by Brian Eames
“You do not know?”
“No.”
The man withdrew his hand. “Then I take back. I share with those who can appreciate. They are coffee beans, of course!”
Kitto had heard of coffee. He believed it to be a Dutch drink. He had never seen it in Cornwall, just heard it mentioned occasionally down at the quay where all manner of goods came and went.
“I thought you drank coffee,” he said. The man stuck his tongue out and blew a raspberry. Kitto had never seen anyone older than Duck do such a thing with his tongue, and he would have laughed were his whole body not shaking with fear.
“Who has the time? The time to sit and drink? What for, zees? Just eat it, and feel alive!” Again he gestured his collection in Kitto’s direction. “Go on!” he ordered.
Just do as the madman says, Kitto told himself. He reached out a shaking hand and pinched a few beans from the man’s palm, then lifted them to his mouth. He chewed, unable to contain a revolted expression when the bitter taste struck. The men in the circle chuckled.
“You do not like?” Kitto spit a few flecks from his mouth.
“Of course he don’t like your rabbit turds, X!” said one of the men. “Nobody but you does.”
The man shrugged. “More for me!” He giggled again. Next to Kitto, Van struggled to stand. He got halfway up and then sat down again groaning and holding his head.
“Ow,” Van said finally.
“Quid, he has a big fist. Like a hammer! But I see your jaw is still attached to your head. Consider yourself lucky!” He twittered. “Double lucky, even, for Fowler shot a tree instead of you.” Van glared up at the man, squinting against the bright sun.
“Who are you?” Van said.
“I could ask zee same of you, ah?” the man said, arching his eyebrows down at Van. “They call me X.” The man drew himself to a dramatic stand of attention that Kitto could see was meant to be ironic. “I am the captain of these fine men!”
“Not for long,” said Fowler, turning and spitting in the sand. X rolled his eyes.
“I found the island, did I not, you filthy pig?” X said. “You want to vote. Fine. We vote, just as soon as my sweet Pippin is brought to shore.”
They vote on who their captain is? Kitto thought it the strangest thing he had ever heard. Van knew what it meant.
“So you are pirates,” Van said. Kitto looked at the faces around him worriedly, fearing they might take offense. Don’t get us killed, Van! Mostly the men seemed not to have heard.
X pursed his lips comically. “What you want me to say, man-boy? ‘Yes, I am a pirate’? No one who is a pirate says he is a pirate! Pirates would not do that, would they?” He threw his hands out wide in exasperation. “Oui, oui, oui, some people, they would call us zees. I prefer ‘sea dogs.’ It has a nice ring.”
Pirates. Men who steal and kill for sport are here, on the island. But how did they get here? Kitto wondered. He cleared his voice and decided to risk asking.
“Do you have a ship?” Kitto said, wondering if the idea that was occurring to him had occurred to Van.
The man called Fowler spoke up with a haughty tone. “Aye, X, do we have a bloody ship?”
X ignored him. He let out a long sigh. “Alas, a ship we do not have. We had a ship, but she has sunk.”
“From an attack?” Kitto said. The more this strange man talked, the more his fear lessened. After all, if they were going to kill them, would they not do so quickly?
“No, it was not the navy. It was the worms.”
“Worms?”
“Shipworms.” Now X turned to spit. “Devil-loving shipworms. The ship we . . . borrowed . . . from this fat little Spaniard piglet, it was full of them! But we did not know this when we traded his ship for our own. Two weeks later and our new ship is sinking beneath us.”
“So how did you get here?” Van asked.
“Shut your hole, you,” Fowler said. He spat again, this time quite near where Van knelt.
“Jolly boats, but nobody jolly in zem. Two, and we have been rowing with the current the last eight days to find this island—or another one like it.”
Kitto’s heart sank. A ship would have meant the possibility of freedom. It was hard to imagine that such men could be allies with them against Morris and Spider and the rest of the crew, but any assistance could have made a difference. X could see the disappointment register on his face.
