George looked down in horror as the living and the dead were hurled together in some ghastly danse macabre.
Where was Ada? Was she dead? And where was the professor?
George struggled vainly and sought release from the magical force that held him, but it was as if he were enclosed within an invisible shell, protecting him from harm, whilst rendering him helpless to offer what assistance he could in this monstrous calamity.
The Empress of Mars suddenly all but upended. Passengers and crew, Earthfolk and others from elsewhere, tables, chairs and all the fine paraphernalia of first-class dining, now joined by the stage, the grand piano, statues, pillars and whatnots, took one final terrible trip, over the dining hall floor, out through the windows and onto the storm-lashed promenade deck.
And after them all travelled George, in surprising comfort considering the apocalyptic circumstances. He wafted gently, light as a bubble from a child’s soap-sud meerschaum. Out and away into the sky.
Untouched by the storm, undampened by the rain, but reaching a point close to madness, George drummed his fists upon the interior of his invisible prison and called the name of Ada Lovelace again and again and again. And as he floated away from the airship, he viewed its terrible end. Lit by spreading fires now and the lightning’s awful blaze, the Empress of Mars, billowing and broken-backed, plunged into the storm-whipped ocean. Folk were fighting for the lifeboats now and overloaded vessels were tearing free of their moorings. The destruction was titanic, decks imploding, cabins tearing open. George looked on as the concert hall turned inside out, spewing seating and balconies into the foaming waves.
And George Fox turned his face away, for he could bear no more.
Shortly before the coming of dawn the storm lost its fury and ceased with its howlings and wrath. The gales dropped away, the lightning departed, the thunder no more to be feared. The ocean calmed to a palette of blues as sunlight fell upon it.
George awoke from troubled sleep to find himself alone.
Alone upon a beautiful beach and freed from his eerie cocoon. His fingers touched on silver sand, warm sunlight kissed at his striking chin. George rose upon his elbows, for he was flat on his back. Took in the idyllic surroundings, smiled to himself and then recalled all that had happened.
George’s face did cloudings-over, George’s stomach knotted. He climbed to his feet and he shouted Ada’s name, but George was all alone. Before him, a sea of infinite blue; behind, a rising jungle.
George shielded his eyes from the early sun and scanned the distant horizon. Debris, bodies, lifeboats? George saw only blue.
Was he the sole survivor saved from the watery grave? Saved somehow by magic, or by God? George’s thoughts went racing – how had it come to this? Was what had happened his fault? Was he somehow horribly jinxed? A modern-day Jonah bringing doom to all he met?
George Fox sank down onto his knees and cradled his hands in prayer.
‘Please, God,’ prayed George, ‘let Ada live. Send my soul to Hell in trade, but please let Ada live.’
A monkey shrieked somewhere in the jungle, causing George to lose his concentration. Had Darwin the monkey butler been washed ashore alive? A monkey butler would prove a most useful creature to a shipwrecked fellow on an uninhabited island.
But then George’s thoughts became further confused. What if this was not an uninhabited island? Putting two and two together, George came up with a seemingly appropriate four by concluding that if not uninhabited, the island must therefore be inhabited. By cannibals!
‘Oh please spare me, baby Jesus,’ prayed George Fox, so suddenly devout. Then George’s stomach rumbled somewhat, adding further confusion by reminding George that he had missed his dinner the previous evening and was now extremely hungry.
George Fox sank once more to the sand and buried his face in his hands.
The sun rose higher in the sky, the tide gently nibbled the beach.
At length George rose to his feet once more and dusted sand from himself. He needed food. He needed to know how large the island was and what natural resources it had to offer. And most of all he needed to know if Ada Lovelace had come ashore alive, unharmed and well.
And then George’s thoughts moved on to what it would be like if only Ada had been washed ashore, leaving only her and George upon the island. The thought of this made George’s spirits rise. He could picture the two of them building a tree house to live in, and of course employing the services of a monkey butler. Perhaps even raising a family. Before being rescued and brought back to London, where the royalties from the best-selling book of their adventures would comfortably keep them in a Mayfair mansion for the rest of their lives.
George smiled broadly and stroked at his striking chin. Then he took a great big breath and marched along the beach.
‘My stride,’ said George, to no one but himself, ‘would be approximately one yard. So if I count my footsteps I will be able to gauge the circumference of this island when I eventually return to the point of my departure.’ It was logical thinking and George was pleased with it, and so, counting loudly to himself, he strode along the beach.
George whistled as he counted, a popular music-hall ditty of the day: ‘Don’t Jump off the Roof, Dad, You’ll Make a Hole in the Yard’. George had but recently seen demonstrated at the music hall Mr Thomas Edison’s patent wax-cylinder phonograph – a wonder of modern-day acoustic science, whereby music could actually be recorded upon revolving waxen cylinders and then replayed by the application of a needle linked to a brass horn affair. And George had wondered at the time, were he ever to be marooned alone upon a desert island, which eight waxed cylinders he would like to take with him. And which book also, assuming he already had a Bible and the works of Shakespeare.
