Hamish X Goes to Providence Rhode Island Read online

  Clang! Clang! Clang! “What going on here?” Captain Ironbuttocks stomped out onto the upper deck, casting his furious gaze down. As he swept his eyes across the deck of his vessel, he took in the crowd of mutinous children. “Well, well, well!” He glared, stopping the children in their tracks. “What is this we have here?”

  “We’re taking over the ship,” Maggie shouted, brandishing her stolen knife. “You might as well give up! We don’t wanna hurt you, but we will if we have to!”

  “Ooo! Is that right? You’re taking over my ship! Well, whoop-e-dy, wheep-e-dy woo!” The Captain did an odd little prancing dance, waving his hands in the air before suddenly becoming deadly serious, his unshaven face set in a fierce scowl. “Well, I hate to be the disagreeing person, girlie, but I am disagreeing with you.” He spat a contemptuous loogie34 onto the deck. “Nah. I don’t think so. This is ending now. No one gets hurt if you go back to the cargo hold and behave yourselves!”

  Maggie stopped at the foot of the steps and glared up at the Captain. “You like the cargo hold? I’m sure we can arrange for you and your crew to stay in there as long as you like. As for us, we aren’t going back there. C’mon!” She signalled for the mob of children to follow her up the steps. She stopped dead when she saw the large black revolver that the Captain drew from his waistband. The gun was heavy and dark, full of menace, the long snout of its barrel trained on Maggie as she stood frozen, one foot poised on the lowest step. The knife in her hand wavered. One must remember, Maggie was really just a little girl, and although committed to taking over the ship, she was only a few weeks removed from building sandcastles on a beach in a Turkish holiday resort. Now she found herself in a bit of a dangerous spot, having mistakenly brought a knife to a gunfight.

  The Captain laughed. “Not so sure of yourself now, eh? Captain Ironbuttocks, he seems to be the cat who got your tongue!”35

  Maggie hesitated for a moment, but, feeling the crowd of children behind her waver, she dug deep and found a hidden well of courage in her heart. She waved her arm to the crowd behind her. “He can’t shoot all of us.” She was about to lead the charge forward up the steps when she heard the voice from above.

  “That’s hardly fair,” Hamish X said. The Captain looked up to see Hamish X sitting on the communications mast, dangling his big boots and smiling broadly.

  “What you do up there?” the Captain roared. “You get down here.” He aimed the gun at Hamish X, who merely continued smiling.

  “I’ll come down when I’m good and ready, Captain,” Hamish X said. “Please, don’t make this any harder than it has to be. Drop the gun and surrender quietly.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or I’ll have to come down there and dent your bottom for you.”

  “You dare to threaten my magnificent behind? You will pay for that!” The Captain raised his pistol and took aim at Hamish X. “I don’t have time for your games.” He pulled the trigger and, with a ringing crack, fired at Hamish X.

  Bullets move at extremely high speed. May you never find yourself in the path of a bullet because, truth be told, it is almost impossible for a human to duck out of the way of an oncoming projectile moving at such high velocity. The best policy is to avoid contact with human beings who employ firearms. If contact is unavoidable, the wise course of action is not to provoke the person with the firearm to discharge it in your direction. Don’t say things like “Why don’t you try to shoot me with that gun?” or “Hey, I bet you couldn’t hit me with a bullet!” or “Yo, dumdum! Shoot me, why don’t you?”

  As I was saying, bullets move very swiftly and almost everyone in the world is slower than a bullet. Fortunately, Hamish X was blessed with reflexes that allowed him the luxury of being rude to people with guns. The bullet ploughed into the mast exactly where he had been sitting only a fraction of a second before. The mast splintered and a sizable shard of it fell, forcing the Captain to dance aside to avoid being skewered. Hamish X launched himself into a somersault36, 37 that took him spinning out of harm’s way to land easily on the deck behind the Captain. Within an instant of landing, Hamish X lashed out his left boot and connected with the Captain’s right buttock with a resounding clang. The Captain staggered from the impact and crashed hard into the railing.

  “Ow! Hey!” The Captain reached back and explored the buttock in question with his free hand. “You little stinker. You dented my beautiful bum!”

