using merge sort principle

Q- I have an array A with the sizes of apples and have to create another array S which would contain the indices of the apples in sorted order given that we cannot directly access or touch A only a function is_large(A,i,j) function can access it. It returns -1 is A[i] > A[j] and 1 if A[i] < A[j]. I wrote the program but it is giving incorrect results even for small arrays what is the problem? The main problem is that the first element is not changing positions because of that the whole array is unsorted.

def is_large_apples(apple_size, i, j):
    """ Takes two indices and tells
    which one of them is larger or smaller """

    if apple_size[i] > apple_size[j]:
        return 1
    elif apple_size[i] < apple_size[j]:
        return -1

def mergesort_apples(s, l, r):
    """ This function takes indexed list and
     makes recursive calls to sort the array """
    if l < r:
        mid = (l+r)//2
        mergesort_apples(s, l, mid)
        mergesort_apples(s, mid+1, r)
        merge_apples(s, l, mid, r)


def merge_apples(s, l, mid, r):
    """ This function takes the list and
    the indices to merge them into the final array"""
    nl = mid - l + 1
    nr = r - mid
    left, right = [], []
    left = s[l:mid+1:1]
    right = s[mid+1:r+1:1]
    i, j, k = 0, 0, l;
    while i < nl and j < nr:
        print(s)
        if is_large_apples(apple_size, i, j) == -1:
            s[k] = left[i]
            i += 1
        else:
            s[k] = right[j]
            j += 1
        k += 1

    while i < nl:
        s[k] = left[i]
        k += 1
        i += 1
    while j < nr:
        s[k] = right[j]
        k += 1
        j += 1

apple_size = [5, 7, 1,44,2,33] # Given list of sizes.
s = [x for x in range(0,len(apple_size))] # Original list of indices.
mergesort_apples(s, 0, len(s)-1)
print(s)