When, on the following morning, Carl returned from the shitter to see the Council assembled on its wall, he knew what was coming. The granddads sat, swaddled in their bubbery carcoats like melancholy auks. The Driver stood among them, his black robe lying slack in the misty air. The weedy stench of a calm sea blanketed the dads, and while Ozzi Bulluk and Gari Funch chewed their gum stubbornly, spitting from time to time on the turf between their feet, the others were silent. Cummeer! Fred Ridmun called to Carl. We wanna tawk wiv U. The Driver gestured to Bill Edduns, and, ever the willing fony, he dashed off along the shoreline towards Böm's semi no doubt to fetch him too for summary judgement.
When they'd returned, and Carl and Böm were seated at the dads' feet, the Driver presented his back to the Guvnor and made his suit:
— These two flyers have been seen consorting with the Exile, and doubtless they've also continued to enter the Ferbiddun Zön. I lay it before the Council that the two of them should henceforth be confined to the manor.
— Yeah, yeah — Carl didn't know where such Boldness came from — but wot if Eye sed Eye woz gonna mayk ve furs jump onta ve stac, wot ven?
There was a rumble of disquiet from the men.
— Wotjoosayin? said Fred Ridmun, leaning forward to examine his stepson.
— Eyem sayin vat wen me an Bert wozzup eest yesterdä vare woz stil fowl landin an tekkin off from ve stac, yeah. Nó lots but vey iz angin on. U sez — Carl stood to confront the Driver — vat weave gotta gé maw fevvers an vat, well U no ve wayuvit, doanchew?
For the first time in many tariffs the Driver was bereft of words. He stood, white-faced and shaking, making no pretence of observing his fares in his mirror, for he did indeed know the Hamsters' way. Any dad might volunteer to make the first leap on to the Sentrul Stac in place of the Guvnor. This entailed privileges: the right to wear a baseball cap and to carry a lighter. Certain allotments of moto oil, booze and fags were also forthcoming. To molest a dad who had made the leap, fixed the cradle ropes and survived was unthinkable.
At last Fred Ridmun spoke:
— Iss troo wot ee sez, if ee mayks ve leep ee carnt B bangedup, innit.
— Issit? The discomfited Driver lapsed into Mokni.
— Ittis! the Hamsters chorused, and the Driver, bested, strode away to the Shelter.
Although Carl had outwitted the Driver, there remained the question of when a party should be dispatched to the Sentrul Stac. It was late in the season, and the Hamstermen were neither confident pedalers, nor could they swim. In former times they may have prided themselves on their Bold ascents, not just of the Sentrul Stac but also of the other, lesser stacks that stood in the sluggish waters of the great lagoon. Most years the Sentrul Stac boasted the largest blackwing colony, although oilgulls also shared the pinnacle, taking the lower galleries. The fowling party would pitch camp on the summit and on successive nights harvest the birds there and on the other stacks. In former times, when the stacks had been more numerous and the Hamstermen more intrepid, they had stayed out on them throughout the breeding season, their vessel carrying several loads back to the shore. However, in the past few generations the birding had, increasingly, become a symbolic activity — a means of inducting the lads into the mysteries of dadhood, rather than a serious part of the island's economy. In the time of the Driver this tendency towards emasculation had increased, almost as if the imminent erection of the New London that he called over had sapped the will of the Hamstermen to maintain their own more laborious paradise.
So it took a full blob of lengthy debate and preparation before the day dawned when the party was readied for departure. First the pedalo was dragged out from its shed and every seam caulked anew, each dad working on his allotted portion of the vessel. Next the fowling ropes were oiled and coiled, the cradle repaired and lashed to the pedalo's gunnels; finally the supplies — chiefly takeaway, tanks of moto gubbins and evian — were stowed.
