Zeuglodon Read online

  Perry passed me a ham sandwich, then, out of the lunch box, and I realized that I was hungry, which is very much better than realizing you’re lost, at least it is if you have something to eat. Perry reminded us of what the Hungry Man said: “If I had me some ham, I’d make me a sandwich, if I had me some bread,” and we all laughed at it, which was good.The Creeper had helped himself to our lunch, but there was still plenty left—ham sandwiches and slices of cold meat pie and dill pickles and cookies and bags of chips and a big thermos of hot chocolate that was still hot, which I can tell you is just the thing when you’re lost in the fog. We started in with the sandwiches, leaving the meat pies until later.

  Perry took the Creeper’s knife back out of the lunch box and said that it belonged to Brendan now, that it was the spoils of war. It had a handle carved out of bone, and a wicked looking blade that was hidden in the handle, and when you pressed a button on the bottom of the handle the blade sprang straight out. Brendan said that he hoped Uncle Hedge would let him keep it, and that made me think of Uncle Hedge for the first time since I saw him standing on the pier, fixing to throw the iron-bound maps into the depths, and I believe that everyone else was thinking the same thing that I was—that we might never see him again at all. And just like that we were miserable.

  We took a vote and decided to cut the engine to preserve fuel. It was pointless not to. We would feel like nitwits if we ran out of gas and then needed power, which we would if the ocean got rough, because it’s better to move through the waves then to let them toss you around. And of course the oars were both lost, which was a bad thing, but not as bad as being caught by the Creeper, unless we were never found at all. In that case it wouldn’t matter what was bad and what was worse. It would all turn out the same.

  I put that thought out of my mind the best I could. We sat there drifting again, rising and falling over the long, low swells. The dark surface of the ocean was smooth, and there was no wind at all, thank goodness, because by now we were very cold indeed, and the fog was heavier and deeper and more lonesome than ever.

  Chapter 13

  Lost at Sea

  Time passed. How much time? I don’t know. None of us wore a watch. The world grew even dimmer. Night was coming on. We wrapped ourselves in the blankets and consulted the compass to get our minds off other things, and we guessed that we were drifting toward the northeast, or else we were drifting away from it—unless, of course, we were sitting dead still. We put the compass away. Perry started up a game of “Animal, Mineral, Vegetable,” and that went well until Brendan used the word “doughnut” and said it was a mineral because it had sugar. I said it was a vegetable because it had flour, which is wheat, and anyway sugar comes from a vegetable, too, and one thing led to another and suddenly we were all talking about food, and whether it should be Animal, Mineral, Vegetable, Food, and whether something would count as food just because you ate it. Like let’s say a frog eats a bug or a goat eats a piece of cardboard.

  Then Perry said that he had read a book in which sailors, lost at sea in an open boat and starving to death, had eaten their belts and shoes, so those articles of clothing would have to count as food too.

  “Sometimes sailors ate each other when they were starving,” Brendan said morbidly.

  “Starting with the youngest,” Perry said, at which point I told them both to shut their gobs. We decided it was time for dinner, and Perry handed out the meat pies.

  It was night almost before we knew it. The gray of the fog just got darker and darker, still hovering thick around us, and I sat for a long time staring at nothing, and wondering about mermaids, and whether there might be any thereabouts, and whether they really rescued poor lost mariners like in the stories. And then I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew I was startled awake when Brendan yelled, “Look!”

  The wind had come up, and the seas with it, and the first thing I thought was that we were capsizing, because the inflatable was bobbing up and down with the rising and falling of the seas. I found myself looking straight into a black wall of water looming above our heads, and then we rose on the swell as it passed beneath us. The water was ink-black—blacker than the night fog—but far down in the depths, off my side of the boat, there shone a pair of great, luminous eyes gazing up at us. And they were apparently growing, too, as they rose toward the surface, larger and larger, the glowing eyes of an enormous fish, a fish the size of a zeuglodon, or a vast great squid.

