Cape Flattery Will Get You Nowhere

5

"Curse this fog," the midshipman muttered, hugging himself.

"What fog?" Stan asked.

"Why—just look around, sir! Ever since I fell overboard and somehow made it to this barren island, the tempests have raged and nothing but fog, storm, and rain has befallen me! I lost my good jacket in the sea, and I am chilled to the very marrow!"

Mabel and Dipper exchanged a look. They saw no fog at all—merely darkness and, in the pools of their flashlights, sand. "Are you cold?" Mabel whispered.

"No. Well, not warm, but not cold, either."

"Why's he feeling and seeing things different from us? Think he's just cuckoo bonkers?"

"Maybe not," Dipper whispered. "Maybe it's some property of this place. Some influence, I mean, that makes different people see and feel different things."

"OK, let's get you aboard!" Stan said, sweeping his light to illuminate the stakes and the rope.

"My word, sir, you have a powerful dark-lantern!"

"Yeah, dark-lantern. You know how to climb a rope, Midshipman Martin?"

"Yes, sir, but I scarcely think—"

"His Majesty ain't payin' you to think!" Stan bellowed. "Up that line double-quick, midshipman, or you'll feel the back of my hand!"

"Aye!" Martin said, and he scrambled up frantically.

Stan put his hand next to his mouth and bellowed. "Ahoy, Cap'n Pines! One castaway comin' aboard!"

"Wow, look at him go!" Mabel said. "How'd you do that, Grunkle Stan?"

"Meh, watched a lot of pirate movies in my younger days," Stan said with a shrug. "You two squirts next, and make sure Ford doesn't scare the livin' daylights outa this poor guy."

As Stan held the light on the rope, Dipper went first, with Mabel right beneath him. He heard her giggling. "What?"

"Just lookin' at your buns, Brobro!" Mabel chortled. "Wendy thinks you—"

"Can it, Mabel!" Dipper snapped.

Down—up?—on the ground, Stan laughed. "Can! I get it!"

Dipper didn't, but he climbed furiously and reversed himself midway with no trouble. Then he simply slid up—down?—to the deck. Martin stood sort of at attention, his hand at his chest clutching something invisible. He was stammering, "J0-John M-Martin, Midshipman, HMS Discovery, sir!"

"Uh—at ease, Martin," Ford said, looking baffled. Martin just stared at him, bug-eyed and quivering.

Mabel slipped down the rope behind Dipper, and then Stan came swooping down. He snapped out, "As you were, Martin!"

And Martin finally relaxed.

Grinning, Stan turned to his brother and said, "Cap'n Pines, this is a castaway who told us he fell overboard from a British ship. Don't know what to do with him."

"A . . . British ship?" Ford asked. "Uh—welcome aboard the Stan O' War II, Martin."

"By your leave, Cap'n," Stan said. He turned to Martin. "All right, lad, despite the name of this sloop, we ain't a war vessel. Just merchantmen. Now, your ship was the—"

"The HMS Discovery, sir, commanded by Captain Charles Clerke, only he's been ill since Tahiti, so generally First Officer Burney is taking his place. Our ship's a consort to the HMS Resolution, Captain James Cook commanding, on a mission to find the Northwest Passage."

"The Northwest . . . Cook?" Ford asked, frowning as though he were listening to a Hindu radio station playing a rap song from Botswana.

Stan took him by the elbow and led him forward, then whispered, "It's some kinda cockamamie time mix-up, Sixer. He thinks it's March 1778, and he thinks we're in the middle of fog, rain, and storms. Also, he's freezin'."

"I see," Ford said. He turned and gestured to Dipper. "Midshipman, uh, Mason, take this man below and give him the pea jacket from my locker. Can't have him freezing."

"Aye, sir," Dipper said.

"What are we doing?" Mabel asked. "Playing pirates? I call Anne Bonney! She's my favorite!"

"Just ignore her," Dipper advised. "Come with me."

They went down to the galley, Dipper had Martin wait, and he brought the blue pea jacket to him. "This'll warm you up," he said.

"Thank you!" Martin got into the garment, though it was too big on him. "Do you think we might try to find my ship?"

