Flint and Silver
Flint and Silver
John Drake
Rip-roaring adventures for fans of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and Patrick O’ Brian, in these pirate prequels to ‘Treasure Island’.
John Silver had never killed a man. Until now, charisma, sheer size and, when all else failed, a powerful pair of fists, had been enough to see off his enemies. But on a smouldering deck off the coast of Madagascar, his shipmates dead or dying all around him, his cutlass has just claimed the lives of six pirates. With their comrades intent on revenge, Silver's promising career in the merchant navy looks set to come to an end… until the pirate captain makes him an offer he can't refuse.
On the other side of the world Joseph Flint, a naval officer wronged by his superiors, plots a bloody mutiny. Strikingly handsome, brilliant, but prey to sadistic tendencies, the path Flint has chosen will ultimately lead him to Silver. Together these gentlemen of fortune forge a deadly and unstoppable partnership, steering a course through treachery and betrayal and amassing a vast fortune. But the arrival of Selina, a beautiful runaway slave with a murderous past, triggers sexual jealousy that will turn the best of friends into sworn enemies … and so the legend of Treasure Island begins.
You’ll be hooked
FINT
AND
SILVER
John Drake
For my beloved wife Most precious Most special Most dear
Contents
Cover (#ubc24133d-7b43-5f37-816f-5f0d6bb6c2f8)
Title Page (#u8bfbce5e-6dd7-55d6-8374-55cfd3019815)
Map (#u54c2af27-a7d7-5f35-865a-ede219622b2d)
Chapter 1 (#u2539ff72-fae5-5df3-8a40-ab1622162c27)
Chapter 2 (#u74e5cfb8-bd27-53e8-ba60-4bb62f9593fd)
Chapter 3 (#u7185b89a-ff08-5ea4-bee8-ededfe36877b)
Chapter 4 (#uc11026a0-ac49-59e9-9083-d9b3b01c9b6a)
Chapter 5 (#u1ea4f1ff-0898-5790-9846-192e39bdc426)
Chapter 6 (#u26c9a4db-04ca-5aac-b327-37ec0264a270)
Chapter 7 (#ub56442fb-b697-5b94-9eab-0c0fff0a3336)
Chapter 8 (#u32a831cd-1b86-5781-b63c-6e740cf167a8)
Chapter 9 (#uaa2b2d42-7579-5377-9ca9-698e4c710352)
Chapter 10 (#u5dad36a0-5898-570c-a0ec-a3df4065beca)
Chapter 11 (#ue4990f61-7c87-51ea-a3fa-77c70b30970a)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)
Preview (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_42b998ba-a289-5295-be77-6052c64886ed)
15th March 1745 Off Madagascar
Ria de Ponteverde carried guns; most merchantmen did: carriage guns, with powder and shot, rammers and sponges, trucks and tackles. They differed from ships of the various royal navies only in the relatively small degree of their armament, as compared with the exclusive concentration upon artillery that marked out the man-o’-war.
And it wasn’t just a broadside battery on the main deck. It was swivels on the gunwale, and small arms in the lockers down below: muskets and pistols, pikes and cutlasses, and all the gear that went with them – cartridges, flints, powder horns and small-grained pistol powder. All this was a fearful expense and a burden upon trade, for there was not one farthing’s profit to be made by honest seamen in hauling defensive arms and ammunition across the seven seas.
Unfortunately there were others on the seas who were not honest seamen, and whose business it was to become very rich, very quickly by selling cargoes without the bother of paying for them. Hence the need for guns, because sometimes –indeed often – these gentlemen could be seen off by force. Sometimes, but not always. And now, six miles off the Bahia de Bombetoka, a general slaughter was about to begin.
The Portuguese brig Ria de Ponteverde and the buccaneer Victory were locked yardarm to yardarm in a stinking cloud of powder smoke that barely shifted in the hot, tropical air. The brig was beaten. She was broken, bloodied, smashed and splintered; her helm was shot away, her sails in shreds and Victory’s boarders were pouring over her sides.
A tall yellow-haired Englishman stood with his Portuguese mates by Ria de Ponteverde’s mainmast among the shattered spars and dismounted guns, the silent dead and the howling wounded, as the boarders came through the smoke cheering and hacking and killing. Firearms boomed and jumped on either side. Right next to the Englishman, his captain, José Carmo Costa, took the flash and thunder of a blunderbuss at close range, blowing large parts of his heart, lungs and breastbone clear out through the back of his shirt.
Then it was cold steel, hand to hand, and no quarter asked or given.
The Englishman swung a cutlass with all his might. He was a big man: muscular, quick and agile with long limbs and not a scrap of fat on his body. The blow came down like the wrath of God and caught his first man – fair, square and smack – on top of the head.
The heavy blade clove to the teeth, slicing bone, brains, meat and gristle. Number one dropped twitching and shivering, and the blade jerked free with a disgusting schlik. Then a dozen men, jammed in ferocious fight, rolled into the Englishman and a bedlam of noise beat at his ears. Arms, blades and bludgeons worked busily all around and instinctively he kicked and elbowed with enormous strength, clearing a fighting space around him, and – seizing the instant chance – ran the point of his weapon into the middle of his second man, who yelped and twisted and tried to pull free. But the pirate stumbled and went over face down, and the Englishman stamped a heel snapping and crunching into the base of his victim’s spine while he leaned mightily on his sword arm, driving the blade through the wriggling body and into the planks of the deck, even as the dense press of combat knocked him clear, still gripping the slimy hilt.
He cut down number three with two strokes: the first shearing fingers, the second splitting a face. Four and five took just a single cut each, one to left and one to right; a tall black with rings in his ears, and a squint-eyed barrel-chested fellow armed with a boarding pike.
Six was the hardest. He was a small man with a straw hat, striped breeches, quick feet and a straight-bladed sword honed to a wicked point, which he used to the exclusion of the edge. This man was a swordsman, which the Englishman was not – he had now to learn or to die.
Sweat flew as he wrenched his cutlass to and fro, trying with sheer speed and force to overcome skill. Ssssk! The cutlass blade sliced a larynx without killing. Jab! Jab! Jab! The rapier missed twice then sank an inch into the Englishman’s side, before he beat it clear with a clash and a scrape of steel. Jab! Into his hip. Chunk! And the tip of the swordsman’s elbow was off like the top of a breakfast egg. Jab! Into the Englishman’s cheek. Swish! Through the straw hat, slicing away hair and a patch of scalp. Then a blur of light and the Englishman cut hard into the right side of the other’s neck, sinking the blade through flesh, fat and marrow to within an inch of the left-hand side, almost but not quite taking the head clean off.
He gasped and shuddered as his man went down. He’d fought before, but only with his fists. It’d been just fights over girls or drink, or because a man had given offence. For that he’d drawn blood and cracked heads. He’d grown up in a hard school. But he’d never before fought with weapons and the serious intent to kill. In fact he’d never killed a man … except that now he had. He’d just killed six of them.
Now he looked around and saw that he was the last man standing of Ria de Ponteverde’s crew. The others were either dead or dying, or having their throats cut before his eyes by the buccaneers. The fight was over and the enemy ringed him, raising their weapons warily. There were no guns left loaded or they’d have shot him for sure. They’d won the fight, but they’d taken the measure of this fair-haired killer who stood head and shoulders taller than any of them, and they were being careful.
He spun on his heel, chest heaving and breath coming in deep gasps that left the taste of blood at the back of his throat. He screwed the sweat out of his eyes with his left hand, and took a firmer grasp of the cutlass hilt. The edge was nicked like a saw, but it would still cut. They edged in closer all around him: angry faces, pike heads, swords, dirks and hatchets.
“Bastard!” said a voice. “You done for my mate.”
“Skin him!” said another.
“Boil him!”
“Woodle him!”
“Burn him!”
“Come on then!” he roared. “Come one, come all!” His voice was high and cracked. It was near a shriek. He was in an uncanny state of mind: wound up tight with the blood of battle, heart thundering, nerves at hair-trigger. He was outnumbered beyond hope, but still highly dangerous, and none of those around him sought the honour of being next to fight him.
“Aaah!” he cried, and stamped forward a pace.
“ ‘Ware the bugger!” they shouted, and “Cuidado!” and “En garde!” They fell back, only to close in behind him. He slashed at a pikestaff thrust by a big-nosed fellow with lank black hair. He clashed blades with a hanger wielded by a bare-chested mulatto with a face scarred in a dozen fights. He spun round to catch a red-haired Irishman trying to spit him on the sly. Red-hair darted back, howling from a shoulder slashed to the bone, and lucky it wasn’t his skull.
“Henri!” cried a man in the front rank, yelling back over his shoulder and holding up an empty musket, “Apporte moi de la poudre et balle!” There was a swirl in the crowd and a cartridge was thrust into the Frenchman’s hand.
“Aye!” they roared. “Drop the sod, Jean-Paul!”
“Je déchargerai la tête du con!” he muttered, and bit his cartridge, priming the pan and snapping down the steel. He grounded the butt, stuffed the rest of the cartridge into the muzzle and drew out the ramrod to firm home the charge down the long barrel. The Englishman leapt forward, trying to cut down the musketeer before he could reload. But they’d thought of that. They were already clustered protectively around Jean-Paul, with pikes presented to keep him safe.
There was a rattling clatter of steel against ash, and the Englishman was driven back bleeding from a stab to his shin, and another to his arm. Frustrated, hopeless and fearful, he watched Jean-Paul finish his loading, cock the musket and slowly take aim.
He saw the round, black muzzle come up and fix on him. He saw Jean-Paul’s eye glinting over the breech, alongside of the lock. He leapt to the right. The musket followed. He leapt to the left. It followed again. And behind Jean-Paul, others were busy loading. It was no good. Muskets were not renowned for accuracy, but Jean-Paul’s was no more than ten feet from the Englishman’s chest.
“Fuck you, you bastard!” he spat. Jean-Paul bowed extravagantly.
“Merci, monsieur,” he said. “Et va te faire foutre!”
“Go to it, then!” said the Englishman. “And a curse on the pack of you!” He threw down his cutlass, spread out his arms and closed his eyes. At least it would be quick. Not like what they’d threatened.
Jean-Paul took up the slack on the trigger. He squeezed harder. The lock snapped. It sparked brightly. The gun roared. Three drachms of King George’s best powder exploded, driving the heavy musket ball violently out of the barrel … to soar in a majestic parabola, higher than a cathedral steeple, and then to curve down into the sea, where it fizzed viciously for a few feet until its power was spent, and then proceeded gently on its way down to the sea bed, where the fishes nosed it for a while and then ignored it.
“Belay there!” cried a loud voice, with all the confidence of command. Nathan England, duly elected captain of the buccaneers, had just knocked the barrel of Jean-Paul’s musket skyward.
“I say we keep him!” he said, pointing his sword at Jean-Paul’s target. “You there!” he said. “You can open your eyes … Ouvrez les yeux! … Entiendez? … Capisce?” England’s crew were the dregs of half a dozen seafaring nations and he was used to making himself understood in whatever tongue suited.
The Englishman blinked. He stupidly ran his hands over his body to feel for a wound.
“Portugês?” said England. “Français? Español?”
“English, damn you!”
“Huh!” said England. “Rather bless me, you ungrateful bugger, for I’ve a mind to let you live. I’m several men adrift, courtesy of yourself, and I don’t see why you shouldn’t make up some of the loss.”
“I’m no bloody pirate!” said the Englishman.
“Neither am I,” said England. “Nor my men, neither. We’re gentlemen of fortune! Brethren of the coast!”
“Horseshit!” the Englishman sneered. “Same bird, different name.”
Hmm, thought England, taking the measure of the big man with his broad, square face – pale for a seaman – and his stubborn jaw and angry eyes. “Now see here, my bucko,” said England, “I’ve neither time nor inclination to educate you. The fact is, I saw you fight Little Sam, who was the best among us. And you killed him.”
“And why not?” said the Englishman, not realising he was being praised. “Didn’t you take our bloody ship and kill my mates?” He pointed at the body of Captain Carmo Costa, still smouldering from the charge that had killed him. “That’s my captain there, and him not a bad bastard neither.”
England frowned. He was not a patient man. He stuck his thumbs in his belt and drummed his fingers on the tight leather. “Now, here’s the long and short of it,” said he. “We must come to a swift agreement, you and I, my lad. I like the way you fight, and I have the fancy to admit you into our company. So you can either sign articles and join us …” Glancing over his shoulder at Jean-Paul with his smoking musket, England commanded, “Recharges, enfant!” Then he nodded at the Englishman and concluded with a smile: “… Or you’ll be shot where you stand.” As far as England was concerned, the matter was resolved.
Quickly, another cartridge was found for Jean-Paul, and he grinned merrily as he plied his ramrod. Meanwhile Captain England drummed his fingers on his belt.
“So, what’s it to be?” he said. “For as soon as mon ami has loaded, he may open fire, and that’s the truth.”
“Damn you all!” said the Englishman, and Jean-Paul cocked and aimed.
“Je tire, mon capitaine?”
“Last chance, my cocker,” said England, as Jean-Paul began to squeeze the trigger.
“Avast!” said the Englishman, and made the only choice that any decent man could make in the circumstances. A precious saint might have said no, and the Lord Jesus Christ certainly would have, but who wants one of them for a shipmate, anyway?
With all matters of recruitment concluded, England’s men set briskly to work aboard the two ships, mending and splicing above, plugging and hammering below. These things they did with practised skill, and did them well, since the lives of all aboard might depend on the work. They also buried the dead with due respect, and they cleaned and scoured the decks after their fashion. As for the wounded, they were attended by the drunken butcher that served England for a surgeon. He was of the “boiling pitch” school when it came to staunching bleeding, and the crew were more afraid of him than of the hangman. But he was what they’d got.
Victory and Ria de Ponteverde sailed in company within hours of the battle, and that evening the yellow-haired Englishman was welcomed into England’s crew as a fellow gentleman of fortune. The ceremony was half farce and half deadly earnest, with all hands mustered round the mainmast and the rum flowing freely. England presided in his best clothes, a plumed hat, and seated on a massive carved armchair brought up from his cabin.
The proceedings owed much to the horse-play of crossing the equator, with a ludicrous bathing and soaping, and the postulant stripped naked and blindfolded. Finally, England hammered on the deck with the narwhal tusk he carried as a staff of office.
“Now, brothers,” he cried, “we stand ready to admit this child as a free companion. So pull the blindfold off him, Mr Mate, and put a sharpened sword into his hand.” This was done and the Englishman stood blinking and puzzled and looking about him. The mob of armed men were swaying in silence on the heaving decks, bracing themselves with such ease that they weren’t even aware of doing it.
“So,” said England, “if any brother knows of any just impediment why this child should not be admitted, then let him speak now or for ever hold his peace!”
This parody of the wedding ceremony served the entirely practical purpose of ensuring that any man who’d lost a friend to the child must challenge him at once or accept him as a shipmate in good faith. With six dead to his credit, this was an interesting moment for the crew, and there was much hopeful shuffling and muttering and looking to those who had lost their messmates. One or two of the bereaved found it expedient to consider their boots at this moment, while others brazened it out with fixed smiles and knowing winks. But much to the disappointment of those free of obligations, nobody wanted to fight.
“So be it!” cried England when he thought sufficient time had passed. “And now, brother-that-you-have-become, I asks you to sign articles as all others have done before you.”
At this, England’s first mate stepped forward and laid down a big book upon a barrel that was set before England as a table. Pen and ink and a sand-caster were ready to hand. The book was black-bound in leather and had once been the master’s journal aboard an honest merchantman. But the long-dead navigator’s written pages had been cut out and a series of numbered items entered in a large, bold hand on the first remaining page.
“Are you a scholar, brother?” said England. “Or will you have me read these articles to you, before you make your mark?”
“I know my letters,” said the Englishman.
“Well enough to read?”
“Aye!”
“Oh?” said England, for, saving the mates and the gunner, not one other man in his crew could do the like. “Then read, brother, and read boldly for all to hear!” The Englishman picked up the book and held it close to a lantern to catch the light.
“These articles …”
“Louder!” cried England. “So those aloft can hear.” He pointed to the tops where the lookouts were stationed.
“These articles,” roared the new brother, “I do enter into freely and volunteerly and thus do I solemnly swear. Article one: that I shall obey the commands of my captain in all matters of seafaring and warfare, upon pain of the law of Moses, viz: forty lashes – barring one – upon the bare back …”
And so it went on. There were twenty-three articles in England’s book, mainly self-evident statements of the need for discipline on board any ship that ever went to sea in all of mankind’s history. There was much other good sense too, on such matters as forbidding the dangerous business of smoking below decks, and the filthy business of pissing in the ballast, which lazy sailormen will do who can’t be bothered to go to the heads on a dark night. Anyone caught doing that was obliged to drink a pint of the same liquid, piping hot, donated by his messmates. Also, there were ferocious punishments for taking private shares of the loot before its formal division. In all these matters, the articles were similar to those in use by numerous other freebooters and buccaneers currently doing business in the Indian Ocean and Caribbean.
But England’s articles had some extras. He punished rape by castration, torture by hanging, and sodomy by dropping the offenders over the side, bound together, with roundshot tied to their feet. These eccentricities the crew took in good part (even the astounding prohibition of rape) because England was a fine and lucky seaman with a nose for smelling out gold.
So the new brother worked his way through the list till he came to the end, where followed four clear signatures, one obviously that of the draughtsman of the articles, plus a few painfully worked names such as children might attempt, then several hundred crosses, marks and scrawled drawings: some of fish, or birds, or animals, some of hanged men, some skulls-and-crossbones, and one splendid likeness of a face, the size of a penny piece, as finely drawn as the work of any London caricaturist, which was the mark of an illiterate man who nonetheless had this remarkable gift. Each mark had a name beside it in the draughtsman’s hand. Many (including the likeness) were neatly ruled out in red ink, with a date beneath it. These were the dead.