  I thought of the creatures in the lake on the ice island. I could see the shape of this one now, not a squid but something more like an immense whale. Then more eyes winked on, as if there were several of the creatures all rising together, and into my mind came the thought that this was the end, and that we were going to be capsized and swallowed like Jonah. I held on tight to the thwarts, bubbles rushing up around the boat as we rose again on another swell. I saw that Brendan had the Creeper’s knife open in his hand, although it looked pitifully small, but there was something about it that made it easier not to be afraid, for about a second, anyway. Whatever it was in the water was now very near the surface, and I closed my eyes, the boat tilting and tilting until we were sliding backward down the face of a watery hillside.

  I opened my eyes then, because scary or not I just had to see. There was a great agitation of the water, millions of bubbles churning up in a foamy rush, and the creature rose above the surface not twenty feet away, and just kept on rising, the seas flowing off its sides in a waterfall. We were all shouting like crazy now, and I slid down into the bottom of the boat, which had a couple of inches of very cold seawater sloshing around in it, although I didn’t feel it at the time.

  Then I saw what it was—the submarine, and not a sea creature at all. Its row of lights were glowing through the fog now. We could hear the hum of its engines, and we watched as it very slowly drew away from us, obviously not seeing us there in our little boat in that foggy darkness. Uncle Hedge must be somewhere aboard—I hoped he was—and Lala, and Reginald Peach, all bound for who-knows-where and, for the moment, only a biscuit-toss away.

  “The horn!” Brendan shouted, and he took out the foghorn can and popped loose a little plastic bit that protected the trigger. It let off a great blast that shocked us all it was so very loud. But the lights of the submarine continued to fade away through the mists, and so Brendan blasted another one, because all of us by then were cold and hungry and we would by far rather be prisoners and be warm aboard the submarine than be lost and eat our shoes.

  But the lights winked out and the submarine vanished, just like the Clematis and the ice island had vanished. For a moment there was a sort of moonlike glow some ways off through the mists, but only for that moment, and then the night was as deep and dark as ever, and the humming of the engines died away into silence.

  Brendan blasted the horn one last time, senselessly, because he was angry, and I said, “Don’t waste it!” because I was angry too, although I don’t know if I was angry at Brendan or at our losing our chance to be rescued. Then, in the moment of quiet that followed, just when I was feeling like it had been hope itself that had vanished in the fog, there was an answering horn, and close by, too. We waited, holding our breath and holding on even harder to the inflatable, because, as I said, the ocean had grown a little bit wild by then. The horn sounded once more, and Brendan answered with our horn, and the ship answered, closer now.

  I started the engine and turned into the swell. The wind gusted, and the fog blew aside, and the night was suddenly sparklingly clear. The sky was alive with stars, and the moon shone down on the ocean in a long ivory road stretching toward the horizon. Not fifty yards away lay the Clematis, glowing with lights and with her big spotlight searching the sea. After a moment it shone right on us, blindingly, and we waved our hands and Brendan blew the horn again, half standing up and nearly pitching out of the boat as the searchlight moved on past. Then the light swung back toward us, and stayed there, and we all waved and shouted, just out of happiness
, because there was really no more need for waving and shouting.

  Brendan, I can tell you, was very much the hero, because he was the man with the horn. Perry said that it had been just like Rolland, I said I thought it had been, too, and so did Brendan, although I had no idea about Rolland, and I was pretty sure Brendan didn’t either. Later Perry told me that Rolland was a great hero in the time of Charlemagne who blew on his horn so hard that blood flew out of his eyes and ears, which is either a very awful thing to contemplate or else a very ridiculous thing, depending. No part of Brendan’s head had exploded, of course, and the air came from inside a can instead of from inside his lungs, but if he wanted to be Rolland it was fine with me, because his impetuous behavior had saved us from a hideous fate.

  We bumped along over the choppy seas toward the Clematis, and before we knew it we were rescued, hauled aboard and safely back in our cabins and climbing out of our wet clothes. My hands were so frozen that it took me a long time just to work the buttons on my shirt, and my feet, which had gone numb, felt like they were on fire when they started to thaw out, and were still prickly and rubbery-feeling even a half hour later when we were all sitting in the saloon and telling Captain Sodbury what had happened to us—about the betrayal by Dr. Frosticos and about the Creeper, and how the ice island had seemed to be sailing away under its own power and the submarine with it.

