Cuttlefish Read online

  The villa had some lovely broad shade trees with strange roots that were almost like cathedral buttresses, and a huge aviary of exotic birds…and a fence and three guard dogs, and four or five men with guns wandering around, besides the crew that were there to watch over them.

  “Rivas. It's a dangerous place if you have any money,” explained Lieutenant Ambrose. “Someone is bound to try and take it from you.”

  Tim was quite pleased when he got called to the bridge. It beat working in the engine room. In fact anything beat working down in the engine room in that temperature.

  “We need to send someone from the boat along to Rivas, to the American Legation, to drop a letter there. Señor Omberto says he'll provide a boy to guide them. The problem, however, is that there has been some trouble in the area with foreign sailors. The Nicaraguans and the Americans are trying to keep the canal they've been working on a secret, which means that they must be nearly finished—they're arresting anyone they're suspicious about, particularly men. So he suggested sending another boy or a couple of boys. So we're going to send you and Banks. We've got you some local clothes.”

  Tim groaned to himself. The other cabin boy had decided that he just didn't like Tim, even before their little fight. Now no matter what Tim did to try and keep the peace, Banks was always trying to make Tim's life a misery, without ending up in the brig. Banks was more experienced at life on a submarine, and bigger and heavier than Tim. He found ways to make that count. It had to be Banks! Still, it would be quite exciting to see this foreign city. “Yes, sir.”

  It was hot and sticky, although it was barely eight in the morning when they began their walk from the house in their borrowed clothes and bare feet. They'd given Banks a big hat, because he was too pale for a local. Tim had kept his breeches but had a local cotton shirt bright with coarse embroidery.

  “Makes you stand out like a peacock in a coal scuttle, Darkie,” said Banks, mockingly.

  “Yeah? Well your white face makes you stand out like a bar of ivory soap in a coal scuttle,” said Tim. “Hope we don't get caught because of it.”

  “Oh, it'll be a piece of cake. We get to go for a walk and look at all the pretty girls.”

  “Mr. Amos said that they'll shoot you for getting familiar with the women in the Spanish Americas,” said Tim, anticipating trouble, but feeling like a bit of a killjoy and a prude. There wasn't any harm in looking, surely?

  “Huh,” said Banks, “you don't know nothing. Not even about that fancy Irish girlfriend of yours. Bet you haven't even made out with her, let alone got off with her properly, even though she's making sheep's eyes at you all the time.”

  Tim felt himself blush. He wanted to punch the fathead. “Captain Malkis warned us…”

  “Aw, what does old Malky know.…”

  “Shut up! There are some local people on the road,” said Tim.

  So Banks shut up. He didn't even greet the family and their geese, but Tim copied the boy showing them the way, and got a smile and a burst of a foreign language. Tim nearly panicked, but their guide rattled off an answer. The goose-herders laughed, and they all went on through a small huddle of houses, and on towards the town. It was a good four-mile walk, and hard on their bare feet. They worked barefoot a lot of the time, but there were no stones underfoot in the submarine.

  Eventually they came to the outskirts of the town—it couldn't really be called a city, not by a boy who had seen London. The buildings were white—except for the bottoms, which were stained with the red dust from the road. In the market people were selling strings of beads, or trays of fruits and vegetables. Some of stuff he'd heard of, like corn, and those yellow curvy things that must be bananas. They seemed to come in green too, but much bigger. And other fruits—well they must be fruit, he thought—with strange smells and colours. The sacks of potatoes were at least familiar. There were stalls selling cooked food, with people yelling “Gallo pinto!” at them. It smelt of frying and beans, and as usual Tim was hungry. But food was not part of their plan.

  The street was crowded. The crowds seemed to cluster around the sailors in uniform…who were speaking English to each other. Well, English that was sort of somewhere between proper English and Cookie's English. “Americanos,” said their guide, threading them past two sailors talking to a trio of dressed-up ladies. He didn't seem to find them worrying. Tim did. He also felt ghostly hands in his pocket at one stage, but seeing as the small envelope he had to deliver was in his hand, getting sweaty, and there wasn't anything in his pocket, that was just something he had to put up with.