  The children on the deck below cheered. Hamish X laughed and shrugged. “You were warned. Now throw down your weapon and I’ll accept your surrender.”

  Captain Ironbuttocks glowered. He was not used to being laughed at, especially by children. On top of that, his bottom was quite sore, which did nothing to improve his mood. He stood up and sneered. “You can’t possibly be defeating me and my entire crew. It’s you who should be surrendering before I call my men up here to deal with your little mob of ankle-biters, hey? I will take these rug monkeys, these carpet gnomes, these thumb-sucking, diaper-wearing . . .”

  Before Ironbuttocks could think of another way of insulting the children, the ship rocked as an explosion from below decks sent Hamish X, the Captain, and the children crashing to the deck. Thomas was obviously up to some mischief in the bowels of the ship. Before Hamish X could stop Ironbuttocks, the Captain vaulted to his feet, leapt over Hamish X through the door to the bridge, and slammed the metal hatch behind him.

  Hamish X stood up and grabbed the handle to find that it was locked from the inside. He braced his boots against the hatch and strained with all his might, but to no avail.

  “Ha!” The thick steel of the hatch muffled Ironbuttocks’s voice. “Not so smarty-mouthed now, eh Boot-Boy?”

  Hamish X reared back and kicked the hatch, scoring the surface but denting it only slightly. “Open this hatch! There’s nowhere to hide!” Hamish X shouted.

  “No chance!”

  Sometimes one becomes so focused on the task in front of one that one misses the obvious. Have you noticed? Hamish X was trying so hard to get in the locked hatchway that he failed to notice all the windows on the front of the bridge were gaping open, shattered when the explosion tore the cargo hatch off. Flummoxed by this hatch, he stood back, breathing heavily, and finally noticed his error. Unfortunately, so had Captain Ironbuttocks.

  “Aha!” shouted Hamish X. He tensed to jump through the opening. Inside the bridge, the Captain staggered across the floor and slammed his hand down on a large metal lever. Metal shutters screeched down, sealing the windows from the inside. The Captain breathed a sigh of relief. He had bought himself some time.

  “Tee hee!” Captain Ironbuttocks cackled, “Tee hee! I have stuck a fly in your ointment, hey, Mr. Boots? Tee hee!”38 He looked around the bridge, hoping to find some way out of his predicament. All of the ship’s controls, radar, communications equipment, and steering were controlled from the bridge. If he could wait the rebellious children out, he might still win the day.

  Hamish X stood outside the bridge, frustrated by the metal shutters. Maggie, having recovered from the explosion, ran up the steps and stood by Hamish X’s side.

  “We gotta get in there,” Maggie said. “Without the bridge, everything else is pointless.”

  “Yes,” Hamish X agreed, running his hand over the scratched metal of the hatch. “This door is strong, but I don’t doubt that with a little work,” he tapped it with the toe of one massive boot, “I can get through. In the meantime, we should look for alternatives.”

  “Like what?”

  Hamish X thought for a moment. “Leave this to me!” he said grimly. “You go and help Thomas. Get to the engine rooms and shut down the turbines. If the ship’s dead in the water, there’s nothing Ironbuttocks can do. He’ll have to come out or we’ll have all the time in the world to get in.”

  Maggie nodded and sped off in search of her brother.

  Hamish X turned his attention back to the task at hand. He concentrated on his boots. In all his adventures they had aided him in overcoming
whatever obstacle he faced. Angry Yetii,39 vicious pirates, fields of fire, oceans of ice: all these opponents had been vanquished by his boots. But since King Liam had freed him of the ODA’s hold, removing their restraints and tracking devices, Hamish X had been forced to relearn how to access the power of his magnificent footwear.

  He took a deep breath and focused his mind on his boots. Before, whenever he was in distress, the boots would respond immediately, coming to his aid. Now he had to make a conscious effort, but as he practised, the effort became easier, second nature.

  “Like riding a bicycle,” he muttered … Where had he ever ridden a bicycle?

  He had a sudden vivid memory of being up on the seat of a bicycle, wobbling ferociously as someone shouted to him: “You’re doing it, Hamish! You’re doing it!” A beautiful, woman’s voice. He knew her. The voice was so familiar. “You’re riding a bicycle, Hamish! I knew you could do it.” Suddenly he was tipping over. He was falling, his hands thrust out in front of him … Falling!

