Magic by the Lake (11 page)

They came out onto the red-clay road at last, farther from home than where they had left it. The lake wasn't even visible from here, and Mark decided the best plan was to head back toward their own field. Katharine counted seven hills before they reached their gate. Nobody had breath enough for much talking, but as they climbed the gate and went bumping over the field (little heeding whether the rams were unfriendly or not, this time), Jane managed to utter a few words between puffings.

"What'll we do when we get there?" she said. "Just wish?"

"What else?" gasped Mark. "We can't worry about consequences now. We've got to save her. No matter what."

"Let come what may," agreed Katharine.

The three children thudded across the hilly field, over the second gate, and through the yard of the cottage. Their mother sat reading on the porch. She looked up and saw Jane and Mark running, with Katharine trailing behind.

"Hello, darlings," she said. "Playing tag?"

Nobody answered. Snail shells crunched under their flying feet now, followed by the splud, splud of damp sand. A glance showed the lake, blue and ordinary and empty of magic menacings, before them.

"But that doesn't signify," said Jane. "Imagine what's probably underneath! Just lurking there!"

"Let's not," said Katharine.

Mark touched the lake first. "I wish we were on the island with Martha," was all he could say before breath utterly failed.

And then they were.

The next thing Martha knew after she made the wish, a salty breeze was lifting her hair, and she was standing on the rocks that rimmed the familiar coral island. Just before her were the four palm trees where she and the others had hidden on that first fateful magical day. She ran forward.

There, right in front of the four trees, was the flat stone, just as she remembered it, with Chauncey Cutlass's initials blazoned on its front. She flung herself on her knees and scrabbled in the sand with her fingers. Too late, she wished she had brought a shovel. Still, maybe one could be fetched by magical means.

Hurrying back to the rocks, Martha leaned over, plunged her finger in the water, and wished again. Nothing happened. So Mark must have been right that first day, and this tropic sea had no connection with the magic lake. Either that, or the salt got in the way of the magic current. "Like a short circuit," muttered Martha to herself, running back to the flat stone, "whatever that is."

If there were a tree branch she could make a stick for digging! But the only trees were palm trees, and Martha felt that a palm leaf right now would be but as a broken reed. So she used her hands again.

At last she managed to get one end of the stone free of the encroaching sand (breaking several fingernails in the process). Huffing and puffing, she heaved the stone away and to one side. Beneath it was just more sand, heeled down and trampled well by the industrious pirates. Martha got to work on it. Her fingers were sore by now, and there seemed to be no end to the gritty graininess, except that as she got lower it got wetter and scratchier.

"I've heard of the sands of time," she said aloud, "and these must be it."

But a second later one hand struck solid metal, and a tantalizing corner of pirate chest appeared at the bottom of the hole. Martha started to dig faster.

Then she stopped. All this while she had been half-hearing a sort of plashing sound in the water at her back. Probably just waves, she thought. But now the plashing was nearer and louder. Something made her turn and look behind her.

A long, canoe-shaped boat was fast approaching the island, manned by what looked like hundreds of bare-skinned figures. A few strings of beads here and there formed their only costume. Their white teeth gleamed in the sun.

"Natives!" was Martha's first thought. "Friends or enemies?"

Probably the natives wouldn't notice, though, was her second thought. Probably they wouldn't any more than half-see her, the way the pirates had that other time, and probably they'd just think the island was haunted, and she could scare them away as easy as pie and get on with the digging.

As her mind spoke this thought, one of the natives stood up (rocking the boat) and pointed straight at her with his paddle. And a fierce battle cry went up from every dusky throat.

And Martha remembered that she had broken the rules and wished there
weren't
any rules anymore, and now there
weren't.
And here she was, alone and unprotected on a desert island, and
everybody
would notice. Particularly savages.

A weaker spirit might have quailed, or hid its head in the sand. Martha did neither. Her one concern now was to protect the treasure, and Mr. Smith and the bookshop. Huffing and puffing harder than ever, she dragged the flat stone back into place and started stamping it down.

Behind her she heard a boat-landing sound, followed by the thud of running feet. Then the running stopped, and the only sound was a sound of breathing. Whether it was her own or the savages', Martha wasn't sure. She decided to look around again.

She did, and quickly shut her eyes. But that was even worse, and she opened them once more. The bead-clad savages were standing in a ring around her. Some carried spears with jaggy-looking edges (if a spear can have an edge). All of them were looking straight at her, and she could read only utter unfriendliness in their gaze. And she could read something else, only she wasn't quite sure what it was. Or if it was what she was afraid it was, she hoped she was wrong.

She thought it time to address the islanders. "Ugh," she said. "Mugwump. Mattapan. Chop Suey."

The head native paid her words no heed. He pointed at her with his spear, which was the jaggiest-looking of them all.

"Supperum," he said. "Smallum fattum girlum. Roastum stuffed with breadfruit crumbs. Custard apple in mouth all same like sucklingum piggum."

"Yum yum yummmmmmmmmmm," said all the other natives.

And Martha knew then what it was she had seen in the expressions of the savage eyes. It was hunger. This was a cannibal island, and they were cannibals.

As this fell thought sank into her brain, rough hands seized her, and she knew no more.

