"The figures are indisputable. The depredations of this gallant Sea-Fox have devastated the whole Spanish economy. Spain has become too impoverished to threaten anyone, least of all Great Britain."
"Commendable that may be," replied the judge, "but the Sea-Fox has also plundered English merchantmen."
"Yes, from time to time," admitted Allegra. "Not enough to matter. Without competition from Spain, Britannia rules the waves, and prosperity reigns throughout the British Isles.
"Until now, England faced financial ruin," Allegra went on. "No longer. The Sea-Fox has saved the British Empire from bankruptcy."
"Good heavens, I had no idea this was the state of affairs." The judge flung away his black cap and turned to the Sea-Fox. "This case, I am happy to declare, is dismissed. You are free to go, accompanied by the thanks of a grateful nation."
The spectators burst into cheers and threw their hats in the air. The jurymen streamed from the box to hoist Allegra and the Sea-Fox onto their shoulders and bear them from the courtroom.
"Brilliantly argued," remarked the Sea-Fox to Allegra. "You saved my life-but what if the judge had not accepted your defense? What if the case had gone to the jury and they chose to convict me?"
"I took that remote possibility into account," said Allegra, "and used my considerable influence as the governor's niece to guard against it. The Lord Chief Justice himself allowed me to pick the jury; and the jury-this jury would have never found you guilty."
The jurymen began pulling off false beards and mustaches, green spectacles, and cardboard noses, revealing themselves as Mr. Eustace, Dr. McKelvie, and others of the Sea-Fox's loyal crew, including Nora the parrot.
"Justice has prevailed," said the Sea-Fox.
"With a little help," said the Sea-Vixen.
The Allegra had gone into dry dock for repairs; the crew waited eagerly to set sail again as soon as the vessel was shipshape. One duty remained. Once more in England, the Sea-Fox thought it only correct to present Allegra to his noble father. The happy couple rode to Aldine Manor in a golden coach and four, a gift from the grateful Board of Trade, and entered the baronial hall. Lord Aldine, surrounded by suits of armor and ancestral portraits, sat drinking a glass of vintage root beer.
"My dear father," said the Sea-Fox, "I have returned home."
"Gadzooks! So you have." Lord Aldine blinked. "Not drowned after all? Bit of a surprise, wot? Didn't you used to be a puny sort of blighter?" "Allegra and I seek your blessing," said the Sea-Fox, "which we pray you will grant."
"Zounds! Nothing would please me more, haw, haw! Handsome pair you make, new branch on the old family tree." Lord Aldine stopped and raised a hand. "Here, now, just a minute. I distinctly recall telling you never to set foot in this manor until you were fit to wrestle a bear."
The Sea-Fox bowed gracefully. "I stand ready to fulfill that condition."
Lord Aldine ordered a footman to lead in a huge bear from his private zoo. Allegra gasped at the sight of the gigantic animal, but the face of the Sea-Fox brightened.
"Bruno!" he cried. "How you've grown!"
The eyes of the bear also lit up, recognizing his old playmate. Since he was a cub, Bruno and the young Sea-Fox had romped over the meadows of the estate. The Sea-Fox and the bear held out their arms to each other. Instead of wrestling, however, the two began dancing happily, whirling around the great hall.
"Good enough!" exclaimed Lord Aldine. "Right-a! give you my blessings and welcome to them."
Allegra stepped to the side of the smiling bear.
"May I have the next waltz?" she said.
Thuh End
As for the "something." my sister warned Jay in store for me, I was present when it was revealed.
My mother had taken me to my grandmother's boardinghouse for Mrs. Jossbegger's corn-cutting session. I fed Nora grapes; the ladies chatted as usual, though in a different, more earnest tone. I had gone totally invisible and was probably considered deaf as well. I heard Aunt Rosie, paying no attention to whether I was there or not, say: "Of course, he can't be allowed to run the streets like a savitch. You see the mischief he got into, Bad company, Rotten apples."
"A childish prank," my mother said. "I wouldn't call Mrs. Deveraux's son a rotten apple; Mrs. Barnick's, either."
"With a knife in his boot?" Aunt Rosie countered.