  They came to a triple-story white building, with pillars and a bit of a balcony…and with a heavy black iron fence, topped with spikes. Their guide pointed. “Americano.”

  Which made things rather difficult. Tim had expected to be able to slip the envelope into a mail slot and leave, hopefully without being seen.

  There was indeed a mail slot in the big studded black door. Only it was fifteen yards away, on the other side of the gates. The gates had even more spikes than the fence had. One of the smaller gates was open…but a soldier in a blue uniform with gold buttons, wearing a white cap with a black peak, stood there in the guardhouse, with a bayonetted rifle.

  “You distract him and I'll run in and post it,” said Tim, measuring the distance.

  “Not on your life!” said Banks. “He'll shoot us.”

  Tim looked it all over carefully again. And then decided that there was really only one thing to do. Gritting his teeth, he walked up to the guard.

  The guard said, “Beat it, kid! Gowan. Vamoose!”

  Tim held out the envelope, which wasn't quite as clean as when it had left the Cuttlefish. “Letter.” He decided to try and play the local part. “Letter for you,” he said, pointing at the door, doing his best to sound foreign. He didn't speak any Spanish! Actually he didn't speak anything but English. Aha! He remembered a word. “Señor,” he said, bowing.

  The soldier was about to take a poke at him with the bayonet…but paused. Looked at the neat handwriting on the envelope, and at the address. “Where'd ya get that from, kid?”

  “Engleesh lady,” said Tim. “Give for me. For here, Americano.”

  “Who?”

  “Engleesh lady,” repeated Tim. And trying to come up with anything that might sound like he was a local, said, “Gallo pinto, señor.”

  The soldier shook his head. “Darn foreigners. Just go and put it in the slot. And don't try anything.”

  So Tim did. He walked back with his heart still hammering, but very pleased with himself. “Thank you, sir.”

  “You sound almost English, kid!” said the soldier.

  Terrified, Tim shook his head, but somehow keeping a facade of calm he went on walking out of the spike-topped gates.

  And then he nearly screamed.

  Because Banks and his guide were nowhere to be seen.

  He stared around frantically. Opened his mouth to yell. Somehow he managed to get a grip on himself. The guard was looking at him a little oddly, so he walked down the hot crowded street. All he had to do was get back. That couldn't be so hard, could it?

  After a little while he realised it could be. He'd just followed the local boy on the way here. And trying to reverse that, he'd taken a wrong turning somewhere. He didn't recognise anything—none of the buildings on the street. He was sure he'd have remembered that big tree and the huge white church if they'd passed them. He had to breathe deeply, and turn back, trying to retrace his steps again. It took him quite a while to find his way to the American Legation and then, work out his way back to the noisy market street.

  Only it wasn't quite so noisy or crowded now. The baking sun was high overhead, and the stalls were being packed up. But at least he was on the right route now. And with luck those two would have waited for him somewhere, or if he walked a bit faster, he'd catch them up.

  Tim walked on determinedly. It did seem like he was the only one doing so. It was very very hot. Still he was at least going
the right way, and he'd managed to do what had to be done. He was relatively pleased with himself. He whistled as he walked. He could do that here, without getting into trouble for making a racket on the submarine.

  And then passing through the last little cluster of houses before the final home strait, everything went wrong.

  A fat man sitting on the porch of one of the houses hailed him as he came closer. Tim didn't know what to say, as he couldn't understand a word of it, so he nodded politely and walked on. It was hot; he was desperately thirsty, and he was tired.

  It was obviously not the right thing to have done. The fat man got to his feet and spoke quite sharply, stepping towards Tim. Tim did what maybe he should have done first: turned to run. Only he fell, headlong, over a skinny dog that had been sniffing at his heels.

  And it all went downhill from there. Downhill from lying flat on his back, half winded.

