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DOCTOR MUFFET’S ISLAND

by Brian Stableford

Brian Stableford’s recent works include the novel The New Faust at the

Tragicomique and the anthology News from the Moon and Other French

Scientific Romances, both from Black Coat Press. Routledge published his

mammoth reference book Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia

in 2006. One does not have to be familiar with the remarkable events that

occurred in Brian’s tale about “The Plurality of Worlds” (August 2006), to

follow the further exploits of Francis Drake and his adventures on...

* * * *

The island’s only hill was so shallow that it would have posed no challenge at

all had it been a Devon moor, nor was its vegetation unduly thorny, but the

thin-boled trees were parasitized by so many sticky vines that it was difficult for

Francis Drake and Martin Lyle to climb it, even with the aid of a machete.

The island seemed to have little in the way of animal life except for birds, of

which there were many brightly colored kinds, which seemed quite unintimidated by

their visitors. Whenever Drake was not fully occupied in clearing a path he attempted

to watch the birds more attentively, but the only result of his cursory study was a

conviction that a few of the larger parrots were studying him with equal intensity. It

was easy to imagine that the endless avian chattering was conversation.

When Drake and his young cousin finally got to the top of the rise it was

necessary for the boy to climb a coconut palm with the captain’s best telescope

clutched beneath his arm. Drake watched him anxiously, afraid for the instrument. It

was one of John Dee’s finest, designed with the aid of the theory of optics Dee and

Tom Digges had worked out in happier days and constructed by a lens-grinder from

Strasbourg, who had fled to Protestant England to escape the gathering storm of the

continental wars of religion. In theory, it was a capital offense for anyone outside the

Queen’s Navy to possess a telescope, but Drake had long been an exception to that

rule. The ethership fiasco had reduced his reputation as Queen Jane’s favorite

privateer, but he ought to be able to recover his prestige if his present expedition

went well.

As soon as Martin had attained an adequate height, Drake demanded to know

whether the large island of which he desperately wanted news was visible. Its real

existence was a point he desperately needed to prove, for the benefit of his belief in

his own sanity.

Martin uncapped the telescope’s objective lens, and put it to his eye. “I can

see two isles to the west, captain,” he reported. “The nearer is tiny, no bigger than

this one, but the other— God’s blood! ”

There had been a time when Drake’s automatic reaction would have been to

warn the boy against taking the Lord’s name in vain, but they were in the middle of

the mis-named Pacific Ocean now. Although Drake had prayed as fervently as he

ever had in his life during the storms that had driven them back to Peru when they

had first emerged from the Magellan Straits, cursing did not seem so dire a sin when

the nearest church was a thousand miles away and papist.

“What is it, boy?” Drake asked, anxiously.

“It’s a ship, captain,” Martin reported. “She’s heading straight toward us with

full sail. She’s bigger than the Pelican .”

Drake did not trouble to remind his kinsman that the Pelican had now been

the Golden Hind for more than fifty days. “Is she flying Spanish colors?” he asked,

filled with sudden dread.

“The cross of Saint George!” Martin reported, excitedly. “She’s English!”

Drake could not share his cousin’s enthusiasm. The remainder of his crewmen

would doubtless be as glad as Martin to discover Englishmen on the far side of the

world, but to him it signified that he had been forestalled. He could not imagine by

whom, but the fact was obvious—unless the red cross were a treacherous ploy,

intended to deceive. That seemed unlikely, though. The Spanish ships plying the

nascent navigation-paths west of the Americas were cargo vessels, not warships;

they had no fear yet of pirates or privateers and no incentive to display false colors.

Although the Hind was anchored to the south of the islet, with no headland to

shield her from view, there was no way that the captain of this mysterious vessel

could tell what she was unless the man in his crow’s-nest was equipped with a

telescope at least as good as Drake’s own. Even if the Spanish navy had such

instruments, they would not have been given to explorers of this ocean. As good

Romanists, the Spaniards were supposed to believe that the Pacific had no land in it

at all, with the possible exception of Dante’s mount of Purgatory. The existence of

the Americas had already proved Cosmas’ geography ludicrously false, but the

Roman Church always let go of its mistakes by slow degrees.

