“Ladies and gentlemen,” the chief steward said, “the captain has informed us that we will be making a landing over water…”
I started handing out life jackets, trying to block out the rest of the steward’s message and the cries of dismay and fear that rose up from the passengers. I saw Kate and Miss Simpkins across the room and worked my way toward them. Kate was sitting with a book in her lap—her grandfather’s log, I noticed. She looked pale but composed.
“All right?” I asked Kate quietly.
“Of course we’re not all right,” said Miss Simpkins, fussing with the straps of her life jacket. “We’re about to sink to the bottom of the ocean!”
“We won’t sink, miss,” I said, helping her fasten her straps. “The engines and helm are unharmed, and the winds are very light. The captain will set us down gently, and all you need do is step into the life raft. We’ll take care of everything.”
I hoped I was right. The Aurora was not watertight. Captain Walken would need to keep her nose into the wind and hover just above the ocean’s surface for as long as he could. For once the ship touched down and started taking on water, she would not heed our commands anymore. She would sway and spin and flood and begin to sink.
I checked Kate’s life jacket to make sure it was snug then started over to the next group of passengers.
“You’re coming back, aren’t you?” Kate said.
“Yes. You’re part of my muster group. We’ll be on the same boat.”
Nearby, a young boy was crying. “Don’t you worry,” I told him. “Our captain will see us through. I’ve sailed with him three years. There’s no better than Captain Walken. He’s been through worse than this.”
As I was helping a woman on with her life jacket, she turned her scared eyes to me and said, “I don’t know how to swim.”
“You don’t need to, ma’am,” I told her with a smile. “There are more than enough life rafts for everyone. They’re quite roomy, you know. And with enough provisions to have bang-up meals for weeks if need be. We’ve made sure there’s a chef on every boat. You’ll be fine.”
She touched my cheek. Her fingers were cold. “You’re a good boy,” she said.
Just then I caught the scent of her perfume, and it was my mother’s perfume. I had to turn quickly away, a sudden tremor in my throat. I looked out the window at the approaching sea. I didn’t know how to swim either. We were close enough to hear the ocean’s impatient sigh, see the thuggish slouch of her surface, calm enough, but there was no hiding the immense strength of her mile-deep muscle. It was a clear day, and the rising sun was painting jittering diamonds on the surface.
I didn’t want to touch it.
Jump now. You won’t fall. You’ll stay aloft. You’ll fly clear.
Your father did.
Stupid thoughts.
Everyone was in their life jacket now, just waiting for the captain’s order to proceed to the emergency hatches. The life rafts were ingenious things, packed into small bundles in the ship’s hull. A pull of the handle and they would inflate instantly with a burst of compressed air, the paddles and emergency provisions already stowed away in their lockers.
I walked among the passengers, checking their life vests, trying to comfort them. It was like trying to soothe some great wild beast, to keep it from breaking free of its chains and going on a rampage. Some were holding hands, others crying quietly or praying. A few were being sick. I wished I were in the control car with the captain. I wished I were there serving fresh coffee and pastries, hearing the captain’s calm voice giving orders, and knowing exactly what was going on. It would keep the fear at bay.
The emergency phone was ringing.
I looked at the chief steward. Our eyes met. He picked it up.
“Mr. Lisbon here, sir.”
I could not bear to watch his face as he heard the order to evacuate, so I turned to the window again. I squinted. Dead ahead a dome of bright mist hovered on the horizon. Mist at sea meant…
“Land ahoy!”
It was me who shouted it, for I’d just caught sight of a bony peak jutting above the mist, and then through the mist itself, a darker outline spreading across the water’s surface.
“An island!” I exclaimed, turning to the chief steward.
“Very good, sir,” he said into the phone and hung up. He was smiling. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m very pleased to inform you that we’ve sighted land and will be setting down shortly. The captain’s asked that you all remain seated.”
I looked at Kate. She was smiling. I was smiling. Miss Simpkins had her hands over her face and was weeping. It was like a thundercloud had just passed out of the lounge.
