The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Blue Bear: A Novel

Foreword

A bluebear has twenty-seven lives. I shall recount thirteen-and-a-half of them in this book but keep quiet about the rest. A bear must have his secrets, after all; they make him seem attractive and mysterious.

People often ask me what it was like in the old days. My answer: In the old days there was a lot more of everything. Yes, there used to be mysterious islands, kingdoms and whole continents that no longer exist. They lie beneath the waves of the eternal ocean, for the waters are slowly but inexorably rising higher and higher, and one day our planet will be entirely submerged. That is why I now live in a seaworthy ship perched on a cliff high above sea level. I propose to tell you about the aforesaid submerged islands and countries and the creatures and marvels that sank below the waves with them.

I should be lying (and everyone knows I’m not a liar by nature) if I claimed that my first thirteen-and-a-half lives were uneventful. What about the Minipirates? What about the Hobgoblins, the Spiderwitch, the Babbling Billows, the Troglotroll, the Mountain Maggot? What about the Alpine Imp, the headless Bollogg, the Bolloggless head, the nomadic Muggs, the Captive Mirage, the Yetis and Bluddums, the Eternal Tornado, the Rickshaw Demons? What about the Venomous Vampires, the Gelatine Prince from the 2364th Dimension, the Professor with Seven Brains, the Demerara Desert, Knio the Barbaric Hog, the Wolperting Whelps, the Cogitating Quicksand, the Noontide Ghouls, the Infurno, the Ship with a Thousand Funnels? What about Gourmet Island, Tornado City, the Sewer Dragon, the Duel of Lies, dimensional hiatuses, Voltigorkian Vibro­bassists, ram­paging Mountain Dwarfs? What about the Invisibles, the Norselanders, the Venetian Midgets, the Midgard Serpent, the revolting Kackertratts, the Valley of Discarded Ideas, the Witthogs, the Big-Footed Bertts, the Humongous Mountains? What about Ear­spoonlets, Time-Snails, Diabolic Elves, Mandragors, Olfactils, the Upper Jurassic Current, the smell of Genff? Mine is a tale of mortal danger and eternal love, of hair’s-breadth, last-minute escapes… But I mustn’t get ahead of myself!

Nostalgia overcomes me when I recall those days, but the clock of life cannot be turned back. This, although regrettable, is only fair.

Winter is following autumn in its time-honoured way. The sun, cold as the moon, is sinking into the icy grey sea below my cliff, and the wind smells of snow. But there’s something else in the air as well: the scent of bonfires burning in the distance. It carries a hint of cinnamon, a whiff of adventure! I always used to follow that scent, but today I’ve something more important to do. My memoirs must be preserved for posterity. Frost-sprites are insinuating their clammy fingers between the floorboards of my cabin and groping for my feet. Invisible ice-witches are painting frost flowers on the windows. Hardly my favourite season of the year, but the ideal time to brew a pot of hot cocoa (with a wee dash of rum in it), fill thirteen-and-a-half pipes with tobacco, make thirteen-and-a-half slices of bread and jam, sharpen thirteen-and-a-half pencils, and begin to record my first thirteen-and-a-half lives. A bold and arduous undertaking of epic dimensions, I fear. For, as I already said, there was a lot more of everything in the old days – more adventures, too, of course.

1.

My Life as a Minipirate

My strange birth

People usually start life by being born. Not me, though. That’s to say, I don’t know how I came into the world. Purely theoretically, I could have emerged from the foam on the crest of a wave or developed inside a seashell, like a pearl. Then again, I might have fallen from the sky like a shooting star.

The only certainty is that I was a foundling abandoned in the middle of the ocean. My earliest memory is of being afloat in rough seas, naked and alone in a walnut shell, for at first I was very, very small.

I also remember a sound – a very big sound. When you’re little you tend to overestimate the size of things, but I now know that it really was the biggest sound in the world.

The Malmstrom

Its source was the loudest, most monstrous and dangerous whirl­pool anywhere in the seven seas. I had no idea, of course, that my little nutshell was bobbing towards the dreaded Malmstrom. To me it was just a gigantic gurgling sound. I probably thought (if I ‘thought’ at all at that stage) that it was the most natural thing in the world to lie naked in a nutshell and drift across the open sea towards the origin of that deafening roar.

The sound grew louder and louder and the nutshell bobbed more and more violently, but I was equally unaware, of course, that I had long been in the grip of the whirlpool. My tiny boat, probably the smallest in the world, went dancing towards the roaring abyss in a miles-long spiral.