  He opened his eyes to find himself on his hands and knees on the deck. What had happened to him? Was he remembering his life before he had become Hamish X? Were those memories still there, hidden in his mind? Was there hope that he might someday find his real mother? Tears started in his eyes. “Ha! It’s possible. Ha ha!” He started to laugh out loud.

  “Hey!” Captain Ironbuttocks shouted through the hatchway. “What’s so funny? Are you going crazy because you can’t get me? That’s it, isn’t it? I’m driving you mad with the frustration, eh?”

  Hamish X pushed himself up to a standing position outside the hatch. “No such luck, Rustypants,” he called cheerfully. “I’m just laughing because getting you out of there is going to be so easy!”

  Hamish X once again took a deep breath and focused on the boots. When he was a slave to the ODA, he had been forced to listen to that voice, Mother. Not his real mother but a presence guiding his actions for the evil intent of the Grey Agents. He was free of that presence now, and the hope that one day he might find his true mother and listen to her voice filled him with joy. He tapped into the swell of his emotion, reaching easily down into the boots and calling up a massive surge of glorious power.

  “Are you ready, Captain Ironbuttocks? I’m coming for you!”

  To his boots he cooed, “You’ve never let me down before, friends,” and felt the power begin to swell. “Let’s open this tin can and get ourselves a greasy little sardine!”

  Chapter 7

  Captain Ironbuttocks sat in his captain’s chair and puffed on a cigar.40 He was feeling pretty pleased with himself. He had thwarted the crazy boy with the boots and now he could dictate terms. The shutters and the hatch were made of the highest quality tempered steel. Nothing short of an industrial laser could cut through his defences. Back when he had purchased the ship, he’d made sure the bridge was reinforced as a final bastion. As a Slaver Captain and a member of the Pirates Union, Ironbuttocks knew that captains often had to face the danger of a mutinous crew or a rebellious cargo, so he’d made sure he had a fortified place to ride out any uprising. For once he was glad he’d been so paranoid and paid the extra money.

  “I’m a pretty smart guy, me!” The Captain chuckled. “Super smart.”

  He was fairly certain that he had driven the nasty boy with the boots mad with frustration when he heard Hamish X laughing for no apparent reason. The Captain’s aura of superiority evaporated when the boy shouted, “Are you ready, Captain Ironbuttocks? I’m coming for you!” Something in the tone of Hamish X’s voice cut right through the Captain’s wall of contentment.

  The final vestige of Ironbuttocks’s smug self-confidence was dissipated by a loud clang as Hamish X kicked the hatch with all the pent-up power his boots could muster. The impact knocked the Captain out of his chair and onto his metal bottom. The hatch held, but an alarming dent appeared in the centre. The dent was roughly the same shape as one of the mad boy’s boots.

  “Uh-oh,” the Captain said softly. Another ringing clang saw the hatch dent grow even larger. The hatch wouldn’t hold much longer. Captain Ironbuttocks felt a cold, burning hatred deep in his soul.

  “I hate you, boy! I hate you and your silly, stupid boots!” he railed. He loathed the thought of losing his ship to these ragged kids. If he lost his ship, his employers would not be pleased. He doubted he would survive the displeasure of the ODA. “I won’t give up my ship! I won’t give up my ship! I … I …” He looked around the bridge and his eyes caught the radar screen. What he saw there made him smile. He leapt to the wheel and slammed the engines full ahead. The ship lurched forward.

  “Hey, Mr. Big Feet! You think you have a lot of smart thinks in your mind? Well, phooey! If I can’t have this beautiful ship, nobody will! Tee hee! Christmas Is Cancelled is cancelled!”

  Though the threat was difficult to decipher, Hamish X still felt a trill of dread when he heard it. Outside the hatch, he was just rearing back for another powerful kick when he felt the ship change direction. Puzzled, he shouted to the Captain. “What’s going on, Ironbutt? What are you up to?” He turned to look out over the bow of the ship, scanning the darkness. At first, he saw only blackness and the reflection of the ship’s running lights off the wine-dark sea, but after his eyes adjusted, he saw a winking red light in the distance. Concentrating on it, he felt his vision shift. His pupils widened like telescopic lenses. The red light leapt into stark relief. The dawn was coming. Outlined in the growing daybreak, a series of jagged rocks rose out of the sea. On the largest of them a red beacon winked on and off to warn sailors of the danger. Hamish X’s face turned ashen as he realized what the Captain was going to do. He turned and hammered on the dented hatch.

