The Dragon of Lonely Island

by Rebecca Rupp

  That was why when the sailor stopped by the door one fine spring morning looking for a likely boy for a job, Jamie was allowed to go. The sailor was a big strapping fellow with a red bandanna around his head and a gold ring in his ear. He had a friendly way about him, a warm rich laugh that made you think of brown molasses, and a pair of bright little black eyes. “My captain needs a cabin boy for a run to the Indies,” the sailor said, offering Mr. Bingle one of his big bronzed hands to shake and giving Mrs. Bingle a polite nod and a bow. “It’s a fine ship, a healthy life, good pay, and he’ll be treated as well as if he were the captain’s own son. And he’ll have a chance for promotion. Why, I started out as a cabin boy myself, and look at me now — second mate of the Albatross and hoping someday to have a ship all me own.”

  The Bingles, over Jamie’s head, exchanged worried glances. “Why, I don’t know,” Mrs. Bingle said. “It seems so dangerous and so far from home. . . .”

  “None of our lads has ever gone to sea,” said Mr. Bingle, shaking his head, “and I hear it’s a hard life. . . .”

  But Jamie had overheard the Bingles in the kitchen that morning deciding that the time had come to sell the last of Mrs. Bingle’s great-grandmother’s silver spoons, which they had been saving for a rainy day. So he spoke up for himself, looking the laughing sailor straight in the eye. “I’d like to go, sir,” he said.

  It was no sooner said than done. The sailor, it seemed, was in a hurry, too rushed even to stay long enough to share the Bingles’ dinner. “We sail tomorrow on the morning tide,” he said. “Fetch your things, lad.”

  There wasn’t much to fetch. Mrs. Bingle packed Jamie’s bundle, putting in his spare shirt, three pairs of red-striped stockings that she had knit herself, and a set of scratchy woolly underwear for cold weather. She gave Jamie a hug, told him always to carry a clean handkerchief, and slipped a twopenny piece, which Jamie knew she really couldn’t spare, into his pocket for emergencies. Mr. Bingle shook his hand solemnly and wished him luck.

  “Keep all your promises, don’t take what doesn’t belong to you, and always look after those less fortunate than yourself, and you’ll do well in the world,” said Mr. Bingle. “And come home as soon as you can, Jamie. We’ll miss you.”

  Then Mrs. Bingle hugged him again, her eyes filling with tears, and Jamie’s last sight of them, as he set off down the road with the sailor to make his fortune, was of Mr. Bingle looking sad, with one hand upraised, Mrs. Bingle mopping her eyes with her calico apron, and all the other children crowding around them, calling “Good-bye, Jamie!” “Good luck!” “Come home soon, Jamie!” “Good-bye!”

  Jamie and the sailor, whose name, he said, was Black Ben, tramped briskly down the dusty road. “It’s ten miles to the harbor, lad; shake a leg,” the sailor said, setting a rapid pace on long strong legs. Jamie had to trot to keep up with him, his bundle bouncing up and down against his back. The farther they got from the little yellow house, the less friendly the sailor became. He snapped at Jamie to hurry along when he paused to take a pebble out of his shoe, and called him a foolish brat when he slowed for a moment to admire a blue butterfly perched on a buttercup at the edge of the road. “You’ll do no such lollygagging on shipboard,” Black Ben growled, jerking him by the arm, “or it will be the worse for you.” Jamie began to wish that he’d stayed at home.

  He wished it even more when he got his first look at the Albatross. The ship was old and dirty. It leaned sideways in the water, it was gray and ugly, and it stank. Jamie saw a flick of tiny yellow eyes as a rat peered out from a coil of rope on deck. Jamie hung back as he and Black Ben approached the creaking gangplank, and the sailor gave him a sharp shove between the shoulder blades. “There’s more where that came from,” the sailor growled, all traces of the warm voice and friendly laughter gone. “Shake a leg, boy! Move!” Jamie staggered up the gangplank and boarded the Albatross.

  On deck, the sailors of the ship’s crew peered curiously at the new arrival. Two men in ragged striped shirts glanced up from a game of dice, pointed scornfully at Jamie, and sniggered unkindly. A great red-haired giant of a man, with a tattoo of a snarling leopard on his naked chest, called out, “That the captain’s new boy, Ben? Looks like fish bait to me!”

