The Mudskipper Cup

by Christopher Cummings

  He stood the gun on its breech. Graham held it upright for him. Then Peter inserted the small brass funnel into the muzzle. Using the ladle he scooped some gunpowder from the bottle and carefully poured it down the barrel. Then he screwed the lid back on the powder jar and put it well to one side. Next Peter tore off a small square of cartridge paper and tried to ram it down the muzzle. He took the funnel out and tried again.

  “I think tissue paper will be better,” he said.

  Using the wormer he extracted the cartridge paper and in its place inserted a wad of tissue paper. Gently, but firmly, he tamped this down. While he was doing this Graham realized they should have cleaned the gun first. He mentioned this to Peter.

  “There might be a hornet’s nest or a spider or something in there.”

  Peter tried not to look foolish. “It won’t matter, as long as the touch hole is clear.”

  “What if it’s blocked up with dirt. How do we clean it without risking a spark that might set the cannon off?” Graham asked.

  “This thing.” Peter reached over and held up a long thin piece of brass wire. “It’s a pricker.”

  Graham nodded. “Are you going to load with shot?”

  “Yeah. I want to see if it works,” Peter replied. He selected a ball-bearing, rubbed it between his hands and on his shorts to remove the rust, then dropped it down the barrel.

  “Do you need a second wad to keep it in?” Graham asked.

  “No, I don’t think so. Only if the barrel is tilted downwards.”

  Graham nodded. “That was what they did on the sailing ships, a second wad to hold the shot in if the ship was rolling.”

  Peter lowered the cannon onto its wheels and looked around for a suitable target.

  “The rubbish bin will do.” He picked up the galvanised steel rubbish bin and carried it ten paces down the lawn. Then he cut five centimetres of fuse and gently pushed it down the touch hold. Lying on the grass on his stomach he squinted through the notch sights in the top of the barrel. Gently he pushed the quoin, the triangular wedge under the breech, down its slide. This forced the breech up.

  “OK, stand back!” Peter ordered. He opened the box of matches and lit one, then grinned. Both boys were breathing fast with excitement. The match was held to the fuse. It began to hiss and smoke spurted up. Peter stepped back. He was so intent on watching the cannon he forgot the burning match he held. “Ow!” He dropped it, just as the cannon went off.

  BAM!

  There was a shattering bang. Almost simultaneously there was a savage metallic ‘whack!’ as the ball-bearing hit the rubbish bin. The cannon leapt in the air and somersaulted backwards, ending up upside down on the lawn. A huge cloud of smoke billowed out.

  The boys gaped in stunned surprise, then began to cough and sneeze. In the neighbour’s yard over the back fence was a large bird cage with budgerigars and cockatoos. For a moment these stopped chirping. Then they burst into terrified and raucous screeching. A dog started barking. Several other dogs joined in.

  “Strewth! That was good!” Peter cried.

  “Talk about the crack of doom,” Graham agreed enthusiastically. They looked at each other through the billowing smoke and grinned.

  There were rapid footsteps upstairs. Peter’s mother appeared at the back door.

  “Peter! Peter! What was that explosion?”

  Doors banged next door. The cockatoos continued to screech. Dogs kept barking. The two boys looked at each other as the realisation sank in that firing a cannon in the backyard in the middle of Cairns may not have been the wisest thing to do.

  “Just testing the old cannon mum. It’s alright,” Peter replied.

  “It is not alright! I nearly had a heart attack! Now you clean up this mess and pack it away at once, before someone gets hurt. Do you hear?”

  “Yes mum.”

  The smoke was drifting clear now. From over the back fence came an angry woman’s voice. “What was that noise? Who fired a gun? What’s going on? What’s going on? What have you boys done?”

  The boys turned to face the angry red-faced woman.

  “Sorry. We didn’t realise,” Peter said, biting his lip.

  “Sorry indeed! Listen to my birds. You could have killed them with fright.” The woman waved her arms and glared at them. Then she pointed at the cannon. “It’s against the law to fire guns in a town. You fire that thing again and I will call the police.”

