Nation

CHAPTER 11 Crimes and Punishments

THE CRACK OF THE PISTOL echoed around the mountain. It was even louder in Daphne’s head. Ataba went over backward, like a falling tree.

Only Milo and Pilu know what’s just happened, she thought. No one else here has even seen a gun before. There was a loud noise and the old man fell over. I might just be able to stop everyone from being killed. Mau was crouched over the body of Ataba, halfway toward getting up. She waved at him frantically to stay down.

Then Foxlip committed suicide. He didn’t know it at the time, but that’s how it started.

He pulled out his other pistol and growled, “Tell ’em not to move. First one who does, he’s a dead darkie. You tell ’em that right now!”

She stepped forward with her hands up. “I know these men! They’re Foxlip and Polegrave! They were crew on the Sweet Judy. They kill people! They shot Mister Wainsly and Mister Plummer! They laughed about it! They — Pilu, tell them what a gun is!”

“They are bad men!” said Milo.

“Yes! They are! And they’ve got more pistols. Look! Stuck in their belts!”

“You mean the spark-makers?” said Mau, still crouched. She could see his muscles, wound up to spring.

Oh dear, thought Daphne, what a time to have a good memory….

“There’s no time to explain. They can point them at you and kill you better than any spear. And they will kill you, do you understand? And they probably won’t kill me. I’d be worth too much. Keep away. This is between… trouser-people!”

“But you pointed one at me — ”

“There’s no time to explain!” hissed Daphne.

“You’re talking a good deal too much, missie,” said Foxlip. And just behind Daphne, Polegrave sniggered. She felt the barrel of a pistol pressed into the small of her back.

“Saw a feller shot inna spine once, miss,” the man whispered. “It stuck there, indeed it did. Funny thing was, he started dancin’, right there, legs goin’ like mad and him screaming. Didn’t fall over for ten minutes. Amazin’ thing, nature.”

“Stow that!” said Foxlip, watching the clearing nervously. The islanders had mostly slid away into the bushes, but those who remained did not look too happy. “What did that silly ol’ devil want to get hisself shot for? Now they’re all worked up!”

“Pretty raggedly lot, though,” said Polegrave. “We could hang on ’til the others come — ”

“I told you to shut up!”

They don’t know what to do now, Daphne thought. They are stupid and scared. The trouble is, they are stupid and scared with guns. And there’s others coming. Imo made us smart, Mau said. Am I smarter than a stupid man with a gun? Yes, I think I am.

“Gentlemen,” she said, “why don’t we deal with this like civilized people?”

“Are you having a little laugh, your majesty?” said Foxlip.

“Get me to Port Mercia, and my father will give you gold and a pardon. Who’s going to give you a better offer this day? Look at this from a mathematical point of view. You’ve got guns, yes, but how long can you stay awake? There’s a lot more” — she forced the word out — “darkies than you. Even if one man stays awake, he’s only got two shots before his throat is cut. Of course, they might not start with the throat since they are, as you point out, savages and not as civilized as you. You must have a boat here. You don’t dare stay.”

“But you’re our hostage,” said Polegrave.

“You might be mine. I just have to scream. You shouldn’t have shot the priest.”

“That old man was a priest?” said Polegrave, looking panicky. “It’s bad luck to kill a priest!”

“Not heathen ones,” said Foxlip, “and the bad luck was all his, eh?”

“But they got these spells; they can shrink your head —!”

“When did they shrink yours?” said Foxlip. “Don’t be such a damn fool! As for you, princess, you’re coming with us.”

Princess, she thought. That was just like the mutineers. They called her baby names all the time. She hated it. It made her flesh crawl. It was probably meant to.

“No, Mr. Foxlip, I’m not a princess,” she said carefully, “but you’re coming with me all the same. Keep close.”

“And have you lead us into a trap?”

