’

  ‘O.K.’ Cindy nodded. ‘And thank you very much.’

  ‘Yes, thank you very much,’ Craig agreed.

  ‘Well, everyone, stop thanking me and start eating.’ Moses laughed. ‘I never did see such thankful sailors as you. Why out on the Spanish Main they’d just as soon put a cutlass through your choppers as through your cheese.’ He tapped his teeth.

  Craig and Cindy looked at each other, wondering whether to believe Moses’ stories of cutlasses.

  Moses saw them looking at each other and laughed. ‘You don’t believe me. Well, I’m gonna tell you the tallest story you ever heard and tomorrow I can prove it, maybe.’ He laughed. ‘If you come to that plug.’

  Both Craig and Cindy munched their food, smiling, for they had waited all day to hear this legend.

  ‘My dad,’ began Moses, scraping out the dead ash in his pipe and filling it with new tobacco, ‘he told me the legend I’m about to tell you, when I was a tiny mite ’bout half the size of that penguin.’ Everyone looked at the penguin who couldn’t understand why everyone was looking at him. ‘Told me never to tell a soul nor ever to even talk in my sleep about it.’ There were long pauses as Moses puffed. ‘And he said never to move the sail from in front of the door of that windmill. But if ever a storm should move it, he told me what would happen and what I was to do.’ Moses sighed, ‘Ah,’ relaxing and leaning back as the smoke came out between his teeth like a house on fire. The pipe went out. Moses tapped his tobacco down and lit it again. All his attention was directed at the pipe. Cindy was afraid he would forget all
about the legend.

  But he didn’t. Finally with the white smoke and sound of puffing they heard: ‘What was I to do? Oh yes. I was to get a lot of candles and rope and string and his map,’ said Moses. ‘And I was to make my way lickety-split over the mud, following the rope till I reached the plug.’

  ‘But what was the legend?’ asked Cindy.

  ‘Yes, Moses, how did the plug get there?’ asked Craig.

  ‘How did the plug get there?’ Windmill fluttered up to Moses’ shoulder and settled himself under a corner of his red beard. ‘Well, this is the legend, and a greater tale was never told. Nor a truer one I’ll wager you.’

  ‘There was once a king named Geiges, a thousand, thousand years ago on the lost continent of January, who controlled all this half of the world. He was threatened by King Cain, ruler of the other half of the world, who had begun to march against him with a secret weapon.’

  ‘I never heard of the lost continent of January.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ said Craig. ‘Was that before the Greeks?’

  ‘This was before any of them people, Greeks, Romans, a thousand, thousand years ago. That’s a long time,’ Moses explained. ‘So Geiges, the King of the West, was threatened by the king of the other side of the world and, in order to avoid war, he made his whole continent look like an iceberg so the King of the East wouldn’t know it was a continent. He made his men paint all the stones white and cut down all the trees so the land was bare and without grass.’

  ‘That sounds horrible. No grass,’ said Cindy.

  ‘Well, he sowed all the fields with salt, and all the moss with lime, and soon an iceberg stood out upon the sea. Then, to avoid war, he summoned all his wise men to him and said, ‘What will we do now that the King of the East has begun to march?” and they all said they would have to think. So he gave them a month while he dug caves in the rocks for his people and no one was allowed out on the rocks for fear that the King of the East would see them and send out his secret weapon.

  ‘After a month he summoned his wise men back again, but none of them knew what to do. “We are men of peace,” they said, “and we don’t know how to defend ourselves from this secret weapon.”

  ‘Only one small man with a very long beard which reached to the floor said, “There’s one way to stop the wretched King of the East. But it is so dangerous that I will tell you only if no other way is found.” So they all went back to their big room to think for one more day.

  ‘The next day many methods were brought before the king but they were all impossible for they were invented only to prevent the dangerous little man with his dangerous little plan from telling it to the king.

  ‘And so, at the end of the day, when all the wise men were tired and the king was sitting in the great cave of his iceberg without a plan, he called again for the little man. And the little man with the golden beard to the floor tapped in, leaning on his cane.

  ‘“There are some great caves through the centre of the earth,” said the little man. “If we dig an enormous hole through the ground to reach them we can put a plug at the end. Then we can dig away all the land around the plug so the water of the sea will be on top of the plug. This will be the deepest point in the sea. And the plug will rest on runners so that it can be pulled aside to let the water pass and flow through to the other side of the world. If that happens it will drown them.”

  ‘“But that is too horrible to even think about,” said King Geiges of the West, and they all agreed. But after another day more news came of the great march of King Cain of the East. So the king called them back to his great cave palace.

  ‘“Great wise men, you have thought for days of ways of making war, but you have thought of only impossible plans. Now, I am a peaceful man and we are a peaceful land, but we have decided to build the plug, which of course we will never use, for it is too terrible to even talk about.”

  ‘“But what if we are forced to use it?” asked all the wise men.

  ‘“That is too terrible to even think about, so we can’t discuss it,” said the king.