I opened up a window and stuck my head out as far as it would go. The mist was burning off quickly, and I could see that the island was sizable. A gaunt peak poked into the sky. The coastline sloped gradually upward into hills. Before us, the sea broke in a ragged white line against a coral reef, protecting a turquoise lagoon and a long crescent of sand. Back from it sprouted palm trees, sparsely at first, and then more densely as the verdant forest took over and shrouded the island in a canopy of green that continued up the hills and into the mountains.
The beach, I thought. That’s the natural landing site. It was flat, and wide enough and deep enough to accommodate the Aurora. Likely it was the only flat place on the whole island. That’s where Captain Walken would bring us down.
Luck was with us. We were coming at the island with the wind at our nose, perfect for an approach. But we would have only one chance. We were losing too much hydrium to come round again. No question, it would be a tricky landing: an unknown landing field, no ground crew to grab the lines and tether the ship, no mooring mast to keep her secure.
Already the captain was bringing us down, quite sharply, the engines’ pitch deepening as we slowed. The phone rang again. I knew what the call was about and was already heading for the exit.
“All hands to their docking stations,” the chief steward called after me. “Prepare for landing.”
Down at the bay doors, the crew were waiting, scrambling for every inch of spare line we could muster. Baz was there, and it was good to see him. He grabbed my shoulder and squeezed hard.
“Quite a time we’ve had lately.”
“You’ll have a story to tell back home.”
“Too true,” he said.
The bay doors, opened and we could see the water, sparkling below, getting closer. Head pressed against the hull, I watched the coastline approaching. We were over the reef now, surf crashing, then the jeweled lagoon, and we were coming down lower and lower. Enormous fish in colors I’ve never known flitted beneath the clear water. Then the sand of the beach. The engines gave a great roar as they went into reverse, and you could feel the whole airship straining as she pulled back.
“Ready now, men,” said Mr. Chen.
I looked down. The sand was no more than six feet below me.
“Spring to it!” shouted Mr. Chen, and we were out the doors in a second. All across the Aurora, stem to stern, starboard and port sides, sixty of us hit the ground at once, each with a line uncoiling behind us, holding the great ship steady. I almost stumbled, the earth strange under my feet. I felt heavy, clumsy, my nose filled with unfamiliar scents. The sand sent me staggering, and I reeled toward a stand of palms. The air was thick. I’d already forgotten how much I hated being landlocked. Twice I wrapped my line around a palm trunk, awaiting orders from the second officer. A sudden morning breeze pummeled the ship, and the line burned through my fingers, sending smoke from the tree’s bark.
“Hold tight!” came the cry, and for a moment I was afraid we’d lose her as she lifted and leaned back out toward sea, as if lonesome for the sky. She was still lighter than air, just, but she was as big as an ocean liner, and when she moved, she moved hard. I dug in with my heels and prayed for her to stop. She did.
“Starboard side, pull her tight!” came the officer’s call, and with all my might I tugged
my line, winching it round the trunk.
An incredible sight it was, this massive airship nested down on the shores of a tropical island, palm fronds brushing her flanks. A steamship in the middle of a desert could not have looked more out of place. Amidships, where she was fattest, her belly was almost scraping the beach. Her lower fin was badly crumpled, its tip buried in the sand. The Aurora swayed in the humid air. She seemed a mirage.
The great ship’s nose pointed inland. On her starboard side the palms grew quite close, and we’d been tying up her lines to the trunks. Off the Aurora’s port side, there was nothing but beach, so the crew was tethering her lines to mooring spikes, driven deep into the sand. I hoped she would hold.
“I want more lines on her!” the captain called from the window of the control car. “Every extra inch I want holding her. Stem and stern and breast lines. See to it, please! We may not have a mooring mast, gentlemen, but I want this vessel tied down as tightly as Gulliver! Houdini could not shift her, nor a typhoon! See to it, men! Heave on those lines and make her snug as if she were in dry dock!”