“It’s near sunset. Do you want to be up here in the dark?” She held out a hand and added, “And the rain, too.” A squall had blown in, and the first drops began to fall. “The people here can see in the dark,” she went on. “And they can move as silently as the wind. Their knives are so sharp that they can cut a man’s — ”

“Why’s it happening like this?” Polegrave demanded of Foxlip. “I thought you were smart! You said we’d get the best pickings. You told me — ”

“And now I’m telling you to shut up.” Foxlip turned to Daphne. “All right, my lady, I’m not falling for that malarkey. We’ll take you off this rock at first light. Might even get you as far as dear old dad. But there’d better be gold at the end of it, or else. No tricks, right?”

“Yeah, we got four loaded pistols, missie,” said Polegrave, waving one at her, “and they’ll stop anything, you hear?”

“They won’t stop the fifth man, Mr. Polegrave.”

She rejoiced in the change in his expression as she turned to Foxlip. “Tricks? From me? No. I want to get home. I don’t know any tricks.”

“Swear on your mother’s life,” said Foxlip.

“What?”

“You always were a stuck-up kid on the Judy. Swear it, like I said. Then I might even believe yer.”

Does he know about my mother? Daphne wondered, calm thoughts floating in a sea of fury. I think poor Captain Roberts did, and I told Cookie, but not even Cookie would gossip about that sort of thing to the likes of Foxlip. But no one is entitled to ask for an oath like that!

Foxlip growled. Daphne had been silent too long for his liking.

“Cat got your tongue?” he said.

“No. But it is an important swear. I had to think about it. I promise I won’t try to run away, I won’t tell you any lies, and I won’t try to deceive you. Is that what you want?”

“And you swear that on your mother’s life?” Foxlip insisted.

“Yes, I do.”

“That’s very handsome of you,” said Foxlip. “Don’t you think so, Mr. Polegrave?”

But Polegrave was watching the dripping forest on either side of the path. “There’s things in there,” he moaned. “There’s stuff creepin’ about!”

“Lions and tigers and elephants, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Foxlip cheerfully. He raised his voice. “But there’s a hair trigger on this pistol, so if I even think I hear a sound out of place, missie will be put to considerable embarrassment. One footfall and she’s ready for the boneyard!”

As soon as Daphne and the two trousermen had rounded a bend in the track and were out of sight, Mau stepped forward.

“We could rush them. The rain’s on our side,” Pilu whispered.

“You heard the big one. I can’t risk her being killed. She saved my life. Twice.”

“I thought you saved her life.”

“Yes, but the first time I saved her life, I saved mine, too. Do you understand? If she hadn’t been here, I’d have held the biggest rock I could find and gone into the dark current. One person is nothing. Two people are a nation.”

Pilu’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “What are three people?”

“A bigger nation. Let’s catch up to them… carefully.”

And she saved me from Locaha a second time, he thought as they set off again, silent as ghosts in the rain. He’d woken up, his mind full of silver fishes, and the old woman had told him. He’d been running to the white city under the sea, and then Daphne had been there, pulling him up faster than Locaha could swim. Even the old woman had been impressed.

The ghost girl had a plan, and she couldn’t tell him what it was. All they could do, with their sticks and spears, was follow her —

No, they didn’t have to follow her. He knew where she was going. He stared at her, pale in the dusk, as she led the men down the sloping path to the Place.

Who would be in here now? Daphne wondered. She’d seen Mrs. Gurgle up at the cave, because everyone who could walk had been up there. There were some sick people in the far huts, though. She would have to be careful.

She lit some dry grass from the fire outside the hut and cautiously transferred the flame to one of the Judy’s lamps. She did it very carefully, thinking about each movement, because she did not want to think about what she would be doing next. She had to keep herself in two parts. Even so, her hand shook, but a girl had a right to tremble a bit when two men were pointing guns at her.

“Do sit down,” she said. “The mats are not as bad as the ground, at least.”

“Much obliged,” said Polegrave, looking around the hut.

It almost broke her heart. Once upon a time some woman had taught the man his manners, but to thank her he’d grown up to be a weasel, thief, and murderer. And now, when he was worried and ill at ease, an actual bit of politeness drifted up from the depths, like a pure clear bubble from a swamp. It wasn’t going to make things any easier.

Foxlip just grunted, and sat down with his back to the inner wall, which was solid rock.