  “What do you think you’re doing? You’ll wreck us on the rocks!”

  “You won’t get my ship, you booted freak-boy,” came the muffled, manic reply. “You won’t get my ship! Tee hee! Tee hee!”

  Hamish X feverishly began to hammer the hatch with his boots. He had to stop the Captain from wrecking the ship on the rocks. “Hurry, Maggie,” he muttered to himself.

  Down below, Maggie hurried. She pelted through the corridors of the ship. Everywhere she looked, there were signs of a titanic struggle. She ran through the mess hall and found the tables overturned, chairs broken, dishes shattered. She ran down a corridor past the crew cabins. The doors hung open or dangled from shattered hinges. In a heap, four crewmen lay tied together with electrical tape and nylon rope, a child standing guard over them. She was about to ask the boy where her brother was when she heard shouting and the sound of metal clashing against metal. She followed the din and came to a steep metal ladder. The sounds were coming from below. She gripped the handrails and slid down the ladder, landing lightly on the metal floor.

  She found herself on the lowest deck of the ship. The remnants of a heavy battle were strewn along the corridor. Two sailors lay unconscious. A little girl sat with her back to the wall, holding a rag doll against a cut on her forehead.

  “Where’s Thomas?” Maggie demanded. The girl pointed down the corridor and Maggie sped off. She came to the end and turned the corner, almost running into a knot of children gathered in front of a large metal door. Lined up against the wall, bound and gagged, was a group of vanquished crewmen.

  The door was scratched and dented but seemed solid. Thomas swung a massive wrench. It bounced off the door with a sound like a metal gong, shivering the wrench from his grasp. The tool fell to the metal deck with a clatter. Thomas danced out of the way, avoiding a crushed toe, then examined the hatch. The wrench had barely scratched the surface.

  “Ow!” Thomas winced and twisted his wrists experimentally. “This is hopeless! We can’t get in!” He shook his head.

  “What’s going on?”

  “The last of the crew is holed up in the engine room, Maggie. They’ve locked the hatch and we can’t get through. We’ll have to starve them out.”

  “Hamish X says we have to shut down the engines,” Maggie insist
ed.

  “Well, unless he has a blowtorch,” Thomas snapped, “or a bazooka, we are not getting into the engine room.”

  Maggie shook her head. “Hamish X is trying to get into the bridge, but the place is like a fortress. Keep trying.” She turned on her heel and ran back the way she came.

  Thomas watched her go and shrugged. “Let’s find a bigger wrench.”

  HAMISH X WAS DRENCHED WITH SWEAT. He had kicked the hatch with all his might for the last minute and, though it was severely dented, the portal would not yield. He staggered back and looked at the rocks. They loomed ever closer. Even without the enhanced vision afforded him by whatever alterations the ODA had made to his eyesight, he could make out the deadly obstacle in the growing dawn light. He calculated that, at their current speed, the ship would crash into it in a minute, maybe less.

  Maggie burst out of the lower deck hatch and ran towards Hamish X. “The engine room door isn’t going to break down any time soon. We can’t shut down the engines.”

  Hamish X felt panic well up inside him. Fear wrapped itself around his heart and squeezed.

  Maggie stood looking up at him, her blue eyes huge in her grimy face. She needed him to do something.

  Before, when he remembered nothing about the past, he never felt this fear. When he was alone in the world on his adventures, he had never known fear because there was nothing and no one to lose. Now he missed Mimi and Parveen. They could have helped him, but he’d left them behind. He had found these new friends in need of his help, and now he was going to fail them.

  Inside the bridge, the Captain had gone quite mad. He thumbed the switch on the Tannoy41 system. The laughter of Captain Ironbuttocks rang out on the loudspeaker system. “Tee hee! Tee hee! We’re all going to die! If I can’t have my ship, no one can.” He gripped the wheel of the ship with insane intensity, his eyes glaring and foam spraying from the corners of his mouth.