  Graham felt a spasm of fear and glanced nervously at Peter who was standing with a very wooden face. “Yes Mrs Golliger. Sorry Mrs Golliger. We won’t do it again. We just didn’t think.”

  The woman snorted, scowled at Mrs Bronsky who stood at the top of the steps looking anxious, then went to cluck and shush her birds.

  The two boys relaxed and knelt down to start packing up. Graham felt the barrel of the cannon. It was just warm enough to feel. The boys collected all the accessories and gunpowder and carried them back to the workshop.

  Once under the house and out of sight they grinned at each other.

  “Bloody hell, that was good!” Peter exclaimed.

  “You bet! Strewth, didn’t it go off with a bang! I didn’t expect that,” Graham agreed.

  “I should have remembered,” Peter said, shaking his head.

  “Can we fire it again?”

  Peter stared at him. “Are you crazy? Old Mrs Golliger will have a fit. She will call the cops then.”

  “I know. I didn’t mean here. Couldn’t we go somewhere else?” Graham asked.

  Peter rubbed his chin. “Yes, I suppose so. After lunch. Let’s clean the gun first.”

  They went out to collect the cannon. Graham picked it up while Peter walked to the rubbish bin. He bent down and gave a whistle of surprise and pointed.

  “Bloody thing went clean through!”

  Graham walked over to look. The ball bearing had punched a neat, round hole through the metal bin. On the inside it had left small jagged edges. The ball bearing had then smashed through a bag of garbage and struck the other side so hard as to leave a semi-circular dent in it. Peter groped at the bottom and extracted the ball.

  “Holy mackerel!” Graham gasped. “This thing is deadly. If it hit someone it would kill them.”

  Peter made a wry face. “It is a cannon after all. I told you it worked.” He looked up. “Just as well it hit the bin or it would have gone through the wall of that house.”

  “What will your mum say?”

  “I won’t tell her. Hopefully she won’t notice,” Peter replied.

  The bin was put back in its normal place and the cannon carried to the workshop. Here it was carefully swabbed out and dried and the vent picked clean of burnt powder. Graham enjoyed this. “It’s a beaut cannon,” he said enviously. He again fingered the shackles and the brass ring under the cascabel. “We should rig tackles on her and mount her on the Old Cat.”

  “What for? To fight off pirates?” Peter replied.

  Graham shrugged, not wanting to admit his daydreams. “As a starting gun,” he suggested.

  “Maybe. Let’s have lunch.”

  After lunch Graham again suggested they fire the cannon. “We could go to that patch of bush behind the Scout den, or at the back of the cemetery.”

  Peter hesitated and then agreed. He dug out the old army pack he used for hiking and carefully stowed the wrapped up cannon in it. Then he handed Graham a haversack and they stowed the powder, shot and accessories in that. The boys then mounted their bikes and pedalled to the cemetery.

  They followed a dirt track through a small patch of ti-tree scrub, a relic of the original vegetation. Here they hid their bikes and walked on through a stand a trees. This brought them to the back of a club hall. The nearest houses were one hundred and fifty metres away. There was no-one in sight.

  “What will we use as a target?” Graham asked.

  Peter pointed to a small weatherboard outdoor ‘dunny’. “What about that?”

  “OK. Can I load this time?”

&nb
sp; “Yes. I’ll draw a target on the wall,” Peter said. He dug in his pack and took out the cannon and a piece of chalk. The old toilet was side on to them and ten-metres away. Peter swung the door open to check no-one was in it, then drew several chalk rings on the wall. Then he walked back to Graham.

  “We’d better not fire ball-bearings,” Peter said. “They could smash the planks.”

  Graham was gently tamping the wad in the top of the powder. “What will we use then?”

  “Something soft,” Peter replied.

  “What?”

  “What about this stick of chalk?” Peter suggested.

  “Will it fit?”

  It did. It was so snug it needed the ramrod to seat it firmly on the charge. Graham cut the fuse and inserted it, then lay down on the sandy lawn and aimed the gun at the wall of the toilet. Then he stood up, dusted sand from sweaty hands and forearms and looked around. There was no-one visible. All was quiet.

