FEARLESS

  ELVIRA WOODRUFF

  SCHOLASTIC PRESS

  NEW YORK

  For a Dear Fearless Fellow

  BENJAMIN JOSEPH WOODRUFF

  In His First Year

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  PROLOGUE: The Nightmare

  I: All Hands on Deck

  II: There Is News

  III: Stay Away from the Cursed Sea

  IV: The Crossroads’ Corpse

  V: A Meeting with Master Death

  VI: A Last Look at the Worm

  VII: Time to Go

  VIII: Followed

  IX: Cousin to a Witch

  X: Come Aboard, Me Hearties

  XI: Up to the Crow’s Nest

  XII: A Crate of Crows

  XIII: “Father, Oh, Father, You Are Alive!”

  XIV: Plaguey Little Wharf Rats

  XV: The Jester of Littlebury

  XVI: Off to Tend a Dragon

  XVII: Homesick

  XVIII: Toadstools and Talking Swans

  XIX: The Magic House

  XX: The Huffy Bird

  XXI: The Compass

  XXII: Dreams of Home

  XXIII: Change and a Broken Teacup

  XXIV: The Angel

  XXV: To Plymouth

  XXVI: Devil’s Smiles

  XXVII: It’s All or Nothing

  XXVIII: If I Only Had a Boat

  XXIX: The Light

  XXX: The Death Trap

  XXXI: C’est Tout ou Rien

  XXXII: Unlucky to Be Alive

  XXXIII: The Shanty

  XXXIV: A Radiant Future

  Author’s Note

  Glossary

  Ship’s Glossary

  Bibliography

  Art Credits

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by Elvira Woodruff

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE: THE NIGHTMARE

  AUTUMN 1703

  Eleven-year-old Digory Beale heard his father’s death coming under a starless sky. It was not in the roar of the gale on that stormy night, nor in the echo of the sea as it crashed over the ship’s starboard bow. It was not in the thunder of the flapping canvas overhead, or in the stunned cry of the ship’s first mate as he was blown off deck and swallowed whole in the churning black waters.

  Digory Beale heard his father’s death coming in the loud creaking and cracking of the ship’s floorboards as they were ripped beneath his father’s very feet. At the sound of it, Digory’s breath caught in his throat. The blood drained from his face, and his heart tightened in his chest, for he was a Cornishman’s son and bred to the sea. He knew that the loud crack of wood as it splintered on the jagged jaws of the Eddystone’s rocks, fourteen miles from landfall, was every English sailor’s nightmare. It was a nightmare from which Digory knew his father would never awaken.

  It was startling how fast the water rose up the man’s pant legs. The scud and salty spray were already covering him like a shroud when his eyes locked onto the ship’s figurehead, a carved wooden angel painted gold, with a broken wing and a trumpet to her lips.

  “Have mercy on my soul! See us to safety!” Digory’s father pleaded as if the angel could hear him, as if her wings were not made of wood. But she stared vacantly into the waves as if he had no voice, as if he were already dead.

  It was then that the man cried out for his eldest son. “Help me, Digory! Help me, please!” But the water was already lapping at Nicholas Beale’s mouth. The sting of salt was on his tongue. His final words were muffled as his head slipped under a wave.

  “Fight, Father! Fight!” Digory shouted. “Don’t let the sea take you!”

  Digory’s loud outburst was answered with a sharp jab to his side. With one swift kick, his older cousin, Jacca, sent him flying out of the bed. Digory’s bare bottom hit the loft’s rough floorboards with a thud.

  “What’s all the noise about?” Jacca mumbled. “Another nightmare?”

  Digory blinked and rubbed his eyes. “Aye,” he whispered, relieved to be out of his nightmare world and safe and dry in the loft of Aunt Alice’s cottage. And quickly he wiggled his way back into the sea of arms and legs in the rickety big bed he shared with his three older cousins.

  CHAPTER I: All Hands on Deck

  Early the next morning, a heavy fog rolled in off the ocean, swallowing up Mounts Bay and the small granite house that hugged its harbor. Digory awoke to the familiar smells of boys’ sweat, fish oil, and turf burning in the fire.