When she came to, for a minute she didn't know where she was. She tried to move, and couldn't. She looked down. Then she knew.

She was bound hand and foot and tied to the handle of a long spear that was standing up with its point plunged deep in the sand. Her feet dangled high above the ground. It was an undignified position, and she would have been furious if she had had room for any feelings but fear.

Drums were beating somewhere nearby, and there

was a sound of rough voices raised in something that was probably intended to be song. Martha looked. It was just as she feared. A huge bonfire blazed on the beach nearby, and the islanders were dancing round it, waving their spears. A vast caldron hung over the fire. Steam issued from it, and Martha knew only too well (from Katharine's home cooking lessons) that any minute it would come to a boil.

"O turtle!" she cried, trying to make her voice heard above the din.

Not a thing happened. Naturally. All rules were broken now, and there wouldn't be a soul to help her, and she was the one who had done it. It was only what she deserved, but that was small comfort.

The caldron began to bubble. Martha spared a second for a wish that if Jane and Mark and Katharine ever got out of the woods and arrived back at the magic lake and were noble enough to try to help her, it would be too late. After all, there was no point in their being boiled, too. Then she wept, a prey to despair.

Savage hands seized her, spear and all, and carried her toward the bonfire. She could feel its heat all around her now, and the steam from the caldron was warm and damp on her face.

Then, just at the moment when she was abandoning all hope, there was an interruption.

Three forms appeared on the island's rocky shore. The forms were those of Jane and Katharine and Mark. Because at just that moment they
had
arrived at the lake and made their wish, and it
wasn't
too late, and here they were.

Their horrified eyes took in the scene.

"What'll we do?" said Katharine.

"Pretend we're gods from the sea, silly!" said Jane. "That's what explorers
always
do! It
always
works!"

"Wait," said Mark, wanting to stop and think it over, as usual.

"There's no time!" said Jane, and for once she was right about this, for the natives were holding Martha poised over the caldron now, and one of them was just reaching out to cut the bonds that held her to the spear and were all that kept her from the scalding depths below.

"Stop that!" cried Jane, striding forward and waving her arms as a great goddess from the sea should. "Salaam! Hallelujah! Boria Boola Ga!"

Katharine tried to follow her example, but she couldn't think of anything godlike to say. "Vamoose! Twenty-three skidoo! Skat, you nasty things!" were the words that fell from her lips.

The cannibals jumped, startled, and some of them dropped their weapons. The ones who were holding Martha's spear let it fall (luckily to one side of the caldron, and Martha was only slightly bruised). Mark took advantage of the distraction to kick quite a lot of sand onto the bonfire. It went out. He reached down to pick up one of the weapons the savages had dropped.

But the cannibal chief wasn't to be discouraged so easily. He put his foot on the spear Mark was trying to pick up.

"Bushwah!" he said (or a native word that sounded very much like that). "Don't believum. Strangers always tell same old storyum. All same likum Captain Cook. Tellum native him great goddum. Wasn't. Heap big fakum."

He rallied his flagging cohorts round him, and they started for Jane and Katharine menacingly. Mark ran forward to bar the way.

"Beware!" he cried wildly. "Great goddum! Am, too! Prove it! Heap big magic! Fire magic! Voodoo!" And pulling out a box of matches he happened to have in his pocket, he struck one of them and brandished it in the cannibal chief's face.

The chief remained unimpressed. "Old stuf-fum," he said. "Modern invention. Safety matchum." And blowing out the match contemptuously, he seized Mark in his iron grip. Others of the savage horde laid hold of Jane and Katharine.

Mark fleetingly wished he were the Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur and could predict an eclipse of the sun, and then it would happen, and that would show them. But he wasn't, and he couldn't.

And the cannibal chief had probably had the book read out loud to him by some missionary, anyway, Mark reflected bitterly. And then he had probably eaten the missionary, coat and bands and hymnbook, too.

The only thing Mark
could
do was let himself be bound hand and foot and tied to a spear like Martha before him. Out of the corner of one eye he could see Jane and Katharine being subjected to the same humiliating treatment. Five minutes later the four children were dangling from their four spears like so many sides of meat hanging in a butcher shop waiting to be roasted. Mark shuddered. Every idea he had seemed to lead back to the same horrid subject.

The natives were hurrying about below them now, gathering wood for another fire and hauling out three more caldrons (though how they had fitted four caldrons into their one narrow canoe Mark couldn't imagine).

"This is the worst thing that's happened to us
yet\
" cried Katharine from her spear.

"Don't give up. Keep thinking. We've always managed to find a way out before," called Mark, reassuringly from his, though he didn't really feel as hopeful as he tried to sound.

"We hadn't broken all the rules then, and ruined everything," said Jane, who was in no mood to consider the feelings of her youngest sister.

Martha gave way to tears again. I will not say whether any of the others joined her, or which ones.

The bonfires were nearly built now, and the caldrons being hung in place. But the natives were moving more slowly, and pausing every few moments to wipe their brows. The sun had climbed high in the heavens. It was hot. Some of the cannibals abandoned all pretense of work and flung themselves down on the sand and shut their eyes. Others followed their example.