“This is a trap, right?” he said.

“No. You asked me to swear on my mother’s life,” said Daphne coldly, and thought: And that was a sin. Even if you have no god at all, that was a sin. Some things are a sin all by themselves. And I’m going to murder you, and that is a mortal sin, too. But it won’t look like murder.

She said: “Would you like some beer?”

“Beer?” said Foxlip. “You mean real beer?”

“Well, it’s like beer. It’s the Demon Drink, anyway. I’ve always got some freshly made.”

“You make it? But you’re a nob!” said Polegrave.

“Perhaps I make ‘nobby’ beer,” said Daphne. “Sometimes you have to do what needs doing. Do you want some?”

“She’ll poison us!” said Polegrave. “It’s all a trick!”

“We’ll have some beer, princess,” said Foxlip, “but we’ll watch you drink it first. ’Cause we were not born yesterday.” He gave her an unpleasant wink, full of guile and mischief and with no humor in it at all.

“Yeah, you look after us, missie, an’ we’ll look after you when Cox’s cannibal chums come for a picnic!” said Polegrave.

She heard Foxlip hissing at him for this as she stepped outside, but she’d never for one minute believed that they intended to “rescue” her. And Cox had found the Raiders, had he? Who should she feel sorry for?

She went next door to the beer hut and took three bubbling shells of beer off the shelf, taking care to brush all the dead flies off.

What I am about to do won’t be murder, she told herself. Murder is a sin. It won’t be murder.

Foxlip would make sure she drank some beer first, to prove it wasn’t poisoned, and up until now she had never drunk much, only a tiny amount when she had been experimenting with a new recipe.

Just one drop of beer would turn you into a madman, her grandmother had said. It made you defile yourself and neglect your children and break up families, among quite a lot of other things. But this was her beer, after all. It hadn’t been made in a factory somewhere, with who knew what in it. It was just made of good, honest… poison.

She came back balancing three wide, shallow clay bowls that she put down on the floor between the mats.

“Well now, you’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts,” said Foxlip in his disgustingly unfriendly friendly way, “but I’ll tell you what, missie, you’ll mix the beer up so’s we all get the same, right?”

Daphne shrugged, and did as he said, with both men watching closely.

“Looks like horse piss,” said Polegrave.

“Well, horse piss ain’t too bad,” said Foxlip. He picked up the bowl in front of him, looked at the one in front of Daphne, hesitated for a moment, and then grinned his unpleasant grin.

“I reckon you’re too smart to put poison in your bowl and expect me to be daft enough to swap them over,” he said. “Drink up, princess!”

“Yeah, down the little red lane!” said Polegrave. There it was again, another tiny arrow into her heart. Her own mother had said that to her when she wouldn’t eat her broccoli. The memory stung.

“The same beer is in every bowl. You made me swear,” she said.

“I said drink up!”

Daphne spat into her bowl and began to sing the beer song — the island version, not her own. “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” just wouldn’t work now.

So she sang the Song of the Four Brothers, and because most of her mind was taken up with that, a smaller part took the opportunity to remind her: Air is the planet Jupiter, which we believe to be made of gases. Isn’t that a coincidence! And she faltered a moment before recovering herself, because some tiny part of her mind was worrying her with what she was about to do.

There was a stunned silence when she finished, and then Foxlip said, “What the hell was that all about? You gobbed in your drink!”

Daphne tipped up the bowl and took a good swig. It was a little more nutty than usual. She paused to feel it bubbling down, and saw them still staring.

“You have to spit in the bowl and then sing the beer song.” She burped and put a hand over her mouth. “Pardon me. I can teach it to you. Or you can just hum along. Please? It is an ancient custom — ”

“I’m not singing no pagan mumbo jumbo!” said Foxlip, and he snatched up his bowl and took a long swig, while Daphne tried not to scream.

Polegrave hadn’t touched his beer. He was still suspicious! His beady little eyes flicked from his fellow mutineer to Daphne and back again.