  He opened his sea-green eyes and ran his hand through his thick blue-black hair, the color of a mussel shell. The memory of his frightening nightmare had returned.

  If he could only stop dreaming about drowning. How could a fisherman’s son be so afraid of the sea? He’d always been uneasy when he heard talk of men drowning, but it wasn’t until last year that the nightmares began. They started just after his father left Mousehole to take a job on a tall ship.

  With their mother long dead, Digory and his nine-year-old brother, Cubby, were sent to live with their aunt Alice and her eleven children. Digory’s fears were only made worse by his cousin, Ross, who took great pleasure in scaring Digory with the frightening story of how their grandfather had drowned years before, when his ship wrecked on the Eddystone Reef.

  “It was a Plymouth ship,” Ross would begin, “newly built with a fine figurehead, a beautiful golden angel. When the ship hit the rocks, the hull split in half. Granddad and all the crew were swept clear out to sea. The only one to make it into shore that night was the broken gold angel floating on the waves.” Ross would always pause here and shrug. “What the sea wants, the sea will have. That’s what the old salts down at the harbor say.”

  Now Digory couldn’t stop worrying that the sea might want his father. And recently, the closest he would get to the water was to wet his feet as he stood on the beach, drawing with a stick in the sand.

  Each season when the mackerel swam into the bay, there was always a call for the boys of Mousehole to man the three-oared jolly boats to bring the fish ashore. Every boy in the village hoped to be picked for the job, but not Digory. Since his father had left, he wanted nothing to do with boats.

  Digory yawned and stretched his legs across the bed. His three older cousins were already awake and had long gone down the loft’s ladder. Finally he could enjoy the rare pleasure of having the bed all to himself.

  But the babies had begun to yowl from below, and soon Aunt Alice would be rapping on the ladder with her iron poker, her signal to get up and do the morning chores. In a family of fourteen, everyone had chores.

  Digory reached up to the rafter over the bed and felt in the dark for the old, broken roof slate and piece of cliff chalk he kept there. If he were at home in the rooms his father rented on Quay Street, he could be drawing now. But it was too dark in here. The loft’s only window was boarded over with planks. Aunt Alice had covered the glass so as not to have to pay the window tax.

  If I were rich as a lord, Digory thought, I’d have windows in every room of my house and big slate walls so I could draw gigantic pictures! He smiled at the luxury of having so much light. But even now in the dark, when he couldn’t draw his pictures, he could still imagine them. He pictured himself fighting a fire-breathing dragon, his own green eyes burning with fury as he lifted his sword. In his pictures he was always fearless, fighting beasts and one-eyed giants. In his pictures he was never afraid.

  Digory wondered if the sword would be enough to fight the beast. Perhaps he should use a catapult instead. He smiled as he pictured rocks flying through the air toward the fire-breathing dragon. He loved nothing better than to be alone drawing pictures and dreaming up fantastic adventures. But when a boy shares a house with one brother, one aunt, and eleven cousins, he is rarely alone.

  “Thundering gales! Look there!” came a voice from under the bed.

  “What do you see?” two other voices chimed in.

  “Pirates off the starboard!”

  “I hate them dirty pirates!”

  “I hate them, too! Let’s blow them out of the water with a nine gun! Ka-boom!”

  “Quiet!” Digory hollered down to his brother, Cubby, and his younger cousins, Colan and Gordy, who slept on a straw mat under the bed. They were playing their favorite make-believe game, pretending to be the crew of his father’s ship.

  “Stop killing pirates and go back to sleep,” Digory ordered.

  “Hey, you can’t kill those pirates with a nine gun,” Colan said.

  “Yes you can,” Gordy answered.

  “Could not!”

  “Could too!”

  “I said quiet!” Digory shouted.