It should be borne in mind that this was just about the most hopeless predicament in which anyone at sea could find himself. Any mariner in his senses gave the Malmstrom the widest possible berth, and even if someone had come to my rescue he would have suffered the same fate: he would have been sucked down with me to the bed of the ocean, for no vessel could withstand the pull of the whirlpool.

My nutshell now began to rotate on its own axis, dancing to perdition in waltz time as it descended into the ocean’s gurgling maw. As for me, I merely watched the stars spinning around over­head and listened entranced to the Malmstrom, quite free from any forebodings.

And that was when I first heard one of the Minipirates’ weird songs.

The Minipirates

The Minipirates were the masters of the Zamonian Sea. Nobody knew this, however, because they were too small to be noticed. No wave was too high, no storm too tempestuous and no whirlpool too powerful for them not to defy it. The most audacious of all seafarers, they were forever seeking opportunities to demonstrate their nautical skill, even when confronted by the most potent of natural forces. Thanks to their exceptional seamanlike abilities, they alone were capable of tackling the Malmstrom.

That was how they had ended up in the whirlpool, out of pure bravado, bawling their defiant pirate songs. The masthead lookout, carefully scanning the surface for the most favourable currents and wave-tunnels, had sighted me through his tiny telescope just as I was about to be engulfed by the Malmstrom.

I was doubly fortunate to have been found by the Minipirates, of all people, because anyone of normal size would probably have failed to spot me. They hauled me aboard, wrapped me up in oilskins, and lashed me to the mast with thick ropes – a safety measure that puzzled me exceedingly at the time. Meantime, they continued to wage their heroic battle with the elements as a matter of course, scampering up and down the masts like squirrels, hoisting and reefing sails at a rate that made me dizzy just to watch. As one man, they offset the motion of the pitching, tossing vessel by hurling themselves to port or starboard, forward or aft. They manned the pumps or vanished into the bowels of the ship and reappeared with brimming buckets, leapt through hatchways, swung to and fro on the halyards. In constant motion, they wrestled with the ship’s wheel, bellowed at each other, hauled on ropes, joined forces to hoist a mainsail in double-quick time, and never for one moment forgot to sing their pirate sea shanties. I even recall that one of them persisted in scrubbing the deck throughout this pandemonium.

Deluged with spray, the ship lay over on her side, reared skywards, and was actually submerged more than once, but she didn’t sink. I swallowed some seawater for the first time, and am bound to say it didn’t taste too bad. We glided through wave-tunnels, rode mighty mountains of foam, were tossed high into the air and carried down into the depths. The ship was hurled to and fro, buffeted, jostled and spat on by gigantic billows, but the Minipirates were undaunted. They yelled at the sea, spat back at it, and defiantly jabbed the waves with their grappling hooks. They fanned out among the masts at lightning speed, reefed sails and unfurled them a moment later. They reacted to every quirk of the sea, every puff of wind and movement of the ship, and knew at once what had to be done next. No one gave any orders, all were of equal rank. Thanks to their joint endeavours, they finally overcame the mighty ocean while I myself, securely lashed to the mast, watched their activities with the utmost amazement.

If you’re as small as a Minipirate (as small as I was, too, at the time), you live in another time dimension. Anyone who has ever tried to capture a fly in his hand will know that the tiny creature is far superior in terms of speed and agility. We operate in slow motion from the fly’s point of view, so it can easily outmanoeuvre and evade us. It was the same with the Minipirates. To them, what the crew of a ship of normal size would regard as a raging whirl­pool seemed a mere eddy. Every huge billow consisted of many wavelets through which they could navigate with ease. Just as a hurricane can sweep across a city and topple the tallest buildings but leave a little spider’s web intact, so the monstrous whirlpool could not harm us. We were protected by our diminutive size.

So we escaped from the deadly Malmstrom. I was unaware of its true dangers, as I have said – they didn’t dawn on me until much later. All I noticed was that the gurgling sound steadily faded and the Minipirates’ activities became less frantic. The situation eventually eased so much that they could gather round, untie my rope, and gaze at me in wonderment.

I gazed back at them.

Minipirates, as their name implies, were pretty small. A Minipirate six inches tall was considered a giant by his own kind. The little creatures sailed the seas in tiny ships, ever on the lookout for a something small enough to capture. This happened very seldom – never, in fact. Truth to tell, the Minipirates had never managed to capture a single prize, not even a rowing boat, in the whole history of navigation. Sometimes, usually in desperation, they attacked bigger ships, even ocean-going giants, but their efforts passed unnoticed as a rule. The tiny buccaneers hurled their grappling hooks at the big vessels and were towed along until they gave up. Either that, or they fired their dinky little cannon, but the cannon balls always fell short and splashed harmlessly into the sea after travelling only a few yards.