Foxlip put down his bowl and belched. “Well, it’s a long time since — ”

Silence exploded. Polegrave reached for his pistols, but Daphne was already moving. Her bowl hit him on the nose, with a crunch. The man screamed and went over backward, and Daphne snatched his pistols from the floor.

She tried to think and not think at the same time.

Don’t think about the man you just killed. [It was an execution!]

Think about the man you may have to kill. [But I can’t prove he’s a murderer! He didn’t kill Ataba!]

She fumbled with a pistol as Polegrave, spitting blood, tried to get up. The gun was heavier than it looked and she choked back a curse, courtesy of the Sweet Judy’s Great Barrel of Swearing, as clumsy fingers disobeyed her.

Finally she pulled the hammer back, just as Captain Roberts had taught her. It clicked twice, what Cookie called the two-pound noise. When she had asked him why, he’d said, “Because when a man hears that in the dark, he loses two pounds of… weight, quickly!”

It certainly made Polegrave go very quiet.

“I will fire,” she lied. “Don’t move. Good. Now, listen to me. I want you to go away. You didn’t kill anyone here. Go away. Right away. If I see you again, I will — well, you will regret it. I’m letting you go because you had a mother.

Someone actually loved you once, and tried to teach you manners. You won’t understand that at all. Now get up, and get out. Get out! Get out and run far away! Quickly now!”

Trying to run and crouch at the same time, holding his hand over his ruined nose, dribbling strings of snot and blood, and certainly not looking back, Polegrave scuttled into the sunset like a crab running for the safety of the surf.

Daphne sat down, still holding the pistol in front of her, and waited until the hut stopped spinning.

She looked at the silent Foxlip, who hadn’t moved at all.

“Why did you have to be so — so stupid?” she said, prodding him with the pistol. “Why did you kill an old man who was shaking a stick at you? You shoot at people without a thought and you call them savages! Why are you so stupid as to think I was stupid? Why didn’t you listen to me? I told you we sing the beer song. Would it have hurt to hum along? But no, you knew better, because they are savages! And now you are dead, with a stupid little smile on your stupid face! You needn’t have died, but you didn’t listen. Well, you’ve got just enough time to listen now, Mr. Stupid! The thing is, the beer is made from a very poisonous plant. It paralyzes you, all at once. But there’s some chemical in human spit, you see, and if you spit into the beer and then sing the beer song, it turns the poison into something harmless with a lovely nutty flavor that, incidentally, I have improved very considerably, everyone says. It takes a little less than five minutes to make the beer safe, which is just long enough to sing the official beer song, but “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” sung about sixteen times also works, you see, because it’s not the song that matters, you see, it’s the waiting. I worked that out using scientific thinkink” — she burped — “sorry, I mean thinking.”

She stopped to throw up the beer and then, by the feel of it, to throw up everything she’d eaten in the last year. “And it could have been such a lovely evening,” she said. “Do you know what this island is? Have you any idea what this island is? Of course you don’t, because you’re so stupid! And dead! And I’m a murderer!”

She burst into tears, which were large and sticky, and began to argue with herself.

“Look, they were mutineers! If they were in a court of law, they’d be hung!”

[Hanged, not hung. But that’s the point of having courts. It’s to stop people murdering other people just because they think they deserve it. There’s a judge and jury, and if they were found guilty, they would be hanged by the hangman, neatly and properly. He’d have his breakfast first, very calmly, and perhaps say a prayer. He would hang them calmly and without anger, because at that moment he would be the Law. That’s how it works.]

“But everyone saw him shoot Ataba!”

[Correct. So everyone should have decided what to do.]

“How could they? They didn’t know what I know! And you know what they’re like! They had four pistols between them! If I hadn’t got them out of the way, they’d have shot other people! They were talking about taking over the island!”

[Yes. What you did was murder, even so.]

“What about the hangman? Doesn’t he do murder, then?”

[No, because enough people say it isn’t. That’s what a courtroom is for. It’s where the law happens.]

“And that makes it right? Didn’t God say ‘Thou shalt not kill’?”

[Yes. But after that it got complicated.]

There was movement in the doorway, and her hand raised the pistol. Then her brain lowered it.