“Oui, oui, oui. Not such good news for you two, ah? But let me introduce my fellow dogs. The mutt here, the ugly one, that is Fowler.” Fowler gestured rudely at X. “The one who is all squares, that is Quid. There is Pickle and Xavier.” The two young men toying with the pistols looked up and raised a hand to their hats. “That one we call Pelota, and this savage here is Black Dog.” X pointed to a glowering man at his elbow. He had a stony, dark face and long straight black hair, much like Ontoquas’s, and Kitto assumed he must have been a native of the Americas. Black Dog stared at Kitto with a baleful look that made goose bumps run up his spine. He turned away.
It occurred to him as he looked over the pirates that very few of the men were European. In fact Fowler and X himself were the only two with skin as fair as his own. Pickle and Xavier were dark enough to be Africans—as were the other two men whose names Kitto had missed—Quid from the Far East perhaps, Pelota dark and indeterminate. Kitto was accustomed to seeing a variety of peoples spill off the ships that came to dock at Custom Quay in Falmouth, but never in such concentration.
Kitto and Van introduced themselves, first names only.
“Kitto,” X said, making a funny popping sound with his mouth. “I have heard this name before. What was it . . .” His puzzling ended when Fowler hailed out to a rowboat that came into view.
“Splendide!” X said. “My Pippin has arrived.”
The jolly boat was paddled right up onto the sand, a handful of men leaping into the surf and hauling the boat the rest of the way up the beach.
“How is she?” X called, rushing for the boat. “Have you kept her watered?” The grumbling men assured him they had. “Little John, help and get poor Pippin out of zere.”
An enormous man in the boat waved back.
“You need to set the stake first,” Little John said, his accent indicating that he hailed from England, though not Cornwall. He tossed a long metal rod with a loop at one end to X, who snatched it up and walked farther up the beach with a heavy mallet.
In a moment he was pounding the stake into the sand a few yards from Kitto and Van.
What is a Pippin?
Two men held the jolly boat steady while Little John braced his feet on the sides and reached down to where Kitto could not see. When he came up, he had his huge arms wrapped about a massive crocodile, although Kitto did not know that name. He thought it to be some sort of overgrown lizard. A thick leather belt wrapped about the creature’s snout. Little John arched his back, trying to clear the crocodile’s thick tail over the gunwale.
“Careful! Careful!” X said, and too late.
The beast writhed its tale savagely, whipping it back and forth. Little John lost his balance. The huge man and the crocodile both tumbled headlong out of the jolly boat, knocking into the wash one of the men who had been steadying the boat.
The three figures fell in a thrashing heap shouting a fusillade of foul language. X had commenced to shrieking, incensed with worry about the crocodile who scuttled off down the beach at a terrific speed. It stopped short thirty yards away.
“Pippin! Pippin, my sweet!”
Kitto watched in astonishment. Somehow in the fall, the belt clamping Pippin’s jaws closed had slipped off. Pippin opened his jaws wide, displaying a frightening array of teeth. He snapped them shut with a clack that could be heard over the breaking surf. X turned back on the men.
“Robbie, the fiddle! Give it to me!” A young man sprang to the leaning jolly boat and dug about its contents. Shortly he produced a wooden case, which he opened, revealing to Kitto’s surprise a violin, its polish
glinting in the sunlight. Robbie raced it to X, who continued to call to the crocodile.
“I am coming, my darling! Do not be upset. Daddy is coming!” The captain tucked the violin under his chin and immediately launched into a lullaby, a slow melodic strain. Kitto and Van looked at each other in wonder.
“Do you think he is mad, Kitto?”
“I don’t know. They vote him captain. Must say something.” A thought came to him. “Do you think there is enough of them to take Morris’s crew?” Van shook his head.
“Shut up, girls.” Fowler stood over them with his pistol bared. “Scheming, that’s what the two of you are doing. Scheming.” He pulled back the hammer on his pistol. It clicked. “Open your mouth again, cripple, and I’ll fill it with lead.”
The pistol flew from Fowler’s hands in a blur, its pieces scattering in the wash beyond them as the sound of a shot rang out from somewhere indeterminate in the thick jungle.