While all this was under way, Carl and Antonë had little opportunity to talk alone, for they were constantly observed by the other islanders. Böm assumed that Carl had volunteered because he hoped to use the pedalo to effect their escape and was learning how to handle it. When they did manage to grab a few words in private he was disabused of this notion: Nah, Carl said, lookit ve syz uvit. Vares no way we cúd andle it. Nah, Eyem gonna distrak vem, an wyle Eyem gon Ure gonna gé ve stuff togewer 4 ve trip. In answer to Böm's quite reasonable inquiry as to how they were going to cross the five clicks of open water separating Ham from Barn, Carl had a single word: Motos. Antonë, weer gonna swim wiv ve motos.
The Sentrul Stac reared from the waters of the great lagoon about five clicks due southeast of Manna Ba. Its jagged peak was thus the opposite pole of the Hamsters' diminutive world to the rubble of Nimar in the northwest. Effi Dévúsh's legends told of how this stack — and the three further to the east, as well as the four smaller ones grouped around it — were the stepping stones that the Mutha and her giant company had thrown down in the waters so as to cross between Ham and the scattering of uninhabited islands to the south.
Those Hamsters more under the influence of the Driver were inclined to view the stacks as natural features, left behind during the MadeinChina, when the sea had broken into the lagoon and washed away the land. From the moment when he first rounded the Gayt and saw the great lagoon, Antonë Böm had entertained a different hypothesis concerning these curious features and longed to visit them. Each year that he'd remained on the island, he had asked to be allowed on a fowling expedition. The Hamstermen would never take him: fowling was too dävine and too dangerous a pursuit for off-islanders to be allowed to participate. To climb the stacks was the most daddyish of all the rituals in a daddyish world. If a mummy or an opare so much as looked at the cradles or ropes when an expedition was being organized, it would have to be aborted.
This was to be Carl's first time out to the stacks, although he'd sat at the feet of the Council for enough fowling seasons to know what to expect. Sat at the dads' feet and listened in minute detail while they mulled over the nature of their adversary. For, to the Hamstermen, the Sentrul Stac itself had a brooding personality. It was like a rocky pine cone — a series of open chambers, all set in tiers, one upon the other, rising up sheer out of the waves to the height of forty men. At the top of the stack there was a platform forty paces across; this was thick with shrubbery, as were the cavities below. All the stacks had this coating of vegetation; where the lagoon washed at their bases, hanks of seaweed clung to the crete, while above the waterline clumps of buddyspike furred their contours. In the summer, they tinged the air with their flowers, so that a bluish nimbus formed about the summits of the stacks. Now they were gone, and the Sentrul Stac was a grim snaggle, streaked white and black with birdshit.
The Hamstermen maintained that their forefathers had deliberately seeded the birdshit with buddyspike to provide handholds; however, this shrubbery was only shallowly rooted, and it was a foolhardy fowler who relied on it to support him. The first Hamster off the pedalo and on to the stack was charged with climbing to the summit, where he would tie one end of the rope he carried to an irony stanchion buried in the crete; the other end he would let down to his companions, so that they might lash on the cradle. It was also the first bloke's task to descend the rope and dispatch the sentinel blackwing. The Hamstermen would arrive at the allotted stack by night, when the blackwings were all asleep save for the one bird charged with guarding them. If this one could be prevented from uttering a warning cry, then the rest would remain oblivious as the birders swung their cradle from one nest to the next, twisting their necks with the same easy rhythm they employed ashore when casting seed or scything the wheatie crop. If the stack jumper failed in his task, the whole colony would lift off and mob the invaders. With their wingspan as great as a man's outstretched arms, and their sharp, downward-curving beaks, the blackwings were fearful aggressors. Many a Hamsterman had fallen to his death from the stacks, the blood from his ruptured eyes spreading slick on the heaving swell. Carl's own granddad, Peet Dévúsh, had fallen from the Sentrul Stac and died. This was the curse upon the Dévúsh line — for the Hamsters believed that if a bloke was sufficiently dävine the choppa would come. This was a great host of seafowl, flying in such close formation that the falling man could be caught on their backs, then lifted up and set safely back on the stack once more.