He started across the few feet of floor separating him from his friend, and, stooped though he was to adjust his height to the low-ceilinged cabin, nevertheless his bulk was a terrifying sight as he stumbled and staggered forward. His hairless head nearly sc.r.a.ped the ceiling, and his shoulders were as broad across as those of two men. His hands, white but strong and bony, twitched at the finger ends as if they were unused to idleness without hurting, or without the handle of his whip to grasp.

Two steps forward, Chris saw, was all Claggett Chew needed to show him where the parakeet had gone, s.n.a.t.c.h him up, and snuff out his life as a candleflame is pinched between finger and thumb. Chris was tearing with his beak at the silk cord on his foot, raking at it between every look he sent towards Claggett Chew. Chris knew that if the pirate touched Osterbridge Hawsey, or worse, fell, the touch or the noise would succeed in awakening the heavily sleeping fop and the parakeet, exposed, would be an easy prey for Claggett Chew.

The Captain of the _Vulture_, sweat rolling down his tortured face, his eyes starting from their deep-sunk sockets with the strain of keeping himself on his feet, began roaring at Osterbridge once more.

"Osterbridge! Sc.u.mmy no-good! _Wake!_ That parrot has a scar on his jaw such as I once gave a boy! _Osterbridge!_" he roared with a final terrible effort.

Then everything happened at once. Osterbridge Hawsey was aroused at last and sat up abruptly, heavy-headed and bleary, thickly asking: "Claggett! What a _noise_! Cannot a man be allowed to doze in peace?

Where _are_ your manners?"

In the same instant, Claggett Chew reached out to pluck the parakeet from behind the sheltering head and neck of "the fashionable." Chris, with a superhuman effort, changed himself to a mouse, tearing his foot from the frayed cord that held it, and leaped into the air.

Simultaneously, Claggett Chew, overcome by the approaching blackness he had been fighting, crashed to the floor unconscious.

CHAPTER 27

A mouse streaked out the door of the Captain's cabin and did not stop until it reached the farther end of the _Vulture_, where it hid quaking behind someone's old shoe. The little creature, quieting down at last and feeling its heart regain a more familiar rhythm, sniffed distastefully at the shoe. It was plain to see, it thought, that the _Vulture_ was an untidy, ill-cared-for ship. Old shoes were never left lying about on the _Mirabelle_.

The thought of the _Mirabelle_ brought Chris's mission on the pirate ship into sharper focus. He glanced up at the sky; there was little time left in which to work safely, for Claggett Chew's sharp eyes had noticed the infinitesimal scar on his cheek and his astute brain had put two and two together. Chris wondered, with a new start of horror, if Claggett Chew could read his thoughts, and if this was why he had stared at him with such intensity.

Well, he shrugged, he knew what had to be done and if he worked quickly, and Claggett Chew's swoon lasted long enough, not even he could stop him. Looking about to make sure he was un.o.bserved, he took his own shape again with a sigh of relief. It was almost like holding one's breath for long periods of time, to be in the shape of a bird or a mouse, but to be himself, he knew, held even greater dangers.

For the first time he opened the leather bag at his neck and felt inside. The first thing his fingers closed on he pulled out. He turned the object in his palm toward the starlight to see what it might be.

It was a folding knife in a case of tortoise sh.e.l.l inlaid with strange signs in silver and mother-of-pearl. Chris opened it--the blade was razor-sharp--and put it experimentally point down on the wood of the deck. As if by itself the blade revolved with immense speed, sinking in so fast that only just in time did Chris s.n.a.t.c.h it out and hold it more tightly. Trying it out he found that the blade would go through anything, sometimes so easily as to scarcely seem to cut, leaving no trace of a mark, it was so keen. At other times when he pressed on it, the blade whirled around, boring a hole as deep as might be necessary.

What a useful gadget! Chris thought.

This is just what I need and now is the time! he said to himself, and sprang up the nearest of the _Vulture's_ three masts.

What he had to do would take long, and there was little time left that night in which to do it. For he intended slitting the lines of the rigging here and there, not so deeply that they would give way at once and be soon repaired, but so that with the first hard blow the lines would break.

Growing daylight should have warned him long before he was done, for Chris wished also to slit the sails, very slightly, when they had been unfurled and the _Vulture_ was under way. The sound of voices broke his absorption in his task. Looking down from the top of the mainmast where he clung, Chris saw a boatload of returning sailors and realized with a start that it was nearly sunup. In a moment a rat ran down the mast to disappear into the foul-smelling hold of the pirate vessel.