“Has she gun-ports in her sides?” Drake demanded.

“Can’t tell,” Martin replied. “She’s front-on, and all I can see for sure is her

sails. But she’s English, captain—English for sure.”

“Come down now!” Drake commanded. The boy made haste to obey. Drake

remembered as soon as he had spoken that he had not asked for details of the more

distant island that Martin had seen—but there would be time enough for that when

more urgent matters had been settled.

Drake did not wait for Martin’s feet to touch the ground. He set off down the

hill, cursing himself for not having cleared a better trail as they came up it. Running

was direly difficult, and it seemed to Drake that the vines had become positively

malevolent, lying in ambush to catch his feet and trip him. To avoid any impression

of panic, though, he waited until he did not have to yell at the top of his voice to

order William Ashley, his second mate, to regather the landing-party and get the

pinnace afloat.

The wind was blowing from the west, almost directly contrary to the course

Drake had been endeavoring to follow. That was why he had consented to put in at

such a unpromising island, which would surely have been inhabited had it nursed the

free-standing pools and streams of fresh water he needed to replenish his casks.

Given that the other ship was under full sail, and had been close enough for its

colors to be identifiable at first sight, it would likely reach the island within the hour.

It would be politic for the Golden Hind to be in deep water when she arrived, with

sail enough aloft to out-maneuver her. Even if her colors were true, that could not

guarantee that her crew were loyal subjects of Queen Jane. It was darkly rumored in

Plymouth that the Elizabethans had enough ships and captains of their own to form a

shadow navy of sorts, and that they had secret bases in the far-flung corners of the

globe, from which they ceaselessly plotted rebellion. Drake thought such tales highly

unlikely, but the appearance of the ship was so improbable in itself that he dared not

discount any possibility.

Drake had no fear of being outgunned, let alone of being outsailed, by

Spaniards, Elizabethans, or the Devil himself. The tightness in his chest and the

nauseous feeling in his gut arose entirely from frustration, not from some God-given

presentiment of disaster. As he made what haste he could to reach the strand with

his dignity intact, all he could think about was the folly that had caused him to be

seduced by Tom Digges and John Dee into volunteering for the crew of the

ethership instead of making his present expedition three years before, in 1577. That

three-year delay, it seemed, had cost him his priority. Even knowing the position of

the island he had selected as his target—the sole advantage he had obtained from the

ethership’s disastrous voyage—had proved inadequate. Someone had got here

ahead of him.

There was confusion on the beach as men hurried back toward the pinnace

from every direction, bearing whatever natural booty they had been able to

gather—coconuts, for the most part, with a few turtles and baskets of eggs laid by

ground-nesting birds. There was need of a sharp mind and a commanding voice, but

Drake was careful to give his orders in a level voice, rather than barking or howling

them, forming the words with precision. No one asked him what the matter was; the

crew did as they were told, as quickly and efficiently as they could. Once Martin had

arrived in his wake, though, still carrying the precious telescope, the sailors were

quick to seek better enlightenment from the boy.

The mate was the one man who guessed why Drake was so anxious in the

face of seemingly good news. As soon as the pinnace was afloat and headed back to

the Golden Hind Ashley made his way to Drake’s side and murmured in his ear:

“How did they come here, captain? Who else knows what you know about the isle

at seventeen?” He meant seventeen degrees south—the latitude that Walter Raleigh

had estimated while he had hastily sketched a series of maps during the ethership’s

initial ascent.

“Why, no one,” the captain replied, grimly. “Who would believe it, if anyone

did, since I am mad, and everything that happened aboard the ethership was mere

Devil-led delusion?”

Drake spoke sarcastically, as he had learned to do, but it was the truth. So far

as he knew, no one else did know of the island’s existence, save for the Golden

Hind ’s officers—and none of them had been told until they had left the Magellan

Straits. He had told no one in England—not even Tom Digges—while he tried in

vain to convince the ethership’s master that their experiences within the moon and

among the stars had most certainly not been a dream.