"I don't want things to get out of hand," my mother admitted. "He's missed too much school already, and likely to miss more. Dr. McKelvie was very uncertain about that." Aunt Rosie dicked her tongue. "He could turn out to be some kind of ignoramus."
"Alan and I thought the vicar could help," my mother said. "He might suggest someone to give private lessons."
"A tooter?" said Aunt Rosie.
"Something like that," said my mother, and my grandmother nodded agreement. "Maybe Mr. Milliken, the Sunday school teacher. He seems to be a pleasant sort of fellow. Or a university student in his spare time. I suppose, if we had to, we could put a classified advertisement in the paper." Aunt Rosie snorted. "The public press? You never know what you'll fish up."
My heart chilled as they went on calmly discussing my fate. One way or another, I was doomed to be removed from the back alley. A private teacher? One person, face-to-face, with a constant eye on me? Worse than Rittenhouse Academy, where I could hide unnoticed among my classmates.
Aunt Annie, silent until now, put down her cup. In a tone that made me think of the Almighty commanding Abraham to sacrifice young Isaac she said: "Give me the boy."
5 The Gawgon
"Why, Annie, that's a fine idea," my mother said. "It' never occurred to me. If you feel up to it."
"I've dealt with harder cases." Aunt Annie gave me a glance which included me in that category. "I'll talk to Alan," my mother said. "We'll work out the details."
No one asked the Amazing Invisible Boy's opinion. I would have told them that if I was doomed to be educated, I preferred a total stranger, one I could shirk, dodge, and bamboozle. Aunt Annie saw me all too clearly. My animal instinct warned me that she was not to be bamboozled.
I expected the plan would go into immediate effect. But for the next several days, no one said anything more. I hoped it had been forgotten or, when consulted, my father had rejected it.
Meanwhile, I had no heart for the charms of the back alley. Barnick and Deveraux had been banished to summer camp in the Poconos. Their punishment: to play baseball, swim in lakes, ride horses, and toast marshmallows.
I hoped Aunt Rosie, indignant about everything else, would come up with overpowering objections. She did not, though I heard her remark, later, to my mother:
"She was a hellion in her younger days, you know. Oh, I'll bet she can still be a real gawgon."
Whatever a hellion was did not sound promising. Gawgon-by that I understood Aunt Rosie meant "gorgon." I knew about gorgons, and Medusa, a horrible monster with snakes for hair, the sight of whom turned everybody to stone. The hero Perseus slew her, cleverly looking only at her reflection in his polished shield. This I gleaned from a book of Greek mythology The Gawgon herself had given me as a birthday gift. ("The Gawgon." was now my secret name for Aunt Annie. It had a ring more sinister than "gorgon.")
Desperate, I prayed the government would step in and save me when I heard my father say something about approval from the Board of Education. But it turned out The Gawgon had a certificate that made everything legal.
My mother outlined the schedule: classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. Then, a special treat: Saturdays, I could sleep overnight at the boardinghouse.
That, in itself, was worth a few miserable hours with The Gawgon. I could visit Captain Jack, talk to Nora, explore the cellar, wind up the cuckoo clock, and eat pancakes on Sunday morning. As I told my sister, I looked forward to the weekend holidays.
"You really are a stupid blighter," said my sister, who claimed to understand the twisted minds of adults. "It's a chance for Mother and Father to get you out of the house. Holiday? Yes. For them."
The Monday following, my mother deposited me at the boardinghouse. I had been outfitted with composition books, paper, pens, and pencils. Thus heavily armed, I cautiously made my way upstairs to The Gawgon's lair.
I ran into Dr. McKelvie coming down the hall. He clapped me on the shoulder, addressed me as "laddie-buck," and said he was glad to see me on the mend. I supposed he had been visiting Captain Jack, but the door was shut and Captain Jack was playing his gramophone.
I went on to The Gawgon's den. The room was crowded, but neatly crowded, with a roll top desk and cluttered pigeonholes, a dresser and oval mirror, bookcases, a narrow bed, an electric lamp on the night table. For a den, it was fairly sunny, with pale light from the window that overlooked the street. A card table had been unfolded, waiting. The Gawgon sat in a rocking chair. She motioned with her head.