  “Ah, you’ll like the captain fine, boy!” shouted another. “Don’t you worry none; he’s got a way with young’uns!”

  The red-haired man gave a bark of laughter. “Two guineas says the lad doesn’t last two days!”

  “Done!” bellowed another voice. “Yer on!”

  Black Ben gave Jamie another shove, propelling him toward a battered oak door. “Here’s the captain’s quarters,” he said, “where you’ll be serving from now on. Look lively, boy!” He knocked on the broad boards. “I’ve brought the new lad, sir!” he called out, and swung the door open.

  The room was dark and sour smelling. The only light filtered in dimly from a grimy porthole set high in one wall. The captain sat at a small table on which stood a bottle of wine, a half loaf of bread, and a hunk of hard yellow cheese. He was chewing. A great red scar ran down his cheek, vanishing into his scraggly beard. There were bread crumbs in the beard. He wore a dirty blue coat with tarnished brass buttons, grubby black breeches, and a pair of tall black boots. The hilt of a knife protruded from the right-hand boot and another knife, with a wide-curving blade, was thrust through his belt. He grinned evilly at Jamie, displaying broken yellow teeth. “What’s ’is name?” he asked.

  Black Ben cuffed Jamie on the ear. “The captain’s speaking to ye!” he said. “Speak up sharp, now!”

  “J-Jamie Pritchett, s-sir,” Jamie stammered.

  “So you want to go to sea, eh, laddie?” The captain grinned, taking a swig from the wine bottle and wiping his mouth with the back oof his hand. “You want to sail on the old Albatross, eh?”

  Jamie was just building up the courage to say, “No, thank you, sir, I’d much rather go back home,” when another voice chimed in from a dark corner of the cabin, behind a tattered velvet curtain hanging at the end of the captain’s bunk.

  “Run!” it squawked. “While you have the chance! Run! While you have the chance! Run!”

  It might have been his own thoughts shouting aloud. Jamie jumped in surprise, his heart pounding. The captain cursed, thrust back his chair, reached out a long arm, and snatched aside the curtain. The warning screech was the voice of a bird, a scruffy green-and-red parrot with bright yellow eyes, chained by one leg to a metal perch.

  “Shut up, you flea-bitten scum!” the captain roared, and struck the parrot with his fist. Shrieking, it fell backward off its perch in a flurry of feathers. As it fell, Jamie suddenly felt the floor of the cabin shift and bob beneath his feet.

  The Albatross had put to sea. There was no going home now.

  Jamie was tired. He was always tired these days. There was never any time to sit down. It seemed that he barely climbed into his hammock at night before some booted foot was kicking him awake, shouting at him to move his lazy bottom because there was work to be done. Everyone had chores for him to do. There were floors and pots to scrub, barrels to mend, boxes to haul, buckets to empty, sails to stitch, and endless sacks of potatoes to peel. He had to make the captain’s bunk, polish his boots, sharpen his knives, serve his meals, and care for his parrot, whose name was Ernestine. Ernestine was Jamie’s only friend on board the Albatross, except for the ship’s cat.

  The ship’s cat was thin and black, with one white paw. Jamie called him Beetle because he scuttled about the deck like a bug, hiding behind ropes and barrels, taking care to keep out of the sailors’ way. When the sailors spotted him, which was seldom, they threw bottles at him. Sometimes they threw bottles at Jamie too. Jamie liked Beetle. He felt that he and the cat were kindred spirits, companions in adversity — though Beetle, Jamie thought, was certainly less fortunate than he was. Beetle had never had a home at all. Whenever he could, Jamie saved bits of dried beef for Beetle from his meager dinner. Sometimes, late at night, the black cat
would leap up into Jamie’s hammock and lie next to the boy, purring and kneading him with his paws, keeping him warm.

  Without Ernestine and Beetle, Jamie’s life at sea would have been pure misery. And the more Jamie learned about the Albatross, the unhappier he became. As he watched and listened, he became certain that this was no ordinary trading voyage to the islands of the Indies. Each day, morning and afternoon, the captain mounted the poop deck, spyglass in hand, and scanned the horizon, searching, ever searching, while the crew seemed to hold its collective breath, each man straining his eyes in one direction and then another, waiting. For what? Jamie wondered, and in spite of himself, he found his eyes straining and searching too. Sea monsters? Whales?