The Englishman sighed. He took up the pen, dipped it into the ink, and paused. In fact he was only half an Englishman, for his seafaring Portuguese father had married an English girl and settled in Bristol. The son had taken his father’s size and strength, his mother’s yellow hair, and at thirteen had run away to sea to escape his father’s belt. His name, as given to him by his father, had been João De Silva: a foreign-sounding name to some and therefore tainted, but not to him. Unlike the vast body of land-rooted, home-fast Englishmen, he had no disdain of things foreign, because seafaring men are an international breed taught by hard reality to know that all races have their strengths and weaknesses, and the only thing that matters is how your shipmate behaves when the sea turns nasty – and certainly not the land of his birth. But for all that he was still an Englishman in his loyalties, and so he signed with a flourish as …
Chapter 2 (#ulink_b9189095-7748-5e1b-8226-dc75c9c1ad1a)
4th January 1749 Aboard HMS Elizabeth The Caribbean
Captain Springer controlled his anger with effort.
“Lieutenant Flint,” he said, “I swear that if I hear that tale once more, I shall put you in irons.”
“Will you, though?” said Flint. “Then I pray that you may be cursed as I was. Four years under Anson, suffering scurvy, shipwreck and sores, only to see thirty-two wagons full of gold unloaded at London, and not a penny piece was my share!”
Springer glanced around the quarterdeck. The mids and the seamen were muttering and looking sly. Mr Bones, the master’s mate, was staring attentively at Flint as if waiting for some word of command. Springer ground his teeth, Bones was Flint’s man through and through, while next to him, Dawson, the sergeant of marines – who was loyal to Springer – was glaring his contempt at this public squabbling.
“Mr Flint,” said Springer, “a word.”
Springer walked up the sloping deck to the weather side and waited for Flint to join him while the crew looked on in wary fascination. Springer was pure tarpaulin: lumpish, heavy and elderly with a fat lower lip, watery eyes and a bristling white stubble that no razor ever conquered, while Flint was smooth as a cat, with an olive, Mediterranean skin. He moved like an athlete and had a beautiful, brilliant smile. He was slim-built and only of average height, but men always thought of him as tall.
Together, these two opposites stood locked in argument in their long blue coats with the brass buttons.
These uniform coats were badges of rank which few officers were wearing as yet, for they were an innovation introduced only the previous year. But Elizabeth’s officers all had them, thanks to Lieutenant Flint, who, wanting a smart ship, had spent his own money to get them – including one for Springer, who’d never have bothered if left to himself.
But if the coats were uniform, nothing else was: not the shirts, nor breeches, nor shoes, nor the big straw hats the two men wore against the sun. Nonetheless, the coats served their purpose of marking out the wearers as officers of His Majesty King George II. In fact, since Elizabeth was sailing with a reduced, peace-time, crew, they were the only two commissioned officers on board, and it was sheer madness for them to be seen in open dispute before their men.
“Mr Flint,” said Springer, “look about you. If we continue in this manner, there’ll be no discipline worthy of the name in this ship. So, listen to me: I am resolved to proceed to São Bartolomeo according to my orders –”
“And leave a fortune in prize money to pass by?” said Flint. “We named this ship Elizabeth when we took her, but she was Isabella la Católica before that, and she’s Spanish from keel to maintruck. We could use that to come alongside of any Spanish ship –”
“But we ain’t at war with the Dons!” said Springer. “Can you not appreciate that, you bugger? Not since last year!”
“Bah!” said Flint. “There’s no war, but there’s no peace neither. Not out here. It’s dog eat dog: us and the Dons and the French! And I know ports where a prize’ll be bought for cash money and never a question asked.”
“No …” groaned Springer, and he wavered. He distinctly wavered, and Flint spotted it instantly and changed tack. He was exceedingly charming when he chose, and now he spoke sweet and friendly.
“See here, Captain, sir,” he said, “there’s a way to square the matter between us, I do declare. Indeed, I take my oath on it, for I’d not see a brother officer suffer in such a matter.”
The words meant nothing, but they were so fairly spoken that Springer relaxed. The scowl left his face and he gave Flint his entire attention.
Ah-ha! thought Flint, and rejoiced, for it was his guess that deep within Captain Springer there was greed that was just itching to be squared with duty, if only the means could be found.
“The fact is, sir …” said Flint.
“Aye?” said Springer.
“… I lost my share of the greatest treasure ever taken because of that bastard Anson, and I’d not see you lose your own best chance –”
But Springer snarled like a wolf as Flint struck a wildly false note by harping back upon the great wrong that had scarred his life.
Flint had sailed with Anson on his famous circumnavigation of 1740–44, when the Manila galleon was taken: the most fabulous prize in British naval history. But before that, Flint’s ship Spider had foundered going round the Horn, and Anson had taken her people into his own ship, Centurion, where Spider’s officers had nothing to do and were rated “supernumeraries”. As Flint told the story, this meant that they fell into legal limbo and got no share of the loot: a monstrous injustice, but one that a man got sick of hearing about.
“Mr Flint,” roared Springer at the top of his voice, “you will attend to your duties this instant, or I’ll not be answerable.”
Barely in control of himself, Springer turned away and yelled at Sergeant Dawson, “Turn out your men, damn your blasted eyes! Bayonets and ball cartridge!”
Dawson yelled and hollered and a company of marines doubled up and formed on the quarterdeck with steel gleaming at the tips of their musket barrels.
“Mr Bones!” cried Springer. “Muster all hands!”
“Aye-aye, sir!” said Mr Bones, and after a deal of cursing, kicks and blows, and a rushing of bare feet, Springer’s eight-score seamen poured up from below, and down from the rigging, to fill the waist. There they stood, squinting up at the quarterdeck in the sun, on the hot deck, in the mottled shade of the towering canvas high above their heads.
So, with his officers and marines behind him, Captain Springer reminded his crew of their duty under his orders from Commodore Sir John Phillips, which orders were to occupy, fortify and hold the island of São Bartolomeo. He reminded them of the strategic importance attached to the island by Sir John. He further reminded them of the dreadful penalties provided for disobedience under the Articles of War.
The crew stared sideways at one another, for they knew all this already. They also knew all about Flint’s “secret” plans for privateering. They knew because Lieutenant Flint had made it his business that they should know, and thereby they knew that Springer’s speech was not for themselves but for himself and Lieutenant Flint. Springer no longer trusted either, and was parading the power of the King’s Law to deliver the two of them from temptation. And for a while, the stratagem worked.
So His Majesty’s ship Elizabeth sailed steadily southward from the Caribbean, heading for a certain latitude and longitude that Commodore Phillips had got from the last survivor of a Portuguese barque wrecked on the coast of Jamaica. Elizabeth was a big ship, of near eight hundred tons, mounting twenty brass guns. She was old fashioned, with a lateen sail on the mizzen, a spritsail under the bow, and steered with a whipstaff. But she was well found and comfortable and, with so few men aboard, and fair weather and no war actively in progress, Elizabeth should have been a happy ship. But she was not.
As far as the foremast hands were concerned, Elizabeth was becoming a hell-ship. This was thanks to Mr Flint, who, having failed to bend Captain Springer to his will, was taking out his spite on those beneath him. As first officer, he had unbounded opportunity for this, together with a natural aptitude for the work.
Naturally he flogged the last man down off the yards at sail drill. Naturally he flogged the last man up with his hammock in the morning. Any vicious brute would think of that. But it took Joe Flint to punish a mess by making them serve their grog to another mess and stand by while it was drunk. And it took Flint to set the larboard watch tarring the decks for the starboard watch to clean – and vice versa.
His repertoire was endless and creative. A man who prized his three-foot pigtail was made to cut an inch off it, for the crime of sulking. Flint contrived to detect a repetition of this crime each day until the pigtail was entirely gone. Likewise, a man caught sleeping on watch was made to throw his savings overboard, and another who doted on a particularly fine parrot was obliged to give it up to Flint, though in this case a quirk of Flint’s character drove him to take the bird – for its own good, he said – in order to save it from the filthy words the lower deck were teaching it.
This he believed to be a cruelty, which he despised. For, whatever his attitude towards men, Flint could stand no cruelty to animals, and undoubtedly the bird flourished under his care as never before. Soon, he and it were friends, and he went about with it riding on his shoulder, which was a great wonder to the crew.
But mostly Flint’s tricks were cruel, and a particular favourite of his was to offer escape from flogging to any man who would play “Flint’s game” instead.
“Mr Merry!” said Flint, the first time this offer was made. “I see you’ve been spitting tobacco juice upon my clean decks. There’s two dozen awaiting you for that. Is not that so, Mr Bones?”
“Aye-aye, Mr Flint!” said Billy Bones, who followed Flint like a shadow. “Shall I order the gratings rigged, sir?”
George Merry stood trembling in fear of the cat, while his mates bent to their work and looked down, for it was unwise to catch Mr Flint’s eye when he was in a flogging mood.
“No,” said Flint. “Here’s Mr Merry that would escape a striped back, if he could, and I’m resolved to give him that chance.”
Billy Bones stared in amazement, and George Merry’s face lit up with hope.
“Will you play ‘Flint’s game’ instead, Mr Merry?” said Flint, tickling the green feathers of his parrot.
“Aye-aye, sir!” grinned Merry.
“Good,” said Flint. “Fetch a small cask and a belaying pin, Mr Bones, and put it down here.”
Flint had George Merry sit to one side of the cask, cross-legged, while he sat on the other, and the heavy oak pin was placed on the cask between them.
“Gather round, you good fellows,” cried Flint at the furtive men watching from afar, and soon a crowd surrounded the cask. “Now then, Merry,” said Flint, smiling, “here’s the game: I shall put my hands in my pockets, while you shall put your hands on the rim of the cask.”
Merry did as he was told and an expectant silence fell.
“Now,” said Flint, “choose your moment, Merry, and pick up the pin. If you pick it up, you go free.” Merry leered confidently at his messmates. “But,” said Flint, “if you fail, the game continues until you choose to take two dozen as originally promised.”
Merry considered this. He looked at Flint. He looked at the belaying pin, only inches from his fingers. He stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth to help himself think … and reached for the pin.
Crunch! The pin beat down on Merry’s fingertips, drawing blood from a broken fingernail. Flint had moved faster than thought. A roar of laughter came from the onlookers, Merry howled in pain, and the parrot on Flint’s shoulder screeched and struggled and flapped its wings in disapproval of the proceedings. It stamped and cursed and nipped Flint’s ear.
“Ouch!” said Flint. “What’s the matter with you?” And he shook the bird off to fly free and nestle in the maintop, chattering and muttering to itself. Meanwhile Flint smiled and replaced the pin and stuck his hands in his pockets.
“Play on, George Merry,” he said, “or take the alternative.”
Merry instantly snatched at the pin … and thud! It smashed blood out of his thumb, to more laughter from all sides. And so it went on, until Merry could stand it no more and begged for a flogging, which Flint graciously allowed.
As for the parrot, in time it came back to Flint, since no man beneath him dared feed it, and Captain Springer – drunk or sober – did not care to. It even seemed to be begging his forgiveness, for it began preening him, taking a lock of Flint’s long, black hair and gently pulling its formidable hooked bill down the length of the strand.
Ever afterwards it took flight whenever men were flogged or abused. Eventually it developed a frightening prescience of Flint’s moods, for it had grown to know him very well, such that even before Flint grinned and gave the word, it flew off because it could not abide the cruelty. The bird was innocent, but the foremast hands saw things differently. They hated the parrot. They called it Cap’n Flint, and on those fell occasions when it flew from its master’s shoulder, and no man knew what might follow, they groaned and whispered:
“Watch out, mates … the bird’s in the maintop!”
And yet there was still worse to come from Flint and all hands soon had warning of it.
The formalities of the service had to be observed before George Merry could be flogged, since only the captain could order it, and Merry was clapped in irons awaiting his captain’s judgement – which was indeed a formality but took time.
Thus Merry had to wait for his punishment, which took place during the forenoon watch of the day after he’d played Flint’s game, when all hands were mustered to witness the defaulter lashed to a grating to receive his promised two dozen. Being already in severe pain from the battering he’d had from Flint, George Merry took his flogging with much groaning and weeping, which disturbed an already unhappy crew far more than a usual flogging when a brave man clenched the leather between his teeth and refused to cry out.
Once Merry was taken down, and the decks hosed clean, eight bells were struck for the turn of the watch, when the navigating officers took their noon-day observations; for which ceremony Mr Flint demanded an absolutely silent ship. After that, the hands were sent below for their dinner, the best time of the day, with full platters and the happy communion of messes clustered at their hanging tables on the gun-deck, where pork, pease, pickles and biscuit were shovelled down throats with a generous lubrication of grog.
It was a noisy, happy time, except for George Merry and his messmates. George himself sat painfully upright, bound in the vinegar and brown paper that the surgeon declared was the best thing for a flogged back. With his broken fingers, he could eat and drink only because his messmates fed him and held his mug to his lips.
“Ah, George Merry!” said a voice from the next-door mess. “I sees you be in poor straits.”
“That I be, Mr Gunn,” said Merry, nodding politely towards Ben Gunn and his messmates, who were quartermasters, rated able to steer the ship. They were the elite of the lower deck and aboard Elizabeth they were always addressed with the honorific “Mister”.
“So,” Ben Gunn declared, “you thinks you be in pain?”
“Aye, Mr Gunn,” said Merry, and bit his lip.
“And you thinks you be hard done by?”
“That I does!”
“Then listen,” said Ben Gunn and beckoned his messmates and George Merry’s to lean closer. Ben Gunn was a serious and sober man, if a little strange. He was much respected for his skill, but was distant – even odd – in his manner, as if his mind steered a different course than that of other men.
“You’ve heard Flint tell of the Manila galleon,” he said, “and how he was done out of his share for being supernumerary?”
“Aye!” they said, and could not help but look over their shoulders in fear of Flint.
“Then heark’ee, my lads, for he don’t tell the whole tale.”
“No?” they said, barely breathing.
“No, he don’t, not the half of it, for I had it in full from a poor soul, long gone, what sailed in Spider under Flint.” Now they were transfixed and, sensing the mood, men from other messes were leaning close. “Supernumerary, he was,” said Ben Gunn, and tapped the table in emphasis, “for Anson diddled him, and he didn’t even diddle him fair! He done it – which is to say, he said he done it – ‘cos of what Flint had done aboard of Spider.”
Now the whole gun-deck was listening. They were listening, but Ben Gunn was gone off in his own thoughts.
“What was it, Mr Gunn?” someone prompted. Ben Gunn started.
“Why, it were the Incident,” he said, and lapsed into silence again.
“What Incident?” said a voice. “What’d he do, Mr Gunn?”
Ben Gunn sighed. “He meant it for a good thing,” he said, “for he were a fine officer in them days, and he meant no harm. But it got twisted into a cruel thing …” He looked around, fixing men’s eyes in emphasis. “It got twisted … and not entirely by his own fault, mark you! And it became such that, by comparison, we be living like lords aboard this ship today, and happy that we ain’t in Spider.”
“Tell on, Ben Gunn!” said his messmates, looking at one another, for even they’d not heard this before.
“It were known as the Incident, for that’s how Anson named it when he used it as an excuse to do Flint out of his share.” He looked round again. “Flint were betrayed, shipmates. Anson betrayed him, and Flint were turned by that betrayal, for he worshipped Anson.”
“So what happened, Ben Gunn?”
Ben Gunn struggled within himself, searching in his limited store of words for the things he would have to say. These were not things that decent sailormen talked about. The task was dreadful hard for Ben Gunn, and the whole deck waited in silence for him to speak.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_239dd7ff-d3ea-54c4-baaa-3b360b40836c)
21st May 1745 Aboard Victory The Indian Ocean
John Silver and Captain Nathan England walked the quarterdeck side by side, with every other man deferring and keeping clear of their private conversation. The weather was hot and good. The ship sailed easily, the guns were secured, and most of the men idling.
“Articles, John! Articles is what makes us what we are.”
“Which is pirates,” said Silver.
“No!” said England. “If I’m a pirate, then Drake was a pirate, and Hawkins and Raleigh too, and all the rest of ‘em that did what I do. And didn’t they come home to knighthoods and estates?”
“But the law – King George’s law – will hang us if they catch us.”
“Which they won’t.”
“But they would.”
“God bless your soul, John! And wouldn’t Queen Bess’ve hanged Drake, if she’d caught him at the wrong time?
She’d’ve done it to please the King of Spain! She did what she had to, and so do I.”
“But …” said Silver.
“JOHN!” yelled England, loud enough to shake the t’gallant masts, and all hands turned to look. England’s face reddened with anger. “Avast, you swabs!” he cried. “Look to your duties!” And every man turned away and found something to be busy with. They did as they were told, without resentment and of their own free will.
“There!” said England. “D’you see that? Was that pirates, or free companions?” He waved a hand at the crew. “That’s real discipline, John. The discipline of free men. That’s articles.”
“Bah!” said Silver.
“God damn you, you ignorant bugger!” said England, biting down on his temper. Then, “Ah!” he said, as an idea struck him. “Come along o’ me, John Silver, and I’ll show you something, by God I will!”
England stamped off, slid down a companionway, and led the way below decks to the great cabin, right at the stern of the ship. Unlike some, England used his cabin not for display but as a place of work, where he could bring together his officers when he needed to make plans. There was a big table and some chairs, and a profusion of cupboards and drawers and pigeonholes for the storage of charts and other papers.
“Secure that hatchway!” said England, pointing at the door. “Not that I don’t trust the hands, but some things are best kept out of temptation’s way.” Then he fumbled for a key, unlocked a cupboard and pointed to the big, black ledger that lay inside.
“Book of Articles!” he said with reverence. “The very same in which you signed your name. And here beside it is the flag beneath which we buries the dead.” He laid a hand on the black cloth. “And then there’s this!” He took out a snuff box. It was nothing special. It wasn’t gilt or enamelled. Not the sort of thing that would have graced a gentleman’s waistcoat. It was a large, plain box, neatly carpentered from some hard, black, African wood.