  By the time he struck the match Graham was trembling with excitement. He applied it to the fuse. Smoke hissed up.

  Boom! The cannon roared and somersaulted.

  “Bloody hell! That was bloody good!” Graham cried, fanning powder smoke away. The dense, white cloud rolled slowly forward and around the toilet. Birds rose screeching and twittering from the trees behind them.

  “Got it. Fair in the Bull’s Eye!” Peter exclaimed.

  Graham walked forward, expecting to see a splatter of white chalk. Instead there was a neat black hole. For a moment he couldn’t believe what he saw.

  “Strewth! The chalk has punched right through!”

  They went to the doorway and got another shock. The chalk had not only punched through the wall but through two centimetres of timber door before impacting on the far wall so forcefully it felt like concrete glued to the wall. A large splinter twenty-centimetres long had been smashed from the green painted door in passing.

  “Holy Malloly! This thing is deadly!” Graham gasped in awe, peering through the jagged holes.

  They studied the holes in amazement, then went back outside.

  “Well, I don’t think we should use the dunny as a target anymore,” Peter said.

  “No fear. What about a tree?” Graham suggested.

  So they turned the cannon around and selected a large Melaleuca. Peter loaded the cannon this time. He carefully aimed from twenty-five paces away.

  Bang! The powder smoke enveloped them and drifted back. Graham sniffed the gunpowder smell and sighed. ‘If only it was a famous battle in the Napoleonic Wars!’ He was half daydreaming while Peter went forward to study the small hole which was weeping sap.

  “It’s bloody accurate,” Peter said. “Only a centimetre from where I aimed.”

  “Pot luck that’s all,” Graham said. He stood up and looked around, imagining the blue coats of the French skirmishers pushing towards him through the wood.

  And there were blue shirts!

  Two policemen.

  Graham felt himself go cold with fear. He grabbed Peter’s arm and pointed.

  “Pete. Cops! Run!”

  The two policemen hadn’t seen them. They had just climbed out of a patrol car on the cemetery side of the belt of timber and were looking around. Peter crouched down and began bundling the cannon into his pack. “Quick. Grab all the stuff. I don’t think they’ve seen us yet.”

  “They’re walking along this track. They’ll see us for sure,” Graham croaked. His mouth had gone dry and his heart hammered in near panic. He scooped all the items into the haversack.

  Through the trees they saw the two policemen start walking in their direction. One pointed to the club house. The boys looked at each other in alarm.

  “This way,” Graham hissed. He scuttled to the left, running at a low crouch along the edge of the scrub. A bitumen road and beyond it, a deep drain full of water, blocked their path. Graham went to the right along the edge of the road. Even as they did the police came out of the bush track and stopped near the toilet. The boys crouched behind bushes and looked back. Graham swallowed.

  “I don’t think they saw us,” Peter hissed.

  “No.”

  The two policemen walked towards the toilet. Graham began crawling away along the bank of the canal, peering back through the trees from time to time. When he judged they were hidden he got up and ran. Peter followed.

  After a hundred metres they were in Centenary Park in front of the Potter’s Clubhouse. By then the boys were winded. They slowed to a puffing walk. There was no sign of the police.

  “Where to now?” Graham asked. He was limping now, his cut foot hurting.

  “Hide these things first,” Peter said. “Then wait for a while before going back for our bikes.”

  They walked along Greenslopes St and across the road junction heading towards the railway. When they reached the belt of swamp there they left the road and followed a foot track into a thicket of mangroves. The pack and haversack were hidden in long grass.

  “That’s better. Strewth, did I get a shock when I looked up and saw those coppers!” Graham said. He took off his gym boot and sock and felt the cut - there was some fresh blood showing. He grimaced, then shrugged.

  Peter looked thoughtful. “Someone must have rung up. They were very quick,” he said.

  “Probably on patrol and directed by radio.”

  “I guess the old cannon does make a bit of a bang,” Peter commented.

  They both laughed. Graham’s eyes lit up. “It was bloody good. I enjoyed that.”

  They walked out of the swamp and back to the road junction in the park. By this time they were more relaxed and chatted about sailing. They turned left along Little Street and headed for the cemetery.