Still shouting his poetry, the captain dropped down from the control car and rolled up his sleeves and hammered ties and pulled lines along with the rest of us. My knees were shaky. I blinked up at the sun, which had just cleared the hills to the east. I felt unpleasantly hot, the light bouncing off the sand and into my face. I sucked in a big breath, wishing for more breeze.
“She’s snug!” the captain pronounced after a good twenty minutes. “Thank you, gentlemen.”
I headed back to the ship, wanting sleep. At the windows in the passenger quarters I could see faces pressed against the glass. My eyes strayed to the Topkapi stateroom, and there were Kate and Miss Simpkins at their big picture windows. The tropical light flashed off the lens of Kate’s camera. She lifted her hand and waved.
8
THE ISLAND
The ladies stood beneath their parasols; the gentlemen angled their hats against the sun’s full glare. In their black patent shoes and high-heeled boots, they were having trouble standing upright in the fine white sand. They tilted and swayed. In their dark clothing they looked strangely thin and insubstantial, wavering there on the beach like heat mirages. Strange birds shrieked from the forest, a coconut thudded to the ground, surf crashed against the reef. Captain Walken stood before his assembled passengers, eyes crinkled benevolently.
“Ladies and gentlemen, first let me apologize for this unscheduled stop in our journey to Australia.”
This brought a few grateful chuckles from the crowd, but most people, I noticed, still looked shaken and anxious, some even angry.
“Luckily, thanks to my able crew, we made an exceptionally smooth landing and are snugly berthed. Our ship is largely undamaged, with the critical exception, of course, that we have lost much of our lifting gas. We have the pirates to thank for that.”
“We’re shipwrecked, then!” said one passenger.
“Not at all, sir. Our vessel is in one piece. And she will fly again.”
“When?” a woman with a powerful voice asked. “We are not children, Captain. Tell us the truth.”
“Indeed I am, madam. Repairs are under way as I speak. Which is why I have asked for all of you to disembark. A temporary measure, I assure you. Right now, I need the Aurora as light as possible until we’ve sealed every leak.”
I looked over at the ship. She hovered only inches above the sand. Several crewmen were already busy digging her tail fin free. If the Aurora lost any more hydrium, she would be forced to start bearing her own weight—something no airship was designed to do. Without enough hydrium, she would collapse upon herself. Inside, the sailmakers would be in a frenzy, seeking out every tear in her gossamer gas cells. Outside, the hull crawled with more crew, patching all those holes we’d missed. I wished I was with them. Lunardi was up there. But here I was, shimmied halfway up a coconut palm, trying to string a tarpaulin to make some shade for our precious passengers.
“But will we be able to lift off again?” someone else demanded.
“With our current load I am most doubtful. We may need to remove cargo and furniture and other nonessential items. We won’t know how much hydrium we have until repairs are finished. At the moment, we have plenty of food and drinking water. The weather is fine, and we are all unharmed—with the tragic exception of our chief wireless officer, Mr. Featherstone.”
The captain paused for a moment, and I saw him sigh. I don’t think anyone who’d been in the A-Deck lounge would be able to clear the images from their mind’s eye. The way Szpirglas had lifted the gun, so casually and unflinchingly, and squeezed the trigger. An explosion of blood and bone and a life gone forever.
“We still have cause to be grateful,” said our captain. “An encounter with the likes of Mr. Szpirglas could have been much, much worse. I intend to be under way as soon as possible. I will keep you abreast of all developments. The cabin crew is, as aloft, at your disposal. The ship’s schedule will remain unchanged, with meals served at the usual times. However, your safety is my first concern, so I would urge you to stay within sight of the Aurora. The beach looks very pleasant, and the lagoon sheltered. If you wish, please sunbathe and swim, but do keep an eye open for sharks. I must also ask you to refrain from straying inland unless accompanied by a crew member. I hope that you will be able to return to the ship before much longer. Our cabin crew will be serving a full breakfast on the beach shortly. Now you must excuse me while I tend to the ship.”
