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The Boy in the Boat

The Roebuck was three days out of Fortaventura, sailing west. It had taken a beating in the Bay of Biscay and had done some running repairs in the Canaries before heading to the Bahamas with a hold full of supplies for the colonists in the West Indies.

Davy Longman was in his favourite place, perched up high in the crow’s nest, searching the wide horizon. The captain had told him to keep a special lookout for ships, because it was well known that pirates infested these waters.

Davy was often given this job, his young eyes being sharper than most. He would look back and forth across the ocean, and only when he caught sight of something he thought of interest did he raise the telescope.

And so it was this time, when Davy’s keen eyes spied a shape on the waves some two miles ahead. He did not call out, because even at that distance he could tell it was not a pirate ship.

With the telescope to his eyes he could see that the object was a small boat, floating alone in the wide ocean, and Davy quickly scanned the horizon for sign of ship or land or possibly wreckage that might explain where it had come from, but there was only a great expanse of water and naught else.

The ocean was in a mellow mood, but even so the boat rose and fell dramatically, disappearing from view every few seconds behind the waves. It was not for a little while that Davy realised there was anyone aboard, and when he did, he could scarcely believe what the telescope revealed. He clambered down the rigging as fast as he was able.

‘It’s a boy, Captain,’ said Davy when he reached the quarterdeck all breathless. ‘There’s a small boy in a boat up ahead.’

Sure enough, as the Roebuck approached and manoeuvred itself alongside the little boat, there was the lad, looking up at Davy and the rest of the crew, barely eight years old.

On the captain’s orders, men climbed down the hull and brought the boy aboard, then fixed a line to his boat and hauled that aboard likewise. The boy said nothing when questioned and the captain hoped that they might garner some clue from the boat as to where he had come from.

But the boat was such an odd-looking craft – too small to be a lifeboat or launch. It looked more suited to a boating lake than the ocean, and on its prow on either side, instead of a name, there was a curious painting of an eye.

As for the boy himself, never had Davy seen a more serious-looking lad; though perhaps that was hardly surprising given his situation and having been lost at sea alone at such a tender age. He had a mop of blond hair like ripe wheat and a face so grave it would melt the heart of even the coldest customs man. Davy wondered that the boy had not burst into tears in fear or relief, or in memory of whatever terrible predicament had resulted in him being cast adrift upon the ocean.

The captain, who was a kind and gentle fellow, attempted again to ask the boy what had happened, but he made no reply, looking in turn from one crew member to the other with his big glistening eyes.

The first mate wondered aloud if the boy was perhaps not English and did not understand the captain’s question, and so the captain began again in French, but with a similar lack of response.

As everyone knows, a ship’s crew is like an island of all nations and the Roebuck was no exception. They had a Spaniard, who spoke his own language and a little Portuguese, an Irishman and a Pole. When their efforts failed the captain even let the cabin boy try in what little he could remember of his own mother-tongue from before he was sold on the slaving coast of Africa. But still there was no response.

Davy, along with everyone aboard, felt sure that this poor lad must be the sole survivor of some devastating wreck or storm-forced sinking and that the circumstances of this event must have been so traumatic that the boy remained in shock. Whatever the cause, the effect of this fragile little survivor on the crew was remarkable.

There were men aboard the Roebuck who would think nothing of stabbing a fellow crewman in the liver with a marlinspike if they were crossed, but Davy marvelled at how these same seasoned mariners now doted on this little boy as though he were their own child, so eager were they to make him smile; but to no avail.

Eventually the captain bade the men go back to their work and let the boy have some space to settle himself, and said that the poor lad might speak when he recovered from his shock. The boy looked from face to face with the same mournful expression as the crew reluctantly backed away and then he wandered over towards the ship’s carpenter.

Ludlow was a great bear of a man, his face half hidden by a wild black beard, who seemed to prefer the company of his tools to other men and saved all his affections for wood.

But just as with the rest of the crew, the carpenter’s weathered and seasoned heart was mellowed by the sight of the young passenger and he gladly suffered him to come and watch him work – something that would have earned Davy or any of the other men a grunted curse.

Ludlow was repairing a section of the gunwales. Davy noticed that the boy seemed to study the actions of the carpenter with intense concentration. His eyes seemed to glow with a curious fascination at every movement of the man’s hands, until something extraordinary happened: the boy smiled.

The carpenter was using a chisel to make a mortis joint when he glanced up and saw the boy’s face, and he was entranced by this change of expression; it was like the sun coming out on an overcast day. His lapse in concentration had painful consequences, however; the blade skittered across the surface of the wood and struck his hand, gouging into the flesh at the base of his thumb.

