I think I must have passed out for a while when the kite was climbing ever higher and higher in the sky. I look down now between my dangling toes and see the rope hanging almost straight down with that traitorous tree at the end of it, still high above the water. The island is far away now, just a smudge like when I first spotted it from the mainmast. Only yesterday, was it? The wind is lessening now, as it almost always does in the late afternoon, and the kite is starting to settle. Now the island ain't even a smudge. Now it's gone.
The kite's swooping back and forth as it settles and the rope snakes back and forth, back and forth like a long tail, and I know it's 'cause the wind can't get running smooth across the top of the kite 'cause the kite ain't held steady like a sail is held steady and soon all will drop into the ocean and that will be it for both the kite and me.
I don't rant or cry or anything like that. I don't even pray, hardly. I've prayed for deliverance before and I get delivered and then someone else dies and that someone could be Jaimy this time and I don't want that, but I do hope that he sheds a few tears for me. No, no I don't want that, either. I want him to become a fine officer and marry a fine lady, which I am not and never will be now, but I do hope he remembers me fondly, I do.
The water draws closer. Soon the tree will touch and at least the water will be warm. I look at its blue hugeness and I say, I will ask one thing please, God, please no sharks, no sharks. I just want to be let down softly and then go to sleep 'neath the curl of a smooth little wave, gentlelike. A nice little warm wave. That's all.
I imagine Liam and the rest will be waking me tonight, too. The thought gives me some comfort. I hope he asks Jaimy to come to the wake, too, even though it's Catholic stuff and Deacon Dunne would say no, but all the cryin' and hollerin' and keenin' and such is good for a grieving soul. I've never held back my tears, that's for sure.
Closer yet. I've got to get myself ready in my mind and so I think about how far I got from London and how Muck never got me and how I'll not be put up in jars and I've seen a lot of stuff and how I gave it a good run and got farther than Charlie, who I might be seeing real soon, and how I got to love a fine boy and I think he might love me and I am goin' to cry now but I think that's all right, I never was very brave....
I see the tree hit the water and I'm thinking I'll cut myself out of the harness when me and the kite comes all the way down cause I wants to float free and go down when I'm ready. I figure that the best thing to do when I finally slips under is to hold me breath till I get down a ways and then suck in a chestful of water all sharp and fast so's to get it over with quick with not much choking. I hope not much choking. I don't even know if I can swim 'cause I ain't never tried.
At least it's a plan and I feel a little better for it.
The kite steadies down. It don't swoop no more and I'm wonderin' why, and I look down and see that the tree is half under the water and leavin' a wake. I don't pay it no mind and get back to puttin' my final thoughts in order. I look down again in another minute and the tree is still half under water. No change ... but wait a minute ... I should have dropped down closer and I didn't, I...
Leavin' a wake! I shakes the cobwebs out of me mind and ciphers it out. The tree is draggin' like a sea anchor, just as if a bunch of men was hanging on to the rope so Bernoulli can get back on the job, and the kite stays up and steady! I ain't goin' down no more.
I dare not hope, but I can't help it. No, no, this can't be true, I must be dreamin' or be out of me mind, but it seems too real. It IS 5 real! I have me own ship and I'm under way with way on! As long as the wind holds, I could fly all the way to Mexico!
I twist around in the harness, tryin' to see behind me, but I still can't, but ain't the water gettin' lighter and brighter and shinin' all like an emerald and, oh thank you, God, it means the bottom's comin' up and it's gettin' shallower and shallower and then, as sudden as a slap in the face, there's a white beach beneath me. I don't know if it's Mexico or Timbuktu or what, but it surely looks like home to me! I christen my wonderful ship the Hope and in a few moments the tree pulls up on the beach and catches in a grove of palms. The wind lessens and dies.
His Majesty's ship, the Hope, settles slowly and gently into the treetops.
Midshipman J. M. Faber commanding.
PART V
Oh, Western Wind, When Wilt Thou Blow,
That the Small Rain Down Can Rain.
Oh, That My Love Were in My Arms,
And I in My Bed, Again.
Chapter 38
After I land in the top of the trees, I pull out my shiv and cut myself out of the harness and swing over to a good limb and climb down. The trees are much bigger here, the Captain and the carpenter will be delighted to know. I find my way out to the beach and to that tree, which was both a traitor and savior to me. Strange to see it with its roots all washed off and white and sticking up in the air. I cut the rope off of it and haul the end back into the brush, so as to keep my presence here a secret from any passing cannibals. I'd hate to think that I'd survived all that I had just to end up on a spit.
I go back to the Hope and manage to pull it down from the tree without too much damage. I cut it off from the rope and drag it to a little clearing and put it down such that it forms a little tent. I cut lengths off the rope and use some to tie down the Good Tent Hope so it won't rock about in the wind. I coil the rest neatly nearby. Shipboard habits die hard.
It is nearly dark now so I crawl into my new home and prepare for sleep. One bit of complete and total and almost sinful pleasure I have this night is in the taking off of that damned vest in which I had been crammed, corseted, and confined for a whole year.