“Good,” said Mau. “I do not want to be shot a second time. Remember?”

The tears started again. “I’m sorry about that. I thought you were… I thought you were a savage,” Daphne managed.

“What’s a savage?”

She pointed the pistol toward Foxlip. “Someone like him.”

“He’s dead.”

“I’m sorry. He insisted on drinking his beer.”

“We saw the other one run off toward the low forest. He was bleeding and snorting like a sick pig.”

“He wouldn’t drink his beer!” Daphne sobbed. “I’m sorry — I brought Locaha here.”

Mau’s eyes gleamed. “No, they brought him, and you sent him away full,” he said.

“More are going to come! They talked about it,” Daphne managed. Mau said nothing but put an arm around her. “Tomorrow I want a trial,” she said.

“What’s a trial?” said Mau. He waited for a while, but the only reply was a snore. He sat with her, watching the eastern sky darken. Then he carefully settled her down on her mat, hoisted the rigid body of Foxlip over his shoulder, and went down to the beach. The Unknown Woman watched him load the body into a canoe and paddle out into the ocean, where Foxlip went over the side with a lump of coral tied to his foot, to be eaten by whatever was hungry enough to eat carrion.

She saw him return and go back up the mountain, where Milo and Cahle had been watching over the body of Ataba, so that he would not become a ghost.

In the morning they followed Mau down to the beach, where the Unknown Woman and a few others joined them. The sun was rising now, and Mau was not surprised to see the gray shadow drifting beside him. At one point, Milo walked through it without noticing.

Two more deaths, Hermit Crab, said Locaha.

“Do they make you happy?” growled Mau. “Then send this priest to the Perfect World.”

How can you ask that, little hermit crab who does not believe?

“Because he did. And he cared, which is more than his gods did.”

No bargains, Mau, even for another.

“At least I’m trying!” Mau yelled. Everyone stared at him.

The shadow faded.

On the edge of the reef, above the dark current, Mau tied broken coral to the old man and watched him sink beyond the reach of sharks.

“He was a good man!” he shouted to the sky. “He deserved better gods!”

Down in the steams of the low forest, someone shivered.

It had not been a good night for Arthur Septimus Polegrave, who would have been known to his friends, if he’d had any friends, as “Septic.” He knew he was dying, he just knew it. He must be. There couldn’t be a single thing in this jungle that hadn’t tried to bite, peck, or sting him during the last dark soupy hour. There were spiders — giant, horrible things, waiting at nose height in every path — there were the insects, every one armed, by the feel of it, with red-hot needles. Things had bitten his ears and climbed up his trousers. Things had trodden on him. In the middle of the night something horrible had flopped down from the trees and onto his head, which it had tried to unscrew. As soon as he could see clearly, he would take his chances and make a run for the boat and a getaway. All in all, he thought as he pulled something with far too many legs out of his ear, things were about as bad as they could get.

There was a rustling in the tree above him, and he looked up just as a well-fed grandfather bird threw up in time for breakfast, and found that he was wrong.

Later that morning Daphne marched up to Pilu with the log of the Sweet Judy in her hand and said: “I want a fair trial.”

“That’s good,” said Pilu. “We’re going to look at the new cave. Are you going to come?” Most of the population were gathered around him; news of the gods had got around fast.

“You don’t know what a trial is, do you?”

“Er, no,” said Pilu.

“It’s where you decide if someone has done something wrong and if they should be punished.”

“Well, you punished that trouserman,” said Pilu cheerfully. “He killed Ataba. He was a pirate!”

“Er, yes… but the question is, should I have done it? I had no authority to kill him.”

Milo loomed behind his brother, bent down, and whispered to him.

“Ah, yes,” said Pilu, “my brother reminds me of the time we were in Port Mercia and a Navy man had been found thieving, and they tied him to the mast and beat him with some leather thing. Is this what we’re talking about? I think we’ve got some leather.”

Daphne shuddered. “Er… no, thank you. But, er, don’t you ever have crime on the islands?”

