Very shortly Jolly caught a glimpse of Captain Bannon, straw blond and furious as a dervish, who whisked over to the galleon on a rope. Their eyes met in that brief moment and she felt that he was smiling at her, despite the cloth over his face. His eyes could radiate such friendliness that sometimes Jolly wondered why his victims didn’t willingly hand over their ships to him, just on the basis of the warmth in that look, which didn’t fit at all with his wild determination and lack of scruples.
Jolly raised her arm triumphantly and gave a jubilant shout; then she also came alongside the bow of the galleon, grabbed a dangling line, and climbed nimbly up it like a cat.
The green smoke on the deck had dispersed quickly. Even as Jolly was climbing the rope, she could hear that the battle was already over before it had really begun. The coughing, spitting Spaniards surrendered with tearing eyes and running noses. Hardly any of them lifted a weapon against the pirates, and if he did, it was only a tired reflex, not a real will to fight.
Jolly swung herself over the railing. Bannon saw her and hurried over to her. “Well done,” he said, thumping her shoulder so hard that she almost went to her knees. He turned to his men, who were driving the captured Spaniards to the middle of the deck.
“Cut all lines to the Maddy so she doesn’t take us down with her,” he ordered, pointing to several crewmen. “The rest of you disarm our friends. From now on, this is our new ship!” With a grin in the direction of the girl at his side, he called even more loudly, “I guess the tub needs a new name. From now on she’ll be called Jumping Jolly!”
Jolly grew dizzy with pride, while all around her the pirates broke into shouts of acclamation.
But at the same time a creaking and groaning sounded from the Maddy. The painted predator’s mouth clenched its teeth in death.
Ten minutes later the Skinny Maddy was still not entirely sunk. She rose slantingly out of the sea like a cliff, a memorial in front of the setting sun. The superstructure on the stern had almost reached the water, but the toothed bow was sticking way up. The figurehead on the prow—a dark Neptune with a trident—was raised toward the deep blue sky, as if it wanted to blare a last, proud cry against the world.
Yet even as the pirates were still gathering the prisoners into a group on the deck, it appeared that something was not right. The captain acted victorious and satisfied, but Jolly saw the uneasiness in his eyes.
There were too few Spaniards.
There were just forty sailors aboard. Not enough men to serve all battle stations, not to mention occupy the necessary positions on a ship like this. Even Bannon, with his crew of seventy, wouldn’t have an easy time handling the galleon under sail. But forty Spaniards? Absolutely impossible.
And there was another thing that was strange.
“Those aren’t Spaniards at all,” said Cristobal, Bannon’s steersman. “Most of them speak Spanish, and a few of them even look it, but I’d hazard a guess they were born here in the colonies.”
“And so?” Jolly burst out, earning a frown from the steersman before he turned to the captain again.
“Most of them seem to be ordinary cutthroats. Look at the scars. And the boozy faces.” He grinned, revealing a blackened incisor. “Basically, they look just like us.”
Bannon didn’t return the grin. He looked over the deck worriedly, briefly examined the prisoners, and then looked at the empty horizon. “What’s going on here?” he whispered tonelessly and so softly that only Jolly and Cristobal heard him.
A shiver ran down Jolly’s back. A trap?
“Our people have looked through everything,” the steersman said. “No other men aboard, also no explosives or other booby traps. Furthermore, no cargo, either.”
“We’re getting out of here,” Bannon decided. “Fast.”
With uncustomary haste he gave his orders to the first mate. Soon afterward the shout came down the deck, “Make ready to set sail!”
“What’s going to happen with them?” Jolly asked, pointing to the chained prisoners. Cristobal had walked over to one of them, grabbed him by the neck, and was talking to him.
“We’ll set them down on land somewhere,” said Bannon thoughtfully, as he walked to the railing. No enemy ships in sight anywhere.