George plodded on, for plod he now did, his stride being all but gone. He had counted his way through three thousand footsteps, and he was all but done. But then George suddenly gave up the count and found a new spring to his step. Ahead along the beach lay wreckage. George ran forwards in hope.
This hope, however, was unfulfilled and George stopped dead in his tracks. It was certainly wreckage that lay on the beach, and considerable wreckage was this. But it was not the wreckage of the Empress of Mars – this was old and crusted.
A galleon? thought George. Perhaps. A pirate ship washed up with chests of treasure?
There was not much that had not been recently covered by the mercurial mind of George Fox. Cannibals and tree houses. He and Ada as Adam and Eve and the desert island waxings. But this was unexpected.
This was something different.
George approached this something gingerly. Not because he feared for his safety, but more through simple amazement.
That was what he thought that it was, was it not?
Broken, ancient, barnacle-crusted and wrecked on a tropical beach, it had clearly been there a very long time, but it was what he thought that it was.
‘It is a spaceship,’ said George in amazement. ‘It is an old-fashioned spaceship.’
And there was no doubt at all in George’s mind that that was exactly what it was. An old crashed spaceship. Centuries old by its looks. It was a big one too, although much of it was sunken into the beach and much more hidden from view beneath the incoming tide. Easily the size of a Martian war hulk or a Jovian trading vessel.
A Martian war hulk? George’s thoughts grew busy again. Martians ate humans, this was well known. And where can you flee to on an island?
‘No,’ said George. ‘They must all be long dead. Or rescued, probably rescued.’ Would there be anything to salvage from the spaceship? George’s stomach rumbled urgently. Probably no food, George concluded, and he really needed some food.
Thoughts of food had not left George since he started his hike along the shoreline. But he had not been keen to enter the jungle. Jungles George knew to be fearsome. He had already covered their fearsome potential. Explorers of the Empire were forever leading pioneering expeditions into jungles s
uch as this one. Many never to be seen again. Small brown men with bones through their noses and blowpipes at their lips lurked in jungles such as this one. They shot at you with poisoned darts. Cooked and ate your tasty parts. Shrank your head and hung it on the wall. Why, small brown men with bones through their noses might well have eaten the crew of the fallen spaceship. So they would certainly make short work of George, and he knew it.
‘I am done,’ said George. ‘Doomed and done.’
And with that said he sat back down upon the sand, buried his face once more in his hands and had a good big cry.
And he would probably have continued to sit there upon that tropical beach, blubbering away and bewailing his lot, had not something brought this to an end.
It was a very sudden something and George did not see it coming. It struck him on the top of his head and felled him like a tree.
When George Fox woke up once again to find things not to his liking, it honestly did not surprise him at all. He was growing more than used to it by now. The only logical solution that he could call to mind would be not to sleep at all. Sleeping led to waking and waking led to trouble.
George awoke to trouble and did so with resignation.
He did manage a mentally exhausted, ‘What now?’ but when he saw quite how matters stood, he viewed them fatalistically and did not make a fuss.
George was in a native village, in a clearing in the middle of the jungle. There was a ring of mud huts and George was at its centre. Little brown men with bones through their noses danced about all around George.
The style of their dancing was unknown to George, but he applauded its vigour. Or would have indeed applauded it had he been able to get his hands free. But George could not get his hands free because they were bound tightly to his sides. A feast was clearly being prepared as George could smell the soup. Vegetable soup, deliciously exotic.
George did sniffings at this soup. For he was very near to this soup. In this soup in fact was George.
In a cooking pot.
26
Now many in such circumstances would have cried for mercy. Begged their tormentors for release. But George put on the bravest face and not a word said he. For after all, he had done a deal with God.
He had prayed that the good Lord would take his life in exchange for sparing Ada’s.
True, he had shortly after revoked this plea with a plaintive, ‘Oh please spare me, baby Jesus.’ But the Almighty was not to be toyed around with and if He, in His ultimate wisdom, had decreed that the deal was done, then so the deal was done.
George shifted uncomfortably. It was growing hot.
‘I hope these natives put me out of my misery before the real cooking sets in,’ said George, perhaps addressing God. ‘Although I have read that the more terrible the martyrdom, the more rewards are stored up in Heaven for the martyr. Not that I consider myself to be a martyr, of course. I confess that I have not been the very best of Christians and for that I apologise—Ow – ouch!’
A native, with a bone through his nose, and no doubt a blowpipe back in his hut, tossed a few more faggots of wood onto the fire that crackled away beneath the cooking pot.