* * *
CHAPTER 10:
* * *
Pippin’s Run
The men shouted in alarm, and suddenly every pirate had his hands on a pistol or a cutlass or both. Several scrambled behind the beached jolly boat for cover. Only X ignored the shooting, slowly walking down the beach toward the crocodile, never missing a note.
Pelota raised his arm and fired a shot into the greenery. Whether he knew the direction the first shot had come from Kitto could not tell, but the other pirates joined in, dispensing a hail of fire toward a bend in the beach fifty yards away. Kitto looked on breathlessly, but he could see no sign of either Sarah or Ontoquas.
X turned. “Idiots! Idiots!” he shrieked.
Pippin bolted again, but rather than heading farther away down the beach, the crocodile had sprinted past X and back the way it had come. It stopped ten yards short of the men huddled behind the jolly boat reloading their weapons.
“Shoo! Shoo!” Pelota waved at Pippin with his dispensed pistol. “Somebody shoot it!” X ran toward them, sawing madly at his violin.
“Anybody shoots my baby I cut his heart out!” he said in a singing voice to match his notes. X drew closer.
The music did seem to work some sort of magic on the crocodile. Pippin flexed his jaws several times in a lazy way.
“Oui, oui, oui, sweetheart!” X cooed. “You are so thirsty. Too long you have not had a swim. Just a few moments longer.” He played a few more bars.
“Robbie, the harness and belt!” X sang, trying poorly to match the tone of the sweeping melody. The young man fetched the belt from the sand and tossed it over the crocodile to land at X’s feet. The men finished reloading their weapons, but they could not decide where to point them: out at the unseen foe in the jungle, or at the crocodile that might any minute attempt to devour them.
Robbie rummaged in the leaning rowboat and produced another contraption of leather and iron. He held it up toward X.
“Come and get it!” Robbie said, fear in his eyes. X shook his head at the man’s stupidity.
“If I stop playing this song, you idiot, you are going to be a snack for poor Pippin. Now bring it here and put this strap on!”
Robbie replied in foul terms that he would not do so. Fowler called out from behind the rowboat. He pointed with a new pistol at Van.
“You! Get up and take it over there.”
“Me?” Van looked up. Kitto could see the fear in his eyes, perhaps the first time he had noted it in Van.
“What do you think?” Van hissed to Kitto.
“Try not to get too close.”
Van shook his head, but he got up slowly. His jaw still throbbed and his first few steps were wobbly, but he made it to the rowboat. The man called Robbie handed him the leather bundle.
“Go on!” Fowler said from behind the boat. “Take it over there. X will show you how to put it on her.” Van glared before answering.
“Her?”
“Aye, Pippin’s a girl. But she ain’t no lady,” Fowler said, his lips parting to show a tangle of brown teeth. “Go on and take it.”
“What is it?”
“A harness,” Fowler said. “Now get on.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because I’ve got the pistol, now don’t I?”
Van turned with the harness, and making a wide and slow arc up the beach, he walked around the enormous crocodile and came to stand at X’s side. X was into his fourth or fifth verse of the melody now, but Pippin did not seem to mind the repetition.
“Here,” Van said, holding it out toward the pirate. X scowled.
“You have to put it on her!” X hissed. “I cannot stop playing. She is very upset!” Van shook his head disbelievingly.
“I ain’t touching that lizard.”
Kitto watched, his mind spinning. Seeing over a dozen hardened sailors—bonafide pirates, even—had inspired a vague idea that had not yet taken form but that he could not quite shake. We could use these men, perhaps! But why would such men allow themselves to be used?
Kitto took a few jerky steps toward Van and X, leaning on his crutch. The crocodile, still enraptured by the music, chose not to notice him. Kitto took a few more, following the path of Van’s footsteps in the sand. In a few moments he stood beside Van and the pirate.
“How does it work, the harness?” he said. Van threw him a stern look, but X launched into a musical explanation of how the two pairs of longer straps wrapped around the creature’s midsection, one pair just inside each set of legs.
“Just slide zem under her belly, very gentlelike,” the captain said. “She will let you do it.” X pursed his lips in disapproval. “She is usually much better behaved. . . .”