Only three of the Queen Jane ’s five-man crew had survived the break-up of

the ship, although the bodies of the other two had never been found, presumably

having fallen into the Kentish marshes or the Thames estuary. Of those three, John

Field had embellished his own experiences with such a surfeit of imagined devilry

that no one in the world—with the possible exception of his master, Archbishop

John Foxe—could have believed his testimony. Tom Digges, to Drake’s utter

astonishment, had claimed that it had all been a hallucination caused by the

intoxicating effects of the ether. The combination of those two testimonies, set

against his own, had made Drake seem a monumental fool when he insisted that it

had all been real, and that the Devil had not come into it at all. Drake had been forced

to abandon that insistence, and by virtue of that abandonment, he had kept Walter

Raleigh’s sketch-map a very close secret indeed. He had taken care not to show it to

Master Dee, let alone to Northumberland or any other member of the Privy Council,

reserving it for his own future use.

In truth, he could not know how trustworthy the map was. Had he not had his

own duties to attend to while the ethership was in flight—he was the only true

crewman aboard, save for Digges—he would certainly have made his own maps as

best he could, or at least graven the sight of the world’s far side more securely into

his memory, but he had had work to do. Raleigh had been trained in navigation and

mathematics by Dee, just as Drake had, so his eye ought to have been trustworthy,

but Raleigh had stuffed most of his drawings and scribblings into his own doublet

before leaping to his death. Drake had only picked up a single sheet, dropped in the

confusion, and he had no reliable way of knowing how good its scrawled estimates

of latitude and longitude were, or whether the island really was the largest landmass

in the vast Pacific east of the Austral continent and its companion isles.

If even he could not be sure of anything, what reliable information could any

other shipmaster have had? If he had been beaten to his target by pure chance, it was

a cruel blow. Had he set out in 1577 to explore the Pacific, as he had originally

planned, he might have found the isle by chance himself.

Drake had to pause in his thoughts to bark further orders to the men aboard

the Golden Hind as the pinnace came alongside. By the time the landing-party was

back on board, with the pinnace lifted up and its meager cargo unloaded, the ship

was already putting on sail and the anchor was ready to be raised. Drake snatched

the telescope from his kinsman and began to climb the rigging himself to use it to

best effect.

The vessels were coming together rapidly now, although the Hind was merely

waiting, and Drake was able to take the other vessel’s measure. She was bigger than

the Hind , but not as well-crafted. She was moving swiftly, but that was because she

was riding high in the water, evidently carrying very little cargo. The Hind was

fully-laden, as she had had to be for an expedition into unknown waters, with

landfalls likely to be very few and far between.

Martin had confirmed that there was another island beyond the tiny one he had

seen. If the other captain was sailing without a full complement of necessary

supplies, Drake reasoned, he must have come from that isle, and must have a secure

base there—but there was no need for further speculation. Whether its lookout had a

telescope or not, the master of the other ship had to know by now that the Golden

Hind was heavily armed; even so, the vessel kept sailing dead ahead, intent on a

rendezvous.

Damn you ! Drake thought, bitterly. Damn you to Hell, whoever you are ! He

knew, though, that it was a thought he would have to keep to himself.

* * * *

“What vessel are you?” cried a voice from the prow of the other vessel. None

of the men gathered there was wearing a naval uniform.

“The Golden Hind , out of Plymouth,” replied Edward Hammond, Drake’s

first mate. “Sir Francis Drake her master. What ship are you?”

If the other vessel had been away from home for several years, Drake thought,

his name might still strike the right resonance, identifying the most glorious of all

Queen Jane’s privateers: the man who had mustered the Cimaroon army to attack the

Spanish in Panama and Mexico, rather than the madman whose mind had been

addled by contact with the interplanetary ether.

“The Fortune , out of Southampton,” was the ritual reply. “Sir Humphrey

Gilbert her master.”

Gilbert ! Drake repeated, silently. He had never met the man, but knew the

name. Gilbert was not so much a mariner as a tradesman, but it was said that he had

gone exploring—like many a pioneer before him—for the north-west passage. If so,

he was half a world away from where he should be—and where he was very likely to

have perished, if precedent signified anything. Until John Dee had built his ethership,

Brian Stableford - Doctor Muffet's Island.pdf

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