Jolly looked over at the sinking Maddy. She still lay slanting out of the water. The current had driven the galleon thirty or forty yards away from the wreck, and the distance was increasing every minute.
Cristobal came back to the captain.
“And?” Bannon asked. “What did he say?”
“That they were prisoners. All sentenced to death. They were promised their freedom if they came aboard this ship and did everything possible to defend it.”
“Only forty men? A ship like this? That’s laughable.”
“Whoever hatched this business must have figured that none of these fellows would survive. They obviously have only one thing in common: They were all cannoneers at some time or other. They weren’t chosen to fight hand to hand—they were supposed to polish us off from a distance.” The steersman rubbed his stubbly chin. “And there’s something else. Obviously another ship towed them here. They were never under full sail—”
A loud flapping drowned out his words as the pirates unfurled the sails in the rigging. The mighty bundles of cloth unrolled within seconds.
“No!” Bannon gasped.
Jolly saw what he meant, and at the same moment she heard it, too.
Out of the sails fell jugs—large, brown jugs, which shattered into thousands of pieces as they hit the deck. There must have been two or three dozen, breaking all over the deck with a hollow popping sound. Some fell into the middle of the screaming group of prisoners; another hit Trevino, the cook, on the head and knocked him out.
The broken jugs held something that at first glance looked like dark wool, a tangle of thick yarn—until the tangle unraveled on its own and divided into hundreds of smaller balls, which swarmed in all directions on scraggly legs.
“Spiders!” someone screeched; then another took up the cry: “Spiders…the jugs are full of spiders!”
Bannon bellowed orders, but no one heard them in the panic that had broken out on the ship. The prisoners screamed at the top of their lungs as a true eruption of spider bodies shot up among them. The pirates jumped around on deck, some trying to stamp on the creatures, but they quickly gave up when they saw how hopeless a task it was. Ten, then twenty were crawling all over the body of the senseless cook; others sought their way up boots and trousers, along the rigging and the railing. The creatures might be just as panicked and confused as the men aboard, but they were faster and—above all—irritated.
Jolly pulled herself up into the shrouds. Her hands were wet with sweat and her breath was coming in gasps. Everywhere the pirates were bellowing and stamping and shaking themselves. Cristobal knocked several animals off his body at once, but he overlooked an especially fat spider that crouched on his neck. He screamed when she bit him.
At first Bannon struck at the spiders with his saber, then with his bare hands. He was trying to follow Jolly aloft, but then he was bitten too, several times at once, and the pain made him let go of the rope. With a curse he crashed back down onto the deck.
“Those dogs!” he bellowed. His voice faded as the spider venom numbed him. “Jolly…the figurehead…remember the…figure—”
He collapsed. Jolly stared at the lifeless figure beneath her, and her eyes filled with tears.
Damn it—she had to do something, had to help Bannon and the others somehow. Desperately, she looked around for a weapon and knew at once that nothing would help. No one could master the overwhelming odds of the spiders.
Jolly knew exactly what Bannon had intended to say to her.
From her elevated position she had a good view of the wreck of the Maddy. The figurehead was sticking up like an outstretched finger, pointing the way.
Jolly brushed off the nearest spiders and jumped over to the railing, where she came to a waverin
g stand. Spiders were now everywhere, a seething black carpet that covered the deck and all the men aboard. Most men were no longer moving; some had vanished almost completely under the hairy, scrambling bodies. A few still up on the masts were calling for help, but a whole crowd of the eight-legged creatures was already nearing them.
Jolly looked around at Bannon one last time, then she jumped overboard. It was more a fall than a jump. She might just as well have fallen onto a stone floor when she hit the surface of the water without sinking into it. Lucky not to have broken all her bones, she rolled over, was wildly tossed around by a few waves, and finally got onto her feet.