Not surprisingly, Ludlow swore profusely, throwing down the chisel and clutching his torn and bleeding hand. He hissed and winced with pain and cursed his own stupidity.

There was nothing remarkable in this. All carpenters are wont to injure themselves from time to time and Ludlow’s reaction was that of any man in similar circumstances. No, the remarkable thing – the thing that caused Davy and every man among the crew to cease their own work and stare in the carpenter’s direction – was not his behaviour at all. The remarkable thing was the reaction of the boy.

For the lad stood before the carpenter, his head thrown back in laughter as if he were watching a Punch and Judy show. He had not once opened his mouth since coming aboard, and now his boyish laughter rang round the ship like a bell.

It was so clear, so joyful, it sounded as though a host of angels had come among them. Davy felt it seep into his whole body until his very soul vibrated to its song. After a few seconds every man aboard was laughing too, from the hold to the topsails.

The carpenter frowned both at the boy and then the crew for laughing at his misfortune, but soon even he could not resist the seductive quality of that sound. Even as the blood dripped from Ludlow’s hand, he shook his head and laughed along with everyone else.

Davy was astonished to see the rough-tempered carpenter taking the accident and the boy’s amusement in such good sport, and it seemed to all the crew that this boy was some joyous spirit, gifted to them by God, and every man felt his heart grow lighter for his being there.

It fell to Davy to look after the lad, since he was – until the boy’s unexpected arrival – the youngest of the sailors. The captain bade him see to his welfare and make sure that he came to no harm.

It was not a job that Davy bore well, as it was not in his nature to nursemaid a small child, however much that child delighted the crew. But Davy did as he was told, as all men must aboard a ship at sea.

Wherever the lad went, Davy saw that he was always greeted by a grin or a chuckle and a ruffle of the hair, and this attention was itself rewarded by a smile: his remarkable, heart-warming smile. The very sun appeared to shine brighter when he smiled and everyone within view had no choice but to stop work and bask in its radiant glow.

Had the boy not been so well loved, the captain would surely have been less forgiving of the disruption he caused wherever he went. Men who were normally steadfast in their work now kept losing their concentration and falling prey to all manner of silly accidents, tripping and blundering around like clowns at a May fair.

But whatever happened and however bruised the heads of those who fell, curses would quickly turn to merriment as the boy opened his mouth and laughed his wind-chime laugh, as if all this was being done for his particular pleasure.

Only the ship’s carpenter seemed less than bewitched by the boy’s presence, though he laughed as all the rest did. But Davy could see that however much Ludlow held his belly and slapped his thigh, he did not laugh with his eyes. And the boy saw it too.

This lack of enthusiasm did not in any way deter the lad from seeking out the carpenter’s company; far from it. The boy seemed drawn to the man despite the latter’s unease. And for his part, Ludlow seemed to become distracted, and in his distraction he became clumsy.

One day, as Davy and his charge walked by, the carpenter was sawing a length of wood. Davy saw beads of perspiration appear on Ludlow’s forehead as they approached, as if he were straining to keep his mind fixed on the job in hand, and then the relief when the boy chose to walk by without watching him.

But as Davy followed the boy there was a cry of pain from the carpenter. He turned to find Ludlow clutching his left hand and Davy could see that he must have struck it with the saw. He was moaning and gibbering and fell to his knees, fumbling in the sawdust for something.

Davy was about to take a step towards him when Ludlow picked the thing up. It was his thumb; he had sawn straight through his hand and severed the thumb entirely. As Davy took this in and moved to help the poor wretch, with others of the nearby crew, the boy’s laughter suddenly rang out once more.

Every one of them turned in shock towards him. Surely he could not be laughing at a man hacking his own thumb off; young as he was, he should know better than that. Though Davy was charged with the boy’s safety, he now strode towards him, fists clenched, not knowing what he intended, save that he wanted to stop that laugh.

And yet Davy had taken not more than two steps when a crewman to his right erupted in laughter. Then another began behind him, and another. Soon Davy could see that every man was trying to stop himself from laughing, with various degrees of success. And Davy was no better: the muscles in his face were pulling back into a grin, and a chuckle was fluttering in his throat like a trapped bird. He seemed to have no choice but to laugh himself.

Worst of all, though, was the sound of the carpenter on his knees, laughing uncontrollably through the pain as he stared in grinning, wide-eyed horror at his severed thumb.

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Davy and the whole crew of the Roebuck now shared the unease of the poor carpenter. Ludlow had become a shadowy figure, muttering to himself and nursing his bandaged hand, which he would let no one look at. The boy who had seemed such a sweet and fragile ray of sunshine in their lives now revealed himself as some kind of cruel curse.