"Uh—well, we'll ask the Captain. Uh—do you want any food?"

"I want to rest," the young man said with a tired groan. "Could I just sit here for a spell?"

"Sure."

Sighing gratefully, Martin slipped onto the bench that stood beside the folding table—currently folded out of sight—and then slumped over to one side, huddling in the jacket.

"I'll go have a word with Gr—I mean the Captain," Dipper said.

Back on deck, he heard Stan saying, "What? We should've just left him there?"

Ford was speaking over him: "Of course I wouldn't actually leave anyone to die—"

And Mabel, at the wheel was saying, "Avast, ye scurvy dogs! I be a man pirate and no female in masculine disguise, if that's what ye be thinkin', ah-harr!"

"Guys, guys," Dipper said.

All there glared at him and all three said, "What?" in perfect unison.

"Jinx!" Mabel shouted. "You both owe me a soda!"

"Come on, please," Dipper said. "Grunkle Ford, this—whatever it is, must be a—a time bubble? A time trap? Something that hauls in ships! What could do that?"

"I don't know!" Ford said. "Something that could violate or suspend the normal laws of space and time! I suppose it might be an interdimensional intrusion—though my instruments don't bear that out. Or perhaps some very powerful magic spell. Magic is so diffuse and various that it's difficult to identify with any confidence."

"Look, Martin thinks his ship's still somewhere around," Dipper said. "Do you think maybe if we put him back aboard it, that might, I don't know, break the spell?"

"Possibly," Ford admitted. "But I don't see how!"

"Hang on, hang on," Stan said. "Do we even want to do that? What if it does and we get snapped back to 1778 with him an' his ship? I don't wanna live in an era when the dollar hasn't even been invented yet!"

Mabel said, "But on the other hand, you could be a great Colonial scam artist, a psychic predicting the future that's already happened!"

"You're makin' my head hurt," Stan complained.

"Something else we need to think about," Dipper said. "My phone still shows the time as the same it was when we went into the whirlpool, and that's hours ago."

Ford checked his watch. "My watch has stopped at the same moment! Let me check—" He ducked below deck, came out a moment later, and said, "The chronometer's also frozen. Oh, and Martin is lying on the bench asleep."

"Time's stopped for us," Dipper said. "Mabel, are you hungry?"

"Are you kidding?" Mabel asked. "Am I hungry?" Then she looked puzzled. "Um—no. No, I'm not!"

"There ya go," Stan said. "Something's definitely screwed with the time! I haven't gone to the bathroom since we started down to this crazy place, so yeah, time's froze up."

"We're in suspension," Ford said. "And for Martin to be here too . . . we're somewhere that has no time in the ordinary sense."

"But we're walking and talking," Mabel pointed out. "And I can do this!" She reached into Dipper's waistband, grabbed the elastic band of his undershorts, and yanked hard.

"Hey! Cut it out!" Dipper yelled, writhing. "Mabel! A wedgie is not funny!"

"Yeah, it is!"

Even Ford smiled, and Stan was chuckling. "It's objectively funny, Dipper. But yeah, don't do that, Mabel. Not to your brother. T.K. would probably get off on it, though!"

"I'll try it!" Mabel said.

"IF!" Dipper shouted, tugging his underwear back into place. "If we get home again! Which we have to figure out how to do!"

"Maybe," Ford said slowly, "maybe we should cruise around and see if we spot Martin's ship. Or ships. I'm rusty on my maritime history, but I know that Captain Cook led three expeditions to the Pacific, and this was the last one. He explored the northwest coast of North America, including Alaska, and then went back southward to the Sandwich Islands—that's what he'd named them—"

"Ooh, a delicatessen island?" Mabel asked. "What do they got? Reubens? It's been a long time since I had one of those!"

Ford waited until she ran down, then patiently said, "The name was in honor of John Montague, the Earl of Sandwich, who was such an inveterate gambler—"

"My kinda guy!" Stan said.

"—yes, Stanley. Anyway, he got so wrapped up in a long card game that he missed a couple of meals and finally told his valet to bring him some cold meat between two pieces of bread. He invented that type of food and it was named after him. So no, the islands are not a delicatessen, but yes, they have something remotely to do with the bread type of sandwiches. Today they're called the Hawaiian Islands."