Silvery triangles slid toward her, encircled her. Jolly had had to deal with sharks more than once and knew that they only saw the outlines of the soles of her feet on the surface and didn’t recognize them as worthwhile prey. Jolly forced herself not to think of the men who’d leaped overboard in fear of the spiders. They’d certainly not had as much luck as she. Hurriedly she ran over the water toward the Maddy in great leaps. This time she was running against the current, her breathing wild, her heart hammering in her chest, but finally she saw the pirate ship in front of her—or rather, what remained of it.
Behind Jolly the Spanish galleon rose against the darkening sky. From afar it looked as if the wood itself had come alive. The dark surface moved, covered with swarming life, which cast shifting shadows.
The water was bubbling around the Maddy. Jolly had trouble avoiding the white crests. Sea foam wasn’t to be trusted; sometimes the surface beneath it receded a little and sucked at your feet like quicksand, and then you had to be careful to pull them right out again before the water consolidated around you and held you fast.
She was able to grab the edge of the red railing and pull herself up with it. As soon as the superstructure at the stern and the inner spaces of the xebec were filled with water, the Skinny Maddy would go under like a stone. Not even a polliwog like Jolly would manage to escape from the deadly vortex in time.
Jolly had to be faster. Even faster.
With a gasp she swung herself over the railing onto the deck, lost her footing on the wet incline for a moment, and slipped back a few yards. She felt wildly around her and got hold of a rope, intending to support herself—but the rope gave and fell beside her on the deck. Jolly slipped farther, feetfirst, and now she came dangerously near the bubbling, swirling water. At the last moment she slithered across one of the grating-covered hatches to the hold and hooked her hands and feet into it. From here it was still fifteen feet to the thundering water, but the ship was sinking inexorably farther. In less than a minute, the grating would be under water. By then, Jolly had to be away from here, had to have reached the figurehead, the only place that now offered any safety.
Of course, she could have tried to flee across the open sea. But the walk over the rocking, wavy ocean was ten times as exhausting as the same stretch on land, and Jolly hadn’t seen any island on the horizon. At some point she would collapse in the middle of the ocean from exhaustion—and then she would look just as appetizing to the sharks as any swimmer or large fish. And even if the sharks had no appetite, which was unlikely, she’d die of thirst out there anyway.
She had to get to the figurehead. It was her only hope.
A powerful shuddering went through the ship; then, with a groan from its very innards, it settled more steeply. With every degree of angle the Maddy upended, it became more difficult to climb up the deck.
Now Jolly became aware of something else. At first she saw it only at the edge of her field of vision and then, when she looked more carefully, with merciless certainty.
Among the bubbling and fountains of foam at the foot of the deck, there was a silhouette moving in the water. A form, approaching human, but with long, skinny limbs, skin that shimmered with rainbow colors like oil, and an ugly face that consisted only of a maw and half a dozen razor-sharp rows of teeth. Jolly saw the jaws of the creature snapping open and shut angrily, threatening to bite in the foam and the waves.
A kobalin! A living kobalin! It had been a long time since Jolly had seen one, maybe two or three years, and then it had been a young one, which the pirates had killed in the water with a few well-placed shots.
But this kobalin was fully grown, and he was rampaging down there in expectation of his catch as if he hadn’t had anything between his teeth for months. The sounds of the battle must have lured him. Kobalins loved carrion, especially human carrion, and there were stories of shipwrecked crews that had been torn up and eaten within minutes by a handful of kobalins.
Jolly felt as though her entire body were numb. It wasn’t enough that she’d lost the captain and all her friends, that she was about to be dragged to the bottom by a shipwreck, that her strength was gradually disappearing—no, of course one of those monsters had to turn up.
She began to climb up again, more carefully this time. First up to the hatch cover, then up to a rope, and then from there—finally!—back to the railing. The sound of the kobalin’s jaws snapping at her back overwhelmed even the groaning of the wreck and the booming of the sea. The beast was lurking down there, its teeth bared, hardly able to wait for Jolly to finally lose her grip.