  Just before they reached it Graham grabbed Peter’s arm. The police car was coming out of the cemetery!

  “Act normal. We’ve just come across the oil pipes and we are heading for your place,” Peter said.

  Graham tried to act normal but knew he was scared. To his dismay the police car stopped at the junction with Little Street and one of the policemen looked straight at him. The car then turned left and drove towards them, pulling up beside them. A long, thin policeman with a pimply face got out.

  “Have you boys seen anyone with a gun?”

  “N..n..No sir,” Graham replied.

  “Did you hear anyone shooting?”

  “No,” Peter said, shaking his head.

  “Where have you come from?”

  “Across the oil pipes,” Graham pointed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just walking. Going to my place.”

  “Who are you?”

  Graham told him. He was sweating and nervous. The policeman seemed to be suspicious.

  “You haven’t been over near those clubhouses?”

  “No. We came that way,” Graham lied, blushing as he did so.

  “Hmmm.” The constable got into the car and it drove off to the intersection and turned left along Greenslopes Street towards Edge Hill.

  “Come on!” Graham waited till it was out of sight, then ran along the dirt track to where they’d left their bikes. He half feared the bikes would be gone but they were still there. The boys hauled them out of the grass, jumped on and pedalled as fast as they could. Within five-minutes they had retrieved the pack and the haversack and were crossing the railway.

  Three blocks later Graham got another fright. The police car drove past. He saw the pimply faced constable glance at them and he looked away, afraid of being recognised and ashamed of having lied. He thought the man looked hard at them but to his relief the car kept going.

  Back at Peter’s the boys felt quite subdued. They had afternoon tea, then carefully cleaned the cannon and packed it and its accessories in the box. Then they unrolled the Old Cat’s mainsail and set to work sewing up all the rents and repairing frayed stitching. They added reinforcing patches where the cloth seemed weak.

  Graham felt tired when he went home and he went to bed early. On
the Sunday he went to church. He told Roger of the cannon escapade but he wasn’t proud of himself. Afterwards he went to Roger’s for a while, then home. He didn’t feel like going to Peter’s so he lay on his bed and read a book, then worked on his model.

  CHAPTER 23

  ELLIE POINT

  Monday morning saw the boys up early, high water being at 0815. They had the Old Cat in the water by 0630. Once again there was no breeze so they had to paddle to get clear of the beach. As there were only three paddles Peter, Max and Roger took turns at steering but Graham paddled continuously.

  ‘At least this time we are better prepared,’ he thought. They had spare rope. There was a First Aid Kit. An orange polystyrene lifebuoy on a throwing line rested in the port hull. There were pullovers.

  The weather was fine but cool. A layer of cloud, looking like cotton wool from that distance, cloaked the tops of the mountains. As the wind got up a few more clouds drifted into view. Seagulls skimmed by or circled with curious eyes. Several large fish leapt and once a whole school of tiny fish made the surface boil as they scattered frantically from some larger mouth.

  There seemed to be a lot of other boats too: tinnies with fishermen, launches with holidaymakers, yachts with scantily clad girls draped all over the deck, tourist ferries, a large container ship, two tugboats.

  “Bit busy. I think we might keep away from the channel,” Peter said as they wafted slowly along.

  “Where will we go?” Roger asked.

  Peter looked around. “There.” He pointed. “Ellie Point. I’ve seen it all my life and never been there. How far is it navigator?”

  Graham opened a locker and took out the Cairns 1:100,000 map. “About three kilometres.”

  “Kilometres!” Peter cried. “We authentic sea-dogs don’t use kilometres! We talk in leagues and nautical miles.”

  “OK. About one and a half nautical miles,” Graham replied.

  This began an argument over the exact conversion. Graham shrugged. “Who gives a bugger? It’s only ten-minutes either way.”

  “As long as the wind holds,” Roger observed.

  “Don’t be gloomy Roger,” Peter chided. He burst into song, a sea shanty. “Down the river sailed a clipper, she’d a Yankee Mate and a Yankee Skipper, and a Yo and a Ho, and Yo, heave Ho!”