  Captain Sodbury said that he reckoned we could catch the ice island sometime tomorrow if we could fix the location. But then we told him that the submarine was now out in the open sea, that it had left its moorings on the island. The Captain said that was too bad, and there was no point in our asking why, because the answer was obvious. We ate again, hot food this time, roasted chicken and potatoes and any number of side dishes and a tub of ice cream. We were ravenously hungry despite the meat pie, but also very tired. Brendan fell asleep with his head on the table, and Charlie Slimmerman had to carry him to his bunk. As for me, I’d never been so worn out in all my life, and bed has never felt so good before or since.

  §

  When we awoke the next day the morning was almost gone. Captain Sodbury said that there was nothing to do but wait. Uncle Hedge would pull something out of his hat, or we could call William Sodbury a grass-combing lubber on a lee shore. And it very nearly happened just like he said, except it wasn’t Uncle Hedge who pulled it out of his hat, it was Reginald Peach, pulling it out of his seashell helmet. In any event, nobody had to call anybody a grass-combing lubber.

  Reginald’s message came in late that afternoon on the sub-lunar frequency. The submarine, he said, was bound for the west coast of England. That’s the one thing that Reginald Peach told us that wasn’t bubbleized into nonsense. He spoke for maybe fifteen seconds before the radio went dead, and that was that—no news of Uncle Hedge or Lala, just that the submarine was in a desperate hurry to get to somewhere called Morecambe Bay.

  That bit of information made sense enough to Captain Sodbury, who said that environs of Morecambe Bay and Lake Windermere were “Lemuel Wattsbury’s bailiwick.” Frosticos used the Morecambe Sands as a sort of hideout, he said, which made no earthly sense to us until he told us about the Morecambe Sands themselves—about how the tide in the bay goes very far out, and exposes vast sand flats. The local people thereabouts call that part of the coast Sandylands, which sounds fun, but is actually deadly. You can walk out onto the sand flats, or even drive across them as a shortcut to some place farther down the coast or across the bay, but only if you’re very careful or very stupid, because much of the sand is quicksand, and some of it is watery quicksand. All of it looks the same, though, and without a warning you find yourself sinking away into this watery sand, and in moments you’re gone forever and you’re living with the fishes.

  In olden days the Morecambe Sands swallowed up whole carriages, horses and passengers and all, as well as any number of people who ventured out onto the sands to try to rescue the people who were being drawn under. If you’re in a submarine, though, and if you have very carefully drawn charts, then sinking away out of sight in the watery sands mightn’t be a bad thing, because there’s nobody who would be foolish enough to try to find you. Captain Sodbury said that Dr. Frosticos had “gone to ground” there more than once, and was safe as a baby from anyone who might try to follow, and could make his way unseen into secret water-filled tunnels below the sands—tunnels that flowed out of Lake Windermere. And Lake Windermere, you’ll maybe remember, is the ancestral home of the Peach family. Now it was our destination, too.

  Chapter 14

  St. George and the Dragon

  That’s how we came to find ourselves, the three of us and Hasbro along with Mr. Lemuel Wattsbury, motoring north toward Bowness-on-Windermere, the Wattsbury bailiwick. The Mermaid was sitting snugly in the trunk of the car and the trunk tied shut with a rope. Her exhibit box had been crated up into an even larger box, which said “Wheelchair” on the outside and “Manchester Theatre Company” below that. That was Charlie Slimmerman’s idea—to disguise it.