It took some time to get the idea settled in Pilu’s head, and then he said, “Ah, I’ve got it. You want us to tell you that you didn’t do a bad thing, yes?”

“The ghost girl is saying that there must be rules and there must be reasons,” said Mau, right behind Daphne. She hadn’t even known he was there.

“Yes, but you’re not to say I did a good thing just because you like me,” she added.

“Well, we didn’t like him,” said Pilu. “He killed Ataba!”

“I think I see what she means,” said Mau. “Let’s try it. It sounds… interesting.”

And so the Nation had its first court. There was no question of judge and jury; everyone sat around in a circle, children too. And there was Mau, sitting in the circle. No one was more important than anyone else… and there was Mau, sitting in the circle just like everybody else.

Everyone should make up their own mind… and there was Mau, sitting in the circle. Not big, not even tattooed, not shouting orders — but somehow being slightly more there than anyone else. And he had the cap. He was the captain.

Daphne had heard some of the newcomers talking about him. They used a kind of code, about “the poor boy,” and how hard it must be, and somewhere in it all there was, unspoken yet still present, the suggestion that he wasn’t old enough to be a chief — and around that point, either Milo or Cahle turned up like an eclipse of the sun and the conversation turned to fishing or babies. And every day Mau was a little older, and still chief.

Pilu was in charge of the court. It was the sort of thing he was born for. But he did need some help….

“We must have a prosecutor,” Daphne explained. “That’s someone who thinks what I did was wrong, and a defender, who says what I did was right.”

“Then I’ll be the defender,” said Pilu cheerfully.

“And the prosecutor?” said Daphne.

“That would be you.”

“Me? I have to be someone else!”

“But everyone knows that man killed Ataba. We saw him!” said Pilu.

“Look, hasn’t there ever been a killing in these islands?”

“Sometimes too much beer, a fight over women, such things as these. Very sad. There is a story, a very old story, about two brothers who fought. One killed the other, but in the battle it could have been otherwise, and the other one dead. The killer fled, knowing the punishment and taking it upon himself.”

“Was the punishment awful?”

“He would be sent far away from the islands, far from his people, from his family, never to walk in the steps of his ancestors, never to sing a death chant for his father, never to hear the songs of his childhood, never again to smell the sweet water of home. He built a canoe and sailed in new seas far away, where men are baked into different colors and for half of every year trees die. He lived for many lifetimes and saw many things, but one day he found a place that was best of all, because it was the island of his childhood, and he stepped onto the shore and died, happily, because he was home again. Then Imo made the brothers into stars, and put them in the sky so that we shall remember the brother who sailed so far away that he came back again.”

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?”

It started to get bad. The captain got humpty. Crew who’d served with him for a long time said he was a decent man and a good captain, and they’d never seen him get humpty before. Everyone suffered under a humpty captain, who’d find fault with everything and turn every day into a chore. Daphne spent a lot of time in her cabin.

And then there was the parrot. No one was ever sure who taught the bird its first swear word, although the wobbling finger of suspicion pointed at Cox, but by then the whole crew was ill at ease. Cox had his supporters, and the captain had staunch allies of his own. Fights broke out, and things, small things, were getting stolen. That was terrible, according to Cookie; nothing broke up a crew like the thought that a man had to watch his possessions all the time. Dooms and reckonings would be upon them all, he forecasted. Probably more dooms than reckonings, he added.

And the next day Cox shot the old man in the canoe. Daphne would like to report that every sailor in the crew was angry because the old man had been shot, and in a way it was true, but many of the men were less concerned about the sanctity of souls than they were about the possibility that the old man had relatives nearby with fast canoes, sharp spears, and an unwillingness to listen to explanations. And there were even a few who held that one old man more or less didn’t matter, but Cox and his cronies had been shooting at dolphins, too, and that was cruel and unlucky.

