Pirates Of The Archipelago, Part Fourteen
Has Roy and Annie's gamble paid off?


Pirates of the Archipelago

Part Fourteen

Second by second, inch by inch, minute by minute, yard by yard, we crept towards the safety of the Ring. It was becoming clearly visible ahead of us now. The tide was still rising and with any luck the current which was carrying clean water into the Inner Sea would pick us up and take us with it, just as it had swept us out into the open sea the day before.

Steady as she goes. Was that me or Roy speaking? Or was it the locator? It hardly mattered. All I could do was trust Roy to steer straight, keep the sails full and Albatross level and, perhaps, pray. There were people, I knew, who prayed to the 'Down, who kept pictures and models of her in their homes. That seemed strange to me. The 'Down was only a machine after all and you couldn't pray to a machine, however big and intelligent it was; even if it was the Guardian of Humanity, as we were taught in school. So I put my trust in Providence, which is deaf and blind and doesn't care how good or bad you are; only whether you have the good sense to accept its help.

'Roy? Roy, are you OK?'

'Yes.'

'Not far to go now.'

'No.'

'That's good. I want a bath and somewhere to sleep. I feel very odd, Roy.'

'Odd? How's that?'

'Like I'm not here. Like my head's floating away. I'm hot and cold at the same time. Shivery. You can't be hot and cold, can you? You've got to be one or the other.'

Roy put his hand against my forehead. 'Oh! You're burning up! Annie, you're really not at all well.'

'I'm fine. Give me the tiller. I'm captain. Mustard's my boat.'

'Albatross, you mean.'

'Whatever. Let me steer.'

'No. You're not fit.'

'Are you relieving me of my command, you scurvy dog? This is mutiny! I'll have you put in irons. You'll swing at Traitors' Gate.'

'Gently, Annie. Wait until we're back on Leaven Peak. We'll hold the court martial then.'

'No! Now! Drumhead court is convened, Captain McLuskie presiding!'

I reached out to lift Roy bodily from his place at the helm. No cursed mutineer was going to usurp my position. But somehow my arm refused to obey my commands and instead of dashing the rebellious swab to the deck and filling the scuppers with his worthless guts it caught against the shrouds and catapulted me into Albatross's hold, where I lay among coils of rope, barrels of rum, bolts of silk and chests of tea; the cargo we'd looted from the Eastindiaman we'd sent to Davy Jones' Locker only two days previously.

Oh, my head. I'd overdone it with the grog again...

'Annie. Annie! Talk to me. Oh Annie, please say something!' Someone was cradling my head in his arms and pleading with me. 'Annie, can you hear me?'

'Roy?'

I opened my eyes. My shipmate's face was taut with worry.

'Oh, thank heavens. I thought you'd killed yourself.'

'No such luck. Where are we? Was I knocked out for long?'

'Not long.'

'Help me sit up.' I hung on to Roy's shoulders and pulled myself upright next to him. 'Now give me the tiller. Go on. I'll flake out again if I don't have something to do.'

Roy reluctantly handed me back control of Albatross. My head was still spinning with nausea and for a moment I thought I was going to be sick, but it passed, leaving me shaking. I looked over the bows. The Ring was a dark mass ahead of us, less imposing now the tide was nearing the flood. It was visible more by the way it obscured the stars and the glow in the west that was the harbinger of the Blessèd sun's rising than by the light of Sally, which was fading rapidly into the east. The new day was coming on fast and we had no time to lose. We had to steer for the barrage and hope to catch the incoming wash. If we missed it we would have to head over to the sea-lock and hope to moor up by the lower gates. There would be a lockkeeper who would be able to help us.

'Steer two points to starboard.' That was the locator. I pushed the tiller arm away slightly. Surely it couldn't be much further now? 'Not far now,' I said to Roy, hoping to encourage him.

'Five hundred yards to go,' said the locator.

Who asked you? Since when had the device been listening to me? Never mind, we were nearly home and dry. All we had to do was hang on and keep our nerve. We were going to make it.



It was not long afterwards, with the winch-towers of the barrage clearly silhouetted against the oncoming dawn and safety within our grasp, that I saw the first disturbance in the water. It was nothing - just a little vee-shaped wave, like you see when a loose rope-end accidentally trails behind you. The trouble was, it wasn't behind Albatross but in front of her, between us and the barrage. I blinked and looked again. There it was… no, no it wasn’t. It was gone - there had probably been nothing there. The light was poor and my head was woozy. It could have been anything.

'You OK?' I asked Roy.

He smiled. 'Never better.' So he might say, but why did his voice sound so distant and strange? 'Still scared stupid,' he added, and I felt a wave of sympathy wash over me. That wasn't an easy thing for a boy to say, especially if he thought he was looking after a girl.

