It was, Niall realised, an extraordinary offer, like a princess offering to marry a farmhand.
“A commander cannot marry a runaway slave.”
She took his face between her hands and looked into his eyes. “A commander can marry anyone she likes — that is her privilege.”
She kissed him again, this time very gently, but maintaining the contact for a long time. Something seemed to pass from her lips into him, and from his lips into her — an exchange of vital energy. It was then that Niall realised she had left him without alternatives. It was true that he could easily persuade her to go away and pretend she had never seen him; because she loved him, she would do whatever he asked. But if he did so, he would be turning her into a traitor, and she would feel overwhelmed with guilt. He knew that would be impossible; she filled him with a feeling of protectiveness.
He said: “Very well. I will do as you ask.”
This time she tightened her arms round his neck and kissed him hungrily; both abandoned themselves to the pleasure of this exchange of living warmth. Then Niall felt something brush his hair and started with disgust as a pseudopod started to explore his neck. She asked: “What is it?”
He pointed. “What is that?”
She laughed. “Only a squid fungus.” She stood up, drew a dagger from her belt and slashed at the fungus. It fell on to the floor. To Niall’s surprise, she bent down, impaled it on her dagger, and dropped it into a leather pouch at her waist.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“They are good to eat.” She caressed his hair. “When you are my husband, I will cook them for you.” From outside, the brass band played a fanfare. “Now we must go.” She took his hand.
“Is it a good idea for us to be seen together?”
She laughed. “Why not? It will make the others jealous.”
As she drew him out into the sunlight, Niall experienced a mixture of delight and sadness: delight at being with Odina, sadness at knowing that his attempt to escape had been a failure.
Doggins, who was standing at the rear of the marquee, looked at Niall with astonishment and consternation. Niall avoided his eyes.
The grandstand was now full, the humans tightly packed on benches, the bombardier beetles standing on broad platforms between the rows. Odina led Niall to a bench that was evidently reserved for commanders; she sat down and made a place for Niall at the end. The other commanders glanced at Niall with mild curiosity, and he was interested to observe that none of them seemed to guess his identity. Odina had apparently kept her secret from them.
On the row in front of them, the whole Doggins family stared at the marquee with fascinated absorption, the children all sucking large and brightly coloured lollipops. From inside, the green-tinted bubble dome looked blue, its glass so perfectly transparent that it was almost invisible; it seemed to have the property of cutting out the heat of the sun, transforming the midsummer heat into the pale warmth of a winter afternoon.
Odina was talking to the girl sitting next to her. Niall looked at her with a certain pride. With her honey-coloured hair, her sunburnt breasts and her white teeth, she was by far the most attractive of the commanders. Happiness had given her an inner glow. Was Niall in love with her? The question was almost irrelevant. He was at the age when everyone wants to fall in love, and would have been willing to consider any girl who showed signs of being susceptible to his attraction. As far as Niall was concerned, the question of whether he was in love with her was secondary to the fact that she seemed to be in love with him.
The band blew another fanfare. There was instant silence, everyone’s eyes on the marquee. Slaves were pulling out the pegs that held it against the ground. Bill Doggins stepped forward, bowed to the audience, then turned to the marquee and flung his arms above his head with a gesture of command. The marquee rose slowly into the air, sweeping back towards the cliff on its hidden pulleys, then was lowered over the gunpowder cave to form a backcloth. Cheers and clapping broke out at the sight of the island. Doggins, having established himself as the donor of the entertainment, moved gracefully to one side. Then a black-bearded pirate captain stumped onto the deck of the ship on his wooden leg, glared out ferociously at the audience, and roared: “Avast, ye lubbers, I can see ye watching me! You don’t frighten Pegleg Pete!” He turned and shouted down below: “Men, there’s a crowd of idiots out there staring at us! Let’s go and cut ’em to pieces!” At that moment, there was a loud explosion from behind him, and Pegleg Pete leapt into the air like a startled roebuck, losing his hat and telescope in the process. The audience roared with laughter, and the beetles made a curious quivering motion and rubbed their feelers together, making a sound like crickets. Niall, for whom pantomimes were only a distant racial memory, laughed louder than anyone.
The entertainment proceeded. Pegleg Pete and his crew had come to the island in search of buried treasure; Pete said he was hoping to retire on the proceeds and become a hangman in his spare time. But the island was full of murderous cannibals (played by the slaves, with blackened arms and faces). Pete’s new Master of Artillery — the last one had been eaten by a shark — was an incompetent who could not strike a match without causing an explosion. When the captain ordered a false distress signal to lure a passing merchantman into an ambush, and the Master of Artillery acquiesced with a cross-eyed leer, all the children shrieked with laughter, knowing the result would be yet another disaster. When the Master of Artillery emerged on deck a moment later with an armful of skyrockets, the entire crew — including Pegleg Pete — dived for cover, and the laughter and stamping of feet was so loud that Niall had to cover his ears. Inevitably, the rockets exploded in all directions, and the Master of Artillery turned a spectacular backward somersault off the deck, escaping injury by a miracle of timing. He was evidently a trained acrobat.
There was a love story, which Niall found even more absorbing than the periodic explosions. The second mate, an honest young fellow who had been captured by the pirates in a skirmish, fell in love with a beautiful lady on the plundered merchantman, and they decided to escape. Seized by cannibals, they were forced to watch from behind prison bars as the natives prepared a feast at which they were to be the main dish. Fortunately, their captors were unaware that the fuel they had gathered for the fire included a bundle of signal rockets. In due course, the fire exploded, the cannibals fled, and the prisoners escaped. Now Niall understood why they were enclosed in the bubble dome; three of the rockets struck it with tremendous impact and exploded without even leaving a mark.
In the third act — the pantomime lasted almost two hours — the mate and his lady love were tied to the masts of the pirate ship, with kegs of gunpowder around them primed to explode, while the captain and crew prepared to escape in the merchantman. The cannibals chose this opportunity to raid the pirate ship. While the hero, with incredible dexterity, cut the bonds of his lady love with a dagger held in his teeth, the cannibals swarmed aboard up a rope ladder. Since the slaves had been insufficiently rehearsed, there was a failure of timing, and the cannibals stood around in a circle, watching the hero’s contortions while he did his best to ignore them. Doggins could be seen standing in the wings, waving his arms, but no one paid any attention. Finally, the two principals were freed, and the hero cut the burning fuse with his dagger and tossed the spluttering end over his shoulder. Inevitably, it landed in a bucket of signal rockets, which flew off in all directions, their sparks igniting fireworks which — for unexplained reasons — had been left lying around the deck. This was plainly the build-up to the climax. As the hero and heroine rowed away to safety — pulled by an unseen rope — the ship turned into a spectacular firework display with coloured sparks pouring out of its portholes, its hatches and even the tops of the masts.
At this point, it became clear that the cannibals were not obeying their instructions; they were dancing around joyfully in the showers of sparks, laughing and waving their arms. One of them gave a roar of pain as a rocket soared between his legs, and leapt overboard; but the others seemed to be enjoying themselves too much to be afraid. Doggins finally rushed out from the side of the stage and shouted at them, but his voice was drowned by the crash of fireworks and shrieks of laughter.