Because they never captured any booty, the Minipirates lived mainly on seaweed or such fish as they were capable of tackling – sardines, for instance, or very small scampi. They didn’t turn up their noses at plankton, either, if times were hard.

The Minipirates had little iron hooks instead of hands and wooden stumps instead of proper legs, nor did I ever see one without an eyepatch. At first I thought they’d been wounded during their reckless attempts to board a prize, but I later learned that they were born that way, complete with hats and moustaches.

From the

‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms

and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

Minipirates. Despite their essential harmlessness, or possibly because of it, Minipirates affect an extremely gruff and bloodthirsty manner. They like to deliver grandiloquent speeches, preferably about successful voyages of depredation and fat prizes. The uncharitable might accuse them of a penchant for bragging. Whenever two Minipirates encounter each other [a frequent occurrence in a crowded ship], they simultaneously, with sweeping gestures and much shouting, list the merchant ships they claim to have sent to the bottom and boast of innocent seamen mercilessly keelhauled or made to walk the plank. While so doing they drink rhumm, a beverage compounded of seaweed juice and molasses which, although it contains no alcohol whatever, stimulates their imagination and quickly slurs their speech. Minipirates have rather weak heads.

I have often witnessed such encounters and listened to the Minipirates’ grandiose rodomontades. I must, however, admit to having been influenced by their richly embroidered tales and extravagant flights of fancy. They taught me that a good white lie is often considerably more exciting than the truth. Telling one is like dressing up reality in its Sunday best.

Pirate songs and lamentations

To a Minipirate, nothing was worse than boredom. As soon as one of them grew even the slightest bit bored he betrayed such agony of mind that it wrung your heart. He would sigh and groan and shake his hook at the sky, ruffle his hair, and sometimes even tear his clothes. This only made matters worse, because he would then bemoan the rents in his outfit and accuse fate of heaping him with misfortune. Boredom being a frequent guest aboard every ship at sea, the Minipirates were forever moaning and groaning. If they weren’t moaning they were boasting. And if they were neither moaning nor boasting they were belting out pirate songs. Such was the atmosphere in which I grew up.

I became the central feature of the Minipirates’ life. During the five years I spent with them, their activities revolved around me to the exclusion of almost everything else. It was as if I had at last lent some meaning to their ludicrous existence. They made touching efforts to teach me all they knew about buccaneering and the piratical way of life. They devoted entire days to singing me gruesome pirate songs, uttering oaths, hoisting the Jolly Roger, drawing maps that purported to show the location of buried treasure. Once they even tried, for my benefit, to capture a vessel at least a thousand times bigger than their own. That was a day that taught me the meaning of abject failure.

I learn seamanship

The seaman’s trade, from raising anchor to caulking seams and bracing the shrouds, I learned simply by watching and lending a hand.

I began by scrubbing the deck. It can be a real art to scrub a deck clean of every voracious bacterium, but not so smooth as to render it slippery underfoot (a particularly important consideration in the case of the Minipirates, with their spindly peg-legs). Soft soap with a small admixture of sand is the ideal substance for scouring decks: the soap for cleanliness and the sand for grip. I learned how to sail close-hauled and how to lie to in a lull, how to make the most of a following breeze, how to wear ship, how to go about in a heavy sea, and how to stop dead (a trick mastered only by the Mini­pirates, who used it to avoid dangerous collisions with sizeable fish – in their case, anything bigger than a cod).

Seaman’s knots

Knots are one of the most important aspects of a seaman’s life. I don’t mean the speed of a ship, which is also measured in knots, but the many ways of tying a hempen rope. I learned 723 different methods of tying a knot, and I know them all by heart to this day. I can (of course) tie an ordinary reef knot, but also a Minipirate’s Double Skirtlet, a Storm Cravat, a Goose Gallows, a Hobgoblin Hitch – even a Double Gordian.

I mastered the Hempen Twist and the eight-strand Octopus Noose, the Manilla Maze and the Rio Rope-Yarn, the Buccaneer’s Bowline and the Captain’s Clinch. Blindfolded, I could tie two eels in a knot so complex that it would have taken them longer than a lifetime to disentangle themselves. Aboard the Minipirates’ ship I became something in the nature of a senior knotmaster. Whenever a knot was needed, they came to me. I could tie a knot in a fish. I could even, in a dire emergency, tie a knot in a knot.

Knowing your waves

Navigation, of course, is especially important at sea. The Minipirates, who had very few technical aids, were unfamiliar even with the magnetic compass. They steered in accordance with a system based on observation of the motion of the waves. People say that one wave resembles another, but they’re mistaken. Watch waves for long enough, and you’ll realize that every one is different. Each wave undulates in its own particular way. Some are pointed and precipitous, others rounded and flat. Waves can be thick or thin, green or blue, black or brown, turbid or transparent, large or small, broad or long, cold or warm, salty or sweet, noisy or silent, fast or slow, harmless or lethal.