It was a reassuring oration, I thought, but the passengers were not all soothed. I heard a fair bit of grumbling and caught plenty of worried looks. I turned back to Baz, who was cinching the other end of the tarp to a palm. It made a good screen, enough to keep the ladies’ faces from being blemished by the sun.
The captain had quietly told me, Baz, and the other cabin crew to keep an eye out for any island inhabitants. I can’t say the idea made me very happy. What if they weren’t friendly? So when I wasn’t stealing glances into the darkness of the trees, I was watching the Aurora, afraid something disastrous would befall her. Afraid she would get blown away, or taken over by cannibals, or, more likely, crushed into the sand by her own unaccustomed weight. I didn’t want to be here. I looked up at the sky, a deep cobalt blue. A frigate bird circled high.
Baz and I strung up a few more tarps and then set about serving breakfast with the rest of the cabin crew. It was quite an undertaking, laying out blankets for the passengers, setting up the trestle tables for the buffet, then lugging out the plates and cutlery and napkins and food. It all seemed nonsense to me right now, when the Aurora was ailing. I kept watching her belly, gauging how much more she’d slumped into the sand.
I didn’t want to be outside. Didn’t want to be reminded that I was on an island, with the Aurora aground. I wanted to be inside, helping the ship right now, instead of pampering our passengers.
“How do you expect them to eat?” Baz asked in mock horror when I grumbled all this to him. We were headed back to the ship, teetering with dirty dishes.
“Let them hack open a few coconuts,” I muttered.
“And what next?” he asked. “Wrangling their own sharks? Buttering their own bread? These people did without fresh croissants this morning, Matt. That’s right. These poor people, washed ashore like Robinson Crusoe, making do without croissants. Have some pity, boy.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said, grinning.
He looked at me, then back at the Aurora.
“She’ll be fine, you know.”
“I know.” I blinked away tears.
“Been a bit much for everyone, hasn’t it?” Baz sighed. “Especially without fresh croissants.”
I laughed. Baz could always cheer me up.
After a hurried breakfast in the crew’s mess, the chief steward, Mr. Lisbon, told me to get some sleep.
“They could probably use an extra hand up top,” I replied, thinking of the sailmakers repairing the ship’s skin.
H
e shook his head. “Sleep first. Captain’s orders, not mine.”
I was glad there was no one else around to hear this; I knew the captain meant it kindly but it had the ring of being sent to bed by your parents. I got a sudden lump in my throat. My father, who would never send me off to bed again. My mother and sisters back home. The truth was I didn’t want to sleep. On land I never slept well. My lungs didn’t get enough air; my heart clattered. I panicked when I could not feel the sky beneath me, when I could not feel my father near. I just wanted to work.
“Were we able to send off a distress message, sir?” I asked Mr. Lisbon.
“The pirates smashed all the radio gear. Mr. Chaudhuri’s trying to repair it.”
“Perhaps he could use a—”
“You’re off duty, Mr. Cruse. I suggest you sleep now when you’ve got the chance. We’ve all plenty of work ahead of us.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. I walked mournfully to my cabin and stood beside my bunk. I felt like a six-year-old, not wanting bedtime to come, afraid of the dark. I could feel how tired my body was; maybe I could sleep just a little. Very slowly I took off my trousers and jacket and shirt and climbed up to my bunk. I slid down under the covers, pushed my cheek against the pillow.
I closed my eyes and tried to pretend we were still aloft, still moving. But the smell of mango permeated the ship, and I could not forget we were leaking. All through the ship I heard the soft thuds of crew working on her skin, crew working above me in the bracing wires, crew coming up and down the corridor. I could feel my heart start beating faster. I swallowed, tried to breathe slow and deep. I was aloft. I could fly. I was soaring alongside the ship. I was falling.
My eyes opened. I felt myself start to shake. Out my porthole I could not see the clouds or open sky, only palms and a sweep of beach and some of the passengers promenading on the sand. I heard the waves crashing against the reef. Landlocked.
Shipwrecked.