  Maybe trying the three words of Spanish he had used on the soldier at the legation was a mistake. Because after he said “Señor Gallo Pinto,” the fat man got really, really angry, dragged him to his feet by the scruff of his neck, and marched him off to a cell. The cell had a barred window and a locked door, and a single straw pallet.

  In case he got lonely, it also had fleas. And roaches almost the size of mice.

  Clara knew that Tim and Banks had gone into the city. There really were very few secrets among a submarine crew. But she didn't realise that either of them were back until after the captain ordered all the shore crew and her and her mother back to the boat.

  “Sorry, ma' am. We're going to have to move the vessel. If you can please go to your cabin.” He was not going to explain right then, she could tell. She'd ask Cookie.

  He was off duty. But she found a flushed-looking Banks gulping water in the mess.

  “Hullo. You're back,” she said neutrally. He was always quick to get a bit too familiar. He made her uncomfortable.

  He nodded. “But Darkie got arrested. So we have to move.”

  “What!” She knew Banks and his friends called Tim “Darkie.” She'd seen Tim didn't like it…but right now that seemed unimportant. “They can't just leave him here. Where did he get arrested?”

  “He ran smack up to the marine on guard at the legation. He wanted me to distract him, and then he was going to make a run for the mail slot.”

  “So didn't you?” she asked.

  Banks did a brief mouth-flap. Clara'd bet he didn't. “Yeah, but the guard was quick as lightning and caught him. Darkie cried like a baby and put his hands up. So we came back to warn the skipper.”

  “But we can't just leave him here!” exclaimed Clara again.

  “Aw, we're just moving half a mile or so, upriver. The captain reckons if he plays dumb they may let him go. If he can find his way back to the smuggler's villa, we'll get him again,” said Banks. The idea plainly didn't appeal to him.

  Clara made her way up to the bridge. Her mother had beaten her to it.

  “…the canal is now finished,” said the captain. “That's obviously why security is so tight. It does present us with a unique opportunity.…” He looked at Clara. “Ah. Good afternoon, Miss Calland.”

  “Is it true that Tim got caught?” she asked directly.

  The captain looked at her from under a frowning forehead. “It…would appear that stories spread throughout this submarine faster than water through a broken hatch. Yes, Miss Calland. If the other cabin boy is to be believed, Barnabas got arrested at the legation. They can't hold him indefinitely, but they might turn him over to the local police. We can't take a chance and remain in the same place. Unfortunately I don't speak any of the local Spanish, and our local contact has quite limited English, so I haven't really been able to find out much more. I only now worked out that he was telling us that the canal was actually finished and operational, and not just going to be, a little earlier.”

  “I speak fairly good Spanish,” said Mother. “Although I speak the Spanish of Spain, of course, not the local Voseo variety.”

  “What?” said Captain Malkis.

  “They say vos instead of tú. But I daresay I could still understand him, and him me. If you'd like me to speak to him?”

  The captain nodded. “I'd be obliged, Dr. Calland. The Americans are unlikely to do the boy any harm, although they may try and get our location out of him. But he's a steady lad, which is why I used him as the actual bearer for the letter.”

  Clara had to wait several hours before the local smuggler and his messenger boy came paddling upriver in a canoe. She did listen in to her mother and Captain Malkis talking to him. There was no way she was not going to.

  “So they don't really know what actually happened. The young boy walked up to the guard waving the letter, and the bigger boy ran away. He dragged my boy with him too. My boy got him to sit down behind some bushes, and went back, but the young boy was gone. He didn't know what to do, and it was getting late, towards siesta, so he brought the bigger one back.”

  “Ah, so he's just lost,” said the captain. “Well, that's good.…”

  The smuggler continued in his local Spanish, with hand gestures and, it appeared, incredulity.

  Mother translated. “He has been arrested. He was apparently walking rather fast through the nearest little village to here, during siesta—the local afternoon sleep when it is too hot to work—and when the policeman asked him where he was off to in such a hurry, he called him a speckled chicken. The policeman thinks he is either crazy or a spy.”

