فصل 64

CHAPTER 64

THE ONLY HOPE

TORCHES FLICKERED DIMLY against the cave walls, the flames barely visible through the thick dust swirling in the air. The cave echoed with the sound of rock hitting rock, underscored by the groans and coughs of Mollusks toiling under the glare of their whip-wielding Scorpion guards.

Fighting Prawn, not daring to stop working, sneaked a glance around him. He saw his people: men, women, and—most heartbreakingly—children, with sweat pouring from their bodies; rock dust turning their hair white, their fingers bloody and broken from the endless smashing of lava.

The Scorpions were literally working them to death. If a Mollusk passed out from hunger and exhaustion, the Scorpions whipped him until he resumed working. Those who did not awaken were dragged away, unconscious, and never seen again. Fighting Prawn didn’t want to think about what happened to them.

Fighting Prawn knew his people were beyond despair. They no longer looked to him, as they once had, for hope; they knew he had no hope to give them. He wanted more than anything for this ordeal to be over. He wanted to simply lie down on the hard cave floor and let the end come. But he would not do that. He was the Mollusk chief and would not leave his people, even though in his heart he knew he had failed them.

Fighting Prawn felt a nudge from the man working next to him, Leaping Toad. He was holding something in his hand so that only Fighting Prawn could see it. It was a piece of rough lava, with a different type of rock nestled inside, glittering in the torchlight.

It was a rough diamond the size of a knuckle. Diamonds appeared from time to time among the volcanic rock that formed the island; the Mollusks had traditionally called these “hard rocks,” and viewed them as amusing trinkets. But Fighting Prawn knew, from his experience as a slave aboard British ships, the great value placed on hard rock by the outside world.

The diamonds were what the Scorpions were after; Fighting Prawn was convinced of that. Somehow they had known of the hard rock on Mollusk Island. Twice in recent days, Mollusk workers had uncovered glittering stones, and both times the Scorpion guards had become very excited, only to be disappointed when they realized that the stones were ordinary minerals. But the rock in Leaping Toad’s hand was no ordinary mineral. Fighting Prawn knew it was a diamond, and a big one.

A Scorpion guard, seeing that Fighting Prawn and Leaping Toad had stopped pounding, shouted and came striding toward them. Fighting Prawn, with the slightest shake of his head, indicated to Leaping Toad that the guard was not to see the discovery. Leaping Toad dropped the rock and put his knee over it.

The guard looked briefly at the rocks in front of the two men, then shouted something at them and, raising his whip, gave them each a lash to put them back to work. Fighting Prawn resumed pounding rocks, his mind racing. If the Scorpions saw the diamond, he knew, they would work the Mollusks even harder—if that was possible—in their frenzy to find more. He had to pass the word to the others—any hard rock they found was to be kept from the Scorpions’ sight. Maybe if no diamonds were found, they would give up.

Maybe.

It was the only chance Fighting Prawn saw, in the dim, despair-filled cave, to save his people.