“Come on, Van,” Kitto said, turning to him. “We can do it.”
“You are as mad as this pirate!” Van said. X giggled. Van and Kitto locked eyes a moment, and Kitto tried to communicate how important he thought this could be for them. Van scowled fiercely but stepped forward with Kitto.
“Stupidest thing I ever done!” he said under his breath.
Pippin’s back was to them as she eyed the motionless men at the jolly boat whose heads pivoted back and forth between the jungle where the shots had been fired and the terrifying beast. Kitto angled toward the reptile’s left side, Van to the right, carrying the bundle. They stepped over the massive tail, its very end tracing a small arc in the sand.
“If he comes at us, jump on top of it,” Van hissed. “I don’t think they can get at you that way.”
“She!” X shouted, then cringed at his own words. “Pippin is a girl!” he spat.
Kitto did not reply. He reached the midsection of the crocodile. A simple spin and the beast would be upon him with that hideous mouthful of teeth. Kitto beckoned for the first strap, which Van produced from the bundle. He pointed to the creature’s side, indicating for Van to slide that end under the animal. Van scowled fiercely, but he edged closer.
“Pet her!” X said behind them. “On the top of her sweet head. She likes zis very much.”
Kitto and Van looked at each other. Van jerked his head to Kitto, assigning him that task. Kitto reached out and ever so gently stroked the crocodile on the top of her bumpy skull, just behind the eyes. Pippin jerked her head up a few inches.
“Yes, yes,” X said. “Keep doing that, a little harder. With the fingernails. She will stand for you.”
“This is insane,” Van said.
“Hush.” Kitto petted a bit more vigorously, bearing down with his nails to scratch at the scaly armor. Sure enough, Pippin’s whole body shimmied, and then the crocodile pressed its weight up onto its four diminutive legs, lifting its entire ponderous belly off the sand.
Van wasted no time. He fed one belt under the crocodile’s belly where Kitto was able to grab it—while making sure never to stop petting—and send it over Pippin’s back for Van to work the buckle. In no time Van had moved to the reptile’s hind legs and repeated the action, this time able to do so without Kitto’s help.
“Oui, oui, oui. Splendide!” The
two belts were connected to each other by a thick leather strap that ran along Pippin’s spine, and at its center was sewn a hefty metal ring. “Now for the tether.” X lifted his bow from the fiddle.
“Little John! The rope. She is ready—” Irritated that the music had stopped, Pippin convulsed, her massive tail sweeping wide and knocking Van at the ankles. He spun through the air and landed flat on his back on the packed sand. Kitto petted the crocodile harder.
“Keep with the music!” Kitto hissed. X’s strings gave a squawk and resumed the melody. Pippin lowered her snout and belly again to the moist sand. Van picked himself up slowly and retreated behind X.
Back at the boat Little John retrieved a stout rope and handed it to Pickle.
“Not me!” Pickle said. “Fiddle or no fiddle.” Little John turned to Fowler next, who glared angrily and shook his head. Without another thought Little John heaved the bundle into the air. They all watched in fascinated horror as the rope uncoiled as it spun along its momentous arc. Kitto scratched and petted even more fiercely on Pippin, but held one hand over his head to protect himself.
“Imbécile!”
The mass of rope landed directly on Pippin’s skull, and one of the metal locking hooks attached to each end thumped the beast squarely on the eyeball. Pippin went berserk. Emitting something like a roar, she thrashed her head and tail. X—who had stepped closer when Little John threw the rope—was knocked backward by the tail, his hat and the fiddle bow hurtling off with the wind.
“Run!” X screamed as Van yanked him to his feet. It was good advice, too, because Pippin had spun and lunged in their direction and snapped her jaws in the air where X had been sprawled an instant before. X and Van ran pell-mell down the beach, X’s violin waggling in the air. Pippin shot off after them, abruptly stopped, then turned around slowly, the bundle of rope splayed out over her body.
Kitto looked at Pippin. Pippin looked at Kitto. The beast’s eyes were two slits of black. Kitto tensed. His natural reactions told him to run, but he had seen how fast the crocodile could move, and he knew he stood no chance.