  “I see. Can Señor Omberto get him bailed? Or let out?” asked the captain.

  Mother translated.

  No one had to translate the shake of the smuggler's head. “He says if they think he is mixing with spies they will shoot him,” said her mother, grimly. “He says we should leave. And soon. His men will bring the parts you asked for, the compressor, and the coal late this afternoon.”

  Clara made her plans carefully. The first part had involved talking to that toad Banks. Being admiring. Huh. She got quite a lot of information out of him, even if it had meant putting up with having him put a hand on her knee. She'd slapped it off when he tried to move it, though. He really was a cockroach. The second had involved writing a letter to her mother, and making sure that it would not be found until she was well gone. The third involved organising a neat roll of clothes and the tools that she'd helped herself to from the engine room, and managing to have that and herself on deck in the leaf-shadowed twilight. She wore breeches and had tucked her hair into a cap. It was a problem having pale hair, but this hid it, and she had a lacy shawl of Mother's for later.

  It was easier than she thought it would be, to jump down onto the stern of the barge, while they hefted coal off the front.

  Then it was just a matter of hunching down in the deep shadows of some big floats and netting, pulling some of the netting over herself, and waiting while the little barge putted its way back down the river. She felt very alone, and very scared.

  And very determined.

  After what seemed like forever, the barge bumped gently up against a little jetty, and was tied up there. The crew got off and went on up to the house, through the big gates. Clara came out of her hiding place, and did not even get onto the jetty. Instead she climbed into a canoe, one of several tied up there. She'd never been in one before, and it rocked alarmingly. Still, there was a paddle, and she was able to clumsily row downstream a few dozen yards, to a track she'd seen some thirty yards from the edge of the fence. Getting the canoe up onto the bank made her a little wet and muddy, but there was water right there. She carefully did not think about crocodile-like caymans as she scooped water and washed her hands and face and feet as best as she could. And then she stole past the fence and down to the track. The dogs didn't bark…and no one challenged her.

  In the deep shadow of some trees, next to where the rutted dirt track from the smuggler's house joined the bigger dirt road, she changed…into a dress. They might suspect a boy, she'd decided. With an
y luck, they wouldn't suspect a girl. And with a bit more luck, her mother would stop the submarine leaving without her. Without both of them.

  Mother was going to be more than just angry. So was the captain.

  She'd live with that.

  She was not going to live with just leaving Tim behind. He didn't know anything but the submarine and the tunnels under London. He'd die here. A practical part of her mind said her experience of life in Fermoy and a trip to Dublin didn't make her much better off. That didn't stop her walking down the road. Banks had said that there were only about ten houses in the village when she'd picked his brains about it after they'd found out where Tim was, and thought it funny that Tim should get caught there—conveniently forgetting that he'd told her earlier that Tim had been caught at the American Legation. She had to be able to work out which of the ten houses was a jail, surely.

  It was easier than she'd hoped, even if there were at least thirty houses. Tim was whistling. He often did while he was working on the submarine, and she recognised it at once. Of course working out exactly where it came from took a little longer. But soon she found the high barred window, and whispered, “Tim. Tim Barnabas.”

  In the cell, Tim had gone from bleak and absolute despair to gratitude for water and then, some food. Odd stuff, but food. And food helped his state of mind and not just his stomach.

  What had happened next, didn't. By the light it was late afternoon…and a man spoke from outside the high window, in English. The English of England. “Young submariner. Would you like to get out of there?”

  “Yes!” Relief flooded Tim.

  “It can be arranged,” said the voice coolly. “Of course, you'll have to do something for me. You'll be well rewarded for it. Manuel—the local policeman—is going to town shortly. He won't be back tonight, I gather. Now, do I have your cooperation?”

  “Just what do you want?” asked Tim, suddenly doubtful. Who was this? How did this stranger know he came off a submarine?