CHAPTER 15
Nonagon Island
The same afternoon the four travelers arrived at the Red Jinn's castle, a lonely fisherman in an odd nine-sided dory pulled out from the Nonagon Isle. This strange small nine-sided island lies about ninety leagues from the mainland of Ev. Flat, barren and rocky, it affords but a meager living to the nine fishermen who are its sole inhabitants. Each keeps strictly to his own side of the island, subsisting frugally on fish and the few poor vegetables he can grow in his rocky little garden. Hard and unfriendly as their island itself, the nine Nonagons go their own ways, exchanging brief nods on the rare occasions when they meet one another.
The habit of silence had so grown upon Bloff, the fisherman in the nine-sided dory, he did not even talk to the cat who shared his rough dwelling and accompanied him on all of his fishing trips. And so accustomed was poor Nina to her gruff and taciturn master that she expected nothing from him but an occasional kick or fish head. Never sure which would be forthcoming, she kept her green eyes watchfully upon him at all times. This afternoon she was certain it would be a fish head, and as Bloff reached the spot where he had set his nets her tail began to wave gently in pleasant anticipation.
Bloff himself seemed a little less grim, for the net seemed quite heavy, and sure he had made a good haul, he began pulling on the lines. But when his net came wet and dripping over the side of the boat, he gave a grunt of anger. In it were only three small fish and an immense red jug. His first impulse was to toss the jug back into the sea, but reflecting grumpily that he could use it to salt down fish for the winter, he rolled it into the bottom of the boat and, kicking the disappointed cat out of the way, rowed rapidly back to the island.
Stamping into his nine-sided shack with the net over his shoulder, Bloff banged the jug down on the hearth, cleaned and cut up the fish and popped them into a pot hung on a crane over the fire. Then, lighting his one poor lamp, he sat sullenly down to wait for his supper. The fish heads he flung cruelly into the hot ashes, and whenever he dozed for a moment Nina tried to pull one out with her paw, for she knew full well she could get nothing else to eat.
For perhaps an hour there was not a sound in the fisherman's hut except the crackling of the drift-wood in the grate and the hoarse breathing of the fisherman himself. Then suddenly Nina, who had almost succeeded in dragging her supper from the flames, gave a frightened backward leap.
"Oh, my, mercy me! Mercy, me!" came a muffled but merry voice. "Where—but where am I now?"
As Nina and her master turned startled eyes toward the red jug, for the voice was undoubtedly coming from the jug, the lid slowly lifted and a round jolly face peered out at them. What he saw was so discouraging, Jinnicky—for of course it was Jinnicky—dropped back out of sight. The magic fluid with which he had sealed himself in the jug before Gludwig hurled him into the sea had been melted by the warmth of the fisherman's fire, and the same warmth had restored the little Red Jinn to his usual vigor and liveliness. In a sort of protective stupor he had managed to survive the long months at the bottom of the ocean. A quick thinker at all times, Jinnicky rapidly regained his senses and realized at once what had happened. A fortunate tide had carried him into this fisherman's net and at last he was on dry land again; and NOW to find and face the villain who had usurped his throne and castle.
"But why—why—" groaned the little Jinn dolefully, "with all the fishermen in the Nonestic Ocean did I have to be pulled out by this long-jawed fellow?"