Nation - Пратчетт Терри Дэвид Джон - Страница 51

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Oh my word, thought Daphne as the picture of the dying brother faded in her mind, that is so sad. And it’s a story about something else, about sailing so far that you come back again…. Oh, I must go back into that cave!

“But the ghost girl is already banished,” Mau pointed out. “The wave banished her to us.” And so there had to be even more discussion.

Half an hour later matters were not much improved. The whole population of the island sat in a circle around Daphne, trying to be helpful. Trying to understand as the trial went on.

“You say they were bad trousermen,” said Mau.

“Yes. The worst kind,” said Daphne. “Murderers and bullies. You say you walk in the shadow of Locaha, but they walked in his loincloth when he has not bathed for many months.” That got a laugh. She’d probably said it wrong.

“And how did they walk in Locaha’s loincloth?” said Pilu, and got a slightly smaller laugh, to his obvious disappointment.

“That’s the wrong question,” said Mau. The laughter stopped. He went on: “You say you told them about the beer song, and they didn’t listen? It is not your fault the man was a fool, is it?”

“Yes, but you see, it was a trick,” Daphne said. “I knew they wouldn’t take any notice!”

“Why would they not listen?”

“Because… ” She hesitated, but there was no way of avoiding it. “I’d better tell you everything,” she said. “I want to tell you everything. You should know what happened on the Sweet Judy. You should know about the dolphins and the butterfly and the man in the canoe!”

And while the circle listened with open mouths, she told them what she had seen, what Cookie had told her, and what poor Captain Roberts had written in the ship’s log. She told them about First Mate Cox, and the mutiny and the man in the canoe…

… who had been brown and, like Mrs. Gurgle, looked as if he’d been made out of old leather. The Sweet Judy had caught up with him out among the islands, where he had been paddling a small canoe very industriously toward the horizon.

According to First Mate Cox, the man made a rude gesture. Foxlip and Polegrave backed him up on that, but in his log the captain, who had spoken to them all separately, made a point of noting that they weren’t clear about what the gesture was.

Cox had shot at the man, and had hit him. Foxlip fired too. Daphne remembered him laughing. Polegrave was the last to fire, and that was just like him. He was the kind of weasel who would kick a corpse, because it was unlikely to fight back. Polegrave giggled all the time and never took his eyes off Daphne when she was on deck. But he was probably smarter than Foxlip, although once you got past the swaggering and the bullying, there were probably lobsters who were smarter than Foxlip.

The two of them tended to hang around with Cox in a way that was hard to understand until you found out that there are fish that swim alongside a shark, or even in its mouth, where they are safe from other fish and never get eaten. Nobody knows what’s in it for the shark; maybe it doesn’t notice, or is saving them up for a secret midnight snack.

Of course, Cox was not like a shark. He was worse. Sharks are just eating machines. They don’t have a choice. First Mate Cox had a choice, every day, and had chosen to be First Mate Cox. And that was a strange choice, because if evil was a disease, then First Mate Cox would have been in an isolation ward on a bleak island somewhere. And even then, bunnies nibbling at the seaweed would start to fight one another. Cox was, in fact, contagious. Where his shadow fell, old friendships snapped and little wars broke out, milk soured, weevils fled from every stale ship’s biscuit and rats queued up to jump into the sea. At least, that was how Cookie had put it, although he was given to mild exaggeration.

And Cox grinned. It wasn’t the nasty, itchy little grin of Polegrave, which made you want to wash your hands after seeing it. It was the grin of a man who is happy in his work.

He’d come on board at Port Advent, after five of the crew didn’t come back from shore leave. That often happened, the cook told Daphne. A captain who strictly forbade card games, whistling, alcohol, and swearing found crew hard to keep at any price. It was a terrible thing, said Cookie, to see religion get such a hold on a decent soul. But because Roberts was a decent soul, and a good captain, a lot of the crew stayed with him voyage after voyage, even though stopping sailors from swearing was a terrible thing to do (they got around it by sticking an old barrel of water right down in the scuppers and swearing into it when it all got too much; try as she might, Daphne couldn’t make out all the words, but at the end of a difficult day the water in the barrel was hot enough to wash with).

Everyone knew about Cox. You didn’t hire First Mate Cox. He turned up. If you didn’t need a first mate because you already had one, then the one you had was suddenly very keen indeed on being a second mate once again, yes indeed, much obliged.

And if you were an innocent man, you accepted all the glowing references of the other captains without wondering why they would be so happy to see Cox on someone else’s ship. But Cookie said that in his opinion Roberts knew all about Cox and had been filled with missionary zeal at the chance to save such a big ripe sinner from the Pit of Damnation.

And maybe Cox, when he found himself working for a captain who held compulsory prayer meetings three times a day, was filled with a different kind of zeal, which would have been black with flames around the edges. Evil likes company, Cookie said.

Amazingly, Cox went to the services willingly and joined in and paid attention. Those who knew about him walked carefully. Cox ate and drank mischief, and if you couldn’t work out what he was up to, then it was the really dark stuff.

When he had nothing else to do, Cox shot at things. Birds, flying fish, monkeys, anything. One day a large blue butterfly, blown from one of the islands, landed on the deck. Cox shot it so neatly that there were just two wings left, and then he gave Daphne a wink, as if he’d done something clever. She’d had a cousin like that — Botney was his name — who never left a frog unsquashed, a kitten unkicked, or a spider unflattened. In the end, she’d accidentally broken two of his fingers under the nursery rocking horse, told him she’d put wasps down his trousers next time if he didn’t mend his ways, and then burst into tears when people came running. You didn’t come from a family of ancient fighters like hers without at least a pinch of ruthlessness.

Sadly, there had been no one there to set Cox’s feet on the right path and his fingers in plaster. But, some of the crew whispered, it seemed that he’d changed. He still shot at things, but he was always in the front row for the services, watching old Roberts like a botanist watching a rare beetle. It was as if Cox was fascinated by the captain.

As for Captain Roberts — he might have wanted to save Cox’s soul from the Fires of Perdition, but he hated the man himself and didn’t mind showing it. This did not sit well with Cox, but shooting captains always caused a bit too much of a stir, so, Cookie said, he must have decided to beat the captain on the man’s own ground, or water, destroying him from the inside.

Cox shot things because they were alive, but to him that was just killing time. He had greater ambitions for the captain. He wanted to shoot him in the faith.

It began with Cox sitting up straight during the prayer meetings and shouting “Halleluja” or “Amen” every time the captain finished a sentence, and clapping loudly. Or he’d ask puzzled questions like “What did they feed the lions and tigers with in the Ark, sir?” and “Where did all the water go?” Then there was the day when he asked Cookie to try to make a meal for the whole crew out of five loaves and two fishes. Then when the captain said the story was not meant to be taken literally, Cox gave him a smart salute and said: “Then what is, Cap’n?”

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