A Kentish man called Smollet fell overboard, his leg tangled in a rope that had been tied off to the mizzenmast. The rope stopped his fall three feet short of the sea, but brought him to a halt with a wrench that snapped his leg and then slammed him against the hull again and again until he was hauled on deck, so broken he could not be helped. He died in the night.

Then the Irishman named Connolly, whose catlike grace on the rigging was the envy of every sailor who saw him, fell while climbing the main channels and broke his neck on one of the ratlines, hanging there like a fly in a web while the boy laughed his golden laugh.

There were times when Davy saw crewmen turn as if they intended to strike the little lad, but as soon as they saw his round angelic face and that sweet laugh tickled their ears, they could no more have harmed him than harmed their own babe.

At length Davy saw the captain in discussion with some of the crew, and when the boy was otherwise occupied the captain told Davy that they must talk without fear of the boy’s interruption or without influence from the boy’s charm.

He instructed Davy to lead the lad to his cabin, show him inside and then shut the door behind him. He handed over a key with a very serious expression, telling Davy to lock the boy in and join the others on deck.

Davy did as the captain ordered, and the boy seemed oblivious to any trick, walking into the captain’s cabin without a care in the world and allowing himself to be locked inside without complaint. Davy expected to hear the boy at least try the door, but he did nothing. Davy joined his fellows gathered about the captain, who called for them to speak freely and to voice whatever views they had about the boy.

‘He needs killing,’ came the immediate reply from one of the older crew. ‘He needs killing, mark my words.’

‘You can’t kill a little boy for laughing when he ought not,’ said the captain. ‘We’re not heathens!’

‘It ain’t the laughing and you knows it, with all due respect, sir,’ said the man, whose name was Beaker. ‘He don’t just laugh. It’s him what’s making those things happen. He’s a devil and he needs killing.’

And as he said those words Davy knew there was truth in them, even though he might never have had the strength to admit such a thought to another. He could see that the others knew it too.

‘He ain’t no more a natural boy than I’m the Virgin Mary,’ said Beaker. ‘Killing him wouldn’t be no crime. Besides, who knows he’s here but us?’ He slapped his hand against the mast. ‘I say we kill him and be done.’

Many of the crew shouted their agreement.

‘I’m in charge here!’ said the captain. ‘I say what happens aboard my ship.’

‘Aye, sir,’ said Beaker gruffly. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir.’

The captain took a deep breath before speaking again, his voice now soft and laced with sadness.

‘If I agreed to this course of action, then we would all have to agree. We would all be murderers, whoever did the deed. Are you game for such a plan?’

‘Aye,’ their voices echoed around the deck after a pause.

The captain swallowed dryly.

‘I suppose it should be me who does the killing, then,’ said the captain. ‘I cannot ask a man to put such a stain on their immortal soul.’

‘I’ll do it, sir,’ said Beaker. ‘’Twas my idea. You’re a good man, sir, and you ain’t got a killer’s heart. It won’t be my first time in that regard and if I’m going to hell already, which I more than likely am, this ain’t going to make no difference.’

The captain nodded grimly, unable to look Beaker in the eye. ‘Very well,’ he said, handing him the key. ‘But make it swift.’

‘Aye, Captain,’ said Beaker, already starting towards the door to the cabin.

Beaker unlocked the cabin and Davy could see that the boy was standing in the doorway as if he were waiting for him, and he made no attempt to resist as Beaker grabbed him and pulled him out on to the deck.

The sailors, who had so readily agreed to this course, now seemed rather more reluctant to see the deed done and they shuffled and looked out to sea or at their boots or up into the sails – anywhere but at that boy.

Beaker picked up a length of rope and with practised ease he quickly formed a bowline and tested it a couple of times before turning back towards the boy, who looked at him with fascination.

Beaker took one glance at his crewmates, but it was all they could do to meet his gaze. He picked up the loop and licked his dry lips. But instead of fear, Davy saw that the boy smiled as the noose was placed around his neck.

‘Beaker!’ cried a man beside Davy. ‘Look out!’

One of the big wooden blocks from the main rigging swung through the air on the end of a long rope with enough speed and weight to demolish a wall. Beaker took a step back and grinned as it skimmed past.

But the grin was short-lived, for another block as weighty as the first struck him a glancing blow to the back of the head, spinning him round so that the first block on its return hit him full force in the face, sending him sprawling across the deck, his head cracked open like an egg.

The boy began to laugh his sparkling, magical laugh, and so did Davy and the rest of the crew, even as they stared in horror at Beaker’s shattered face, almost unrecognisable as the man who moments before had stood before them. Almost unrecognisable as any man.

