Dreamlands Read Online Free Page B

spat, as if this bespoke the foulest sort of
degenerate.  “I don’t take issue with Arabs generally.  They are fierce
traders, but no worse men than some with paler skin.  But this group was by
turn traders and pirates, and rumoured to be slavers besides.  Ruffians thought
they could work magic,” he added with a mutter.
    “Anyway,
we had gone off course, alone and far from port, and were stopped on a sandbar. 
The bastards boarded while we waited on the tide, most of us asleep.  They made
too much noise on their approach though, and we beat them back, all except
their devil of a captain.  He was a towering Easterner, with a goat somewhere
in his lineage.  He took a special disliking to me, and would’ve been my end if
Bo’sun Longbottom hadn’t given him a haircut.”
    His
words stumbled to a halt then, as they frequently did, and he cocked his head
as though listening.
    “What
is a bo’sun?” I asked.
    “Bo’sun
is short for boatswain , a petty officer.  What a lubber you are, my boy.” 
He laughed in a forced sort of way.  “That particular bo’sun saved my life more
than once.
    “Longbottom
played the game with a cavalry saber, a leftover of his days as a United States
Marine.  With that saber he took the villain’s head clean off, and every pirate
and sailor stopped mid-fight to watch that head, for while it rolled, and for
minutes yet after it stopped, it tracked Longbottom’s every move with undying yellow
eyes!
    “They
remember the names Bromm, Longbottom and Sloan,” he said, panting with nearly
every word, “for side by side we sent their kind to the bottom of the sea.”  He
added, when he was able, “Watch out for them.”
    “I’m
hardly likely to meet up with any pirates in New England,” I replied, “or even
Arabs for that matter.”
    “Their
memories are long and their blades sharp,” he said, with nothing of the
excitement or relish of the past hour.  He slumped down in place, and I helped
make him comfortable for the night ahead.  I had thought his feverish energy
lapsed for the last time when he spoke again, a deathly wheeze all but
swallowing the words.
    “Listen,
Isaac, there’s something left undone, something you could take care of for me.”
    “Of
course, Uncle.  What is it?”  I was impatient to get to my own bed.  Sleep, for
me a coy mistress, was just then very near and seductive.
    “We
may be overheard,” he said in a hoarse whisper, eyes bugging at the door.
    His
terror was so convincing I did check the hallway –Caddock after all was exactly
the type I expected to find crouching at the keyhole– but we were alone.  By
the time I returned to the bedside, he was submerged in a fitful sleep.
    * * *
    I
woke to wan light filtering through an overcast sky.  Unsurprisingly, my next
dose of laudanum was calling from wherever it made its home, but so far plaintively,
not as an implacable command.
    I
dressed and went straight to my uncle’s room, eager to take up our conversation. 
The funk of sickness was now overlaid with an unbearable spicy sweet scent, a
cleanser used by Mrs. Caddock I supposed.  I had already said my good morning
and forced aside the smothering window hangings before recognizing in his
repose a stillness more absolute than sleep.
    We
would like to believe that in their last moments the dying find peace,
especially those like my uncle, bedridden for so long he had been worn to the
quick.  But his features were locked in a rictus, eyes starting from his
emaciated shell as if witnessing some incomprehensible horror.
    This
being the first time since my arrival when I wished to see Mrs. Caddock, it was
also the first time she was not immediately under foot.  Neither was Georgine at
home.  I forced myself to prepare and eat a bowl of oatmeal, thinking on
Uncle’s stories and particularly on Bo’sun Longbottom, who I believed was still
among the living.
    When
later in the day the housekeeper did return, she had no interest in