Every wave has a stature of its own, so to speak. It possesses not only a face of its own but an individual hairstyle in the shape of the foam on its crest. Waves are differentiated by their mode of progression. Those in southern waters favour a nonchalant, rolling gait; those in northern seas stride briskly along because of the cold and the danger of congealing into ice floes. Caribbean waves dance in calypso time, Scottish waves form line abreast and march along to the strains of inaudible bagpipes. Anyone who makes a detailed study of the subject will know which waves like to be where. Small green ones with funny little cow-licks of foam are found in shallow tropical waters, dark and muddy ones near the coast and par­ticularly in estuaries, big blue ones in cold, deep seas, and so forth.

You can also tell precisely where you are from their appearance: whether you’re sailing in shallow waters or above invisible sand banks and coral reefs, whether you’re near land or on the high seas, whether the current is treacherous – even whether the water contains sharks or merely herrings. If sharks are around, the waves develop a slight tremor.

I also learned all I needed to know about daily shipboard maintenance: how to repair planks, how to remove sea-snails from the hull (and cook them in a seaweed bouillon), how to keep my feet in a heavy sea, how to lower a boat, throw a lifebelt, stand my turn as masthead lookout. Within a year I was a fully trained, able-bodied seabear and no longer threw up in rough weather.

Seaweed cuisine

The Minipirates gave me plenty to eat, mainly seaweed and skinny little fish. They knew over four hundred ways of preparing these dishes, which ranged from ‘seaweed natur’ to a highly sophisti­cated soufflé, and I was privileged to sample every one of them. My present aversion to seaweed may possibly have stemmed from the Minipirates’ dietary habits.

Say what you like about seaweed: it contains all the important vitamins and proteins a little bluebear needs in order to grow – too many of them, perhaps, because I grew at a speed that began to make me – and, more particularly, the Minipirates – uneasy. Having at first been smaller than my rescuers, I was the same size as them after a year. After the second year I was twice as big, and after four years my height was five times theirs.

It can well be imagined that my rapid growth made a very un­pleasant impression on sea rovers whose small stature endowed them with a natural mistrust of all things big. After five years on board I had become so large and heavy that I threatened to sink their ship.

Although I failed to appreciate it at the time, the Minipirates did the only right thing by marooning me on an island one day. I’m sure they didn’t find it easy. They gave me a bottle of seaweed juice and a loaf of home-baked seaweed bread to see me on my way. Then, moaning and groaning, they sailed off into the sunset. They knew that life without me would be considerably more tedious.

Marooned

As I sat there, naked and forlorn on the shores of a lonely island, I thought about my predicament for the first time. It was, in fact, the first time I’d ever thought at all, because I’d never managed to form a clear idea about anything in the eternally noisy atmosphere of the Minipirates’ ship.

I’m bound to admit that my first attempts at cogitation were far from unfathomably profound. The first thought that came into my head was of hunger, the second of thirst, so I greedily wolfed the seaweed bread and hurriedly drained my bottle of seaweed juice. My tummy was promptly pervaded by a pleasant glow, as if someone had lit a little camp fire inside me. Accompanying this sensation was a certain self-assurance that encouraged me to take the bull by the horns and explore the island’s vast palm forest. This early experience may be said to have become a maxim that has governed all my future lives. However great the challenge, it’s easier to overcome with a decent meal inside you.

Darkness

Then came nightfall and, with it, darkness.

Darkness… Until then I hadn’t known what that was. It had always been light with the Minipirates, even at night. Their ship was brilliantly illuminated as soon as dusk closed in. Any Minipirates’ vessel is a miniature sensation at night. It looks like a tiny floating funfair, sound effects included, because Minipirates are terribly frightened of the dark. They believe that night is the time when Hobgoblins come to feed on sailors’ souls, and that those evil spirits can be kept at bay only by lavish lighting and the maximum possible output of noise. So my former shipmates not only illuminated their vessel with lanterns, flaming torches, strings of coloured fairy lights and small fires, but let off one signal rocket after another and created such a hellish din by singing, shouting and hammering on iron saucepans that no one could get a wink of sleep. Sleeping was done in the daytime. As for Hobgoblins, we were never troubled by them.

Fear

So it was dark for the first time. And with the darkness came a novel sensation, one that had never afflicted me before: fear!

It was a very unpleasant feeling, as if the darkness had infiltrated my body and were flowing through my veins. Having swayed so soothingly in the wind only minutes before, the lush green palm trees had now become black figures lurching towards me with their huge paws raised in menace.