'Me too.' I squeezed his shoulder.

And then, with the barrage within touching distance and the inrushing current just beginning to take hold of us that vee-shaped wave appeared again. Something like a stick in a stream, but rising. Another wave and another stick. And another. And as the waves grew and spread a terrifying sensation of horror and despair spread through me. It was all over.

The sticks were rising from underneath the water and they weren't sticks at all, they were spines, sharp-tipped and growing wider as they pushed their way up into the air. The water around them was swirling in a myriad of vortices, humping up and moving aside to make way for what was to come. It would not be long now; I could feel the pressure building up in the ocean beneath us and the air around our heads, higher and higher, making my head hurt so much I let go of the tiller and mainsheet and put both hands to my ears. It did no good. With a mighty heave and a wave so powerful that it pushed Albatross back twenty yards and threatened to swamp her, the foy's head broke through the surface of the sea and towered, dripping water and seaweed, twenty feet or more above our mast. It opened its mouth and a terrible stench, like the back of Mum's packing-shed when they're throwing out the fish-heads and guts at the end of the day, swept across the sea and forced its sickening way into my nostrils.

Below its spiny crest the creature's head was hideous; grey-green, mottled, scaly, encrusted, dripping slime and seawater. Its mouth - wide enough to swallow Albatross, Roy and me in one gulp - was full of dagger-like teeth and its breath steamed and snorted in the dawning light of the Blessèd sun. Albatross swayed violently in the backwash of the monster's emergence from the deep and Roy and I clung to each other for support. I knew that this would be the last dawn we would ever see.

So close. We had come so close to safety and now, with the refuge of the barrage towers only a hundred yards away we had run out of luck. 'I'm sorry, Roy,' I said, but he didn't reply. He was stiff and unmoving, his mouth frozen in mid-cry.

The foy's ridged back surfaced and, nearly two hundred feet away, its quadruple-fluked tail rose and beat explosively against the water. The waves washed along its flanks as if it were a body of fixed land and not a living, breathing creature. This was no minnow or tiddler, no basking shark or dolphin, but foialensis gloriana magnor, one of the Greater Beasts that rule the oceans of Glory. Why was it here? What was it doing so close to one of the lands? Not that I was too interested in the zoology of our world's sea-life at the time but, because death was so close, I suppose, my head had cleared and I was thinking straight once more. You might not have thought so, however, if you'd been there and seen what I did next.

With my left hand gripping the mast I stood up and faced the Beast. I held my right hand up, palm forward, and shouted, 'Stop!' A wild madness flooded my mind. I would defy this thing, even if it were thousands of times my size and millions of times my weight.

The foy shook its head from side to side, scattering a shower of stinking water that drenched Roy and me and threatened to fill Albatross's hull and sink her. I called out again, 'Stop! You can't have us! We're not for you! You took my Dad and you killed him. You broke my Mum's heart. Isn't that enough?'

A great head bowed down towards me and two turbid eyes opened wide and regarded me closely. They blinked twice. I braced myself. Then, as if I were of no further interest, the foy looked away, lifted its mouth to the sky, opened it wide and made its call; a stupendous bellow whose volume forced me to let go of the mast, throw myself down into Albatross's bilge-swilling hull and cover my ears again. You may have heard the distant cry of the Greater Beasts from the security of the solid rock of your land, but even if you live on the coast you can have little idea of how stunning its effect was on Roy and me; mere yards away from a full-sized foy, lost in a small boat on a full tide. My companion had still not moved. He sat as one catatonic, his body swaying with Albatross's mast as if he had become part of her.

I staggered to my feet once more. 'Go away! Leave us!' And, to my amazement, the Beast plunged its massive tail deep into the water and turned its body away from us. Its neck tilted forward so that its jaws skimmed the waves. Albatross dipped her gunwales and shipped more seawater and I dived back down into her and snatched the bailer. There was nearly a foot of water sluicing around inside her now, and I scooped it out in enormous gouts of spray, filled with hope once more.

'Roy! Roy! I shouted. Look! It's going away! I've scared it off! Me, Annie McLuskie! I've done it!' I nearly danced in my elation.

But Roy made no answer and the foy stopped moving and cocked its huge head to one side. And with a sinking of the heart that was all the worse for my recent euphoria I heard another call, from another foy, not far distant. And then another. And another. And another. The sound boomed and reverberated off the wall of the Ring so that it seemed to surround me.

There was nothing more I could do. It was finished. I sat on Albatross's thwart, took hold of the unmoving Roy's hand, bowed my head and awaited my doom.