  Mr. Wattsbury and his wife Susan keep the St. George Lodge. Perhaps you can figure out from the name of their hotel that they’re particular allies of Uncle Hedge and the Guild of St. George. But the Wattsburies aren’t officers in the Guild—not like Uncle Hedge is an officer in the Guild. As is true of Mr. Vegeley, the Wattsburies are…helper-outers, you might say. Or perhaps you wouldn’t. Mr. Wattsbury has a bald and very round head. Brendan said it looked like a pumpkin, but I don’t think that’s kind, and I told him so. Mr. Wattsbury is amazingly literary and has read nearly everything there is to read, most of it twice and some of it three times, just for good measure. He told us in strict confidence that armchairs agree with him, and that the more time he can spend in one, the better he feels. He also told us that he is most decidedly not a man of action, but had always wanted to be a “wit.” He said that when he tries to be a man of action, like Uncle Hedge, he generally turns out to be a halfwit, and so he avoids it.

  The St. George Lodge is ever so much nicer than American hotels, because it’s really just a big house, and the Wattsburies live there the year round and are always bustling up and down stairs and cooking and watching the television, and taking care of the guests, and going into Windermere to the market for that evening’s supper, and so you feel like company instead of like you’re just passing through on your way to someplace else.

  There’s a window in the front of the lodge that’s prodigiously old and is made of stained and leaded glass. On it there’s a picture of St. George slaying the dragon and rescuing the princess. Perry said it was just like Michael the archangel striking down Lucifer during the war in heaven, except that Michael would have had angel wings and also in heaven there wasn’t any princess, although I don’t quite see why there shouldn’t have been. Maybe she was home cooking and sewing. Mr. Wattsbury told us that when we set out to slay the dragon it’s pretty much always the same thing, princess or no princess. I’m certain he’s right, because it sounds so incredibly wise.

  Just inside the door of the St. George, there’s a cast iron Humpty Dumpty that’s immensely heavy and is meant as a sort of greeter. It’s amazingly like the Dumpty on the radio shed, and I told Mr. Wattsbury, so, and he said that he wasn’t a bit surprised. I asked him if his was a talisman, but he said it was an egg man, which was meant to be funny, I’m sure.

  Perry and Brendan and I took room 13, on the second floor, although we didn’t end up in that room just by chance or because it’s an auspicious number. We asked for that particular room after walking around the Lodge and having a good look at it and talking it over. We wanted a room that was strategic. One thing is that room 13 looks down onto the street, so that we could keep an eye out—for whom we didn’t know, although it paid off later. Also, there’s a tree outside the window with heavy branches that run out along the wall of the Lodge, past the far corner and shading the driveway. We discovered that if you open the window and step out onto the ledge, you can jump across onto one
of the limbs just as easy as kiss my hand. (I borrowed that phrase from Mr. Wattsbury.) But you can’t be afraid to really jump, because if you’re timid about it you might not carry all the way across to the limb, and instead you’d fall into the shrubbery below.

  Once you were out on the limb you could make your way to the driveway, and if there was a car there you could drop down onto the top of it and then climb down to the ground. Except when you did there might be someone inside the car, just getting ready to leave, but you didn’t know that, and you might give them a nasty surprise and leave smeary footprints on the car, which are the kind of things that make people mad, especially the man and his wife from Michigan who are staying at the lodge and who call you a “little hoser.” All of that not only makes you feel woeful, but it’s counter-productive to being secretive.

  So we found another route through the tree out to a low limb just above where the hedge meets the sidewalk. We could jump down easily from there, especially if we hung on and then dropped. From there we could cut straight across the street and into the pine woods on the farther side where there’s a picket fence and a trail that winds down to the lakeside. The faithful Hasbro, alas, lived downstairs in the television room, because he’s not the best stair climber and he’s no good at all at climbing trees or at hanging and dropping.

  The thing about Lake Windermere, which is in the north and west of England, is that in the summer it’s full of boats, and even in the winter, in good weather, there are people out sailing or rowing, although when the holiday season is over, and the weather grows dark and cold, the lake is a much more lonesome place than in the summer. When we arrived the summer season hadn’t started yet, and the weather was cool and rainy, not holiday weather at all. The lake is twelve miles from the top, at Ambleside, down to the bottom where it empties into the River Leven, which runs down into Morecambe Bay. There are great stretches of woods along the lake, some of them very old and dark, and here and there you’ll find an ancient farmhouse and sheep pastures crisscrossed with rock walls.