“Now you just look at this, my boy, and you tell me if that was the work of bloody pirates!” He held out the box. Silver took it.
“Well?” said Silver.
“Well, open the bugger!” said England. Silver fumbled for the catch, and sprung the box open. He looked inside and saw nothing … just two round pieces of paper, each about an inch across, each faintly dirtied with charcoal that had long since rubbed off.
“Aye!” said England, seeing Silver’s expression. “Not much to look at now, are they? But each one of them got rid of a captain. By one of ‘em Davies was removed by Latour, and by the other Latour was removed by myself.” Silver took out one of the papers. He turned it over. The single word Deposed was written on the fresh side. The same word was on the other paper.
“What are these?” said Silver.
“The black spot, my son,” said England. “This is the means whereby the lower deck gets rid of a captain it doesn’t like.”
“The black spot?” Silver said, grinning. “Sounds like boys at play!”
“Huh!” said England. “You just hope you never see one handed to you! For it’s a summons from the crew to stand before them and be judged. No man may harm one who gives him the black spot, nor stand in his way as he seeks to deliver it. No man may even lay a hand on one who is found in the act of making a black spot. And as for him to whom they deliver it – why, he must stand judgement by vote of the whole crew, be he even the captain himself.”
England reached out and took the papers. He held them up one at a time before Silver’s eyes.
“This one was for Captain Danny Davies who had greedy fingers for other men’s shares. Him they hanged from the yardarm. And this one was for Captain Frenchy Latour, that brought bad luck upon us one time too many! Him we stripped bollock-naked and heaved over the side to see if he could swim to Jamaica from ten miles offshore.”
“Aye,” said Silver, “but what does it mean?”
“It means, my son, that we sail under the rule of law on board of this ship. We sail under the rule of law every inch and ounce as much as if we were on board of a ship of King George of England, or King Louis of France, or King Philip of Spain! Their laws is all different, ain’t they? And ours is too, but it is law! It is articles! And that’s why we ain’t pirates!”
He spoke with such passion and such obvious sincerity that Silver nodded. He’d now heard these same arguments repeated so many times that he was losing the will to fight them; and in any case, nobody likes to think the worst of himself, so even the cleverest man will accept a weak case if it suits his self-esteem to do so.
“Now then,” said England, “no more o’ this, for it ain’t why I sent for you.” He stared at Silver thoughtfully. “You’re a good man, John Silver, and the crew like you. You know what they call you?”
Silver grinned. “Aye!” he said.
“Well?” said England. “Out with it!”
“Long John,” said Silver.
“Aye! Long John Silver, ‘cos you’re the tallest man among us, and one o’ the best. You’re a seaman to the bone, and there’s not a man here that would dare to fight you. You’re a man that others will follow.” Silver shrugged, England laughed. “It’s true,” said England. “So here’s the case, Long John Silver. I have it in mind to make an officer of you on board of this ship. You have the natural gift of command, and more than that you know your letters and your numbers, which is as rare among seamen as balls on a eunuch! I shall rate you as third mate and start your education this very day.” He clapped Silver on the shoulder. “What say you, Long John?”
“Thank you, Cap’n,” said Silver, beaming with pleasure and raising a hand to his hat in salute.
“Good!” said England. “So what do you know already? Can you steer a course?”
“Aye!” said Silver, confidently.
“Then show me,” said England. “We’ll go this instant to the ship’s wheel!” He smiled and led the way.
“Cap’n!” said the first mate, who was standing by the helmsman.
“Cap’n!” said the helmsman.
“Let Mr Silver take a turn,” said England. “The course is north by northwest, Mr Silver, and keep her as close to the wind as she’ll bear.”
The helmsman waited till Silver had taken a firm hold on the other side of the big wheel with its out-jutting handles, and when Silver nodded, he stood back and left the ship to Silver’s hand, with England and the first mate looking on.
It was easy. Silver had done this a hundred times before on other ships. He was a fine steersman, keeping careful watch on the sails, and holding the ship true to her course with minimal pressure on the wheel. The task is harder than it seems and few men could have done it better. England grinned. The mate grinned, and word ran round the ship that Long John was at the helm.
“Would you change the set of her sails, Mr Silver?” asked England, nudging the mate.
“I’d shake a reef out of the fore topsail, Cap’n,” said Silver. “She’ll bear it, and she’ll steer all the easier.” And when this was done, and Victory did indeed answer the helm more sweetly, there was an actual cheer from the crew, now eagerly looking on.
“Well enough,” said England. “Stand down, Mr Silver, and we’ll look at the transit board, and you shall tell me its purpose aboard ship and how it is kept.” Again, Silver smiled. He waited till the helmsman had control of the wheel, then stepped forward to the binnacle housing the compass, and picked up a wooden board hanging on a hook. It had a series of holes drilled in it, radiating out from the centre in the form of a compass rose. There were a number of pegs to go in the holes, each peg attached to the board by a thin line.
“Well, Cap’n,” said Silver, “every quarter-hour by the sand-glass, the log is hove at the stern to find the speed of her through the water.”
“Aye,” said England. “Let’s say the log’s been heaved, and her speed is five knots …”
“So,” said Silver, “that’s five knots for a quarter-hour, north by northwest.” And he set a peg in the board accordingly, and looked at England. “For that is the purpose of the board, Cap’n: to keep a reckoning of her course and speed, every quarter-hour, throughout the watch.”
“Splendid!” said England. “And what happens at the end of the watch?”
“Why,” said Silver, “the officer of the watch –” he instinctively touched his hat to the mate – “he takes the board and marks out how she’s run – her course and speed – during the watch.” He paused for he was now entering unknown waters. “He marks it out on the chart, Cap’n …” Silver blinked. “Which is all I knows o’ the matter.” His smile faded a little.
“We’ll come to that!” said England confidently. “But first, here’s the end of the forenoon watch about to be struck …”
Clang-clang! Clang-clang! Clang-clang! Clang-clang! The bell sounded from its little temple at the break of the fo’c’sle.
“Eight bells! Change the watch!” yelled the boatswain, and there was a rumble of bare feet on the boards as the hands of the starboard watch ran to relieve the larboard watch, who were now standing down. They doubled to it like men-o’-warsmen because Captain England would have it no other way. At the same time England’s servant came up from below with a big triangular wooden case. He opened it and presented it to England.
“Cap’n,” he said respectfully, and England took out a complex ebony instrument with brass scales, a miniature telescope, and lenses, filters and other mysterious appendages besides.
“This is a quadrant, Long John,” said England. “For this first time, I shall instruct you in its use, but afterwards, the second mate shall be your teacher.”
He nodded at the second mate, who touched his hat respectfully before taking his own quadrant out of its case and standing beside the first mate, who already had his quadrant ready.
“ ‘Tis noon,” said England. “The ship’s day begins at noon, each day, and at that time we …” England paused. “Long John?” he said. “What is it?”
Silver was looking at the quadrant. It unsettled him. It worried him. He’d seen officers using quadrants and the like ever since he first went to sea. But he’d never before been asked to use one, and he stared in morbid dread at the unfathomable complexity of the thing. Some men are disturbed by heights, some by spiders or snakes. Some cannot bear to be enclosed in a small space. Long John was weighed down by the thought of having to swallow such an appalling meal of abstract thinking, which was so different from the simple, physical seamanship that he’d learned by hard labour.
“No matter, Cap’n,” he said. “Show me the workings of her.” Long John was no coward. So he took the quadrant when England offered it, and he paid his best attention to the explanations, so carefully given, and he did his best to ask questions.
But it was no good. The worry turned to fear: fear of being exposed as an incompetent before England and the crew. Later, in England’s cabin, when the captain tried to explain latitude and longitude and how a ship might find its way across the empty oceans, it was even worse. Long John tried to the very utmost of his ability, but the bearings and degrees and minutes had no meaning to him. Instead, his head felt thick and hot, a band of pain clamped round his brow, and his eyes watered like a blubbering child’s. Finally, as England waved a pair of elegant brass dividers with blue-steel needle-points, trying to explain dead reckoning, Long John Silver swayed and stumbled with nausea, and had to be helped into a chair by a dumbfounded Nathan England.
“What is it, John?” he said. “Have you got the ague? Is it some damned fever? What is it, shipmate?”
“Can’t do it, Cap’n,” said Silver. “Show me any other task. Let me dive for gold on the sea bed. Let me lead boarders into a three-decker’s broadside. Anything.”
“What d’you mean, lad?” said England, more concerned than he’d realised. England had no son. He had no family at all. He’d taken powerfully to John Silver and it had become England’s hope and pleasure to see the younger man advanced in his profession.
“Can’t do it, Cap’n,” Silver repeated. “Not with charts an’ all. Please don’t ask me.”
“Nonsense!” said England. “Everyone thinks they can’t do it at first. We shall persevere.”
And so they did. Neither man was one to give up easily. They persevered for weeks. Sometimes Long John even thought he was getting a grasp on the thing. But the best he ever achieved was like the performance of a clumsy musician who sounds one plodding note after another, to the dismay of those around him, and to his own despair, recognising his failure.
“How can it be, John?” said England at last. “I’ve seen you calculate the value of a ship’s cargo down to the penny – and that done in your head without pencil and paper. How can you manage that, yet not master this piece of glass and wood?” He held up a quadrant.
“Cargoes is things I can touch,” said Silver. “But that bloody thing …” he stared hopelessly at the instrument “… that’s black magic!”
England sighed. “It’s no good, is it, shipmate?”
“No,” said Long John. “And happy will I be to try this no more!”
“So be it,” said England. “I shall rate you as an officer, nonetheless: whether it be coxswain, master-at-arms or something of my own invention, for I still say that men follow where you lead. But the fact of it is, John Silver, that only a gentleman and a navigator may command a ship, and I fear you will never be one.”
Chapter 4 (#ulink_0ecbe448-b438-5c06-ad4a-7b1a25705d2c)
4th January 1749 Aboard HMS Elizabeth The Caribbean
Flint crept silently down a companionway, drawn by the unnatural silence on the dinnertime gun-deck, which should have been rattling and echoing with noise. The silence could only mean some punishable insubordination and it was his delight to catch them at it. He was enjoying the anticipation of a hunter who takes his prey unawares, especially when at last he stepped through a hatchway and caught sight of the whole crew gaping at Ben Gunn, their stupid mouths hanging open, still speckled with food and dripping with grog.
This was the delicious moment. The moment just before the trap was sprung, when a word from him would jump the swabs out of their skins. Prolonging the pleasure, he nuzzled his parrot and held his hand over its beak to keep silence. Flint wondered what the solemn and miserable Ben Gunn might have to say that could so captivate them.
Had he been only a little more patient he would have found out; and then he too would have been captivated. He would have been captivated, bound in chains and sunk beyond soundings in the limitless depth of interest in what Ben Gunn was about to reveal … but he couldn’t contain himself. The anticipation of the moment was too exquisite.
“What’s this?” he boomed. “Is there disaffection among the hands? Is there wickedness in the wind?”
A hundred men leapt in terror as the fear of hell took their hearts with an icy claw, for they’d spun round to see Flint, smooth and shining, neat and suave, with his parrot on his shoulder. He gazed upon the sea of terror and shook with laughter, tickled beyond bearing by their comical faces. His parrot flapped and cackled, he snapped his fingers and stamped his foot in glee. Then he walked up and down between the mess tables, making jokes and clapping men on the shoulder in merriment. The coin of Flint’s character had spun and come up bright, and now he worked black magic with his charm and his wit, and there wasn’t a man present who could help but like him, and smile in admiration of him.
Afterwards, though, nobody could ever persuade Ben Gunn to finish his story, and the mystery of an unspeakable past hung about Flint and made them fear him more than ever.
And all the while Springer watched in dull, uncomprehending hatred. He was sixty-two years old. He’d been at sea fifty years. He’d learned his trade in King Billy’s time, when precious gentlemen despised the service, and he knew no other way than a rough way. He’d kicked arses and knocked men down all his life, and he believed flogging was the only way to keep idle seamen to their duties. What’s more, Elizabeth under Flint’s hand was the tightest ship Springer had ever known. And yet … there was something about the way Lieutenant Flint went about his duties that upset Springer, and it nagged at him that he couldn’t make out what it was.
The sorry truth was that Springer had not the wit to distinguish the ruthless, straight discipline that he practised himself – and which seamen respected – from the sadism inflicted upon them by Flint. So Springer avoided Flint and spent many hours in his cabin, reading and re-reading Commodore Phillips’s orders and studying the rough map that Phillips had got from the hands of the dying Portugee. Phillips’s eyes had blazed over the island, thinking it would be another Jamaica: a sugar island to coin money. Springer hoped Phillips was right, and he hoped he might get his hands on a little of the money.
Then he’d roar for his servant to bring a bottle, and he’d damn the lure of Flint’s plan, which he knew might bring a quick return, whereas any benefit from the island was far distant and entirely dependent on the goodwill of the commodore, whose arse was as tight as a Scotchman’s purse.
In fact, Springer need not have worried about Phillips’s greed, because the commodore would soon be incapable of enjoying that deadly sin. In a matter of weeks, a violent storm would run Phillips’s squadron on to a reef off Morant Point, Jamaica, with the loss of over a thousand men. This catastrophe would leave all knowledge of the island of São Bartolomeo exclusively in Springer’s command, to the degree that even the name São Bartolomeo would never be heard again.
What Springer should have worried about was the temper of his crew under Flint, whose reign over the lower deck was unpredictable in the extreme. On the positive side, Flint had some excellent qualities. He knew the name of every man on board, and all their characters and peculiarities. He was a superb seaman and navigator, and his exacting standards were evident in the gleaming brass and snow-white decks. Above all, men leapt to his orders like lightning.
Many of the crew, led by Billy Bones, would have followed Flint into the cannon’s mouth. Billy Bones was a big, plain, simple man with a dog’s need for a master. He had enough education to find his latitude and plot his course. He had enough – plenty enough and more – of muscles to knock down any man he didn’t like. Beyond that, he had the wit to recognise Flint’s talents, and to envy the swaggering style and bearing of the man – a style and bearing which shone so brightly compared with his own, with his leathery face, his knotted hands and his tarred pigtail.
But Billy Bones saw no further and no deeper, and certainly acknowledged no fault in Flint. This was partly because he didn’t want to: he’d found his idol and that was that. But there was more. There was fear. There was a great fear that Billy Bones bowed down to and which made his idol all the greater.
With Flint, everything hinged on fear. At a deep and instinctive level, all men look at each other on first meeting to assess who’d prevail in a fight, but no man had ever looked into Flint’s eyes without blinking, for there was something about Flint that was manic and unholy, something best left unchallenged. Something that resonated with the horrors hinted at by Ben Gunn.
In some officers, this could have been a strength: an instant source of discipline. But in Flint’s case it was an iron lid screwed down on a boiling pot. As his cruelties grew steadily worse and resentment festered among the men, Captain Springer, who could not bear what Flint was doing, stayed mostly below decks, thereby removing the restraint his presence would have had on Flint’s behaviour. It was a situation that could not last. The lid must eventually blow off the pot.
But Phillips’s mysterious island came first. Having run up the Trades to get wind of the island, according to the rough chart, Elizabeth ran south-southwest and made a commendable landfall. Springer and Flint (and even Billy Bones, with deep-furrowed brow and tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth) had completed a most effective piece of navigation.
The hail of “Land ho!” from the masthead brought a surge of excitement, and the hands ran to the fo’c’sle and into the foremast shrouds to see. Even Springer came up on deck, bringing his chart. Flint raised his hat and smiled. All hands cheered, and for a moment everyone was happy.
“The anchorage is to the northeast, Mr Flint,” said Springer, offering Flint his first sight of the dead Portugee’s map.
Flint studied the crude sketch and sneered.
“Pah!” he said. “Damn near useless. No soundings, no bearings. We shall have to go in like an old maid in a dark bedroom.”
“Not at all, Mr Flint,” said Springer. He’d become protective of the old chart and, besides, he hated Flint. “This is a good, safe anchorage, and we have no need to fear.”
“Hmm,” said Flint, spotting the bleary-eyed look on Springer’s face and wondering how much drink he’d got down him. “We’d be as well to sway out the launch, though, and sound ahead as we go, don’t you think, Captain?”
“Aye-aye, sir!” said Billy Bones, at Flint’s elbow, and he turned to give the order. Springer’s face filled with indignation.
“Belay that!” he cried. “Mr Bones, keep your bloody trap shut, you insolent sod! I’m master here and I shall con this ship safe to her anchorage, and there won’t be no need for bloody boats!”
Flint blinked in amazement and Billy Bones’s jaw dropped.
“But –” said Bones.
“Shut your mouth, you mutinous bastard, and attend to getting the guns run out!” said Springer, and turned to his bulldog. “Sergeant Dawson,” he cried, “muster your men! I’ll have an armed landing party ready against any eventualities.” Springer turned to Flint and Bones: “Against all eventualities!”
Some hours later, the big ship worked round the northernmost tip of the island, keeping well out to sea, for vast rollers thundered ashore at every point, throwing up clouds of spray off huge rocks where hundreds of black beasts, glistening like monstrous slugs, cavorted and displayed themselves in the angry waters. Those who’d seen the like before named them for their mates as “sea lions”.
A line of great hills, one a small mountain, rose up from the island, and trees of every kind covered the land. Huge pines towered above the rest, and sea-birds swooped and rose over all. There was some muttering that this was too small an island to be another Jamaica, but for all that the spirits of the crew lifted as it rose from the sea and revealed its secrets.
“There!” said Springer. “See the anchorage, Mr Flint? Good enough for a first-rate, say I!”
Flint looked through his glass and nodded.
“Room enough, Captain,” he said. “But I’d still like to know what depth of water was under my keel as I went in.” Having already heard Springer’s views on the matter, Flint paused and chose his words with utmost care, before adding, “Could we not send the launch ahead, sir, sounding as she goes, just to be sure?”