"Doctors is all swabs," she remarked as I entered. Until now, I had never noticed her eyes were a bright, frosty blue. "Who said that?"
"Why-you did, Aunt." I had not expected such a comment or question. "Just now."
"No, no, boy. Who else? In a book I gave you at Christmas."
Things were not beginning well. I thought hard for a while. Something stirred; it came to me.
"Billy Bones? In Treasure Island?"
The Gawgon nodded. "Who wrote it? A Scotsman," she went on as I shrugged, having forgotten. "Robert Louis Stevenson. You should always remember authors' names. Out of courtesy; poor devils, they haven't much else to hang on to.
"He wrote it for a boy about your age," she added. "To amuse him. Did it amuse you?"
"Yes," I cautiously admitted, suspecting some kind of Gawgon-ish trap.
"Stevenson wrote a good many of his books in bed, did you know that? He was very sick. Oh, a lot sicker than you were. He went to live in Samoa, at the end. They called him Tusitala-'storyteller.' When he died, they buried him in the mountains. He wrote this-it's on his gravestone:"
"Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill. The Gawgon had been looking beyond the window."
She glanced back at me: "Do you understand any of that?"
I had to confess I did not. (Also, at the edge of my mind a picture briefly took shape: Uncle Eustace scrambling up the mountains of Samoa to sell Robert Louis Stevenson a tombstone.) I said I couldn't see why anybody would be glad to die.
"Nor should you." The Gawgon brushed away an invisible gnat. "Not yet. Not yet," she said as much to herself as to me. "Pay me no mind," she added. "It's McKelvie, that cheerful undertaker. He puts morbid notions into people's heads."
She gestured for me to sit at the card table. "Let's see your hand... No, boy, your handwriting." I had raised a palm. "Use a new pen point."
I took a fresh steel nib from my box. Before fitting it into the wooden pen holder, I put it into my mouth to suck away the coating film of oil, common practice at school.
"Are you trying to skewer your tongue?" said The Gawgon, when I explained what I was doing. "Next time, burn the tip with a match. Now, copy down that poem as I read it out."
The glass inkwell-a pleasant surprise-held nothing but ink, unlike those set into the desks of Rittenhouse Academy, usually jammed with chewing gum, spitballs, dead flies, and unrecognizable foreign objects. I scratched away as The Gawgon dictated fairly rapidly. Finished, I handed over the sheet of paper.
"Almost legible. We'll work on that." The Gawgon leaned her head against the back of the rocking chair. "Enough for today."
Glad to get off so easily, I collected my things. I had started for the door when The Gawgon called me back. She took something from her lap.
"This is for you." She handed me a large hank of yarn as tangled as Dr. McKelvie's beard, knotted, twisted in such a confusing mess I could see neither the beginning nor the end of it.
"Take it home," The Gawgon said. "Untie the knots, unravel it-as much as you can. Bring it next time."
6 Percy-Us and The Gawgon
I fall I had to do was scribble down a few lines of poetry and untie some knots, I reckoned The Gawgon and I might get along very well indeed. To forestall my parents finding someone who would actually make me work, I gave my mother an enthusiastic account of my lesson. When my father came home, I had to describe it to him all over again, including the tangled yarn. "Chuh! Lawmigawd!" My father lapsed into a Jamaican accent whenever he found Philadelphia English not expressive enough. "Knots? When I was your age, I had to study Euclid." Sitting in the living room after dinner, I overheard him say to my mother, "If you ask me, old Annie's gone 'round the bend."
"Oh, Alan."-my mother usually began her comments with "Oh, Alan."
"You shouldn't say things like that. Let her do what she wants, for now."
"But we're paying to have him educated," my father protested.
"I told you there's nothing to pay," my mother said. "I offered, she wouldn't hear of it. No matter how much I insisted. You know how she is when her mind's made up. Too bad. Dear soul, she certainly could have used a little money. She's poor as a church mouse."
Satisfied at the financial arrangement, which amounted to zero, my father went back to the stock-market pages of the newspaper, which he studied as intensely as Uncle Eustace studied the death notices.
Sprawled on my bed, I picked at the knots as The Gawgon ordered. My sister had been entertaining the Tulip Garden. When they disbanded, of course she had to come and poke her nose into my occupation.