And as they laughed and gasped at the effort of laughing despite the fear and anger and dread they all felt, the ship suddenly lurched and there was a terrible rending and cracking of timbers, and they knew straightway they had struck some hidden reef or rocks.

The boy seemed untroubled by this state of affairs as the ship tilted and groaned and took on water, and the crew in turn laughed like fools alongside him.

The mainstay snapped like a piece of thread and the topmast broke free, crashing to the deck to kill four men outright. Those that were left laughed on, though tears ran down their cheeks with the effort of trying not to.

The very ship itself seemed to come alive with ropes coiling themselves round necks and splintered wood jabbing and thrusting through bodies like skewers through meat. The whole fabric of the ship fell down around them, crippling many – Davy included – as it did so; collapsing into the boiling sea and dragging the crew with it.

Davy managed to grab a passing spar and hang on with his one good arm, the cold sea numbing the pain of his broken legs. As his grip started to fail and his face began to slide under the water, he became aware of a sound nearby and he turned his head to see that a boat had survived the wreckage. There was someone aboard. Hope suddenly welling up in his heart, Davy called to the boat, but his excitement was short-lived.

The boat he had seen was the strange craft in which they had found the boy, and it was the boy’s face that looked at him now. The boy smiled briefly before his face returned to the same melancholy expression he had worn when the Roebuck had picked him up.

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The last thing Davy saw as he lost his grip and slid beneath the surface of the sea was the boy in his boat, drifting away from the flotsam of the Roebuck, away into the wide expanse of ocean.

*

A branch swung against a window pane and rattled its twigs across the glass, drumming like impatient skeletal fingers, and Cathy and I both started at the noise. Thackeray leaned back and grinned, but his face suddenly changed to one of sadness.

‘Ah, drowning,’ he said with a sigh. ‘That’s a poor death, let me tell you.’

He said these last words with such feeling that I softened a little in my view of him and wondered if he had lost a friend to that fate. The storyteller poured himself another drink and stared at me with a strange penetrating expression that made me shift uneasily in my chair. It infuriated me that this slight youth should make me feel so boyish and immature.

‘The night is drawing on,’ he said, ‘and still there is no sign of your father. I hope no misfortune has befallen him.’

He said this in such an odd way that no man who heard it could have said he wished my father ill, nor yet could they have said that our guest cared very deeply about his well-being.

‘You love your father?’ Thackeray said.

‘Of course!’ I replied. ‘What child does not love their father?’

‘The frightened child,’ he answered. ‘The child of a cruel and vicious father.’

I got angrily to my feet, but Thackeray paid no heed and looked at his drink, not at me.

‘You have a nerve to come here and be a guest in our house and insult our father!’ I shouted.

‘I have never met your father, Ethan,’ said Thackeray. ‘You asked if a child were bound to love its father and I answered. If you see an image of yourself in the answer, don’t blame me.’

‘I saw no such thing,’ I said. Cathy looked at me with tear-filled eyes.

‘Then all is well,’ said Thackeray.

But I did not like his questions or the way he reminded us about our father’s absence, and I wished dearly that I had never let him in, for I knew I would have the devil of a job to get him out. Thackeray seemed to read my mind.

‘Perhaps it is time I was on my way,’ he said, finishing his drink.

‘No,’ said Cathy. ‘The storm is still fierce. We would not hear of it, would we, Ethan?’

‘Of course not,’ I said with little enthusiasm.

Indeed it would have seemed a sin to send someone out into that wild night – even someone as strangely unsettling as Thackeray.

‘Do you know any more tales, Mr Thackeray?’ said Cathy.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I have tales aplenty. What kind of story takes your fancy?’

‘Do you have any about sea monsters?’ said Cathy eagerly, oblivious to the danger I felt emanated from this stranger.

‘Sea monsters, is it?’ He put his fingertips to his forehead, the tattooed eye on the back of his hand standing in disconcertingly for his hidden eye. ‘Let me see now.’ I could have sworn here that both real and tattooed eye blinked. ‘Well. I do not have a tale about a sea-serpent or a kraken or that sort of thing, but I do have a tale about a fearsome kind of creature that did rise up from the sea and wreak havoc aboard a sailing ship.’

‘Was it a giant squid?’ said Cathy.

Thackeray shook his head and smiled.

‘Not exactly. It’s a story about a snail.’

‘A snail?’ I said with a raised eyebrow. Cathy looked a little crestfallen and I allowed myself a smirk of satisfaction.

‘Well – not just one snail, of course,’ he said. ‘And not just any snail. But let me tell the story . . .’