“Nonsense!” said Springer, so poisoned with hatred for Flint that he would deny his own half-century of experience in order to prove the man wrong. He was damned if he would pay attention to anything Flint said. Not if the sod fell on his knees and begged.
“Strike the courses and reef the topsails,” said Springer loudly. “And I’ll slide her in as pretty as poke up a tart’s arse!”
He glared at all around him defying any of them to say otherwise, and men sniffed and muttered and went about their business, while Flint shook his head and turned away. Springer was captain and Springer had his way.
The eastern side of the island was more sheltered and less battered by the waves. The anchorage opened between low cliffs like a softer, southern version of the fjords of Norway. Inside, it widened somewhat and ran for a couple of miles to a sandy, white-and-yellow shore, with thick undergrowth and green-top trees bent over the beach. Behind that, the land rose fast and sharp to high ground on all sides. It was indeed a fine anchorage, fit for a squadron of the line.
In a ship steered by a whipstaff, the helmsman – Ben Gunn on this occasion – wielded the big, vertical lever from beneath the quarterdeck, and looked out through a scuttle, giving him a view of the sails and the sky. He had a compass to steer a course by, but could see nothing else. Consequently, when coming into an anchorage, he relied entirely on the orders of his officers. Thus Springer stood by the scuttle and Ben Gunn awaited his commands.
Meanwhile, the marines remained ready to defend the ship, the gun crews stood by their pieces; the boatswain’s crew assembled at the cathead to cast off the ring-stopper and let go the anchor; the few idlers aboard got themselves where the best view was to be had, and all hands enjoyed the thrill of expectation that comes from exploring a new land. There might be gold, silver, tigers, unicorns, drink, savages … women!
The island stretched out its arms and folded them in, and waited dark and mysterious. The waters were calm, the wind was fair, the ship glided deeper and deeper into the anchorage. She came in bold and confident at a cracking pace, so that Captain Springer might show Lieutenant Flint how to come to anchor like a seaman, and not a lubberly fop … And just at the very second Springer was drawing breath to give the order to drop anchor, eight hundred tons of timber, spars, rigging, iron, brass, biscuit, salt-pork, gunpowder, canvas and men came to a full and shocking stop as the Elizabeth ran judderingly aground.
Two men fell out of the rigging into water too shallow to cover their knees. The fore topmast snapped and came down in ruin. Flint stamped his foot in disgust, the boatswain swore, everyone else looked at his mates and sneered, and Captain Daniel Springer knew himself to be a bloody fool.
Chapter 5 (#ulink_1695ddf7-8971-596a-b594-6a73f662e139)
1st June 1752 Savannah, Georgia
The news of Flint’s arrival ran through Savannah in minutes, and every soul – man or beast – that was not physically chained down, ran to the riverside to see Flint’s ships work slowly up river, through muddy waters that ran some forty feet below. Soon the best part of a thousand people lined the banks, shouting, calling, waving and pointing out the sights to one another. There were redcoats, slaves, children, merchants, dogs, whores, seamen and even a few Indians, all shoving and jostling for a place. Flint’s men were renowned as big spenders and their arrival would benefit the whole community.
Down on the river, Captain Flint himself strutted his quarterdeck in a fine new suit of clothes, and his first mate Billy Bones bawled and roared and drove the crew to their duties as the three ships came to anchor, flying British colours out of respect to His Majesty King George II. Walrus, Flint’s own ship, was the biggest of them, followed by the brigantine Chapel Yvonne out of Le Havre, and the scow Erna van
Rijp out of Amsterdam. Both the latter showed signs of damage to their masts and rigging: damage temporarily repaired for a short voyage.
Up on the river bank, Mr Charles Neal, a stocky, respectably dressed man, sweated in the oppressive heat, and shoved as close to the edge as he dared to catch Flint’s eye. At once, Flint swept off his hat and bowed low.
“Ah,” said Neal, and raised his own hat. He sucked his teeth and hissed in irritation at the damage to the brigantine’s mainmast. He could see that he would have to replace it before the vessel undertook a proper voyage. He shook his head and wondered if the likes of Flint ever considered the consequences (that is to say, the cost) of damaging so expensive an item as the mainmast of a ship. He supposed not.
“Boy!” he said, summoning the slave who followed him about with a big parasol to keep off the sun. “Best speed now! Run back to the liquor shop. Tell Selena to get out all the best. Every table and chair in the house, and all the girls washed and cleaned. Tell her I’ll be along later with Captain Flint.”
Neal thought of Selena. She would do the job. She was his best girl. For that matter, she was his best man – he laughed at his little joke. She was the only one he could trust. The best of all his people, and she’d been with him only thirteen months, and even she didn’t know how much he now relied on her. It was his good fortune that she had come to Savannah. But then, where else could she have gone? This squalid colonial outpost on the banks of the Savannah River was the only place where she could hide.
The town was no place for a man like Charley Neal, who’d been destined for the Inns of Court (or at least their Dublin equivalent) until his temper and fists intervened. Savannah sweltered and stank. It festered with diseases. Its houses were hovels of rough-hewn timber shared by men, hogs, horses and slaves, all living in a constant shadow of danger from the Indians in the surrounding forests.
Mother of God, thought Neal, it’s worse than a bog-house shit-hole!
But then he shrugged and reflected that here, at least, he did not need to watch his back as he would have done in Ireland. Here, almost everyone was welcome: English, Irish, Scots, Swiss and Germans – even dissenters and Jews – and all were left alone, and none pursued for little sins in past lands. Little sins like the mashing and smashing of a holy Jesuit Father who’d tried to take an unholy interest in one of his pupils.
Only Spaniards were banned outright from Savannah since their king had his own ideas about who owned Georgia and who did not. Spaniards were banned and Catholics very unwelcome, so Cormac O’Neil had trimmed his name slightly, and risked his soul considerably, by affecting the protestant religion. And now, Charley Neal consoled himself that Charles was not the most protestant of English royal Christian names, and hoped that God might forgive him in the end.
More to the point, Savannah was teeming with growth. It was close enough to the Caribbean sugar islands to trade with them – and there were other opportunities too. Very profitable ones, since it was acknowledged that, in Savannah, King George’s law ran only on Sundays. And in the absence of law, business worked excellently on trust. Thus Neal’s dealings with the likes of Captain Flint were conducted on that basis. Flint trusted Neal to receive the ships he brought in and to turn them into cash, while Neal trusted Flint to cut his throat if ever he attempted deceit.
Half an hour later, a roaring crowd of townsfolk arrived at Neal’s liquor shop, following at a respectful distance behind Flint, who was arm-in-arm with Charley Neal himself. The liquor shop was a long, dark timber shed with seating for hundreds on low stools arranged around long tables, with fresh sand and sawdust on the earth floor. There were storerooms attached for the drink, and a cook-house to provide food. At one end stood a row of jugs and barrels from which the drink was served. Here stood Selena in front of a row of girls, mostly black, waiting like gunners at their pieces before battle was joined. Neal looked at Selena as he entered and nodded in approval.
Their eyes met and she nodded solemnly, and without smiling, the little madam, as if he didn’t know all about her.
In fact, he did know all about her. She was a runaway. Worse, she’d committed murder. Selena had turned up on his doorstep with a sack made of bedlinen, crammed with gold and silver items she’d stolen from her master’s “special house”. She had money too, doubtless taken off his dead body when she’d finished shoving a knife in him, or shooting him, or bidding farewell to him by whatever means a slender girl finds to do away with a fourteen stone man. And then she’d got as far as Savannah!
Neal shook his head in wonder. How did a sixteen-year-old manage that? She’d run in the night, with no plan and nowhere to go in all this wild land with its scalping, cannibalistic savages. No doubt she’d bribed and paid her way, either with money or that other currency that God gave women for the temptation of men. That would have been easy enough. She was uncommonly shapely and her face was pretty as a doll’s.
“Ah well!” he said. He was over sixty and not greatly troubled by these things any longer. His passions focused on his strongbox. So he’d taken her into his household, claimed an honest quantity of her money, and made her his own legal property, safely secured with all necessary papers and her life’s history washed clean of all stain.
And now she was amassing her own small pile of gold, running the liquor shop – and running it well. As Charley Neal had anticipated, everything was ready to receive his guests. A host of horn tankards stood deployed like a regiment on parade. Corks were drawn and barrels tapped. The cook was blowing up the ashes of her fire while her helpers sliced the pork and slit the fish, and the shutters of the long windows were thrown open for the air, with shades of sail-cloth braced outside to keep off the sun. In one corner, the house band of musicians were already playing. There were two fiddlers, three pipers, a horn-blower and a mulatto drummer, groaning, twanging and battering away at a pace to set the pulses racing.
Thus entered Flint and Neal, followed by Billy Bones in the company of Mrs Polly Porter, owner of the biggest breasts in Savannah, who never laid down for less than gentlemen or those in possession of a Spanish Dollar. Then came Flint’s officers, his men, and all the lesser folk, until the house was filled to the very limit of its capacity to receive them.
It was instant bedlam. Selena and her girls were run off their feet, dealing with the wants of the mob and keeping eager hands out from under their skirts. Food and drink poured down throats, cash poured into the strongbox. Songs were called for, and roared out to shake the walls. Those who felt capable got up and danced. Men piddled in corners, fights flared and died, hogs scavenged scraps, and here and there a copulation beneath a table caused the pots to shudder above, while folk peered below the planks and urged the amorous couple to go to it.
Selena herself served Neal and Flint.
“Selena!” said Neal, taking his rum punch.
“Mr Neal!” she said, and “Sir!” to Flint, who was handsome, with a most beautiful smile and gorgeous clothes. He was by far the finest man she’d ever seen.
“My dear,” said Flint, looking her over.
Ah ha! thought Charley Neal, spotting advantage. “Be nice to the captain,” he mouthed at Selena. But Selena had other work to do, so this duty passed for the moment.
Meanwhile Selena cast an eye over Flint and his crew – and was fascinated by what she saw. She was surprised at how young they were. Aside from some of the officers, they seemed mostly in their early twenties. They were tanned like old leather, and dressed in their best shore-going rig: white ducks, buckled shoes, coloured shirts and stockings, and silk handkerchiefs bound round the skull. They were tattooed and pierced with gold earrings, and each man bore enough arms to start a small war.
But what marked them out from common seamen even more than the pistols and blades was the fact that every man had the authentic look of trouble about him. Savannah was no place for weaklings, but even by Savannah standards, Flint’s “Chickens” stood out as hard cases. Fortunately, today they were in the best of spirits.
When, after some hours, they managed to drink themselves unconscious and things became quiet again, Flint and Neal withdrew to Neal’s house to discuss business, leaving Selena and her crew to clear up the mess. She was in the storeroom, sorting out full bottles from empties, when a sound made her turn around. Selena jumped when she saw the man. This wasn’t one of the drunken swine from the main room, risen on his hind legs to search for more drink; he was stone-cold sober and his clothes were fresh. She’d not seen him before. And yet she already knew him. Or at least she’d heard of him. Flint and his men were the talk of Savannah, and she’d heard plenty about them from Charley Neal, whose business it was to know what went on among his dangerous clients. These men could have one leader one day, and another on the next. Neal had to be ready for such changes and did his best to keep up with the various plots and rivalries.
So Selena already knew quite a lot – by reputation – about the man who’d just come in. He was very tall, with yellow hair, long limbs and large hands. His face was wide and his eyes large and intelligent. He was remarkably neat and clean, and everything in his manner and bearing told her that here was a man quite out of the ordinary. He looked down into her eyes and smiled.
“John Silver at your service, ma’am!” he announced, and bowed like a courtier, sweeping off his hat.
“Long John!” she said. “You’re the one they call ‘Long John’.”
He smiled again, as if pleased with her.
“The very same, ma’am,” said he. “An’ a smart little thing you are an’ all, to spy me out so quick. Smart as paint, you are, I saw it the instant I clapped eyes on you.” He cocked his head on one side in surprise. “And gifted with the speech of a lady, too! Now I wonder how that might be?”
Selena shrugged off this potentially dangerous question and threw back one of her own.
“Long John Silver,” she said, “the one that Captain Flint is afraid of?”
“What?” said Silver, surprised. “And where should a pretty little thing like yourself hear such wicked lies?”
“From the trash in there,” she said, glancing towards the big room with its stupefied inhabitants. “They say you were great friends once, but he’s afraid of you now.”
“Ah, well, there we have it,” he said, nodding wisely as if perceiving some happy explanation of what had seemed like bad news. “ ‘Tis clear that some of the poor lads …” he ticked off names on his fingers: “George Merry, Mad Pew, Black Dog and some others …” He frowned and shook his head like a parson reflecting on favourite pupils who can never quite get the catechism right. “And even Mr Billy Bones himself … ‘Tis plain that some o’ my shipmates just cannot keep a hitch on their jawing tackle, once the first bottle has gone down.”
But then his smile came back and he reached out a long arm and patted Selena’s bare shoulder in avuncular fashion.
“So there y’are, my dear. Weren’t no cause to believe none o’ them. Not at all.”
Selena frowned in her turn and shook off his hand. She didn’t follow the logic of his argument, nor really what he was talking about.
“But whilst we’re on this tack,” said he, genuinely curious, “just what were those lubbers a-saying about old Long John? And why in heaven’s name should Joe Flint be afeared o’ me?”
“Because you want to take the ship from him,” she said, repeating what she’d heard from a score of drunken lips.
“Shiver me timbers!” said Long John, staggering back with every convincing show of horror and amazement. “Me heart fair bleeds to hear of such wickedness from so sweet a child as yourself.” He grinned and shook his head. As far as Long John Silver was concerned, there was no captain other than Flint, whatever might be the gossip on the lower deck, and whatever Flint’s little weaknesses.
But then Silver moved a pace closer and ran his hand lightly down her cheek. She twitched away as she realised that he only wanted what all the others wanted. She tried to slip by him, but he was too quick and kept between her and the door.
“I can prove my loyalty to the dear captain,” he said, manoeuvring her into a corner, “for if I had wanted the ship, then … why, I’d have took her!” He seized Selena’s wrists and pulled her close. “For I’m a man as takes what he wants, my dear.”
“But you can’t!” she said, once more quoting from the drunken gossip of Flint’s men. “Because you can’t set a course, not with charts and quadrants and dividers.”
Silver’s face worked horribly as Selena’s words stuck a red-hot iron right into his most tender, most shameful, and most agonising weakness.
“Can’t I?” he snapped.
“No!” said she. “You can’t, because it’s gentleman’s work, which Captain Flint can do because he is a gentleman!”
“Flint?” he choked. “Flint … is … a … gentleman?”
“Yes,” she said. But he did not reply. The spasm of laughter was so uncontrollable that he could barely breathe, let alone speak.
Chapter 6 (#ulink_aede7ccf-0073-546c-b070-518f1237bc98)
30th January 1749 Aboard HMS Elizabeth The island
With the entire crew looking at him in judgement, and the ship fast aground in proof of his guilt, Captain Springer reddened and seethed and trembled.
Springer was not a clever man nor a gifted one, nor even one with any particular aptitude for his career. He’d only gone to sea in the first place because his seafaring father had sent him, and he’d learned his seamanship through hard work and hard knocks.
He had managed, through a certain dogged bravery, to win promotion in action. He was well aware that he was lucky to have risen as far as he had, and that his skills were few: he knew how to stand the enemy’s fire and how to keep the lower deck to its duties; he knew how to run down his latitude to a destination … and that was it. He hadn’t the cleverness of Flint, and nowhere near his skill as a navigator, and now he felt himself the victim of some plot of Flint’s. Well, he was having none of it. It weren’t his fault, so it had to be someone else’s.
“You bloody lubbers!” he roared at everyone in general. “You whore-son, bastard, nincompoop parcel of landsmen …”
He raved and swore, ignoring the cries of the men who’d been thrown overboard by the impact of the ship’s running aground. It was lucky for them they were in such shallow water or they’d have surely drowned. He damned and blasphemed and blasted and cursed, and comprehensively lost the respect of his people in a rage of temper that every one of them knew ought rightfully be directed at himself.
“Sergeant Dawson,” he screamed, at last and inevitably, “rouse me out that sod of a helmsman and I’ll see the backbone of him at the gratings before five minutes is out. And all the lookouts too, and all the shit-heads that went overside … and … and …”
He cast about in anger and every man wisely dropped his eyes, though one was too slow, “And that sod there!” he cried. “Him as dares to look his lawful captain in the eye in that insolent manner!”
This was a desperately bad course to steer.
For one thing, Springer was ignoring the accustomed usages of ship’s discipline that required the boatswain and his mates to administer discipline. To employ the marines was an affront to every seaman aboard, as well as being a naked display of direct rule by musket and bayonet. Even worse was Springer’s singling out Ben Gunn the helmsman – a man so respected by the entire ship’s company that it would be deemed a severe insult to the lower deck to flog him, unless his dereliction of duty was severe and was obvious to all hands, whereas in this case it was physically impossible for Ben Gunn, in his station at the whipstaff, even to have seen what hazards the ship might be running on to.
What Springer was doing was bad and despicably stupid.
But one after another the five men were stripped, triced up and given two dozen – including Ben Gunn, despite growls of anger from the crew, to which Springer responded by ordering his marines to level their muskets at the hands. This was utter madness, and even the marines were groaning as the cat fell, stroke after stroke, on Ben Gunn’s skinny back. When he was taken down, the poor creature was no longer the same man, for his pride was broken and his mind was wounded far worse than his body.
To say, therefore, that Elizabeth was an unhappy ship would be a very masterpiece of understatement. The mood of the ship’s people was even worse than it had been under Flint; then, at least there had been moments of laughter. Everything that later happened on the island stemmed directly from Captain Springer’s staggering failure of leadership. An explosion was now inevitable. But for a few weeks the disease festered under the skin and no eruptions were visible. This was thanks to the urgent need for action to get the ship afloat again.
First, Springer tried to warp her off. In theory this was a simple task which involved passing a hawser ashore to be made fast to a strongpoint such as a mighty tree. The hawser would then be bent to the capstan and all hands would heave the capstan bars around to haul the ship off the sandbank.