"I'd love to go to Hawaii," Mabel said. "Mom and Dad—"

"Focus, Mabel," Dipper begged. "Please!"

Ford resumed: "Well, Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands and the islanders were first friendly—"

"Hold on," Mabel said. "There were people on the islands when Cook discovered them? Didn't they discover the islands first?"

"Well, yes. I should have said Cook was the first European to discover the islands, which the Polynesians had of course already discovered and colonized."

"Yeah, give them some respect!" Mabel insisted.

"Anyway," Ford said, beginning to sound like Stan in a cranky mood, "after failing to discover the Northwest Passage—because there is none, Mabel!—Cook returned to Hawaii, where he got into a squabble with King Kalaniopuu over the islanders' stealing a boat—this was at Kealakekua Bay on Hawaii, which Americans usually call the Big Island today—"

"Those names are weird," Mabel said.

"No, they're not," Dipper told her. "They just sound that way because the Hawaiian language has only eight consonants and five vowels."

Mabel tilted her head like a bewildered puppy. "What, did they get their alphabet from a used Scrabble game they bought at a cheapo second-hand shop?"

"I give up," Ford said.

"No, no," Dipper told him. "Go on, Grunkle Ford. Didn't Captain Cook die in Hawaii?"

"He did indeed," Ford said. "Because he attempted to take the king hostage and hold him to exchange for the return of the stolen boat. One of the king's warriors attacked and killed him."

"Aw," Mabel said. "Maybe we don't want to send Martin back."

Ford looked up to the dark heavens, sighed, and added, "No, no, most of the men survived, though it was a very long voyage—from 1776 to 1780, to be exact. Even if Cook is fated to die, then the others of his crew still deserve a chance to return home. If we don't give them that chance, all of history could change in unimaginable ways."

"Yeah, and Time Baby would get all crabby and we don't want that," Mabel muttered. "OK, I guess we ought to try to put this guy back on his boat."

"I'll go untie the mooring line," Dipper said. "Then we can haul up the anchors and get underway."

It took a little doing—though Ford moved the boat forward a little so the line was at an angle, one of the anchors very nearly beaned Stan, who jumped back from the rail just in time as it came whizzing down—or up?—and splashed into the water just behind the transom. Then they had to pull the anchors up again, this time from the water instead of the sea floor.

Martin woke up and came on deck to watch as Dipper climbed the mast and lashed himself to it with Stan's belt, standing on the two braces, and kept a lookout, though he looked out on dense blackness, seeing nothing. They reversed their course and sailed slowly toward the center of the mile-wide bowl of water. Finally, though—it felt like two or three hours, though technically he supposed no time had passed—finally, Dipper saw some gleams of orange light off to starboard and called the information down to the deck.

Ford changed course to intercept the lights. Dipper made out that the orange glows came from lanterns on two ships, which were tossing and wallowing heavily, as though fighting a storm, even though the Stan O' War II navigated over calm water.

Ford tied a loud hailer to a line and Dipper hauled it up. When he could hear the swash of the sails on the other two ships, he switched the bullhorn on and bawled, "Ahoy, Discovery! Ahoy, Resolution!" His magnified voice boomed over the sea.

Faintly from the darkness came a man's shouting voice: "This is H.M.S. Resolution! What ship is that?"

"No ship! Just a boat!" Dipper called back. "We have one of your crew! A midshipman who fell overboard!"

"Martin?"

"Yes!"

"He is alive?"

"He is!"

"Approach!"

"Stand by!"

Dipper hurried down the mast. The binnacle light made Stan, at the wheel, look green and menacing. "I heard," he said. "You're goin' home, pal!"

But next to him, Martin, still swathed in the pea jacket, looked miserable. "Oh, Lord!" he groaned. "I'm in for it now! That was the sailing master. A right hard horse, he is! He'll have the flesh flogged off my back for this!"

"Nah, don't worry, kid, I'll have a word with him," Stan said.

"I think that would only make matters worse," Martin said.

"Hah! You don't know me," Stan told him.

"And you," Martin replied sadly, "don't know William Bligh!"