In the end there was a war, and so much bad blood had been bubbling that there seemed to Daphne to be more than two sides. She sat it out in her cabin, seated on a small barrel of gunpowder with a loaded pistol in her hand. The captain had told her that if Cox’s men won, she should fire the pistol into the barrel “to save her honor,” though she was uncertain how much a saved honor would be worth when it was falling out of the sky in tiny pieces, along with the rest of the cabin. Fortunately she did not have to find out, because Captain Roberts ended the mutiny by detaching one of the Sweet Judy’s swivel guns and aiming it at the mutineers. The gun was intended for firing lots of small lead balls at any pirates who might try to board the ship. It was not intended to be a hand cannon, and if he had fired the thing, the recoil would probably have thrown him into the air, but everyone in front of it would have died of terminal perforations. There was a fury about him that even Cox took note of, Cookie had told her. The captain had the look in his eye of the Almighty confronting a particularly wicked city, and maybe Cox was just sane enough to recognize that here was someone who might be even madder than he was, at least for the time it took to turn Cox and those around him into much smaller lumps. Or, Cookie said, the captain may have been about to commit wild murder right up until he realized that this was what Cox wanted, and the devil of a man would drag the captain’s soul to hell along with his own.

But the captain didn’t fire the gun, said Cookie. He laid it on the deck. He straightened up with his arms folded and a grim little smile on his face, and Cox just stood there, looking puzzled, and then every single loyal crewman pointed a pistol at his head. The steam got knocked out of the mutiny. Cox and his chums were herded into the ship’s boat with food, water, and a compass. And then of course there was the matter of the guns. The mutineers still had friends among the crew, who said that leaving them in uncertain waters without weapons was a death sentence. In the end the guns were left for them on a little island a mile away, despite Captain Roberts declaring that in his opinion, any pirate or slaver who ran into Cox and his men would have a new captain in very short order indeed. He ordered the swivel guns primed and ready day and night, and said that the boat would be fired on instantly if it was ever seen again.

The boat was set adrift and sailed, her crew silent and worried except for Polegrave and Foxlip, who jeered and spat. That was because they were too dumb to realize, said Cookie, that they were heading off into bad waters with a murderous madman in command.

The Judy never really recovered, but she kept on course. People didn’t talk much, and kept to themselves when they were off watch. She wasn’t a happy ship at all. Five men had previously jumped ship at Port Henry and so, without the mutineers, there weren’t enough men to crew the ship properly when the wave came.

And that was the story Daphne told. She tried to be honest, and where she’d relied on Cookie’s rather excitable stories, she said so. She wished she had Pilu’s talent; he could make tripping over a stone sound like a desperate adventure.

There was silence when she finished. Most people turned to look at Pilu. She’d done her best in a foreign language, but she’d seen the puzzled looks.

What Pilu gave them was the story all over again, but with acting, too. She could make out the character of Captain Roberts, heavy and pompous, and surely the one who sidled around was Polegrave, and the one who stamped and roared was Cox. They shouted at one another all the time, while Pilu’s fingers popped like pistols and somehow, in the middle of the air, the story unfolded.

A certain extra touch of slightly mad realism was added by the parrot, who danced madly in the top of a coconut palm and shouted things like, “What about Darwin, then? Waark!”

Pilu’s translation lagged behind Daphne’s account, but when he was about to deal with the old man’s shooting, he stopped for guidance.

“He killed a man in a canoe because he was not a trouserman?”

She was ready for this. “No. The man I kill — the dead man would have done that, but I think Cox just killed the old man because he couldn’t see anything else to shoot at.”

“Er… my English is no so good — ” Pilu began.

“I am sorry to say you heard me correctly.”

“He kills for Locaha and adds glory, like the Raiders?”

“No. Just because he wants to.”

Pilu looked at her as if this was going to be a hard one to get across. It was. From the sound of it, no one thought he was making sense.

He went on doggedly for a few more sentences and turned to Daphne. “Not dolphins,” he said. “No sailor would kill a dolphin. You must be wrong.”

“No. He really did.”

“But that is killing a soul,” said Pilu. “When we die, we become dolphins until it is time to be born again. Who would kill a dolphin?” Tears of puzzlement and anger raced down his face.

“I’m sorry. Cox would. And Foxlip shot at it, too.”

“Why?”

“To be like Cox, I think. To seem like a big man.”