In practice, the effort failed. Despite the disciplined effort of teams of men passing the line ashore in the launch, sweltering their way along the shoreline to find a suitable tree, and despite the combined strength of every man aboard, pushing their hearts out on the capstan bars, Elizabeth never budged. Springer had brought her in at the flood of the high tide, such that there’d never be another inch of water to be had under her keel to lift her off. In fact, each time the tide went out, she appeared to settle in deeper. So each high tide, Springer tried another trick, each more desperate that the last, each seeking to give the capstan a better chance to pull the ship clear.
“Give a broadside, double-shotted, to shake her off, Mr Flint!” cried Springer. “That’ll break the suction.” So the island echoed to the boom of Elizabeth’s guns. But the ship never moved. “I’ll lighten her, Mr Flint,” said Springer. “Strike all topmasts! All boats out of the ship, and all spare sails and spars.” That failed too. “Guns and carriages ashore, Mr Flint,” said Springer wearily on the fourth day. “And all stores out of the hold. Everything that ain’t scarfed and bolted into the hull.” But, despite the enormous labour, Elizabeth – now more hulk than ship – simply wedged herself deeper into the sand.
As the boatswain’s pipe delivered the final call of “ ‘Vast hauling” and a hundred sweat-drenched men collapsed at the capstan, Springer chewed his knuckles in despair. Around him his officers were glaring at him in open contempt and the men were seething with hatred for Springer, and with fear at the prospect of being unable to get off the island. The crew were exhausted. The ship was gutted. Ashore lay a vast pile of ship’s stores: arms and artillery, food and drink, clothing and tools, all under a miniature town of spar-and-canvas tents above the tide-line. And in the midst of it all Captain Springer was helpless, hopeless, guilty and angry. For the first time in his career, he did not know what to do.
And so, Lieutenant Flint, who’d watched incredulous as his captain dug himself into the pit, saw that his moment had come. Thanks to Springer’s disgraceful behaviour certain wicked temptations had been laid before Lieutenant Flint, which even he fought off at first, but when they came knocking at his door, grinning and winking, day after day after day … Well, finally he gave up the fight and embraced them.
“May I speak, sir?” said he, all humble and respectful.
“Damn your eyes, you evil sod,” said Springer, “this is all your doing.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” said Flint, ignoring the words, which in truth had no meaning anyway. Springer wasn’t even looking at him.
“I have a suggestion, sir,” said Flint.
“Bollocks!” said Springer.
“Aye-aye, sir,” said Flint. “But we can make Portsmouth yet, sir, and do our duty to the Commodore.”
“What?” said Springer, beginning to take notice. “Can’t you see it’s hopeless, you prick-louse?” Springer gestured at the ship. “She’ll never come free. Can’t you see that, you slimy sod?”
“Indeed, sir,” said Flint, “the ship is lost. But we can build another from her timbers. We have all the tools and the necessary skills. We could easily build a vessel capable of reaching Jamaica, let alone the Spanish Americas.”
Springer gaped at Flint, consumed with relief … and then with envy and hatred. Why hadn’t he thought of that? It was bloody obvious once it was pointed out.
“I further suggest, sir,” said Flint, “that you might consider bringing the men together at once to announce your decision, and that you might further consider the issue of double grog to all hands in respect of their exceptional labours.”
Billy Bones, standing as ever in Flint’s shadow, grinned to himself. He’d make sure everyone knew whose idea it was to get them back home.
“You back-stabbing bastard!” said Springer bitterly, and he glared at Flint. “It’s all you, you sod. It’s a plot!”
“Indeed not, sir,” said Flint, and permitted himself the hint of a sneer, for although there had been no plot before, there was one a-hatching now.
But Springer had no option other than to make the best of it. He had all hands piped to the quarterdeck rail, then he made his speech and ordered double grog. They cheered him for that, knowing there was a way home tomorrow and a roaring debauch tonight. Double grog meant a full pint of strong Navy rum per man, and even sailors got drunk on that.
For the next two days, Springer’s crew were the happiest tars in the service, since on the first day they were mainly unconscious and on the second they were recovering in a warm bliss of recollection. On the third day, Flint, Billy Bones and the boatswain’s crew set them to work with the aid of rope ends knotted tight and soaked in salt water to give a good whack. The crew had had their fun, and now it was time to put the captain’s (that is to say, Lieutenant Flint’s) plan into operation.
The carpenter and his mates set about erecting a small shipyard ashore and hacking planks and timbers out of the ship herself. Another team, under the gunner and his mates, erected sheer-legs, block and tackle, and with the steady labour of twenty chanting seamen, dragged cannon bodily up to the cliff-tops at the mouth of the inlet, and established batteries to command the sea approaches.
At the same time, half the marines under one of the midshipmen began exploring the island to determine whether any danger lay at their backs. The other half, under Sergeant Dawson, deployed on the outskirts of the shore-works, in open order with ball cartridge loaded, to give warning of any attack.
Meanwhile, the cook and his mates served up victuals, the cooper filled the ship’s butts with fresh water, the surgeon drew splinters and sewed up cuts, the sailmaker cut up Elizabeth’s sails and re-sewed them according to the new pattern designed by Lieutenant Flint, and the boatswain’s crew steadily stripped the rigging and fittings out of the ship, and set up a store tent ashore. And just to keep them busy, those men not already employed were sent out in a boat, rigged for sail, with another midshipman in command, to take bearings around the entire island, and to take soundings besides. This would enable a proper map to be made.
The true master of all these works was, of course, Lieutenant Flint, who excelled himself in the efficiency with which he flogged the men to it, and in the ingenious punishments devised for those who incurred his displeasure.
“Three days without water for you, my chicken,” for a boatswain’s mate who’d smashed his toes with a dropped roundshot, which Flint interpreted as malingering.
“The one to lash the other, by turns,” he pronounced on two seamen who’d dropped a compass out of a boat in twenty fathoms. “And to continue until one or the other drops,” he smiled. “So lay on, my hearties, for whichever beats the hardest will take less back.”
And so it went on:
“Gagging with a marlin spike, while lashed to a spar in the sun.”
“No grog until within soundings of England.”
“No sleep for two nights.”
“Ducking to the count of fifty.”
“To play Flint’s game, or take two dozen.”
The result of all this was, firstly, that – in the absence of a maintop – Cap’n Flint the parrot spent a lot of time perched among the trees; and secondly that Elizabeth’s crew were prevented from being mended and made sound by the busy works that Flint himself had set in motion. Under any hand other than Flint’s, the men would have recognised the good sense of what needed to be done. They would have rejoiced in the escape from marooning, and they would have given of their best.
Alas, Flint could not deny himself these vicious pleasures. As for Captain Springer, he was worse puzzled than he’d been when at sea with Flint. He still couldn’t put a finger on what was wrong with his first lieutenant, and was furthermore weighed down by the guilt of running his ship aground and not knowing how to get her off. So he took to skulking in his tent and emptying bottle after bottle to take away the despair. He left everything to Flint, unless Flint positively forced him to play a part.
One day, three weeks after they’d come ashore, Flint came to his tent with just such an intrusion.
It was hot, terribly hot. Springer’s tent, rigged under the shade of trees along the shoreline, kept out the sun, but not the still pressure of heat. As usual, all work had ceased for the middle hours of the day when the sun blazed fiercest. A cable’s length away, where the new vessel was growing, the steady thud, thud, thud of the carpenter’s adze had come to a halt, along with the battering of mallets driving in trenails, and the groaning of saws shaping the timbers afresh. All hands were asleep, save those unfortunates on watch. Clad in an open-neck shirt, wide ducks, bare legs, with the sweat glistening on his heavy face, Springer snored in his hammock.
Two figures came scrunching across the shimmering white sand and into the dark of Springer’s tent. Flint and Billy Bones were coming to call. Flint with his eternal parrot on his shoulder, and Billy Bones in his wake.
“Cap’n, sir?” said Flint, rapping his knuckles on the spar that acted as a tent post.
“Uh? What?” said Springer, starting out of his doze. Flint nudged Billy Bones and nodded his head quickly towards the empty bottles under Springer’s hammock. Bones leered back. They’d become very familiar, these two.
“Sorry to disturb you, Captain, sir,” said Flint, advancing into the tent with a paper rolled up in his hand.
“Damn you, you bloody sod,” said Springer with reddened eyes. “Whassit now, you rat-piss streak of piddle?” He reached for a pistol that he kept by him and cuddled its heavy brass butt.
Flint saw the movement and smirked. Springer’s face swelled and his teeth ground together. He hated Flint beyond reason, and the more so because he didn’t know why. But his fingers twitched and lay still. He was a law-abiding man, incapable of putting a pistol ball through another officer in cold blood. Anyway, he was half asleep, half drunk, and having trouble keeping awake.
“Here’s the chart, sir,” said Flint, displaying the finished map of the island. “You’ll see I’ve taken the liberty of naming the prominent features: Spy-glass Hill, Mizzenmast Hill, North Inlet, and so on.” He pointed with his finger: “And here, sir, you can see that there is a better harbour than this, to the south.” He nudged Billy Bones again, craftily so Springer could not see. “But, of course, we never got the chance to try it.”
“Damn you, you whore’s whelp … you walking abortion … you …” Springer mumbled on and Flint spoke over his incoherent curses.
“I’m glad you approve of the chart, sir,” he said sarcastically. “For it was drawn entirely by myself.”
He rolled up the chart and produced another paper showing the lines of the little sloop that the carpenter’s men were building. “But that is not why I am here, sir, disturbing your rest.” He made a show of presenting the plans to Springer. “Here’s our little Betsy, sir. She’ll be sixty tons, two masts, sweet as a nut, and able to bear six guns.” He flicked a glance at Billy Bones, then continued: “Six guns and maybe forty men. Fifty at the uttermost, sir. We cannot build her bigger.”
“Damn you …” murmured Springer and fell completely asleep.
“So most of the people must stay on the island, sir …” said Flint, making a pantomime of deference to the unconscious Springer, “… while Betsy sails to bring rescue to those who remain.”
It was the plain truth and Flint had known it from the moment he and the carpenter had designed the new vessel. There was only so much that make-and-mend initiative could achieve, and some of Elizabeth’s timbers were rotten besides. The carpenter had been sworn to silence under pain of death at Flint’s own hand, should the secret leak out, plus the promise of being one of those to be embarked in the new ship.
But it would eventually become obvious to even the stupidest among the crew that there would not be room for all of them aboard Elizabeth’s child. Any decent officer would therefore have summoned his men, given them the truth at once, and trusted to their good nature as seamen to understand that there simply was no other way forward. And any decent crew would have understood. But Lieutenant Joseph Flint had fallen so deeply into temptation that he was now driven by quite another logic than that which applied to decent officers who led decent crews.
“Thank you, sir,” said Flint, as Springer – lost in sleep – snorted and gargled like a hog. “Bah!” said Flint. “Will you just look at the swab?” He plucked out the pistol from under Springer’s hand and turned to Billy Bones. “Give me your chaw, Billy,” he said.
“What?” said Bones, his brow furrowed in puzzlement.
“What, sir!” said Flint. “Just spit out your chaw, at the double now.” Flint held out his hand.
“Me chaw?” said Bones, tested beyond comprehension. “Into your hand, sir?”
“Spit!” said Flint. “Now!”
“Aye-aye, sir!” said Bones. He’d seen the look in Flint’s eye and dared not disobey. So he leaned forward and spat out a plastic gob of black-brown tobacco, sticky and slimy with saliva. It splattered into the palm of Flint’s hand. Flint smiled without the least sign of disgust. He squeezed and moulded the tobacco to his liking, then he filled half the barrel of Springer’s pistol with sand, and rammed the sticky plug of tobacco down on top of it as a wad. Finally he deftly replaced the pistol without waking Springer.
“There,” he said quietly as he wiped his hands on Billy Bones’s shirt. “Just in case he ever gets the courage, eh, Mr Bones?”
“Aye-aye, sir,” said Billy Bones.
Then they walked out again into the fierce heat and the high, blazing sun.
“We’ll set them building the blockhouse tomorrow, Billy-my-chicken,” said Flint, “and you can let the word out among the people that Captain Springer is going to abandon them.”
Billy Bones licked his lips. He blinked and trembled. He muttered and groaned. He summoned every grain of his courage … and he ventured to dispute the matter.
“Bugger of a risk, this mutiny, begging your pardon, Cap’n,” said Bones, instinctively adding that last word – the supreme honorific of his vocabulary – in the hope that it might protect him. It was an arm raised in anticipation of a blow.
“Billy-boy, Billy-boy,” said Flint in a peculiar soft voice, without ever giving Bones so much as a glance, reaching instead to pet the green bird that clamped its claws in his shoulder and chuckled and nuzzled his ear. “Don’t ever question my orders again. Not so long as you wish to live. Do you hear me?”
Billy Bones was armed equally as well as Flint with pistols and cutlass. He was the bigger man, being taller and broader in the chest. He was a man in the prime of his strength and was used to keeping discipline over the scum of the lower deck. But he gulped and swallowed in terror, he bowed his head, he shook in fright. Then he took refuge in the seafaring man’s universal safe response to the words of his betters.
“Aye-aye, sir!”
Chapter 7 (#ulink_2c165ead-7817-59f8-af65-12ff6fd4d1ad)
1st June 1752 Savannah, Georgia
As Long John laughed, he took care to keep an eye on the girl. He laughed till his belly ached at what she’d said. He laughed wildly over the thought that – of all the warped and twisted fiends that came in nightmares – Flint might be a gentleman. It was the solemn way she’d said it. It was the innocence of it, God love her, with her plump little arse and her big eyes and her bouncing tits. So even with the tears blinding his eyes, Long John kept a close watch on her, and on the room itself, Charley Neal’s liquor store.
The door was the only way out. The walls were heavily built, with one high window covered by an iron grille to make sure that the liquor did not wander off during the night. Still laughing, Long John kicked the door shut behind him, and leaned himself against it to make entirely sure she’d not escape.
He took these unconscious precautions because Walrus had been months at sea and not a sight of anything female had Long John taken in all that time, and when coming ashore to Charley Neal’s house Long John was as used to making up for lost time as any other seafaring man.
Finally, Long John drew forth a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. He took a deep breath, sighed happily and smiled at Selena, who all the while had kept an even closer watch on him than he had upon her. She was watching and waiting. She knew precisely what was in the man’s mind, and she knew that all the other girls were at that very moment laid on their backs with drunken sailors snoring contentedly between their legs, breeches blown to the four winds and hairy buttocks displayed to the world. She knew too, that each girl would be clutching a fistful of gold, which (after Neal’s percentage) they would keep for their own selves.
“Now then, my girl,” said Silver, “what might your name be? For I’ve taken the most powerful fancy to you, and no mistake!”
The words were true in a constricted sort of way. Long John looked at Selena in the dim light of the hot storeroom and he liked what he saw. The cheap cotton gown was her sole garment and it was thin. It covered her nakedness for decency’s sake, but all the pleasures beneath jutted and curved most appealingly.
“My name is Selena,” she said. “And I’m no whore.” She had made her decision and set down the rules. All she had to do now was enforce them.
“Indeed you ain’t,” said Long John. He smiled and produced a large gold coin. He held it up and turned it so it gleamed and shone.
“It’s no use,” she said.
“Oh?” said Silver, and looked at her afresh. “Aye,” he said thoughtfully, and nodded. “You ain’t like some o’ them dog-faced drabs neither, nor ain’t you neither. You’re quality, my girl. That you are!” He produced another coin. She sneered. He produced a third. There was now more money on offer than Selena could earn in years by any other means.
“I told you, John Silver, it’s no use. I’ve never been a whore, and I’m never going to be one.”
“Oh?” he said, with a sneer of his own. “Don’t tell me there’s been a virgin found in Savannah, for there ain’t never been one yet!”
She blinked, considering her own precise status in that regard, following attentions pressed upon her by a certain Mr Fitzroy Delacroix, who had once been her owner. Long John grinned, mistaking the signs.
“Well, there you are then, my little bird,” he said. “What was good for them, is good for me. And I ain’t no Jew nor Scotchman when it comes to paying the reckoning.” He flourished his three gold pieces. He set them on a nearby barrel. He thought the matter settled. “This’ll do nicely,” he said, looking round the room. “Private like, and quiet as a church.”
He threw off his hat and pulled his shirt over his head. He was a fine-muscled man: strong in the arms, flat in the belly, with a dominating physical presence. Selena crushed the impulse to run because there was nowhere to go. Instead, she stood her ground.
“I said, I am not a whore!” she cried, with all the force in her body, but she was seized by two powerful hands and hoist up off her feet, her eyes level with his.
“Well then, madam,” said Long John, glancing at the gold pieces, “just what is the price, then?” He grinned. “And don’t I get a little something for what I already laid down?”
He tried to kiss her lips, but she turned her face away. He ran his tongue all over and around the silky black column of her throat. She stayed rigidly still. He gave up. He set her down. He was puzzled and annoyed.
“Beach and burn me, girl!” said Silver. “Just how much d’you expect? You’re a rare fine shaped ‘un, I’ll grant you that, but this ain’t Paris nor London, and you ain’t King George’s mistress!”
“I told you. I’m not a whore!”
“Oh yes you are!”
“Oh no I’m not!”
“No?”
“No!”
“You bitch!”
“You bastard!”
“Whore!”
“I AM NOT A WHORE!”
In his anger and balked desire, Silver swung back his hand. But when it came to it, he couldn’t bring himself to strike the small, helpless figure. So he sighed and growled and cursed. And then, eventually, and very late in the day, it occurred to him that it just might be a good idea to pay some attention to what she’d been saying.
“Are you really not a whore?” he said.
“Are you deaf!”
“But all Charley’s girls are.”
“EXCEPT ME!”
“Oh … well … I …”
He fumbled for words. He was a stranger to the art of apologising and no words came. Instead a heavy guilt fell upon him: the guilt that sits on a man who knows he’s behaved very badly. Beyond that, as he looked at Selena, a tiny barb had been driven into Long John Silver, and it smarted. For a long time he didn’t even recognise what was happening, because he’d not had such feelings for years.