Floating in the sky was a thin crescent moon, the sight of which surprised me because I had never noticed it in the permanent blaze of light on board ship. The wind rustled in the fronds of the palm trees and transformed them into a throng of whispering ghouls that hemmed me in, ever closer, and groped for me with skeletal fingers. Despite myself, I suddenly thought of the Hob­goblins.

I strove to suppress the thought, but it was no good. I missed the Minipirates’ hysterical hubbub, their raucous voices and, above all, their extravagant lighting – the lighting that kept Hobgoblins away. I had reached the absolute nadir of my young life: naked and alone, I was marooned in the midst of a dark, unfamiliar forest and beside myself with fear. All at once I sighted a very alarming phenomenon among the palm trees: serpentine threads of green light, quite far off at first but quickly drawing nearer. I also heard a nasty, high-pitched electric hum and an occasional hollow, mocking laugh of the kind uttered by the horned creatures that live down well shafts. This, so the Minipirates had told me, was how Hob­goblins advertised their presence.

From the

‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms

and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

Hobgoblins. These beings fall into the category known as Universally Reviled Life Forms [see also →Spiderwitch, The, →Troglotroll, The, and →Bollogg, The]. This includes those creatures resident in Zamonia and its environs whose deliberate policy it is to spread panic among their contemporaries and, in other respects, to indulge in antisocial, disruptive and killjoy behaviour of every description. Of repulsive or even terrifying appearance, Hobgoblins usually operate in packs, making frightful noises and singing horrific songs. They delight in alarming utterly defenceless creatures.

My first tears

It was all too much for me. I felt a hot liquid well up inside my head. My eyes, my mouth and nose became filled with it, and my only recourse was to yield to this internal pressure: I wept. I wept for the first time in my life! Fat, salty tears plopped on to my fur, my nose ran like a tap, my whole body shook in time to my sobs. Every­thing else was secondary now. The encircling Hobgoblins, the darkness, the fear – all were subordinate to this mighty out­burst of emotion. I wept and sobbed, stamped my little hind paws, bawled at the top of my voice. Like two miniature cataracts, the tears continued to stream down my fur until I resembled a wet floor­cloth. I broke down completely.

Then calm descended. My tears dried up, my sobs subsided. A reassuring sensation of warmth and weariness overcame me. My fear had vanished. I even plucked up enough courage to raise my head and look the Hobgoblins in the face. They were hovering around me in a semicircle, six or seven flickering figures outlined in ghostly light, their arms and legs dangling limply like uninflated inner tubes. They stared at me in silence for a while, almost touched. Then they started to applaud.

I won’t mince matters: the Hobgoblins were a thoroughly unpleasant bunch. Their slithery movements, the slight electric shock you received when they touched you, their high-pitched, sing-song voices, and, above all, the dubious pleasure they derived from terrorizing helpless fellow creatures – all these attributes were utterly repulsive. There was also the smell of rotting wood they gave off (it was associated with their sleeping habits) and, more particularly, their disgusting form of nourishment. But more of that later.

Yes, the Hobgoblins really were the end, but I went with them notwithstanding. After all, what choice did I have?

I didn’t understand a word they said – or sang, whichever – but I quickly gathered that they wanted me to accompany them. In view of my predicament I felt it was the wisest policy, though heaven alone knew what they would do to me.

They glided ahead through the forest, gracefully flowing around every obstacle like water snakes composed of green light. If their path was barred by something too big or solid – a boulder, for example, or a fallen mammoth tree – they simply slipped straight through it as if it were no more substantial than mist.

I found it quite difficult to keep up with them, but they politely paused every now and then and waited for me to catch them up. They spent these intervals singing some rather awful songs. The tunes themselves sounded so sinister, I was glad I couldn’t under­stand the words.

The forest graveyard

I was utterly exhausted, my fur full of leaves, thorns and little twigs, when we finally reached our destination: a large clearing in the middle of the forest. Rotting away in this clearing were the hollow trunks of hundreds of huge trees inhabited by hundreds or possibly thousands of Hobgoblins. For the time being, this grave­yard for forest giants was to be my home.

2.

My Life with the Hobgoblins

It very soon became apparent that the Hobgoblins had not taken me in out of the goodness of their hearts. That same night they indicated in sign language what they expected of me: I was to weep for them.