"If you were a clever blighter, you'd just take a pair of scissors and cut them," she said, watching me struggle. "Like somebody, whoever it was." My sister was more devoted to her toenails than to classical antiquity.
"Alexander the Great and the Gordian knot," I said. "I read how he chopped it with a sword. I'm not supposed to do that."
My sister soon got bored and left me with the tangled skein. At first, I thought it would be easy, but the knots were tight, the strands twisted every which, way. I undid only a couple of them; then I, too, got bored and, grumbling about The Gawgon, tossed the whole thing aside.
Lacking anything better to do, I rummaged out the paint box and amused myself making colored pictures. The details about the hero Perseus were dim in my mind and as complicated as my knotted yarn. I found an easy solution: I ignored most of them.
PERCY-US AND THE TULIP GARDEN
Percy-Us was sitting on a boulder, gloomily polishing his shield, when along came a young man wearing a cap with wings on it, and another pair of wings on the heels of his sandals. He carried a stick with a couple of snakes coiled around it, and still more wings at the tip.
"I am Hermes," he announced, "messenger of the gods."
Even Percy-Us, not the smartest hero in the world, recognized Hermes. Who else dressed like that? "You've got a message for me?"
"Not exactly," said Hermes. "I happened to be passing by. You look like you need cheering up."
"I do," said Percy-Us. "King Polly Deck-Tease is getting married. He's mean, murderous, with Vaseline in his hair. Who'd want to marry him? But that's beside the point. I'm invited to the feast. There's where the trouble comes in. I have to bring a wedding present."
"Napkin rings?" suggested Hermes. "A king always needs napkin rings. State banquets and such. Solid gold is very elegant. I can put in a word with King Midas. He's got plenty. In fact, everything he has is gold. He'll sell cheap."
"I already told the king what I'd give him. I promised." Percy-Us looked all the more unhappy "I promised him the head of The Gawgon."
"You what?" cried Hermes. "Fool! Why, for Zeus' sake, did you do a stupid thing like that?"
"I don't know what came over me." Percy-Us sighed. "We were sitting around in the king's hall, his warriors bragging about the gifts they'd bring, all better than any I had. I couldn't stand it. I had to think of something reall
y amazing.
"So, it just popped out," Percy-Us went on. "I swore in front of the king and everybody I'd give him The Gawgon's head. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I'd be a great hero."
"The first thing about being a great hero," put in Hermes, "is knowing when to keep your mouth shut."
"Too late now," said Percy-Us. "If I fail." he shuddered "you can't imagine what he'll do to me."
"Yes, I can," said Hermes. "I don't envy you, my lad. All right. Here, take this sword." He produced a blade from his cloak and handed it to Percy-Us. "You'll need it."
"Call that a sword?" Percy-Us stared in dismay. "It's bent. It looks like a sickle."
"Of course it's bent," said Hermes. "It's a Gawgon-hooker, By the way," he added, "make sure you never look at The Gawgon. You'll turn to stone. Now listen carefully. You'll need a few more things I don't have with me."
Percy-Us only grew more downcast as Hermes explained what had to be done. "Good-bye," said Hermes after he finished. "Oh-keep polishing that shield."
Following the directions Hermes gave him, Percy-Us set off At the end of many days of trudging along twisting pathways, floundering across rivers, and clambering over craggy mountains, he came to a forest grove. There, as Hermes had foretold, he saw a circle of long-stemmed flowers: the sacred Tulip Garden.
It was guarded by beautiful nymphs. As soon as they caught sight of him, they began screaming, shrieking, throwing gravel, and making unfriendly gestures.
"Go away, silly blighter!" yelled Elysia, the head nymph. "I only want to borrow some of your treasures," protested Percy-Us, "to help me cut off The Gawgon's head."
"We're busy. Can't you see we're painting our toenails?" retorted Elysia. "Get out of here."
"No," declared Percy-Us, despite the nymphs all squealing enough to burst his eardrums. "Give me what I ask or I'll sit here until you do."
"I think he means it," said one of the nymphs as Percy-Us squatted down on a mossy hillock, folded his arms, and showed no sign of moving from the spot.
The Gawgon and the Boy Page 3