I put the rolled-up vest under my head as a pillow and take stock of my situation. I have, besides my Immortal Soul, which is still thankfully tucked in my not-so-immortal body, the following:
My clothes—drawers, vest, shirt, pants
My shiv
My whistle, with thong
My Will
The spyglass, with halter
The Good Ship Hope
Much rope
It's not much to ensure my survival in this strange land, but it will have to serve. I plan, on the morrow, to:
Gather food and eat it
Gather wood for signal fire
Explore to determine danger if I light fire
Light fire and await rescue
I always feel better with a plan.
It rains that first night like I have never seen rain before. It comes on in an instant and pours down in sheets instead of drops, and I know it is soaking every bit of wood beyond any hope of lighting as a signal fire. I reach my cupped hands out and they quickly fill with water, which I gratefully gulp down. It goes on for an hour, and then, just as suddenly, it stops.
Then there is silence. After the droplets stop dripping off the leaves, it gets so quiet I can hear my own heartbeat. I have never, in my whole life—with Mum and Dad and Penny, or on the streets of London with the gang, or on the Dolphin—ever been really alone. I curl up a little tighter. On the ship I was used to sleeping in a room full of sailors, a hundred or more in our hold, with their snores and grunts and other noises. All I hear now is the thump of my own heart and the sound in my ears that I know is the sound of my blood going through my veins, the rush of my own salt sea...
Then the jungle comes alive. It starts with an unholy shriek not ten feet from the tent, the sound of somethin' bein' ripped open and torn and eaten—or maybe it was the sound of the thing eatin' the other thing, I don't know—and then the rest of the fiends joins in with such a chorus of grunts and groans and chitterings and howls and screams that I spend the whole night with my eyes open and on the open end of the tent, my hand clutched around my shiv, and wondering what the snakes do after a rain.
I do fall asleep towards dawning and sleep away most of the morning. I figure there's no hurry; the fire's not going to light, anyway.
When I do get up, I head to the beach for breakfast. There's some of the plants that Tilly pointed out as all right to eat, and when I walk on the sand next to the water, things squirt water up so that will be clams. Very well. Clams and weeds it is.
I kneel down in the sand and commence to digging with my hands and my shiv right where I see a good strong squirt, and before too long I come up with a small round clam about the size of my thumb. I rinse it off and run my shiv between the shells and it gives up the fight. I pry off the top shell and see this disgusting lump of what looks like snot, but I must keep my strength up for the good of the Service and all so I lift it up and let it slide out of the shell, over my tongue, and down.
Not as bad as I would have thought. Sort of like salty nothing. I dig up a few more and do them, and then I try the weeds. Tilly called it pigweed when he was pointing out edible plants to us back on the island. Well, this is one little piggy what don't like it overmuch. It is stringy and not very good, but I force some of it down and it dawns on me that all of this would taste better if it were cooked. The problem is that I don't have a cook pot. Further thought is required.
The breakfast being less than hearty, I decide to explore to see if I can improve my condition in other ways.
The beach, which is about fifty yards wide at this tide, runs up to a line of low trees, and beyond them the land rises to a height of about a hundred feet. What's beyond that, I cannot see, and so I resolve to have a look.
I go back to my camp to pick up the glass and leave off some clothes 'cause it's getting terrible hot. I of course did not put the vest back on when I got up, just my white shirt, Charlie's old shirt, which is now as thin as gauze it's been washed so many times so it's nice and cool, and now I drop the underdrawers, too, and make do with my pants, which I roll up to my knees. Poor Charlie, I thinks, your clothes have made it halfway around the world. And your shiv. And your Little Mary, too.
Looking like a proper castaway, I head off and up.
The climb is not hard as there are plenty of vines and bushes to cling to, and after about fifteen minutes I make it to the top and look about. This is definitely not an island, at least not a little one. I put the glass to my eye and look from the south around to the north and I see nothing but a vast carpet of forest. No cities, no towns, no villages, no cooking fires, no nothing. Which is all right 'cause it might also mean no cannibals. 'Course they could be sneaky devils who've doused their fires and are creeping up on me right now with dinner on their minds.
Once, during that time back in the Mediterranean when that rotten Bliffil had been sent off with the prize ship, I snuck down into the midshipmen's berth and made off with a book called Robinson Crusoe that one of 'em had. I read it in a day, read parts of it out loud to the lads, and had it back before they knew it was gone. The boys, of course, really liked the part where the cannibals were about to roast poor Friday, the bloody-minded sods. Anyway, that's how I know all about cannibals.
Bringing myself back to where I am I reflect that the Dolphin don't need any towns or such—all she needs is good wood and it looks like there's plenty here. Next I train the glass westward towards where I last saw the island. Nothing, of course, not even a smudge. No matter. Time enough for that later.
Now I look down towards the beach and I see, off to the left of my camp, a place where the water has come in and made a little lagoon, with many coconut palms about. I resolve to see what that offers when I climb down.