He picked up his clothes and his money and left, slamming the door thunderously behind him. And later, when he encountered Polly Porter, who’d gone out for a breath of air while Billy Bones was asleep, and she – ever open for business – welcomed him with open arms, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. There was no joy in a sweating copulation with a fat tart when his mind was full of the small, lovely, black figure staring back at him with fierce determination.
When Long John was gone, Selena was seized with a terrible shaking. She’d kept herself bold and calm while danger threatened and, now that it was gone, her legs shook and her teeth chattered, and there were tears too. There was a great quantity of these. She was very young and entirely alone and the world was a very hard place.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_8b8823c8-92db-5797-9ec5-f381142dd609)
20th February 1749 The island
Billy Bones trod heavily across the sand, making his way towards the marine sentry on guard at the latrine trench.
It was night but there was a bright moon and the marine recognised Mr Bones easily by the hulking shoulders and the blue officer’s coat with its rows of shiny buttons. Also there was a heavy ‘Pfff! Pfff! Pfff!’ of exhaled breath in time with the laboured footfalls, which was unique to Mr Bones. It was his unconscious and wordless protest at the need to struggle over soft sand in a hot climate.
The wretched marine drew himself to attention and reviewed all those little sins of omission and commission in the doing of his duties of which private soldiers can be found guilty by any superior officer who has a mind to do so.
It was bad enough being stuck out here by a stinking bog-pit to make sure that the bastard matelots shovelled sand over their shit when they’d shat, but it weren’t fair – not at all – for Mr bastard Billy Bones to come out to check that all was to rights. It was usually one of the mids, and they were all right. A quick “All’s well?” and off the little bastards went, holding their bastard noses. Then a shudder of ice ran down the marine’s backbone.
“Mygawdamighty!” he said as he realised what a fool he was, being afeared of Mr Bones, for if the bastard officers were walking the guard posts themselves and not sending of the mids … then the next one might be … Oh my eyes and soul … the next one might be Flint!
“Stand easy there!” said Billy Bones. “All’s well?”
“Aye-aye-suh!” said the marine, looking rigidly to his front.
“Huh!” said Billy Bones. He looked all around into the dark, as if a horde of wild savages was creeping inwards with sharpened spears. It was all for show, of course, as everyone now knew the island was uninhabited.
“Keep a sharp look out,” said Billy Bones.
“Aye-aye-suh!” said the marine. But Billy Bones lingered, cleared his throat, spat, and condescended to conversation.
“Damned hot,” he said.
“Aye-aye-suh!”
“Shouldn’t wonder if we don’t have fever on the lower deck before the week’s out.”
“Aye-aye-suh!”
And so they continued for some little time until one Emmanuel Pew came out to relieve himself in the trench. Pew was known to his mates as Mad Pew for his speaking of the Welsh language, and for being not quite right in the head.
“Ah,” said Billy Bones, and he waited until Pew had finished grunting and heaving, and had hauled up his breeches and buckled his belt. Then he turned and affected to take note.
“You there!” said he. “Damn your blasted eyes! Shovel away there with a will, like the blasted surgeon says, or I’ll flay the living skin off your blasted back!”
Pew jumped in terror and filled in half the trench in the excess of his desire to please Mr Bones.
“Now, back to camp at the double,” said Billy Bones. “And I’ll walk beside you so you don’t drown yourself falling into the blasted ocean.”
The marine went limp with relief as the big figure rolled away, puffing and cursing beside the thin, nervous, dark-eyed matelot who’d become the target of his attentions.
“Serve the bugger right!” thought the marine. “Bleeding mad bastard that one is an’ all, that bastard Pew.”
But the aforesaid Mad Pew was the objective of Mr Bones’s walk out to the latrine trench. As ever, Billy Bones marvelled at the acuteness of Flint’s observation, and his penetrating knowledge of the characters of the men.
Flint knew that Pew went to shit well after lights out, because at that time there was nobody there, and he wouldn’t be jostled and hurried. Some men are like that, and Flint’s knowledge of Pew’s habits enabled Billy Bones to get him alone for a few minutes’ conversation in the dark, with no possibility of being overheard. It thereby enabled Billy Bones to put certain proposals to Pew, and to ask certain questions of him, without risk of a hanging for the pair of them. And of course – did Mr Bones but know it – the fact that Lieutenant Flint was no part of the conversation meant that there was absolutely no risk to Flint himself. Indeed, Flint would have been the first to denounce Billy Bones as a traitorous mutineer, should the need arise.
So Billy Bones sounded out Pew and explained that Captain Springer was going to abandon him to his fate, but that there was a way out which was very much to Pew’s advantage. Pew nearly dropped in his tracks with amazement once or twice, to hear such things from Billy Bones. But he saw reason.
Over the next few weeks, Billy Bones had similar conversations with a number of others, all carefully chosen by Flint, and always in circumstances where Flint was saved harmless from any consequences, and always where nobody could see or hear what passed between Billy Bones and the other. Each man chosen was a skilled seaman, and together they formed the nucleus of a crew: Ben Gunn the helmsman, Israel Hands the gunner’s mate, Peter Black (better known as Black Dog) the carpenter, and Darby M’Graw the master-at-arms. These, together with Mad Pew the sailmaker, were the principal figures in Flint’s plan, but there were others too: foremast hands to haul on lines and work a ship.
Thus all this dangerous, careful work was planned by Flint, while all the actual risks were taken by Billy Bones. In this secret division of labour, Joe Flint wasn’t quite the perfect judge of men that he thought he was, for Flint believed it was no end of a joke that Billy Bones should stand between himself and danger, and what a fool Bones would think himself should he ever find out. But the truth of the matter was different. So great was Billy Bones’s devotion to Flint that he’d gladly have volunteered for the duty, if ever it had occurred to Flint to be honest with him. But such a thing would never have occurred to Joe Flint.
All the while, up at the North Inlet, close alongside the hull of the dead Elizabeth, the building of her daughter Betsy came forward in promising style. The carpenter’s crew laid her keel, raised up her ribs and planked her hull. They set her beam ends in place and fashioned old spars into new masts, and fitted her out with pumps and capstans, gratings and ladders, and all the complex gear that must be crammed into a sea-going vessel.
As these vital works proceeded, Mr Flint kept himself mightily busy – and clear away from Billy Bones – in building an impressive fortification at the other end of the island. For this major work he took nearly half the able-bodied men, with a month’s supply of food, and all the tools the carpenter could spare. They tramped across the island, and Flint took some more detailed observations of its geography as they went. Finally he chose a site on a thickly wooded hill, with a spring of clear water welling up near the summit.
“You will fell all the trees within musket-shot of this point,” he told the two midshipmen he’d brought with him as his subordinates.
He reached up and scratched the poll of his green parrot. This had become a habit of his when wrapped in thought. The midshipmen looked at one another and at the size of the pines on the hill, and they were glad that they wouldn’t personally be doing the physical labour.
“You will trim and shape the trunks, and they will be used to build a blockhouse according to this plan,” said Flint. He produced a rolled-up paper and looked around the hot, thick, pine-smelling forest with its buzzing insects and soaring trunks. There was not a rock or a bush or a bank of earth; only columns of living wood and the sandy soil beneath. There was nothing to rest the paper on.
“You there – Billingsgate!” he called to a seaman standing a respectful distance away, burdened with a heavy bundle of canvas for making tents. “At the double now! Here, Fido! Here, Prince! Good dog!” He smiled his shining smile and the seaman dropped his bundle and sped forward. “Down, Rover!” said Flint, forcing Billingsgate on to all fours. “And don’t you move, not on fear of a striped shirt.”
The man’s back formed a sufficient table to spread Flint’s plan. Like everything Flint did, it was beautifully done. It showed a loop-holed blockhouse of heavy timbers, with an encircling palisade of split logs. The mids leaned forward and examined the design. The more intelligent – or perhaps not – of them, Mr Hastings, frowned and spoke up.
“Please, sir,” said he, “don’t this plan more readily suit a defence against armed men already ashore? So wouldn’t we be better strengthening the seaward batteries up at … ugh!”
He shut up as the elbow of his less – or perhaps more – intelligent comrade, Mr Midshipman Povey, caught him hard in the ribs. He looked up to see the deadly smile splitting Flint’s face, for Mr Hastings had spoken the unchallengeable truth. Flint’s blockhouse was a nonsense. Any threat could only come from the sea and was best countered by batteries covering the few places on the island where ships, or ships’ boats, could make a landing. But from Flint’s point of view, the blockhouse was a most wise and sensible thing to build, since it kept himself so visibly away from Mr Bones’s politics at the other end of the island.
“Mr Boatswain!” he cried, and acting-boatswain Tom Morgan came doubling through the tree trunks. “Get yourself a cane, Mr Morgan, and stripe this insolent child a couple of dozen across the fat of his arse.” The colour drained from Mr Hastings’s face and he swallowed hard. Flint turned his face to the other mid. “And then deliver two dozen unto this one, for he’s as insolent as the other.” Flint smiled and tickled his parrot. “I’ll not have nasty young gentlemen answering back to their betters.”
Two weeks later the blockhouse was built and ready for occupation. Where only virgin forest had stood, there was now a great clearing with a massive log-house in the centre, surrounded by the stumps of the trees that had been sacrificed for its construction. As a fortification, it was thoroughly well made, commanding a clear field of fire in all directions, while the six-foot palisade was well placed to break up an assault, but too insubstantial to enable an enemy to take shelter there.
Had there been any real need for such a building, it would have served to perfection, and Flint even attended to minor details such as the fact that there was no natural basin around the spring from which water might be drawn. He had a large ship’s cauldron brought up, and the bottom knocked out of it, so it could be sunk in the ground at the spring-head to provide an artificial tank that constantly filled and brimmed with fresh water.
With the blockhouse built, Flint left a guard of four marines to occupy it, and marched his command back to the North Inlet, the Elizabeth, the Betsy, and Captain Springer. The long, straggling column, heavy-laden as it was (by Flint’s own design), laboured heavily to complete the journey and suffered various casualties. One man broke his leg, one got lost, four developed severe blisters from the straps of their packs and fourteen presented themselves to the surgeon with rashes from poisonous jungle plants.
Flint dealt promptly with all these accidents. He had the gratings rigged and awarded a dozen each to the rash-sufferers for carelessness, two dozen to the lost soul for stupidity, three dozen to the blister brigade for incompetence in lashing their kit, and four dozen to the broken leg (so soon as he could stand on it) for wilfully rendering himself unfit for duty.
With these punishments and others, there was now hardly one man of the three hundred foremast hands and petty officers that once had been Elizabeth’s people who had not felt either the lash or some more spiteful punishment. The mood of the crew was sullen and resentful, and only one push was needed to drive them to the great leap that Flint had planned: some of them … enough of them … sufficient for Flint’s purpose.
By now, too, Betsy looked like a ship rather than a collection of timbers. Her lower masts were stepped, and her standing rigging in place. The carpenter and his mates had even contrived to serve her hull with pitch and paint, to offset the worm. All she needed was men turning the capstan and she’d warp herself sweetly down the greased slide-way already laid out before her, and she’d swim in the waters of the North Inlet.
Flint saw that things had reached the moment of truth, and he held a conference that very night, safely away from the camp and out in the dark forest, with Billy Bones and some others including Israel Hands and Black Dog, who were the most intelligent, and others who were the least stupid of the chosen ones. Flint explained what each of them had to do, and made each man repeat it until it was clear they’d understood. Hands and Black Dog learned fast enough, but for the rest Flint had to keep his temper entirely under control. For once, he had to be patient and encouraging as these morons stumbled and mumbled and struggled towards learning their parts.
He could not afford any noise or dispute at this stage, for now he, Joseph Flint, was personally involved, and the danger to himself was acute.
Chapter 9 (#ulink_aab03fe6-6b34-5550-a0b2-097893e495d2)
3rd April 1751 The Delacroix Plantation, South Carolina
Selena fought all the way, but her mother was twice her weight and three times her strength. The woman just put her head down and took the blows she received from her daughter and never gave back one – which amazing behaviour frightened Selena more than anything. Instead, her mother got sullen and angry and tried to persuade.
“What you do, girl?” she cried as she pulled Selena along. “You think you not like all women? You think you better? You … you … you …”
But her words failed. She’d never learned English very well and she switched to the liquid speech of her homeland, which the youngsters like Selena barely understood – for it earned the toe of the overseer’s boot to be heard “talking African”.
But this time Selena’s mother didn’t just speak it: she bellowed it. And since it was dusk, and the day’s work was done, the people came to the doors of their shacks as Selena was dragged by. They came to see what all the fuss was about. When they saw, they understood and they laughed or pitied according to their individual character. Mostly the men looked at Selena and licked their lips and thought their own thoughts, but the women screeched and laughed and slapped their sides in happy chorus.
“It’s your time, girl!” they cried. “Now you just like all the rest!” And they nodded to one another in righteous enjoyment at the fall of one who had put on such airs.
“Where’s Miss Jeanie?” they mocked. “You want me to call her from Paris?”
And the children hopped and capered along behind, laughing and mimicking, even though they didn’t understand. But they would, given a few years; especially the girls.
Yard by yard, Selena was hauled away from the neat line of shacks and out towards the big house. The crickets sang, the moon came out, the stars shone, and soon the children scampered back home with final jeers, for they were getting too near the big house, and knew better than to make trouble there.
The big house was ablaze with light and music. The master and mistress were entertaining. White-folk visitors were come from far away beyond the plantation, where no slave was allowed to go. There were carriages drawn up outside the big house, but that was at the front, which was forbidden to Selena and her mother. Instead, Selena was dragged the last few hundred yards to where Sam the overseer lived in his smart, plank-built house with the veranda and the whitewashed walls. Sam’s house stood way out from the shacks where the common folk lived, and close enough to the big house to be ready for the master’s call.
Sam was a greatly privileged creature. He wore shoes and a white man’s hat, and was even trusted with a gun, and now he sat with this badge of office across his knees as he rocked on his own porch.
Selena’s mother dragged her up the steps and brought her before Sam. He was a big, hard young man, chosen for his ability to knock down any other slave with his fists. But he smiled and shook his head in admiration of Selena.
“My oh my!” he said. “Ain’t you just ripe and ready.” He slid his hand into Selena’s cotton dress and reached for one of the hard breasts that were bouncing so appealingly as she struggled.
“No!” barked Selena’s mother, and caught Sam’s arm a blow with her fist. “She not for boy like you!”
Sam snarled and raised his musket butt to smash the woman flat. He was top dog and didn’t take no crap from nobody.
“Hold you hand, nigger-boy!” cried the woman. “My Selena, she be Master’s girl – yes? Master do what she say – yes? Selena say, ‘Flog Sam black ass’ – Master flog Sam black ass!”
Sam froze. It was true. It could happen. So long as the master’s fancy lasted, he’d give a girl most everything she wanted … especially if it was so little a thing as flogging an uppity slave. Sam had seen too many floggings to suffer one on his own sweet hide. He doused his anger and lowered his gun.
He said nothing, but got up and led the way to the “special house” down in the hollow by the river, among the trees and out of sight of the big house, where it had been placed by a thoughtful husband to spare the blushes of his wife. What the mistress did not have positively thrust before her eyes, she could contrive not to know. Indeed, as far as the mistress was concerned, what went on in the house in the hollow served the invaluable purpose of focusing her husband’s attentions where they would do the most good and the least harm.
Sam had the keys to the special house. He unlocked the door and lit the candles inside. He looked sidelong at the two women to see their wonder at the fine things on display, things no field slave ever saw: the curtains, carpets and furniture, the silks, satins and linen, the wines and food, the big bed, the great mirrors and the gold-framed paintings of naked white women, luscious and plump. Tonight there was also a big bathtub, with water, soap and towels, and a selection of brightly coloured dresses.
“Now you get that girl ready, you hear?” said Sam, for the benefit of his dignity. “You get her clean and dressed up right pretty, or it gonna be your black ass gets flogged!” With that, he straightened his shoulders and marched off, master of the field.
Selena’s mother sighed.
“Get you clothes off, girl.”
“No!”
“Get you clothes off. How me clean you, if you not take off clothes?”
“Take me home. I wasn’t bred for this!”
“No! You stay here. You stay!”
“Why?”
This simple question finally broke the dam of Selena’s mother’s emotions. The woman burst into loud slobbering tears and called Selena a wicked girl who’d see her ma and pa sold away and all her brothers and sisters too.
“Sold away!” cried Selena’s mother, voicing the dread fear of the plantation slave. “Sold downriver. Me never see you. Me never see me man. Me never see me childrens. Never never never. That what you want? You creature!”
“No!” screamed Selena, and stamped her foot. “But why should it be me?”
“ ‘Cos Master want you. That why he let you live in the big house! That why you get fancy clothes and fancy words. You got them ‘cos he want you for fancy piece!”
“No! Miss Eugenie – Jeanie – she loved me!”
“Huh! She love you when you small. You was her nigger doll. And now she gone to Paris for schooling and left you behind when she could’ve taken you with!”
“No!”
“No? So why you back in fields? Why you sleep in Mumma’s house and not Miss Jeanie’s room?”
“It’s all your fault! You told me to smile at the master in the first place!”
Selena’s mother bit her lip and the strength drained out of her indignation.
“Well,” she said, searching for words. She searched hard and came up with a powerful word: a white man’s word. “I told you to smile ‘cos it proper,” she said, and nodded in satisfaction.
“Huh!” sneered Selena. “ ‘Proper’, you say? I say you just want all the things I can get you while I’m the master’s girl!”
If a woman with skin the colour of black velvet could have blushed, then Selena’s mother would have done it. Since this was impossible, she took her daughter by the hair, stripped her naked, lifted her bodily into the bathtub, and doused and soaped and scrubbed the slippery body as if she’d have the skin off it. Then she laid on with the towels, bound up the girl’s hair to look nice, and crammed, jammed and rammed her into the first dress that came to hand.