  A sudden silence followed, interrupted only by the scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch of a mouse scurrying over the floorboards. The cottage was overrun with mice lately. Tam, the old tabby cat, spent all her time sleeping in front of the fire. The mice had grown so bold, they ran circles around her. Aunt Alice wanted to get rid of Tam and complained that she was “useless” and “just another mouth to feed.” Digory couldn’t help but notice how his aunt’s cold gray eyes fell on him when she said this. He knew what she was thinking. He was old enough to be out with the other boys, working on the fishing boats and making a wage. He was as useless as old Tam. If only he wasn’t so afraid of the water.

  He heard the scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch of the mouse again, and he thought about shooting it with his slingshot. It was the best slingshot he had ever made, with a perfect fork and a
good piece of leather he’d found on the beach. He decided to wait until light and go on a mouse hunt. Surely Aunt Alice would think that was useful. Just then he felt something graze his leg.

  “Agh!” he yelled. But as he looked down, Digory was relieved to see that it was no mouse at all but only a sand crab that scurried over his knee and onto the quilt.

  “Cubby! Your crab is loose again,” he hollered.

  “Oh, Barnacle, you bad crab. I told you to stay put,” Cubby scolded as he crawled out from under the bed to retrieve his pet. Digory often wondered how one little red-haired, freckle-faced brother managed to be more troublesome than all eleven of his cousins put together.

  “If he gets loose one more time he’s going into the pot,” Digory threatened.

  “Can we come up on deck now?” another little voice begged from below, followed by a fit of coughing. “It’s smoky down here.”

  The chimney in the kitchen was poorly made, and the cottage was always filling with smoke.

  “It’s just as smoky up here,” Digory said. “You stay where you are,” he ordered. “I’m the captain of this bed and what I say goes.”

  The tousled dark hair and sleepy faces of seven-year-old Colan and six-year-old Gordy suddenly appeared beside Cubby. With a sudden loud cry of “All hands on deck!” Cubby led the mutinous crew up and over the sides of the bed, where they gleefully piled on top of their captain.

  CHAPTER II: There Is News

  “Disobey orders, will ye?” Digory cried out as he fought off the attack with tickles. “Fancy walking the plank, do ye?”

  Squeals of laughter and cries begging for mercy were so loud that Digory didn’t hear the girls on the loft’s ladder.

  “We’ve come with your clothes,” ten-year-old Zimmie called over the uproar.

  Digory turned to see his cousin’s long black braids and ruddy cheeks in the glow of the lamp she set down on a box that served as a table. The smell of fish oil from the lamp’s burning wick swirled through the loft. Like most fishermen’s families, the Beales depended on the net for their supper, their wages, and even their light.

  Zimmie’s identical twin, Armynel, followed close behind with a willow basket filled with smoky-smelling shirts and trousers that had dried hard and stiff before the fire. Nightclothes were a luxury a poor man’s family could not afford, and underclothes were unheard of. The few times a year their clothes were washed and hung by the hearth to dry, the children went to bed wearing only goose bumps from the cold. Digory pulled the quilt over himself while the others dove under the blanket to hide.

  “Smells worse than the backside of Neddy Crumb’s pig up here,” Zimmie said, making a face.

  As she passed by, Cubby reached for Barnacle and quickly attached the crab to one of his cousin’s long braids.

  “Get it off me!” Zimmie screamed when she looked back to find the crab on her hair. “Get it off!”

  Armynel grabbed Barnacle and threw him back onto the bed.

  “You needn’t be so rough with him,” Cubby complained.

  “I’m telling Mamm that you’ve got crabs in the house again, Cubby,” Zimmie huffed, smoothing down her hair. “And if you touch my braids once more, I’ll drop your breeches into the fire. On my honor, I will!”

  “I never touched them, Barnacle did,” Cubby grinned.

  “’Tis a cold morn to go about the village in naught but your shirt,” Armynel said as she dangled a pair of raggedy trousers over the bed.

  Digory yanked the trousers from her hand. As the girls hurried back down the ladder, he reached into the basket and began throwing out clothes to his rowdy crew.

  “Tar me, Aunt’s still not mended the hole,” Cubby moaned. He poked his finger through a large hole in the knee of his pants.

  “If you can mend a net, you can mend your breeches,” Digory told him. He stepped into his own trousers, which he had patched himself with sailcloth. “Besides, Aunt is in a bad enough temper already without you giving her more work.”