  Finally, one afternoon as he worked at peeling potatoes in the ship’s galley, his curiosity became too much for him. The cook, a fat bald sailor in a greasy red shirt, sometimes liked to talk. Jamie risked a question.

  “Please, sir,” he asked, “what is everybody keeping a lookout for?”

  The cook growled. “None o’ yer business, boy,” he rasped. “The captain has his reasons.”

  Disappointed, Jamie bent his head over the bucket of potatoes.

  Then the cook relented. “There’s a ship out after our captain,” he confided, “an old mate it is, who thinks our captain did him wrong. They fought in the old days, the story goes, and our captain left him for dead and made off with his gold. But he wasn’t dead, not by half, and he’s been after the captain’s blood ever since. Red Jack, his name is. A ship with red sails, he’s got, red as blood, and we hear tell that he’s threatened to burn the Albatross to the water line if ever he crosses her path. It’s Red Jack the captain’s looking for.”

  The cook gave a sudden evil-sounding laugh. “At least part o’ the time.”

  “What about the rest of the time?” Jamie asked.

  But the cook refused to say more.

  The answer soon became clear. One day —a bright clear day, with the sky and the sea the same deep shade of blue — the lookout in the crow’s-nest screamed out in excitement, “There she is! Captain! There she is! A sail! A sail! To the northwest! A sail!”

  The ship erupted into wild activity. The captain burst from his cabin and flung himself against the rail, training his spyglass on a distant glimmer of white. He squinted for a moment, craning his neck forward, and then turned to the crew and grinned. “It’s her all right,” he said. “His Majesty’s payroll ship, loaded with gold, bound for the colonies.” He put the spyglass to his eye again. “She’s armed,” he said, “but unsuspecting. Raise a signal flag, men — signal that we need help. Let’s lure her in.”

  Jamie’s jaw dropped. “But that’s not an enemy ship!” he gasped, afraid to believe his ears. “That’s one of ours!”

  “Not one of ours,” a burly deck hand said, testing the blade of a cutlass on his thumb. “That’s floating plunder, boy. That’s the ship will make us all rich, lords in London every one of us, and me with a gold watch and chain, a carriage all trimmed in red leather, and a team of fine black horses.”

  “Here she comes,” a one-eyed sailor spoke up, grinning. “Floating along innocent as a rose, thinking we’re here all hurt and helpless, and when she gets within range . . . ,” he paused, made a deathly gargling noise and a gesture of slitting his throat.

  “And no one left to tell tales.”

  “Down to Davy Jones’s locker, every last one of them.”

  Jamie’s voice trembled. “You can’t!” he cried. “That’s murder!”

  A hand gripped his shoulder roughly as Black Ben strode by. Jamie winced in pain. “Shut up, boy, and mind your business!” snapped Ben. “All quiet! Ready your weapons! Let her move in!”

  The doomed ship drew nearer and nearer. Its sails gleamed in the sunlight. Jamie could see the men bustling about on her deck, the red-and-blue flag snapping in the wind, the carved figurehead — a green-tailed mermaid with flowing golden curls — and the name painted on the side: The Sea Lady. The captain — Jamie thought it must be the captain in a blue hat with a gleaming gold cockade —raised a spyglass to his eye and aimed it toward the Albatross. Jamie felt as though it rested directly on him. Closer and closer the ship came. The men of the Albatross tensed, cannon loaded, swords and pistols in their hands, awaiting their captain’s order.

  Jamie could stand it no longer. He sprang to the rail and hauled himself up, waving an arm in the air, and shouted at the top of his voice, “Turn back! Turn back! There are pirates here! Pirates! Turn back!” At first he thought that his warning had gone unnoticed. Then he saw a change: the captain barking orders, seamen leaping to the rigging, the ship beginning to turn.

  On the Albatross, the captain bellowed in fury.

  “They may not be out of range!” howled Black Ben. “Fire all cannons! Now! Fire!”

  The guns roared and spat red flames. Cannonballs sped across the water, deadly balls of blackened metal, enough to cripple a ship and leave it broken and drifting, sinking in the water. But the cannons roared too late. The cannonballs fell short, plopping harmlessly, like pebbles, into the bright blue waves. The trap had failed. The Sea Lady had escaped.

