The Castaways by Iain Lawrence Read Free Book Online Page A

own weight tipped them over, and they went rolling back to the sea.
    The cold island, streaked with blood, rocked wildly in the attack of the black fish. At the summit the two men turned round and round to face each one. They had guns, but apparently no powder, for they were using their weapons like clubs, to bash at the heads of the creatures.
    There was so much blood on the ice that the men musthave killed or injured one of the black fish. I imagined they’d been fighting for days, balanced at the top of their pitching island as the fish charged up again and again.
    I called out as we shouldered our way toward them. The shadows of the sails raced ahead of us, over the foamy crests of the waves, over the ice and the black fish.
    Like wolves at the coming of the shepherd, the creatures scattered and fled. At last the men looked up, and the sight of the ship suddenly looming above them must have been startling indeed. They cowered from it at first.
    “We’re going to run them down,” I said. “How do we slow the ship?”
    “She’ll do it herself,” said Midge. “You watch.”
    It didn’t seem possible. Over the waves we charged like a great knight, the bowsprit our lance. The sea surged and foamed at the bow.
    The ship didn’t stop. But it did turn aside. The surge of waves breaking back from the ice caught the bow with a booming blow that nudged it away.
    We all hurried to the waist in the hope that we might drag the men aboard. Gaskin swung out from the rail and stood on the ladder. We held his shirt and the waist of his pants, and he reached out with both arms just as the men dropped their guns and reached
up
for him.
    The ship struck the ice and rolled it under. The men leapt up, clasping hands and arms with Boggis. The sudden shock of their weight nearly hauled every one of us over the side. But Gaskin held on, and the men twirled at the ends of his arms, skittering their feet on the tops of the waves like a pair of seabirds.
    Walter Weedle leaned farther over the rail. One of the men looked up at him with the most surprised expression I’d ever seen. His eyes doubled in size, and his mouth gaped open. It seemed he truly believed he was seeing a pirate, that he had come to the ship of Blackbeard himself. But he must have glimpsed the boy within the clothes, for just as quickly the expression fell away.
    So did the men, or very nearly. It took much puffing and cursing to bring them aboard, but at last we managed it. Side by side they stood on the deck, each dressed in many clothes, layer upon layer, all sodden with brine and blood. They gazed in wonder around the ship—down its length and up the masts—until their eyes settled on little Midgely
    “What happened to that one?” asked the taller of the two.
    “He was blinded,” I said.
    “How?”
    No one answered, though Benjamin Penny rather squirmed beside me. We were wary, like schoolboys sizing up a new teacher.
    The taller man had tattoos on his hands, and a stare as cold as the ice that he’d come from. He was a frightening figure, but the other was twice as horrid and twice as scary. He looked like a pig, his ears so large and squashed, his head so round, speckled with lonely hairs. From his mouth came the most vile breath imaginable, for his teeth were brown and rotten.
    “When I ask a question I expect an answer,” said the taller man, turning to me. “What happened to that boy?”
    His tone annoyed me. We had just saved his life, but he gave not a word of thanks, nor a how-do-you-do. I said only, “He’s blind, not deaf. You can ask him yourself.”
    The piglike man drew a whistling breath through his teeth. Weedle’s scar began to twitch. But the man with the tattooed hands only looked at me with the same burning gaze.
    Weedle spoke quickly. “Sir, it happened long ago. In a prison hulk at Chatham, sir.”
    “At Chatham? You’re convicts, are you?”
    “Yes, sir.” Weedle bobbed his head.
    “Stowaways too?” Not a line or wrinkle had