“Now hear me, Selena,” she said, with a face as grim as a bulldog’s. “Me don’t want no more. You always stamping and cussing. You always having you way. Me always let you. Me let you, ‘cos you fine and you pretty.”
She stood back, hands on hips and leaned forward so her nose was an inch from Selena’s.
“Now you pay me back, girl,” she said. “You bump you ass for Master. You bump real good. You think on me. You think on you father. You think on you brothers and sisters.” In a final burst of anger, her voice screeched in fury, hitting a pitch previously unsurpassed. “If you not do, then no place for you in me house. Not food, not fire, not water. Nothing! NOTHING! You hear me?”
There was silence as the two looked at one another, balked in anger. Then, seeing the faintest flicker of a downcast eye from Selena, and seeing that the girl made no move to run, the mother said, “Huh!” loudly. Then she cleaned up the bath things, made everything neat and tidy, hauled the bath outside and emptied it, and marched off back to her own place, and her husband, and the rest of her eight surviving children.
She was a good woman. She was doing her best, under iniquitous rules, for all those who depended upon her. She was the exact moral equal of a noble commander who wins glory by sacrificing a regiment to save an army. She wept all the way home, nonetheless.
Left alone, Selena first did some weeping of her own. Then she threw some things about and broke glass and china. Then she looked at herself in a mirror, admired the incredible gown, and then she sat down on the big bed to think. Ideas sped and tumbled through her head with the wild energy of a sharp and penetrating brain. But she saw no way out, other than the one her mother had specified.
Thus she came to a decision. First she brought herself to face and accept her betrayal by Miss Eugenie. She cleared that monstrously difficult fence with valiant courage and with maturity beyond her years. She did it all by herself and with none to advise her. Next, she accepted her duty to her mother, to her father and to her family. Finally she lay back on the bed, spread her gown to best advantage, and waited for the master. But the master did not come, and eventually, being unused to staying awake at the end of a hard day’s work, Selena closed her eyes and went to sleep.
She was awakened by a fumbling at the front of her gown and a man’s drink-loaded breath wheezing in her face. A fat belly pressed down upon her with the buckles of his clothes scratching. Hands squeezed her breasts and a foul mouth pressed on hers, licking and sucking.
At forty-six years of age, the master, Mr Fitzroy Delacroix, had long since established his etiquette where slave-girls were concerned. He liked them young, he liked them slim, he liked them full-breasted and he liked them virgins. The delight of slave-girls, to his way of thinking, was that you could do what you damn well liked to them, when you damn well liked, and not have to waste hours bringing them to the boil like you did with decent white women. As for whores, slaves beat them every time because you didn’t have to pay and you couldn’t get poxed.
Added to these usual benefits was the particular one that Selena had been his own daughter’s playmate, raised alongside her, and equipped with the speech and manners of a white girl to the degree that – for some time now – Delacroix had been just itching to get his hands on her. Thus it was very much the case that his daughter’s desire for a wider education and her hopes of fluency in the French language were far from Delacroix’s only reasons for sending Miss Eugenie to Europe.
Not sharing Delacroix’s point of view, Selena struggled furiously and got a ringing box round the ears in reply. Delacroix laughed and threw her skirts over her head. Holding her down by the wrists, he buried his nose into the soft recess between her thighs and gorged like a hog at a trough. Enjoying himself hugely, he rolled to one side to unbutton himself and haul out his shaft. But, freed from his weight, Selena leapt up and darted to the door … which was locked.
Delacroix positively roared with laugher, and staggered after her with his drawers round his ankles and his paunch wobbling over his upstanding lust. He grabbed at Selena, but he was full of drink and she ducked under his arms, snatched up a silver candlestick and swung it at his head. He just managed to raise his arms in defence and the blow thumped painfully into his left elbow. He fell back, stumbled and sat down heavily on the floor, legs stretched out in front of him.
“Ow!” he said, rubbing his elbow in surprise. “Well, I’m damned!” And he doubtless was, for those were his last words on earth.
With a huge quantity of food and drink in his stomach, and sick from the pain of the blow, Delacroix suddenly vomited heavily, gulped and choked … and inhaled a good lungful of half-digested beef and claret. He then throttled and kicked for a minute or two, before expiring purple-faced and pop-eyed at Selena’s feet, with his tongue lolling out of his open mouth.
Philosophers would argue that Delacroix was entirely responsible for his own death – and a shameful death too – from gluttony and attempted rape, but Selena knew that the world would see things differently. A slave found with her dead master was just meat on the hoof. They’d not ask her what had happened. They’d simply hang her.
Fear and panic surged out of the dark corners of the room. There was no refuge on the plantation. They’d hang any slave who tried to help her, and her mother’s house was the first place they’d look – even supposing for one minute that her mother would take her in. But beyond the plantation was the great, wide world: the outside world that Selena had never even seen, let alone visited. And now she had to get out into that world and make her way, and not get caught. And all she had to guide her was her own native wit.
Chapter 10 (#ulink_e5d06eb2-9e93-5dd9-8b30-7fd172feb26d)
24th March 1749 The island
On the morning after his secret conference, when Flint had taken his irreversible step and now stood at risk of betrayal by too many men for him to face down, he went to Captain Springer.
The man was sunk beyond belief in drunkenness. As far as Flint could judge, Springer was a worse hulk than Elizabeth. He was decayed and rotting in his tent. Flint sighed. By the look of Springer, this would delay vital preparations by a week or more; or at least by however long it took to get Springer off the rum and looking like some passably good imitation of an officer. But since Springer was unconscious, Flint went and found Springer’s servant and put Billy Bones to work, kicking the servant’s unfortunate arse around the camp for sufficient time to drive home the message that the captain was to receive no more strong drink, no matter what threats or entreaties he might offer.
In the event, Flint was lucky. Springer came from a tough old breed, and his liver was so powerfully exercised by its life’s work that it had him sobered up that very evening.
Then, after a day spent in blinding headaches and purgative vomits, Springer was fit to walk, talk and to be washed and shaved and put into a clean shirt by the morning of the day after. Flint duly presented himself at the captain’s tent, and – as his deputy and representative during the captain’s indisposition – he gave Springer an account of all the island’s news that was masterly in the very small proportion of untruth that was added in order to deceive Springer completely, and to set him off on the false trail that Flint had planned.
When Flint was done, and was standing humbly before his captain with his hat in his hands, Springer glared at him with bloodshot yellowed eyes and with hatred that could have been cut into blocks and sold by the pound as rat poison. But Springer knew his duty (or so he thought), and he never hesitated.
“Muster the men, you bloody lubber!” he growled. “This is your fault, as I’ve always said, and I’ll see you broke for it as soon as we rejoin the squadron!”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” murmured Flint, with downcast eyes. And after suffering a sufficient quantity of oaths and curses from Springer, Flint withdrew, found Billy Bones, and gave his final instructions.
Half an hour later, every soul on the island, excepting the four marines still guarding the useless blockhouse, were mustered on the beach under the hot sun, before the tented encampment and the almost-completed Betsy, while stuck on her sandbank a cable’s length off, the empty corpse of the Elizabeth was a constant reminder of past failures, and a spectator to what happened next.
Springer got up on a chest, the better to speak to the men. He sweated heavily in his uniform coat and cocked hat, and his shirt and stock. But these were the indispensable icons of his rank, especially given the shockingly ugly mood of the men. Springer had never seen the like before, and he stuck out his chin and clenched his fists in anger. He wasn’t the man to tolerate skulking and scowling from the lower deck, as they would bloody soon learn!
Around him, in their blue navy coats, stood Lieutenant Flint, Acting-Master Bones, and five midshipmen. The surgeon and the purser stood to one side of them, with a group of senior warrant officers including the boatswain, the gunner and the carpenter. Further off still was the comforting block of twenty-nine marines, drawn up with bayonets fixed, under Sergeant Dawson and two corporals.
Facing Captain Springer, divided into starboard and larboard watches, stood nearly two hundred lesser folk and foremast hands of the manifold varieties of their kind: topmen, coopers, waisters, cooks, afterguard, boys and so on. Springer ground his teeth at the muttering and scowling that came from them, and the insolence on their stupid faces.
“Avast there!” he bellowed. “Silence on the lower deck!”
They looked at him and waited, still defiant but listening to what he might have to say. When it came, it wasn’t very much, and it wasn’t very clever. Springer was no maker of speeches: he simply stamped and spouted and told them to do their duty and God help them as didn’t! Since the men had already been flogged and punished beyond all reason, this was the last thing they wanted to hear. But Springer didn’t know that, for Flint hadn’t told him, and finally, the captain got round to the subject of leaving the island.
“Our new ship lies a-waiting and ready to bear away for Jamaica!” he cried, pointing to the Betsy. “She’s well found and ship-shape and will bear fifty men …” At this there came a deep, animal growl from the belly of the crowd. “Silence!” yelled Springer, but all he got was a chorus from the play so lovingly crafted by Mr Flint, who nearly choked with laughter as his actors delivered their lines.
“What about the Dons?” cried one.
“What if they come back?” cried another.
“AYYYYYE!” the crowd roared.
“What?” yelled Springer. “What bloody Dons?”
“Them as was seen from Spy-glass Hill!”
“Them as was looking for a landing!”
“They’ll murder every man jack of them as gets left behind!”
Now other voices joined in, genuinely frightened of a mass slaughter at the hands of the Spaniards. Frogs and Dutchmen was one thing; even the Portuguese; but they’d get no precious mercy out of the Dagoes!
“Mr Flint?” said Springer, looking down at his subordinate. “What the poxy damnation are the sods blathering about?”
“I cannot imagine, sir,” said Flint with a sneer. “Why don’t you ask the men?” In that instant, seeing the look in the other’s eyes, Springer came as close as he ever did to understanding Flint and to guessing what was actually underway.
“You whoreson bastard!” he said, and he cast about, this way and that, wondering what to do next. He was the very picture of indecision, and to the angry mob in front of him, he looked exactly like a man who’d been found out.
“See!” cried Israel Hands. “The bugger knew it all along. He’s leaving us to the bloody Dons!”
“No!” cried Springer. “No! No! No! The ship’ll take a good fifty, maybe more, and I’ll come back for …”
“And who’s to say who goes and who stays?” cried George Merry, in wild terror. Swept on by the furious emotions around him, Merry – who in any case was not one of the brightest – was now so deep into the role given him by Flint, that he actually believed it.
“ARRRRRGH!” roared the crew.
“Sergeant Dawson!” screamed Springer, as the mob rolled forward. But Dawson was already giving his orders.
“Make ready!” he barked, and twenty-nine muskets snapped into the left hands of their bearers, enabling the right hands to cock the locks. A howl of fright went up at this show of deadly force.
“Bastards!” cried Israel Hands and, reaching the climax of his own part, he produced a hidden pistol: a little one, small enough to hide under his few clothes. He took a breath. He ran forward, and while the marine’s muskets were still pointing harmlessly upwards he let fly with his pistol.
“Ahhhh!” screeched a marine, and dropped his musket as the ball took him in the face and smashed his jaw. It was the first blood. The wretch continued to bawl and groan, but his mates straightened up, as they’d been taught, and faced their front.
“Present!” cried Dawson, and the muskets swept down to bear on the mob.
CRACK! Another shot came out of the mob: Black Dog this time, with the second of Flint’s own pair of pocket pistols. The ball flew nowhere. The cries of the mob became general, and a hail of two-pounder, swivel-gun shot (distributed earlier by Billy Bones) was thrown by muscular arms to arch up, and drop viciously down on the redcoats. One marine went down stunned. More shot flew and the mob charged.
“Fire!” cried Springer.
“Fire!” yelled Dawson.
BA-BANG-BANG-BOOM! Twenty-seven muskets blazed together at such close range that powder-flash singed the hair of the maddened seamen at the front of the mob, while Captain Springer hauled out his own pistol and discharged it at Israel Hands, who was running at him with a drawn knife.
Instantly, fifteen men went down, struck by musket balls, and Springer fell backwards off the chest with the thumb and two fingers blown off his pistol hand, and one eye put out by flying fragments of the burst barrel. Being half-blinded, he did not notice that Israel Hands simply ignored him, leapt over his fallen body, and ran off after Flint, Billy Bones, Black Dog, George Merry and about fifty others.
While these favoured ones vanished into the jungle at the edge of the beach, a hideous, murderous fight took place: marines, mids and warrant officers against the remaining seamen. It was bayonets, dirks and swords, against knives and fists. It was entirely hand-to-hand, for the marines had no chance to reload. Consequently the struggle between former shipmates lasted only as long as it took for all parties to exhaust their strength and fall back sickened by what they had done, or rather what they had most cunningly, deliberately and skilfully been caused to do, by Lieutenant Joseph Flint.
The final tally was forty-five dead, including most of the marines, Sergeant Dawson, Captain Springer, most of the mids, nearly all the warrant officers and a large number of seamen. Many more were wounded, some grievously. But there was a still worse moral effect of what had been done. This was to place the greater part of those alive entirely beyond the law, and in all probability under delayed sentence of death at the hands of the service they had just betrayed.
The surviving marines were safe. The two surviving midshipmen were safe, as were all the rest who’d fought for their King and his laws. But the rest had shared in a mutiny, and an extremely bloody one at that. They had been a part of the ultimate crime, the crime which the Royal Navy would never, ever forgive – they had slain their captain. They now faced either permanent exile from their native land or being hunted down for a naval court martial, and the short, jerking journey up the yardarm with the aid of a running noose.
Thus the survivors broke naturally into two parties that limped and bled and drew away from one another as far as they could go. The smaller party, perhaps thirty strong, consisted of the mids, the marines and the purser, plus those seamen and petty officers who’d remained loyal. This party had two muskets, a few pistols and a pair of midshipman’s dirks between them. The larger party, nearly two hundred strong, carried off the rest of the marines’ firelocks and ammunition. Being the stronger, they took command of the camp and immediately broke open the spirit casks and proceeded to get roaring drunk.
In this condition, they were later visited by Captain Flint, as he was now known, at the head of the only body of men on the island who were sober, under discipline, and fully armed from the supply of weapons thoughtfully hidden in the woods at Flint’s orders. Flint told his followers – Israel Hands, George Merry and the rest – that they were restoring order and conquering mutineers. This was abject nonsense, but it served, and a second slaughter followed, since Flint’s real purpose was to eliminate from the surviving seamen as many as possible of those whom he felt unable to trust in the greater purpose which was to come.
When the sun set that night there were less than a hundred men left alive on the island. Flint stood in the dying light and eyed the wreckage and slaughter all around. He stroked his parrot and smiled.
“Well, Billy-boy,” he said to the creature that clung to him even closer than the green bird, “it seems we are become free men, to go a-privateering after all. Isn’t it a shame that Mr Springer never saw reason in the first place, to save me all this trouble?” And Flint laughed and laughed and laughed.
But there had to be a few more risings of that sun before Flint got entirely what he wanted. To begin with, Betsy wasn’t quite as ready for sea as had been hoped, and vital work remained to be done, and also Flint had to deal with the remaining loyal hands on the island.
Some of them weren’t hard to find, since they came limping into the camp at North Inlet in ones and twos, begging for food. The others were hunted down with whooping and haloo-ing and merriment, at least on Flint’s part, for he took a lead in all such congenial operations, leaving Billy Bones the task of completing Betsy’s fitting out.
“Chop ‘em down, lads!” he cried, on the first occasion they took captives. “Chop ‘em down like so much pork!” But in this he was baulked. To his surprise, his men turned nasty as their consciences stirred. After all, as far as they knew, they’d mutinied in face of abandonment and certain death, and then they’d fought the marines when fired upon. But they’d never set out to cut the throats of their own shipmates. What’s more, the captives included Mr Hastings and Mr Povey, the last surviving midshipmen: two youngsters who were good officers and popular with the crew.
Flint glowered and cursed, but saw that he could not oppose the men in this matter. He was well aware that not everyone on the lower deck was stupid. Some were capable of working out that Flint had taken command from Captain Springer by force. In that case, what was good for Springer might become good for Flint, should Flint upset the men too much. This gave Flint a nasty fright. It was his first sight of a problem that – for all his cleverness – he had not foreseen, and which would come back to sit upon his shoulder like his parrot. Given his great pride and vanity, it was deeply disturbing.
But the prisoners were spared: all of them.
Finally in late May of 1749 when Betsy was warped out into the North Inlet, laden with men and stores and guns, to spread her sails and head north, she towed astern of her a longboat containing the remaining loyal hands. There were twenty-three of them, but the longboat was a good, big one, so they weren’t too crowded. They had their own store of food and water too – the crew had insisted on that – and this proved a blessing, since soon after Betsy had left the island under the horizon, the towline somehow got slipped during the dead of night.
Flint explained that this had been an unfortunate accident which was all for the best, since it removed those who had unaccountably refused to win wealth and riches by privateering. For their part, with the longboat gone and nobody forced personally to witness what might be the fate of the boat’s occupants, the crew allowed themselves to believe Flint’s words, and were thereby led down a slippery path towards outright bloody-handed piracy.
In this profession – having at last got what he wanted – Flint proved a passing fair success. Or perhaps he just was lucky. Whichever, he took some good prizes, and beat up and down the Caribbean for many jolly months before fate caught up with him.
Chapter 11 (#ulink_1f4d2fd1-17b3-5223-8792-54b0900ac1ed)
1st June 1752 Savannah, Georgia
In Selena’s world there was no time for self-pity. When the shaking stopped, she went back to work.
She picked her way over and around the customers in the liquor shop, and made an effort to clear up the mess that they had made. Some of them were stirring now, and calling for more drink. Selena served them, and prodded the other girls awake to help her.
Later in the evening, after lamp-lighting time, when Flint and Neal came back to the liquor shop, a second round of debauchery was well under way. Flint and Neal were like brothers; satisfied with their business and now looking to take a drop or two in celebration. Flint merrily kicked three or four men out of their chairs and swept their pots and plates off the table to make way for himself and Neal. Roars of approval greeted their arrival, and the musicians woke themselves up and joined in the din.