How long must he wait in the hold? Chris wondered. Although he might be in the shape of a rat, it was only his outward form that had changed. He could not eat grain or refuse that was not suitable for a human, and he did not relish having to hold his own in a fight with a true rat, there in the darkness. He contemplated boring a hole in the hull of the _Vulture_ but decided to wait until the ship was under sail. He bitterly regretted not having brought food with him, feeling hungry after his exertions about the ship. There was nothing else for it but to hide as safely as he could in his own shape.

This he did, after a thorough search in his rat form to find what seemed a safe, hidden place high at the top of a pile of the loot stolen from the merchantman. There the exhausted boy, curled closely against any sudden movement of the ship, fell into a sound sleep.

The dip and sway of a sailing ship cutting the seas, and a ravenous appet.i.te, combined to wake Chris. For the first few moments he was confused at where he was. Little or no light seeped into the hold, and he was further troubled by having no idea how long he might have slept.

His first thought was to find food. Climbing down from his sleeping place he felt his way back to the ladder leading up to the deck. The hatch at the top of the ladder was open and through it came a long faded shaft of light and a freshening draught of air. By the quality of the light, Chris judged the time to be well along in the afternoon.

He was debating with himself whether or not to change his shape and venture up to find something to eat, when on one of the lower treads of the plank ladder he caught sight of a plate of food.

Chris stood staring at it for a moment. His mouth watered, for he had not eaten in many hours and the sight of meat, bread, and fruit was almost more than he could resist. But resist it he did, for he argued in himself: If this has been put here, it must be for me. If it is for me, it may well be poisoned. I shall not be tempted, much as Claggett Chew would like me to be! He therefore left the plate of food where it was, hoping the rats would find it before long and he would have proof, through their actions, whether or not his theory was right.

Then, as a shadow fell over the hatch far above his head, Chris hastily became a fly, soaring up to hit Simon Gosler on the nose.

Crawling in a leisurely fashion on the beggar's hump, he lingered long enough to see what the cripple was about. Simon was looking down the steep ladder, shading his rheumy eyes against the brilliance of the setting sun with one filthy, crooked hand. Chris, crawling nearer, could make out what the old man was muttering under his breath.

"The Cap'n, he say go down an' see, is the food et up, sez he. But 'tis a weary hard way for a pore ol' cripple to hop down thet steep ladder. I'll not do it. He's a sick and fevered man. I shall say it was et up--the rats will have got it before I get to his cabin, in any case, an' then who's to be the wiser? Besides, there's no boy on this ship. What a fancy!" he muttered. "He is an ill man, is Claggett Chew. May his bones rot! I need do no more for him than what I have a mind to, knowing as many of his misdeeds as I do. Hah!" He rubbed his hands with antic.i.p.ation. "Any day, Simon Gosler could be Cap'n of the good _Vulture_, an he say the word to the right quarter!" His eyes, no longer hidden behind black patches, narrowed with cunning. "And in the meantime, who gets the best share of the spoils?"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The beggar broke off in a cackle of glee, rubbing his dirty gnarled hands with satisfaction, and turned away to go back to the Captain's cabin with his message.

Chris flew away in the direction of the cook's galley, where as a fly he found it easy enough to eat his fill of meat and what few good things the _Vulture_ afforded.

Refreshed, he flew hard against the wind in order not to be blown off the ship entirely, up to the safety of a part of the rigging from where he could ponder on what he had heard, and see whatever there was to be seen.

Tahiti seemed to have been left far behind, for the _Vulture_ was well out to sea, and no smallest cloud on the horizon gave any hint of distant land. The sailors had set the sails and a good breeze filled the black canvas of the pirate ship. The pirates themselves, still surly from having eaten and drunk too well after the fight of the day before, were quarrelsome and tired and lay about in sprawling groups on the deck far below. Looking aft, Chris saw Simon Gosler hobbling from the Captain's cabin, and Osterbridge Hawsey's graceful, overdressed figure outlined in the doorway. On an impulse, Chris flew down to hear what they were saving.

"I thank you, Gosler, for your message," Osterbridge was saying, "for Captain Chew seems much relieved to have heard it, and I think will now rest quietly and sleep. Who is it, you say, who has some knowledge of medicine--the ship's carpenter?"