From the

‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms

and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

Hobgoblins [cont.]. Hobgoblins originate when a will-o’-the-wisp [Lux Dementiae] comes into contact with a pocket of Zamonian graveyard gas. Graveyard gas is an evil-smelling vapour that rises from decaying coffins when the soil above them has not been tamped down sufficiently to render it gasproof. Will-o’-the-wisps come into being when glow-worms are struck by lightning and go fluttering on in an electrically charged condition. When a will-o’-the-wisp encounters some graveyard gas – as it usually does, for obvious reasons, above a public burial place – the gas molecules and light particles combine to form that ill-starred invertebrate commonly termed the Hobgoblin.

It’s clear that nothing good can come of such a combination. If you don’t have a spine you don’t need a nervous system, and anyone devoid of nerves is devoid of feelings as well – hence the Hob­goblins’ overpowering interest in the emotions of other living creatures. People always covet what they themselves do not possess. Once you know how Hobgoblins come into being, you aren’t surprised that they should take such an inordinate interest in unpleasant emotions like fear, despair, and sorrow. To a Hob­goblin, a crying fit – in other words, something in which all these emotions are present at the same time – is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

The Hobgoblins

The Hobgoblins ushered me over to a huge, mouldering tree trunk that lay there like a toppled factory chimney and thrust a few leaves under me so that I could sit down on it in comfort.

The clearing was steadily filling up with Hobgoblins. Humming to themselves, they glided through the trees in search of their seats. It was weird to see so many hundreds of them lighting up the arboreal graveyard. Together they generated a dome of green light that overarched the scene in a ghostly manner. Nervous whispers and giggles filled the air until the last of the Hobgoblins had found seats and focused their gaze on me. Then silence fell.

I sensed what was expected of me, but somehow I wasn’t in the mood. I was feeling thoroughly uneasy, but not uneasy enough to cry. I felt I hadn’t a drop of liquid left inside me, and my mouth and throat had never been more parched. I did my best, though. I pulled all kinds of faces and tried to squeeze out a tear, but to no avail.

I tried sobbing, but all that emerged was a hoarse croak. The Hobgoblins were becoming restive. Some of them broke into a low, ominous sing-song, and the air crackled with little electrical discharges. I rocked to and fro for a bit, as if racked with sobs, and rubbed my eyes to start the tears flowing, but my movements remained wooden and contrived, and still the tears refused to come.

Several of my audience rose from their seats. There was a universal hiss like the sound of gas escaping from a fractured pipe. One or two Hobgoblins glided from their tree trunks and came slowly snaking towards me, clearly with evil intent. I tried self-pity. I reminded myself that I was a little, naked, abandoned, very hungry bluebear, that I had no parents, no home, no friends. I thought of my happy times with the Minipirates and of the fact that those days were gone for evermore. I felt I was by far the most pitiful, forlorn, hungry little blubear in the whole world, the most pathetic creature that ever… And at long last the tears started flowing!

And how they flowed! They poured down my cheeks in veritable cascades, inundating them with salt water. They spurted from my eyes, ran down my nose and trickled over my lips. I emitted heart-rending sobs, threw myself on my tummy and hammered the hollow tree trunk with my little forepaws, so hard that the forest rang with the sound. I lashed out with my hind paws and tore at my short fur. I crouched on all fours and howled at the moon like a little, homesick puppy. It was a first-class crying fit, far better and more prolonged than the first.

And then, quite suddenly, it was over. I sat up, sniffing, and wiped away the last of my tears. Seen through the moisture that veiled my eyes, the Hobgoblins looked weirder than ever. They were sitting quite still, staring at me.

Utter silence.

I gave a final sniff, ready for anything. Whatever they did now – eat me, or whatever – I felt strangely indifferent. A Hobgoblin seated on a tree trunk at the back began to applaud, half-heartedly. The others continued to sit there without moving. A second joined in the applause, then a third and a fourth, and suddenly, as if in response to a secret word of command, they all stood up and applauded till the forest shook. They uttered shrill cries of delight and whistled on their thin, ghostly fingers. Many picked up branches and beat a rhythmical tattoo on the hollow tree trunks. An incredible din arose. Flowers were thrown in my direction. Here and there a Hobgoblin shot high into the air like a green flare. All in all, those habitually unemotional creatures gave an amazing demonstration of delight. It rather moved me, I must confess.

There’s no other way of putting it: I had literally become a star overnight. Although I wasn’t paid any money (I didn’t even know that such a thing existed), the Hobgoblins remunerated me for my lachrymose performances with food. Nothing special, mainly nuts, berries, bananas, and an occasional fresh coconut washed down with spring water, but more than that I didn’t need in those days. My hosts had very soon grasped – Neptune be praised! – that I wasn’t their peculiar form of food. The fact was, they lived on fear. I knew from the Minipirates that Hobgoblins glide across the sea at night in search of ships whose crews they can terrify with their weird singing. Once they’ve succeeded, they suck in the fear like milk through a straw.

