The Castaways Read Free Page B

don’t care who it is,” I said.
    Penny snarled like a dog. “That blind little bum-sucker, what’s he saying?”
    “We can cook his goose, Tom.” Midgely squeezed my arm with sadly little strength. “We can give him his gruel.”
    I thought it was the fever that had changed him. His drooping gray eyes gave him the look of an old man, and the seawater had addled his thoughts. I loved him dearly, yet hated what he was saying.
    “You’ll be the one to do him in,” he said. “I know that too; I seen it. You’ll be the one to do the killing, but it’s Penny what’s going to hop the twig. That’s why the shark’s here; it’s waiting for him. You can do it, can’t you, Tom?”
    “No,” I said. “Of course I can’t.” It made me furious that he was so unlike himself that he’d think I’d agree to murder.
    “Then all of us will die,” said he. “Me, I’ll be the first. You know I ain’t got much longer, Tom. And you know something else?” His dried, cracked lips became a smile. “Penny will be the last. That’s funny, ain’t it, Tom? Penny will be the last.”
    “Oh, Midge,” I said. But it was probably true. Benjamin Penny had the cunning, and the cold-bloodedness, that would let him outlive us all.
    No one was sleeping anymore. Now Weedle and Boggis, too, demanded to know what Midge and I were scheming. So I told them straight out, thinking it would end all thought of it. “Midge wants to draw lots,” I said. “To see who’s thrown overboard.”
    They said it was folly; they said it was madness. “He’s off his nut!” cried Walter Weedle, and Penny said things that were worse. I was pleased by the reaction. Or at least I was until I saw Midgely’s face. He looked utterly crestfallen, as though his last hope had been snatched away, and I wondered if we hadn’t
all
gone mad.
    We went back to our places, but that wasn’t the end of it. Once planted in our minds, Midgely’s idea grew like a poisonous weed. What else did we have to think about? Hour after hour we sat staring at each other in the rocking, rolling shell of our boat. Weedle and Penny muttered about it as ourlast supplies dwindled. The meals that we divided became almost impossible to measure. On the first day that we had no water, everything came to a head.
    “Draw lots!” cried Weedle and Penny. “The time’s come. Draw lots!” they cried, as the shark swam round and round. “Do it now,” they said, and the sunlight flashed across their faces.
    For the first time ever, Penny and Weedle and Midgely sided together, against me. “You’re always the one for fair and square, Tom Tin,” said Weedle. “Well, it’s three against two, ain’t it? We’ll do it ourselves.”
    I didn’t trust Penny or Weedle, so I fell in with the plan, praying to God that I would be forgiven for it. I even made the lots, tearing five strips from the ragged edge of my shirt. In one I tied a tiny knot, then held up the five for all to see, and each was the same length and the same width, and apart from the knot they were identical.
    I crushed each strip into a ball, and wadded the five in my fist. All the while I knew that I had gone as far as I could go from my father’s idea of “the handsome thing.”
    We gathered in the center of the boat, where the bilge -water sloshed and gurgled. Benjamin Penny came down from the bow, dragging himself over the ribs of the boat. Midgely knelt on my left, Boggis on my right.
    I held out my fist full of cloth. “Who will do the killing?” I asked.
    No one moved. Midgely said, “Don’t call it killing. Call it saving, Tom. That’s what it is.”
    “Call it whatever you like.” My hand trembled from the mere weight of the scraps of cloth. “Who will choose first?”
    “It don’t matter who’s first,” said Weedle. “Everybody chooses, and nobody looks until we’ve all done it.”
    “But who will
be first?”
I asked again.
    I thought that none of them would dare to be the first, that even