Here Osterbridge Hawsey rolled his eyes upward and shrugged his expressive shoulders.

"Dear me! At least to be a sawbones, he has the saw!" he said disdainfully.

"And knows how to drive a nail into a coffin too, master," whined the beggar.

"Enough!" cried Osterbridge in sudden anger. "Fetch him at once, and tell the cook, as you pa.s.s the galley, to bring the Captain some plain hot broth! He is much fevered."

The atmosphere seemed right to Chris for all he had to do. Without Claggett Chew's commanding and forbidding presence, the pirates would be in a turmoil. Chris returned to the higher rigging to wait until darkness should be more profound.

It was not long before the tropic night fell, deeply blue in the first hours until the stars should give off their high clear light. As the _Vulture_ rolled and pitched over the sea far down beneath him, Chris clung to the rigging and took the chance of changing himself into his own shape. Then, with all the haste he could, he moved a hundred feet above the hard decks, up the masts and along the sails, setting the new knife gently here and there to part the fibers of the cloth. As he went the lines were touched occasionally in vital spots.

It took long, for it had to be done with care. Chris scarcely made a move without looking down to see whether the sailors might not have glanced up at the dusky full-bellied sails, but they were weary after two such hard-filled days and soon fell asleep on the planks of the open deck. Only Simon Gosler hobbled in and out, watching a sailor here, stealing from another there, lifting his head slowly above the window of the Captain's cabin to spy on what went on inside. Like a dark malevolent spirit, Simon Gosler, crippled in thought and body, moved restlessly about the pirate ship.

Chris completed his task on the sails and rigging and slipped down to hide behind the third mast as he looked out to see where Simon Gosler might be. He could see him nowhere, and holding his breath, stepped over two sleeping pirates sprawled on their backs on the deck to reach the hatch of the hold. He had one last task to perform before leaving the _Vulture_.

The hatch top was open, laid back as before, and Chris, feeling some danger, changed to a mouse as he crouched on the top rung.

Hesitating, sniffing the fetid air of the hold, he finally ran down the ladder edge. There he sensed imminent death at its foot in time to leap as far as he could as he reached the last few rungs of the ladder. For Simon Gosler stood waiting at the bottom armed with a club, which he brought down with a splintering crash on the wooden crossbars as the mouse ran past and leapt out of sight. Curses instantly filled the hot air like so many wasps. Simon Gosler thrashed around with the club laying it about him on the floor, narrowly missing several times, and yelling at the top of his raucous lungs for companions to help him. In no time figures carrying flaming torches clattered down into the hold and Chris, his own shape regained, knew he would have to be quick as he had never been quick before.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

With a flick the new knife was open in his hand and the blade pressed with all his strength against the hull of the _Vulture_. He was crowded into a corner as far as possible from the advancing row of torches and shouting men. Frantic rats, terrified by the flames of the torches and the reverberating noise, scampered over Chris's feet or ran up over his bending back and shoulders, but he did not move. The blade whirled in the stout wooden side of the _Vulture_, but it seemed no time before the flicker and wavering red of the nearest torches sent their flares over him from a distance. Chris could make out the silhouette of hunting figures as the first black trickle of sea water pierced through the side of the ship and stained the dry planks. Still the boy pushed the knife on a moment more until the water was a steady spurt, wetting his hand with its coolness. Then, as the torches sent their flames moving into the obscure corner where he had been, a fly soared up and out, over an empty metal plate and four dead rats, over the stooped screaming figure of a humpback, and a scattered line of searching men, out to the freshness of the night and the open sea.

Only Osterbridge Hawsey, curious at the torches and the shouting, looked out the cabin door in time to see a tiny boat scud past, back toward Tahiti. And only in his befuddled dreams did he puzzle over how the small craft could sail against the wind, or wonder how it could sail so well, when it seemed to be made of rope.

CHAPTER 28

Chris and Amos lay belly down in a low clump of pine scrub at the top of a precipitous rocky pinnacle. Below them in the blistering noon lay the palace walls of the Lord of the Seven Seas, Descendant of the Sun and the Moon, Overlord of the Mountains and the Plains, Prince of all the Isles, Father of Plenty, and Brilliance-Before-Which-All-Cast-Down-Their-Eyes, the Emperor of China.