  “If only Father would come home,” Cubby sighed.

  “I wish my father was coming home,” Gordy said.

  A sudden quiet fell over them. Digory knew that his cousins were thinking of their own father, who had drowned two summers ago when his boat wrecked on the rocks at Lamorna Cove. Aunt Alice had not smiled since.

  “You’ve got your shirt on backwards again, Gordy,” Digory said, breaking the silence. He gave his little cousin a playful shove, and soon they were all shoving and shouting again as they tumbled back into a pile on the bed.

  “Ross said that when the Flying Cloud returns, your father’s pockets will be filled with coins,” Colan declared as he sat on Gordy’s stomach. “You won’t be sorry he made the voyage then.”

  “Uncle Nicholas promised to buy us a goose,” Gordy said, pushing Colan off him.

  “He promised to bring me a whistle from the other side of the world,” Cubby bragged.

  “I’d fancy having me a taffy, instead,” Gordy said.

  “Do you think there are giants on the other side of the world?” Cubby asked. “Like the giant, Mog, in Father’s story?”

  Digory smiled at the thought of the good tales their father used to tell them. He knew that Cubby’s favorite story was the one about Jack the giant killer from Land’s End and the giant called Mog, who used the Cornish hills for his table and the stars for his candles.

  There was something special in the timber of their father’s voice, something steady and strong. But it was his father’s singing that Digory missed most. No one could sing a tune like Nicholas Beale. Everyone in the village said so.

  At the sudden sound of a noise, Digory turned to see Zimmie back at the ladder.

  “What now?” he called to her.

  “There is news.”

  “What news?”

  “Mamm’s not said yet, but she sent me to fetch you,” Zimmie said before disappearing back down the ladder.

  “It could be news of the Flying Cloud,” Colan whispered excitedly.

  They had been waiting for months for some word of the ship and her crew. Everyone grew quiet until Cubby let out a loud whoop. “Thundering gales! Father is coming home!” he cried. The others joined in with a chorus of cheers and whistles.

  “Don’t be gutting your fish before she’s in your net,” Digory told them. “We’ve not heard what the news is yet.”

  But as he walked toward the ladder, Digory hoped they were right. Hadn’t his father promised to take him and Cubby back to Quay Street, where they could sit with him by the fire once again and listen to the story of Jack and the giant?

  Everyone scrambled toward the ladder. Digory was the first to go down. As his foot reached the bottom rung, he saw his older cousins standing at the hearth. But one look at his aunt’s red-rimmed eyes, and his heart stopped. No one needed to tell him that the news was not good.

  “Where?” he heard his cousin Jacca ask. “Where did Uncle Nicholas’s ship go down?”

  CHAPTER III: Stay Away from the Cursed Sea

  “They said it went down at Yarmouth,” Aunt Alice said, blinking at the shock of hearing her own words. “They said that the Flying Cloud went down four and twenty days past, now.”

  Digory felt the air catch in his throat. He looked around the dimly lit room in disbelief. He could hear the girls’ gasps as they reached for each other beside him. He saw Cubby, Colan, and Gordy clumped together in a wide-eyed frozen heap at the bottom of the ladder. Meanwhile Jacca and Ross stared in silence at the dirt floor. Only twelve-year-old Peder, simpleminded from birth, looked unfazed as he sat banging a wooden spoon on his knee.

  Baby Bronwyn babbled in the corner. Three-year-old Jane stumbled over her dress and fell down crying. No one moved to pick her up. No one spoke. Digory’s worst nightmare was coming true. He couldn’t stop his mind from flashing back to the cracking ship filling with water. But this was no dream.

  His aunt’s worn face crumpled before him as her reddened hands reached numbly to pick up the crying child from the floor.

  “Who brought this news?” Jacca asked.

  “Jem Sprite,” his mother replied weakly. “He heard it from a packhorse driver who journeyed from Plymouth….” Her voice trailed off.

  “And the crew, Mamm?” Jacca pressed. “Any saved?”