Kobalins were afraid to leave the water. Only the bravest among them sometimes stretched a head or a claw above the surface; most preferred to look for their food underwater. That the one down there was extending his arms toward Jolly—even if he couldn’t reach her—was unusual. That he once even raised his torso above the raging waters was extraordinary.
Jolly climbed farther and reached the figurehead. Bannon had explained the mechanism to her more than once, on quiet nights when she and he were the only ones awake. At that time he’d let her in on the best-kept secret on the Maddy.
The figurehead with its grim Titan face was hollow and had room for one adult human being. Watertight packets inside it contained provisions for several days. By means of two bolts, the figurehead could be loosened from the hull of the ship and would become a perfect lifeboat for its occupant. Concealed weights ensured that it would always turn face upward; there one could open a hatch to let in fresh air.
The kobalin let out a gruesome cry as one of the masts broke and crashed down on him with its full weight. Out of the corner of her eye, Jolly saw the mast plunge straight into the monster’s gaping mouth and ram the creature down into the deep with it.
She snorted grimly, but she had no strength left to exult. With a last effort of will, she opened the hidden hatch cover at the back of the figurehead, laboriously made her way inside hand over hand, and pulled the hatch closed behind her. Leather upholstery covered the crack. For a fraction of a second, she felt as if she’d been enclosed in a coffin alive. Panic cut off her air. She’d rather go down with the Maddy than be trapped inside here. But then reason got the upper hand.
The wreck settled steeper and steeper; the final plunge to the bottom of the sea might begin at any moment.
Jolly pulled the two bolts out of their fastenings. They slid out easily, as if Bannon had recently oiled them. There was a shattering noise, and for a long moment Jolly believed that the Maddy was breaking up. But no—the figurehead had loosened from the hull. She didn’t even notice the free fall into the water, just the landing, which struck the wooden outer shell like a hundred hammer blows. There was a roaring in Jolly’s ears, and she was on the verge of fainting. Then the figurehead was seized by the waves. A deafening screeching sounded out of the depths, perhaps the dying kobalin or perhaps the sinking Maddy. Jolly could only hope that she was already far enough away from the wreck that the suction of the sinking ship wouldn’t take her to the bottom with it.
It was pitch-black inside the figurehead. The air smelled musty. Jolly didn’t dare open the little air hatch for fear the boiling sea would enter and fill the cavity with water.
A dull thud sounded as something banged against the figurehead from underneath. Sharks! They took the drifting shape for an especially fat catch. Jolly wa
sn’t sure the wood would withstand the heavy pressure of teeth if one of them really bit into it.
Something stroked her face in the darkness.
She cried out. In the first moment she thought it was a finger. But that was foolishness. The distance between the tip of her nose and the wooden wall of the cavity wasn’t more than twelve inches. She was alone, of course.
Or maybe…not entirely alone.
A spider was enclosed in the figurehead with her! It must have crawled inside Jolly’s shoulder bag on board the galleon.
Now it was crawling freely around her body.
Jolly began to kick in the narrow tube, hammering against the wood with her hands and feet, before she got her panic enough under control to be able to form some clear thoughts.
Lie utterly still. Be utterly quiet.
And listen!
Jolly held her breath. Goose bumps spread over her entire body like armor, but that still wasn’t any protection from the venomous bite of the spider. She listened to her own heart beating, not faintly, not softly, but so loudly that she thought it must burst her chest at any moment.
Still, there was a sound. Barely audible. Like fingertips drumming gently on a hollow surface.
The spider was scrambling over the wood somewhere underneath her.
Jolly bit her lower lip to keep from making a sound. If she could only see something! A tiny shimmer of light would be enough, perhaps. But she didn’t dare lift a hand to open the air vent over her face for fear of really irritating the spider.
Somehow she had to get rid of the thing.
She breathed in and out very slowly, then held her breath again, grew as stiff as if she were a piece of wood herself. She had to lure the spider into a sense of security; she mustn’t under any circumstances induce it to attack.