  ‘They began to dig the hole and clear away the corner of the island continent so that the plug would be just off the island. Secret stairs and a secret slide were built down to the caves to keep a guard at the bottom. The work went on and on, digging deeper and deeper, till one day a messenger arrived with the dreadful news. “The King of the East has found out about the plan. He has now built a plug on his side of the earth too.”

  ‘“Oh no,” cried King Geiges. “What have we done? What have we started?” He called in his wise men.

  ‘By now the tunnel and hole were finished and a plug had been made of solid gold, to protect all the gold of the country in the surest way. “All is ready,” said the small old man with the very long beard. “All is ready,” echoed the king’s wise men, “as you wished.”

  ‘“I have sad news and need your advice,” he said. “The King of the East has blocked up the cave on the other side of the earth with his own plug and threatens to drown us all. What can we do?”

  ‘And all the wise men with all their long beards shook their heads and said, “Shocking, shocking,” but could give the king no advice. Finally the little old man with his beard of gold to the floor was called, and he came tapping in with his cane.

  ‘He said: “If all is ready, then the plug should be put in place and the water let into the hole. Then, when he and you have this danger over each other’s heads …then you can make an agreement to each keep your own guard together in the centre of the earth with a palace of East and West …”

  ‘“That is a magnificent idea,” said the king and agreed immediately without discussing it with his other wise men. The following day, the great golden plug was lowered into the hole and tied to a great rope.

  ‘Everything happened as the little old man had said. The King of the East lowered his plug and both decided to build the underground palace of East and West. But—’ Moses paused to puff—’the rope had been stolen.’

  ‘Stolen?’ Craig and Cindy said at once.

  ‘Yes, because the little old man had taken the rope with fifty of the king’s men and rowed it out to an island and there he had built a windmill’

  ‘But why did he take the rope?’ asked Cindy.

  ‘And why did he build the windmill?’ asked Craig, ‘and why didn’t anyone stop him?’

  ‘Hold on, hold on. I’ll tell you the rest.’ Moses laughed. ‘The little old man built the windmill to be able to pull out the plug.’

  ‘Did he want to control the world?’ asked Cindy.

  ‘No he wanted peace. So he took guards from the other kingdom and put them in charge of this windmill and guards from this kingdom and put them in charge of another windmill on the other side of the world.’

  ‘You mean there’s another windmill?’ asked Craig.

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’ Moses puffed.

  ‘But what happened then, when the guards of the eastern kingdom were at our windmill, and our guards were in charge of the eastern one?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Moses, smiling.

  ‘Nothing?’ asked Cindy and Craig in the same breath.

  ‘The little man had built each windmill with one sail stuck in a rock so that it wouldn’t move. But he kept the guards there to stop anyone who tried to come up and cut the rope or start a war.’

  ‘But why did he build the windmills in the first place, if he didn’t want them to work?’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s the final part of his plan. On each side there were those who were afraid of what the other side might do, so he made them believe the windmills worked. Actually neither side could do anything anyway, but it made them get together in the centre of the earth and talk.’

  ‘I don’t understand at all,’ said Cindy, shaking her head.

  ‘Oh, Cindy, it’s so simple. He made everyone feel safe and happy, can’t you see?’

  ‘But what happened to the two kings if everything was so happy and safe?’ asked Ci
ndy.

  Moses smiled, ‘Well, there are those who said a great flood came just after that and washed everyone away, but I really don’t know ’cos that’s as much as my daddy told me.’

  They all sat around the fire looking at the licking flames as Moses threw on some large strings of seaweed and began to finish his food. He had been talking so much he had had no time to eat.

  Suddenly there was a whoosh of flames. ‘What was that?’ Craig shouted as a tower of flame shot into the sky lighting them all up like a fireworks explosion.

  ‘Just some fisherman’s oil,’ said Moses. ‘Nothing to worry about. It comes to the top of the sea, in places out in the middle of the ocean. Why I’ve seen oil catch fire when lightning strikes the water. Happened on a black rainy night. Whoosh, a tower of flames. Seen it I did.’

  The flame suddenly died down as quickly as it had shot up. ‘It comes out of cracks in the rock.’

  ‘You mean there’s oil in the sea?’ asked Cindy.

  ‘There sure are plenty of things about the sea for you two to learn,’ said Moses. ‘Take this bread. Do you know where it came from?’

  They both shook their heads. ‘Seaweed,’ he said, ‘special yellow seaweed that grows in the shallow rocks just off the island.’

  ‘And the cheese?’ asked Cindy, expecting to hear about a special sea flower. But it was ‘only goat’s cheese from a little goat’ Moses kept on the island. ‘Must have got lost in the storm, I haven’t seen him since that night.’

  ‘Moses, if the sails haven’t moved for so long, how did you get in and out of the windmill?’

  ‘I was waiting for one of you to ask that question. It’s the sign.’

  ‘The sign?’ asked Cindy.

  ‘The sign is a trapdoor and goes out under the rope. There’s a secret staircase out from that same place to the shore and a little cave, which is the way my dad showed us to get in.’

  ‘We didn’t find that cave,’ said Cindy, ‘and we didn’t know what was in the hole in the bottom of the sea. In fact, we never knew there was a hole at all.’