My fur used to stand on end when I saw those diaphanous spirits return from their nocturnal raids glutted with fear, plump and bloated like deep-sea sponges. At first they wanted to take me with them on their gourmet excursions, but they dropped the idea when they saw I couldn’t walk on water.

Despite my initial abhorrence of the Hobgoblins, I have to admit I enjoyed my evening performances more and more as time went by. The stage fright beforehand, my steadily improving technique, the thunderous applause at the end – I became positively addicted to it all. I found it ever easier to burst into tears (and I can still do so today, on the few occasions when tears become necessary for histrionic purposes).

I had only to think of something sad, and I was off. I enriched my programme with dramatic crescendos and pauses for effect. I could run the whole gamut from faint sighs to despairing sobs and frenzied paroxysms of weeping. I learned to synchronize the rhythm of my sobs with the melody of my pathetic cries so perfectly that miniature symphonies resulted. I could turn up the volume of my screams until they attained pinnacles of hysteria, to relapse a moment later into deep valleys of snuffling lamentation. Sometimes I would subject my audience to intolerable suspense by blubbering almost silently to myself for minutes on end, then suddenly howl like a homeless seal pup.

Stardom

The Hobgoblins were putty in my hands. Their ovations grew louder, longer and more enthusiastic every night. They almost smothered me with flowers, wove wreaths for my brow, showered me with berries and other fruit. No wonder I began to enjoy my role more and more. It was an intoxicating sensation to stand behind the footlights and be applauded (even when the only applause was the Hobgoblins’ eerie wails and the only light their faint green glow). The reader should not, however, forget that I was still very young – this was only my second life.

I soon became notorious for my star performer’s airs and could sometimes be as temperamental as a prima donna. If my audience failed to applaud frenetically enough, I turned sulky and left the stage without giving them an encore. Many were the nights I tormented the Hobgoblins by feigning a headache and refusing to appear at all. I became rather loathsome – almost as loathsome as the Hobgoblins themselves. I grew more and more like them, in fact. I started to imitate their eerie voices and hum their songs. Having at first insisted on sleeping by myself in the open, I later joined them for the night in their hollow tree trunks. I snuggled down among the humming spirits and dreamed their gruesome dreams. Before long I began to smell, like them, of rotting wood. Sometimes I also glowed a little in the dark because their luminous gas had lodged in my fur. I even made several vain attempts to walk on water, so as to be able to accompany them on their forays. On one occasion I almost drowned in a forest pool.

I myself was completely unaware of how hard I was trying to become a Hobgoblin. It’s quite natural for a young person to want to be like other people. The worst of it was, I’d clearly reconciled myself to spending the rest of my days on the Hob­goblins’ island.

A horrific reflection

One evening, when I was making yet another attempt to walk on water (I had taken to using very shallow pools for experimental purposes), I saw my own reflection in a big puddle. I not only caught myself aping the Hobgoblins’ slithery movements but uttered one of their frightful, bleating laughs. The ripples on the puddle made my limbs undulate like a Hobgoblin’s. I was appalled.

What, it suddenly occurred to me, would the Minipirates think if they could see me like this? I felt deeply ashamed. My cheeks burn, even today, when I recall that spectacle.

It was then that I resolved to escape from the Hobgoblins’ island. When bad habits become a habit, you have to turn over a new leaf.

3.

My Life on the Run

At dawn one day, when early morning mist was drifting sluggishly across the clearing, I stole out of the forest. The Hobgoblins were still fast asleep in their hollow tree trunks. They had returned from a successful raid during the night, bloated and humming with contentment. Now, snoring and squeaking in their sleep like gorged opossums, they were digesting the fear they had absorbed. I gave them a last, distasteful glance, then set off for the beach.

I escape by sea

In the days beforehand I had dragged some small fallen trees from the edge of the forest to the shore and lashed them together with creeper. As the sail of my raft I used a big, fat palm leaf. I had scooped out a few coconuts, filled them with water, sealed them up again, and tied them to the mast with thin lianas, together with the unopened coconuts that were to serve as food. That was the sum total of my supplies.

I pushed my raft out into the breakers. The tide was just turning, so I was quickly carried out to sea. Where would the wind and waves take me? I had dispensed with a rudder on the principle that fate must be given a chance.

I was feeling wonderful. It seemed that the wind in my fur and the wild sea beneath me existed solely to transport me into a world of adventure. Could anything be more exciting than a journey into the unknown, a voyage of discovery across the great, wide ocean?