Other natives held what looked to be marshmallows upon sticks towards the flames.
‘Nice for starters,’ George observed. Then carried on his one-sided chit-chat with God.
‘I have tried to be a good person – ouch!’ he continued. ‘I do not think that I have ever – ow – knowingly done – ooh that hurts – harm to anyone and I was supposed to be on some kind of sacred quest. I think perhaps I should have spoken to you personally about that, butI – oh – ohh – ow – aaaaaagh . . .’
And that was that for George’s conversation.
‘Help!’ screamed George at the top of his voice. ‘Somebody help me, ple—’
And a native with a bone through his nose, and a catapult in his hut, for he was too young for a blowpipe, stuck an apple, or indeed the tropical equivalent thereof, right into George’s mouth, staunching further screams from the coming dinner.
George thrashed about as best he could, which was not much at all. It was all hurting far too greatly now to permit any lucid thought of further colloquy with the Almighty.
It is strange indeed what fills your head when you think that your end is near. The possibilities are almost infinite. Repentance for past transgressions. Regret for not having done the things that one should have done. Thoughts of loved ones and of hated ones. Thoughts of the unfairness of life in general. Thoughts of God in particular.
Though rarely enough, it might be supposed, a muse upon ‘irony’.
‘How damned ironic,’ went words in George’s head, for they no longer left his mouth. ‘I am hungrier now than I ever have been and I end my days as food.’
And there might, of course, have been a moral there, but if so it was lost upon poor George.
The natives continued their dinner dance, the sun shone down from on high, the jungle in its beauty rose around.
George did inward screamings that his misery would cease.
But George knew that his life was almost done.
So he missed it when the first of the natives screamed and fell to the ground. He also missed the second, third and fourth. He became aware quite shortly thereafter, though, that something odd was afoot when, howling madly, all the natives ran.
And he would have a vague recollection of hairy figures bounding into the village hurling coconuts. And one, who wore a salt-stained fez, hauling him from the pot.
George Fox opened wide his eyes and then beheld an angel.
‘Well,’ said George. ‘At least I have gone to Heaven.’
Or indeed he might well have said something very much like this had he been able to speak, but as there was an apple jammed into his mouth, he did not.
But then the apple was wrenched from his mouth and George beheld a demon. He had not reached Heaven at all, but gone to the other place.
The demon sniffed at the apple, then took to munching upon it. The angel, once more in George’s vision, asked, ‘George, are you all right?’
George did blinkings of the eyes, as anyone would do in such circumstances, then said, ‘Ada . . .’
Then he said no more.
When George awoke this time he found Ada’s face anxiously looking down upon his own. He became aware that he was lying on a bed of straw, within a rude mud hut. A blowpipe hung on an earthen wall, beside a shrunken head.
‘Ada,’ said George. ‘Ada, you are alive.’
‘And you also,’ said Ada. ‘Although it was touch and go.’
‘But how?’ asked George, and Ada told him how.
‘It was all too mad,’ said Ada Lovelace. ‘All too terribly mad. The horrors of the great dining hall with people being bowled about as if they were nothing at all. And you up in the air in your magic bubble – how ever was that done?’
But George just shook his head.
‘Then there was all the mad fighting over the lifeboats. People were overcrowding them and they didn’t know how to get them loose from the wreck. Now, as you know, I was well acquainted with one particular lifeboat and I made my way to it as best I could. I had it all to myself, then Darwin arrived, carrying the professor, who had been knocked unconscious. And obviously I could not leave him behind, because he is such a good man and knows what is for the best.’
George let this one pass without comment and Ada continued with her tale.
‘I released the lifeboat and rowed very hard,’ said Ada.
‘You rowed?’ said George.
‘The professor felt that it was for the best.’
And George Fox ground his teeth.
‘The lifeboat was not too crowded. There was just me, Darwin, the professor and young Master Hitler, the wine waiter.’
‘Ah,’ said George. ‘Well, I am so happy that he came to no harm.’
Ada gave George a certain look, then carried on with her tale.
‘It was simply awf
ul, George,’ she said. ‘I saw you sail away into the sky and there was nothing I could do. I could only hope that you would be safe. Not a lot of people survived the crash, I don’t think. Half a dozen lifeboats full at most. I saw a lifeboat with the Venusians in and another with those fat Jovians. Laughing away like mad they were, enjoying every minute. But then the Empress sank and the storm went on for hours. When dawn came we saw the island and came ashore. Only three other lifeboats survived, I think, or perhaps the others made land on another island. We all made camp on the beach, then the professor told me that it would be for the best if I went into the jungle to forage for food. Darwin came with me and we met with a tribe of monkeys. They led us here and here we found you in the pot. Which is all of my story really – what did you think of it?’