The Elfin Ship by James P. Blaylock Read Free Book Online Page B

stealthily crept into the hold although it was clear from the outset that there was no one in the room aside from them and the dog Ahab. Kegs of odd sizes sat about, and ropes and sailcloth and buckets and various sorts of stores and tools lay heaped here and there. No mysterious whisperers were to be seen. It was all a puzzle.
    Jonathan removed his cap and scratched the top of his head. Both men shrugged then said, almost simultaneously, ‘The kegs. The empty kegs!’ There were a round dozen of the large kegs, and Jonathan, as if to surprise something that might be hiding within, tiptoed toward the closest and reached for the lid.
    The Professor made a noise like an ape might make if his mouth were taped shut and gestured at Jonathan to wait. He rushed out and was back in a flash with the oboe gun, squid arm whirl-gatherers flapping roundabout. He squinted one eye and nodded to Jonathan to continue.
    The Cheeser snatched the first lid up, then the second and third, but nothing save air lay within. He approached the fourth, reached for the lid as Professor Wurzle stood guard, and the lid, as if on command, popped off and clattered down onto the deck.
    ‘Hey there, Mr Bing Cheese!’ cried Dooly, popping up out of the barrel like a jack-in-the-box and causing Jonathan to leap back onto a sack of beans.
    Professor Wurzle, in the excitement, failed to recognize poor Dooly who had, it seemed, stowed away in an empty keg. He twirled away on the crank device and the whirl-gatherers began flailing round, making little whistling noises until the oboe gun nearly sang a tune. Both Jonathan and Dooly stared silently in amazement for a moment at the dumbfounded Professor, who was immediately sorry that he’d started the thing up. The motion of the whirl-gatherers finally became so intense that the Professor was forced to drop the entire affair, and the weapon went whizzing round the hold like a giant rotating moth.
    Dooly grabbed the fallen lid and dropped back down into his barrel, pulling the lid shut after him. Jonathan took refuge behind the bean sacks. The Professor, fearful of damaging the weapon, leaped after it and attempted to throw a burlap sack over it as it careened off the walls. The burlap, in the end, got caught up among the whirl-gatherers and fouled the entire machine which dropped clattering to the deck. Dooly peeped out, sweat prickling his brow.
    ‘What is it, Professor?’ asked Dooly. ‘Some sort of bird? Looks like a thing my grandpa had once to find treasures with.’
    ‘Well, Dooly!’ the Professor gasped. ‘I don’t suppose your grandfather had one of these. It’s just a sort of a thing I use for this and that.’
    Dooly nodded.
    ‘The question,’ said Jonathan, rising from the bean sacks, ‘is what are you doing here?’
    ‘Aye, aye, Captain,’ cried Dooly, clambering out of his keg. ‘It’s a jolly day to be a-roving, Cheeser, if I do say. And, Cheeser, you said once that you and me couldn’t go a-rafting without we took a fine dog like Ahab along beside us. So there you are, and here I am, and there, with his pickle, as I, if you please, felt I had to give him, is the dog.’
    The answer, somehow, wasn’t completely satisfactory, but Jonathan could see no profit in being upset. Of all the things the Cheeser disliked, being upset was the worst, and so usually, if he had the choice, he ignored anything that would provoke such a thing.
    ‘Dooly,’ he said, taking a pickle from the barrel for himself. ‘Welcome aboard.’
    ‘Ahoy, Captain,’ said Dooly. ‘Shall I make up a lunch?’
    ‘I believe you should.’
    ‘And did I tell you, Cheeser and Mr Wurzle gentlemen, about the time my grandpa went into fix
him
a lunch?’
    ‘I don’t suppose so, Dooly,’ Jonathan replied rather abruptly. ‘But …’
    ‘About the great Toad King,’ said Dooly.
    ‘But,’ continued Jonathan, ‘I imagine the Toad King and your grandfather can hold on until our own is served.’
    ‘Don’t let me