Becalmed

Three hours later my raft lay becalmed, bobbing in the midst of a vast expanse of motionless water. Could anything be more tedious than a sea voyage? The sea? Pooh! Just a salt-water desert, smooth and featureless as an enormous mirror. Any pool in the Hob­goblins’ forest had more to offer. Nothing happened, not even a seagull flew past.

I had been hoping for unknown continents and mysterious islands, or at least for a Minipirates’ ship, but not even a message-in-a-bottle floated by. After a considerable time, a rotten plank came my way. It took hours to drift past. That was the most interesting sight I’d encountered on my voyage to date. I cracked open a coconut and began to feel bored.

The younger you are, the more excruciating boredom becomes. Seconds crawl by like minutes, minutes like hours. You feel you’re being stretched on the rack – a time-rack, as it were – and very slowly torn apart. An infinite succession of wavelets splashes past, the sky is a bright blue vault of infinite extent. If you’re a relatively inexperienced seafarer and watch the horizon, you feel it must disclose something breathtaking at any moment. But all that awaits you beyond it is another horizon. I would have welcomed any diversion – a storm, a seaquake, a terrible sea monster – but all I saw for weeks on end were waves, sky, and horizons.

I was beginning to yearn for the Hobgoblins’ nauseating company when the situation changed dramatically. Although there was little wind, the sea had been unusually agitated for some days. The calm green water had transformed itself into a turmoil of grey foam, the air was filled with soot and the smell of rusty metal. Hopping excitedly to and fro on my raft, I vainly strove to discover the cause of it all. Then came a sound like never-ending thunder. It drew nearer and nearer, and the sky grew darker by the minute. I had my longed-for storm at last.

The SS Moloch

Or so I thought until a huge, black, iron ship appeared in the distance.

She had at least a thousand funnels, so tall that their tops were hidden by the smoke that rose from them. Soot entirely obscured the sky and turned the sea the colour of Indian ink, thanks to the smuts that kept raining down on it like black snow.

At first I thought the ship had come straight from hell to crush me, she seemed to be bearing down on me so purposefully. Then I was lifted by the bow wave and swept aside like a cork. I could now observe the iron colossus from a safe distance as it glided by like a dark mountain of metal. The screws that propelled it must have been bigger than windmills.

I don’t know how long the ship took to sail right past and disappear from view, but it must have been about a day and a night. Not that I knew it at the time, she was the SS Moloch, the largest ship that ever sailed the seas.

From the

‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms

and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

SS Moloch, The. With 1214 funnels and a gross registered tonnage of 936,589 tons, the Moloch is held to be the biggest ship in the world. No precise specifications are available, or none that can be scientifically validated, because no one who has set foot in the Moloch has ever returned. Thousands of tales are told about this vessel, needless to say, but none that has any recognizable claim to credibility.

At night, thousands of portholes – the windows of that floating metropolis – shone brighter than the stars. The pounding of the engines was deafening. They sounded like an ironclad army tramping across the ocean.

During the daytime I tried to spot some of the crew, but the deck was so far above me I could scarcely make out a thing. Whenever distant figures came to the rail and threw garbage over the side, as they did from time to time, I set up a tremendous hullabaloo. I yelled and gesticulated, jumped up and down on the raft and waved my palm-leaf sail, but my efforts were as futile as the Minipirates’ attempts to board a merchantman.

They weren’t without their dangers, too. On more than one occasion I was almost sucked into the wash of the gigantic propellers, and swarms of sharks crowded around the hull to fight for the scraps of food that were forever being thrown overboard. At times the creatures were so numerous that I could have walked to the ship’s side across their backs.

A voice in my head

But the most astonishing feature was something else. In spite of the huge vessel’s monstrous ugliness, it held a mysterious fascination for me. There was no discernible reason for this. Although the ship was repulsive in every way, my dearest wish was to sail the seas in her. This desire had taken root in me when the Moloch first appeared on the horizon, a tiny speck growing bigger the nearer she came. While she was passing my raft it became positively overpowering.

‘Come!’ said a voice in my head.

‘Come aboard the Moloch!’

The words had an unearthly ring, as if uttered by some dis­embodied being in the world hereafter.

‘Come!’ it said. ‘Come aboard the Moloch!’

I should have liked nothing better than to obey its summons. I now know it was my good fortune that the sharks formed an in­surmount­able barrier between me and the ship, but at the time it nearly broke my little heart to watch the Moloch sail away.

‘Come! Come aboard the Moloch!’

The gigantic ship eventually disappeared from view, but the sky remained dark for a long time to come, like the aftermath of a receding storm.

The voice in my head grew ever fainter.

‘Come!’ it said, very softly. ‘Come aboard the Moloch!’

Then they were gone, both the ship and the voice.