  “Where is that blasted brat?” the captain screamed. His boots thundered on the boards of the deck. “You misbegotten little rat!” Purple faced with rage, he snatched Jamie up by his shirt collar and shook him, then hurled him violently against the mast. Jamie’s head crashed against unyielding wood. Everything went black.

  When Jamie awoke, he was lying on sand. At first, he had no idea where he was. “I’m dead,” he thought, “or dreaming.” His head ached, and when he raised his fingers to his temple, he felt a lump the size of a goose egg, crusted with blood. It hurt to touch. Slowly he opened his eyes and found that it was dark. Stars glittered in the sky above him. A full yellow moon cast a shining yellow path on the water and silhouetted a ship, sails furled, floating silently at anchor. “We’ve landed somewhere,” thought Jamie.

  Something stirred at his side and he felt a warm furry presence: Beetle, snuggled up against his hip. He stroked the black cat’s ears and Beetle, thankful that Jamie was awake at last, purred. When Jamie lifted his head, he saw that he lay on a stretch of smooth sandy beach bordered by rocky cliffs topped with trees. Two longboats were pulled up on shore, their oars resting in the oarlocks. Thirty yards down the beach he saw the orange glow of a fire, surrounded by moving black figures, and heard the clink of bottles, shouts, and snatches of song. The pirates were consoling themselves for the loss of the Sea Lady.

  Slowly Jamie sat up. He was bruised and sore, but — he wiggled his arms and legs — no bones were broken. He scratched Beetle underneath the chin. “I sure am glad you managed to come along, old fellow. What did you do, sneak on board the boat?” Beetle closed his eyes and purred.

  Jamie glanced toward the pirates’ fire. Someone threw something on it that made the flames blaze up blue, and there was a deep shout of laughter. Jamie stroked the cat again. “Let’s get a little closer and see if we can find out what’s going on.”

  Silently, boy and cat crept across the sand and huddled behind a jumbled pile of driftwood. Jamie, peeking cautiously through the twisted branches, found himself staring directly at the back of the captain’s head. On the opposite side of the fire, three seamen clanked their mugs together and began a faltering song about life on the ocean waves. One of the singers kept hiccupping and forgetting the words.

  From the captain’s right came the voice of Black Ben.

  “What d’ye plan to do with the brat, Captain?”

  The captain drank deeply from a squat brown bottle. “We’ll leave the little rat here,” he snarled. “He’ll not set foot on my ship again.”

  A hoarse voice from the other side of the fire shouted, “Hang him from the yardarm!”

  “Feed him to the sharks!” roared another.

  The captain drank again.

  “Forget the brat,” he bellowed. “We’ll leave him here to starve. Sing, lads
! Sing!”

  Jamie, crouched behind the wall of driftwood, smoothed Beetle’s soft ears. “They’re planning to abandon me,” he whispered softly to the cat. “It’s called being marooned. They’re angry because I warned away the other ship. Well, that’s fine with me. We’re going to get out of here, Beetle. We’re going to abandon them.” Jamie, unnoticed, got to his feet. Silently he and Beetle slipped away, like shadows in the moonlight, toward the cliffs.

  There they found a small sandy path, leading sharply upward. They climbed, Jamie soon panting, Beetle bounding at his heels. At the top, they paused and peered down — far down — over the edge, to the beach. The fire had shrunk to a prickle of red embers; silent lumps around it were the forms of sleeping pirates. A few hardy souls were still awake, singing a song about a dead man’s chest and a bottle of rum.

  “Good riddance,” muttered Jamie to himself, and Beetle rubbed against his leg in agreement. Together, they turned away from the cliff’s edge and followed the path on into the woods. A full moon lit their way, turning the rocks and trees to silver. They walked on and on, glad to be on land again and free.

  Once, they saw an owl pass, silent winged above the path, and heard the rustle of a field mouse diving for cover. Once, a pair of rabbits, surprised eyes round as saucers, rose on their hind legs to watch them pass. Finally, as Jamie’s eyes began to droop with tiredness, the trees gave way to a wide shelf of rock, still warm from the day’s sunshine. Jamie sat down. “Let’s just rest for a minute, Beetle,” he murmured, and was almost instantly asleep. Beetle settled down in his lap. His eyes closed too.