“Big man?”

“Like the remora fish. Er, you call them suckfish. They swim with the sharks. Perhaps they like to think they are sharks.”

“Not even the Raiders would do this, and they worship Locaha! It is beyond belief!”

“I saw them. And poor Captain Roberts wrote it down in the ship’s log. I can show you.” Too late, she remembered that Pilu didn’t so much read as recognize writing when it was pointed out to him. His look now was a plea for help, so she stood close to him and found the right place: “Once again Cox and his cronies have been discharging their pistols at the dolphins, against all decency and the common laws of the sea. May God forgive him, because no righteous sailor will. Indeed, I suspect that in this case even the Almighty will find his mercy overly strained!!!”

She read it aloud. In the circle, people were getting restless. There was a lot of loud whispering that she couldn’t understand, and it looked as if some sort of agreement was being arrived at. The nods and whispers ran around the circle of people in opposite directions until they met at Mau, who cracked a thin smile.

“These were men who would shoot a brown man for no reason,” he said. “And they would shoot dolphins, which even trousermen respect. You could see inside their heads, ghost girl. Isn’t that right? You could see how they thought?”

Daphne couldn’t look at his face. “Yes,” she said.

“Savages, we are to them. Some sort of animal. Darkies.”

“Yes.” She still did not dare to look up, in case she met his gaze. She’d pulled the trigger, she remembered, on that first day. And he had thanked her for the gift of fire.

“When the ghost girl first met me — ” Mau began.

Oh, no, he’s not going to tell them, is he? she thought. Surely he won’t. But that little smile of his, that’s the smile he smiles when he’s really angry!

“ — she gave me food,” Mau went on, “and later she gave me a gun to help me light a fire, even though she was far from home and frightened. She was thoughtful enough, too, to take out the little ball that flies and kills, so that I would come to no harm. And she invited me into the Sweet Judy and gave me wonderful lobster-flavored cakes. You all know the ghost girl.”

She looked up. Everyone was staring at her. Now Mau stood up and walked into the center of the circle.

“These men were different,” he said, “and the ghost girl knew how their minds worked. They would not sing the beer song because they thought we were a sort of animal, and they were too proud and great to sing an animal’s song. She knew this.” He looked around the circle. “The ghost girl thinks she killed a man. Did she? You must decide.”

Daphne tried to make out what was said next, but people all started talking at once, and because everyone was talking at once, everyone started talking louder. But something was happening. Little conversations got bigger, and then were picked up and rolled from tongue to tongue around the circle. Whatever the result was going to be, she thought, it probably was not going to be one simple word. Then Pilu wandered around the circle, hunkering down here and there, joining in for a little while, and then strolling on to another point and doing the same thing again.

No one stuck up their hands and there was no voting, but she thought, I wonder if it was like this in ancient Athens? This is pure democracy. People don’t just get a vote; they have a say.

And now it was settling down. Pilu got up from his last conversation and walked back to the center of the ring. He nodded to Mau and started to speak: “A man who will kill a priest, or kill a man for the pleasure of seeing him die, or kill a dolphin” — this one got a big groan from the circle — “could not be a man at all. It must have been an evil demon haunting the shell of a man, they say. The ghost girl could not have killed him, because he was already dead.”

Mau cupped his hands over his mouth. “Is this what you think?” There was a roar of agreement.

“Good.” He clapped his hands together and raised his voice. “We’ve still got to finish the pig fence, everyone, and we still need timber from the Judy, and the fish trap is not going to build itself!”

The circle rose and became a crisscrossing of hurrying people. No one had banged a table with a wooden hammer, or worn a robe. They had just done a thing that needed doing, without much fuss, and now, well, there was the pig fence to repair.

“Is this what you wanted?” asked Mau, suddenly beside her.

“Sorry? What?” She hadn’t even seen him approaching. “Oh, yes. Er, yes. Thank you. That was a very good, er, judgment,” she said. “And you?”

“I think they have decided and I think it is settled,” said Mau briskly. “The man brought Locaha here and his pistols serve him. But Locaha is no one’s servant.”