This time Flint leapt on a table top, threw back his head and led the singing. His men cheered madly when they heard the song, for it was a piece of his own creation, that he sang only when in the best of spirits. Joseph Flint sang beautifully, with a high, carrying voice that was lovely to hear, and once heard never forgotten. He gave each line of the song, with his men roaring out the chorus.
“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest –” “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” “Drink and the devil had done for the rest –” “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” “But one man of her crew alive –” “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” “What put to sea with seventy-five –” “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
The song went on, verse after verse, getting steadily grimmer and darker, but with Flint so beaming and charming, acting out the horrors of the story in such splendid good humour that everyone laughed at the wickedness he was proclaiming.
When he finished, he sat down to mighty cheers, and smiled like the sun in his glory. Neal smiled too, though he’d no taste for Flint’s kind of music. His mind was still full of delightful calculations concerning the cargoes in the holds of Flint’s two prizes. Selena came to their table at once, with rum. Flint raised his glass to her in a polite toast. His sharp eyes swept her up and down. He frowned. He saw the miserable expression on her face and her red eyes.
“What rogue has upset you, my African Venus?” he said. He stood up, and took her chin gently in his fingers, the better to study her. “I dare swear you’ve been crying. Just tell me who it was,” he said, in a soft, quiet voice. “Just tell me his name and I’ll have the liver out of him. I’ll rip it out, and slice it narrow, and feed it to him in strips.” Charley Neal blinked anxiously. When other men said things like that, they weren’t really thinking of opening a man’s belly and sticking a hand inside to pull things out. But when Flint made the threat …
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John Drake
Rip-roaring adventures for fans of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and Patrick O’ Brian, in these pirate prequels to ‘Treasure Island’.
John Silver had never killed a man. Until now, charisma, sheer size and, when all else failed, a powerful pair of fists, had been enough to see off his enemies. But on a smouldering deck off the coast of Madagascar, his shipmates dead or dying all around him, his cutlass has just claimed the lives of six pirates. With their comrades intent on revenge, Silver's promising career in the merchant navy looks set to come to an end… until the pirate captain makes him an offer he can't refuse.
On the other side of the world Joseph Flint, a naval officer wronged by his superiors, plots a bloody mutiny. Strikingly handsome, brilliant, but prey to sadistic tendencies, the path Flint has chosen will ultimately lead him to Silver. Together these gentlemen of fortune forge a deadly and unstoppable partnership, steering a course through treachery and betrayal and amassing a vast fortune. But the arrival of Selina, a beautiful runaway slave with a murderous past, triggers sexual jealousy that will turn the best of friends into sworn enemies … and so the legend of Treasure Island begins.
You’ll be hooked
FINT
AND
SILVER
John Drake
For my beloved wife Most precious Most special Most dear
Contents
Cover (#ubc24133d-7b43-5f37-816f-5f0d6bb6c2f8)
Title Page (#u8bfbce5e-6dd7-55d6-8374-55cfd3019815)
Map (#u54c2af27-a7d7-5f35-865a-ede219622b2d)
Chapter 1 (#u2539ff72-fae5-5df3-8a40-ab1622162c27)
Chapter 2 (#u74e5cfb8-bd27-53e8-ba60-4bb62f9593fd)
Chapter 3 (#u7185b89a-ff08-5ea4-bee8-ededfe36877b)
Chapter 4 (#uc11026a0-ac49-59e9-9083-d9b3b01c9b6a)
Chapter 5 (#u1ea4f1ff-0898-5790-9846-192e39bdc426)
Chapter 6 (#u26c9a4db-04ca-5aac-b327-37ec0264a270)
Chapter 7 (#ub56442fb-b697-5b94-9eab-0c0fff0a3336)
Chapter 8 (#u32a831cd-1b86-5781-b63c-6e740cf167a8)
Chapter 9 (#uaa2b2d42-7579-5377-9ca9-698e4c710352)
Chapter 10 (#u5dad36a0-5898-570c-a0ec-a3df4065beca)
Chapter 11 (#ue4990f61-7c87-51ea-a3fa-77c70b30970a)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)
Preview (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_42b998ba-a289-5295-be77-6052c64886ed)
15th March 1745 Off Madagascar
Ria de Ponteverde carried guns; most merchantmen did: carriage guns, with powder and shot, rammers and sponges, trucks and tackles. They differed from ships of the various royal navies only in the relatively small degree of their armament, as compared with the exclusive concentration upon artillery that marked out the man-o’-war.
And it wasn’t just a broadside battery on the main deck. It was swivels on the gunwale, and small arms in the lockers down below: muskets and pistols, pikes and cutlasses, and all the gear that went with them – cartridges, flints, powder horns and small-grained pistol powder. All this was a fearful expense and a burden upon trade, for there was not one farthing’s profit to be made by honest seamen in hauling defensive arms and ammunition across the seven seas.
Unfortunately there were others on the seas who were not honest seamen, and whose business it was to become very rich, very quickly by selling cargoes without the bother of paying for them. Hence the need for guns, because sometimes –indeed often – these gentlemen could be seen off by force. Sometimes, but not always. And now, six miles off the Bahia de Bombetoka, a general slaughter was about to begin.
The Portuguese brig Ria de Ponteverde and the buccaneer Victory were locked yardarm to yardarm in a stinking cloud of powder smoke that barely shifted in the hot, tropical air. The brig was beaten. She was broken, bloodied, smashed and splintered; her helm was shot away, her sails in shreds and Victory’s boarders were pouring over her sides.
A tall yellow-haired Englishman stood with his Portuguese mates by Ria de Ponteverde’s mainmast among the shattered spars and dismounted guns, the silent dead and the howling wounded, as the boarders came through the smoke cheering and hacking and killing. Firearms boomed and jumped on either side. Right next to the Englishman, his captain, José Carmo Costa, took the flash and thunder of a blunderbuss at close range, blowing large parts of his heart, lungs and breastbone clear out through the back of his shirt.
Then it was cold steel, hand to hand, and no quarter asked or given.
The Englishman swung a cutlass with all his might. He was a big man: muscular, quick and agile with long limbs and not a scrap of fat on his body. The blow came down like the wrath of God and caught his first man – fair, square and smack – on top of the head.
The heavy blade clove to the teeth, slicing bone, brains, meat and gristle. Number one dropped twitching and shivering, and the blade jerked free with a disgusting schlik. Then a dozen men, jammed in ferocious fight, rolled into the Englishman and a bedlam of noise beat at his ears. Arms, blades and bludgeons worked busily all around and instinctively he kicked and elbowed with enormous strength, clearing a fighting space around him, and – seizing the instant chance – ran the point of his weapon into the middle of his second man, who yelped and twisted and tried to pull free. But the pirate stumbled and went over face down, and the Englishman stamped a heel snapping and crunching into the base of his victim’s spine while he leaned mightily on his sword arm, driving the blade through the wriggling body and into the planks of the deck, even as the dense press of combat knocked him clear, still gripping the slimy hilt.
He cut down number three with two strokes: the first shearing fingers, the second splitting a face. Four and five took just a single cut each, one to left and one to right; a tall black with rings in his ears, and a squint-eyed barrel-chested fellow armed with a boarding pike.
Six was the hardest. He was a small man with a straw hat, striped breeches, quick feet and a straight-bladed sword honed to a wicked point, which he used to the exclusion of the edge. This man was a swordsman, which the Englishman was not – he had now to learn or to die.
Sweat flew as he wrenched his cutlass to and fro, trying with sheer speed and force to overcome skill. Ssssk! The cutlass blade sliced a larynx without killing. Jab! Jab! Jab! The rapier missed twice then sank an inch into the Englishman’s side, before he beat it clear with a clash and a scrape of steel. Jab! Into his hip. Chunk! And the tip of the swordsman’s elbow was off like the top of a breakfast egg. Jab! Into the Englishman’s cheek. Swish! Through the straw hat, slicing away hair and a patch of scalp. Then a blur of light and the Englishman cut hard into the right side of the other’s neck, sinking the blade through flesh, fat and marrow to within an inch of the left-hand side, almost but not quite taking the head clean off.
He gasped and shuddered as his man went down. He’d fought before, but only with his fists. It’d been just fights over girls or drink, or because a man had given offence. For that he’d drawn blood and cracked heads. He’d grown up in a hard school. But he’d never before fought with weapons and the serious intent to kill. In fact he’d never killed a man … except that now he had. He’d just killed six of them.
Now he looked around and saw that he was the last man standing of Ria de Ponteverde’s crew. The others were either dead or dying, or having their throats cut before his eyes by the buccaneers. The fight was over and the enemy ringed him, raising their weapons warily. There were no guns left loaded or they’d have shot him for sure. They’d won the fight, but they’d taken the measure of this fair-haired killer who stood head and shoulders taller than any of them, and they were being careful.
He spun on his heel, chest heaving and breath coming in deep gasps that left the taste of blood at the back of his throat. He screwed the sweat out of his eyes with his left hand, and took a firmer grasp of the cutlass hilt. The edge was nicked like a saw, but it would still cut. They edged in closer all around him: angry faces, pike heads, swords, dirks and hatchets.
“Bastard!” said a voice. “You done for my mate.”
“Skin him!” said another.
“Boil him!”
“Woodle him!”
“Burn him!”
“Come on then!” he roared. “Come one, come all!” His voice was high and cracked. It was near a shriek. He was in an uncanny state of mind: wound up tight with the blood of battle, heart thundering, nerves at hair-trigger. He was outnumbered beyond hope, but still highly dangerous, and none of those around him sought the honour of being next to fight him.
“Aaah!” he cried, and stamped forward a pace.
“ ‘Ware the bugger!” they shouted, and “Cuidado!” and “En garde!” They fell back, only to close in behind him. He slashed at a pikestaff thrust by a big-nosed fellow with lank black hair. He clashed blades with a hanger wielded by a bare-chested mulatto with a face scarred in a dozen fights. He spun round to catch a red-haired Irishman trying to spit him on the sly. Red-hair darted back, howling from a shoulder slashed to the bone, and lucky it wasn’t his skull.
“Henri!” cried a man in the front rank, yelling back over his shoulder and holding up an empty musket, “Apporte moi de la poudre et balle!” There was a swirl in the crowd and a cartridge was thrust into the Frenchman’s hand.
“Aye!” they roared. “Drop the sod, Jean-Paul!”
“Je déchargerai la tête du con!” he muttered, and bit his cartridge, priming the pan and snapping down the steel. He grounded the butt, stuffed the rest of the cartridge into the muzzle and drew out the ramrod to firm home the charge down the long barrel. The Englishman leapt forward, trying to cut down the musketeer before he could reload. But they’d thought of that. They were already clustered protectively around Jean-Paul, with pikes presented to keep him safe.
There was a rattling clatter of steel against ash, and the Englishman was driven back bleeding from a stab to his shin, and another to his arm. Frustrated, hopeless and fearful, he watched Jean-Paul finish his loading, cock the musket and slowly take aim.
He saw the round, black muzzle come up and fix on him. He saw Jean-Paul’s eye glinting over the breech, alongside of the lock. He leapt to the right. The musket followed. He leapt to the left. It followed again. And behind Jean-Paul, others were busy loading. It was no good. Muskets were not renowned for accuracy, but Jean-Paul’s was no more than ten feet from the Englishman’s chest.
“Fuck you, you bastard!” he spat. Jean-Paul bowed extravagantly.
“Merci, monsieur,” he said. “Et va te faire foutre!”
“Go to it, then!” said the Englishman. “And a curse on the pack of you!” He threw down his cutlass, spread out his arms and closed his eyes. At least it would be quick. Not like what they’d threatened.
Jean-Paul took up the slack on the trigger. He squeezed harder. The lock snapped. It sparked brightly. The gun roared. Three drachms of King George’s best powder exploded, driving the heavy musket ball violently out of the barrel … to soar in a majestic parabola, higher than a cathedral steeple, and then to curve down into the sea, where it fizzed viciously for a few feet until its power was spent, and then proceeded gently on its way down to the sea bed, where the fishes nosed it for a while and then ignored it.
“Belay there!” cried a loud voice, with all the confidence of command. Nathan England, duly elected captain of the buccaneers, had just knocked the barrel of Jean-Paul’s musket skyward.
“I say we keep him!” he said, pointing his sword at Jean-Paul’s target. “You there!” he said. “You can open your eyes … Ouvrez les yeux! … Entiendez? … Capisce?” England’s crew were the dregs of half a dozen seafaring nations and he was used to making himself understood in whatever tongue suited.
The Englishman blinked. He stupidly ran his hands over his body to feel for a wound.
“Portugês?” said England. “Français? Español?”
“English, damn you!”
“Huh!” said England. “Rather bless me, you ungrateful bugger, for I’ve a mind to let you live. I’m several men adrift, courtesy of yourself, and I don’t see why you shouldn’t make up some of the loss.”
“I’m no bloody pirate!” said the Englishman.
“Neither am I,” said England. “Nor my men, neither. We’re gentlemen of fortune! Brethren of the coast!”
“Horseshit!” the Englishman sneered. “Same bird, different name.”
Hmm, thought England, taking the measure of the big man with his broad, square face – pale for a seaman – and his stubborn jaw and angry eyes. “Now see here, my bucko,” said England, “I’ve neither time nor inclination to educate you. The fact is, I saw you fight Little Sam, who was the best among us. And you killed him.”
“And why not?” said the Englishman, not realising he was being praised. “Didn’t you take our bloody ship and kill my mates?” He pointed at the body of Captain Carmo Costa, still smouldering from the charge that had killed him. “That’s my captain there, and him not a bad bastard neither.”
England frowned. He was not a patient man. He stuck his thumbs in his belt and drummed his fingers on the tight leather. “Now, here’s the long and short of it,” said he. “We must come to a swift agreement, you and I, my lad. I like the way you fight, and I have the fancy to admit you into our company. So you can either sign articles and join us …” Glancing over his shoulder at Jean-Paul with his smoking musket, England commanded, “Recharges, enfant!” Then he nodded at the Englishman and concluded with a smile: “… Or you’ll be shot where you stand.” As far as England was concerned, the matter was resolved.
Quickly, another cartridge was found for Jean-Paul, and he grinned merrily as he plied his ramrod. Meanwhile Captain England drummed his fingers on his belt.
“So, what’s it to be?” he said. “For as soon as mon ami has loaded, he may open fire, and that’s the truth.”
“Damn you all!” said the Englishman, and Jean-Paul cocked and aimed.
“Je tire, mon capitaine?”
“Last chance, my cocker,” said England, as Jean-Paul began to squeeze the trigger.
“Avast!” said the Englishman, and made the only choice that any decent man could make in the circumstances. A precious saint might have said no, and the Lord Jesus Christ certainly would have, but who wants one of them for a shipmate, anyway?
With all matters of recruitment concluded, England’s men set briskly to work aboard the two ships, mending and splicing above, plugging and hammering below. These things they did with practised skill, and did them well, since the lives of all aboard might depend on the work. They also buried the dead with due respect, and they cleaned and scoured the decks after their fashion. As for the wounded, they were attended by the drunken butcher that served England for a surgeon. He was of the “boiling pitch” school when it came to staunching bleeding, and the crew were more afraid of him than of the hangman. But he was what they’d got.
Victory and Ria de Ponteverde sailed in company within hours of the battle, and that evening the yellow-haired Englishman was welcomed into England’s crew as a fellow gentleman of fortune. The ceremony was half farce and half deadly earnest, with all hands mustered round the mainmast and the rum flowing freely. England presided in his best clothes, a plumed hat, and seated on a massive carved armchair brought up from his cabin.
The proceedings owed much to the horse-play of crossing the equator, with a ludicrous bathing and soaping, and the postulant stripped naked and blindfolded. Finally, England hammered on the deck with the narwhal tusk he carried as a staff of office.
“Now, brothers,” he cried, “we stand ready to admit this child as a free companion. So pull the blindfold off him, Mr Mate, and put a sharpened sword into his hand.” This was done and the Englishman stood blinking and puzzled and looking about him. The mob of armed men were swaying in silence on the heaving decks, bracing themselves with such ease that they weren’t even aware of doing it.
“So,” said England, “if any brother knows of any just impediment why this child should not be admitted, then let him speak now or for ever hold his peace!”
This parody of the wedding ceremony served the entirely practical purpose of ensuring that any man who’d lost a friend to the child must challenge him at once or accept him as a shipmate in good faith. With six dead to his credit, this was an interesting moment for the crew, and there was much hopeful shuffling and muttering and looking to those who had lost their messmates. One or two of the bereaved found it expedient to consider their boots at this moment, while others brazened it out with fixed smiles and knowing winks. But much to the disappointment of those free of obligations, nobody wanted to fight.
“So be it!” cried England when he thought sufficient time had passed. “And now, brother-that-you-have-become, I asks you to sign articles as all others have done before you.”
At this, England’s first mate stepped forward and laid down a big book upon a barrel that was set before England as a table. Pen and ink and a sand-caster were ready to hand. The book was black-bound in leather and had once been the master’s journal aboard an honest merchantman. But the long-dead navigator’s written pages had been cut out and a series of numbered items entered in a large, bold hand on the first remaining page.
“Are you a scholar, brother?” said England. “Or will you have me read these articles to you, before you make your mark?”
“I know my letters,” said the Englishman.
“Well enough to read?”
“Aye!”
“Oh?” said England, for, saving the mates and the gunner, not one other man in his crew could do the like. “Then read, brother, and read boldly for all to hear!” The Englishman picked up the book and held it close to a lantern to catch the light.
“These articles …”
“Louder!” cried England. “So those aloft can hear.” He pointed to the tops where the lookouts were stationed.
“These articles,” roared the new brother, “I do enter into freely and volunteerly and thus do I solemnly swear. Article one: that I shall obey the commands of my captain in all matters of seafaring and warfare, upon pain of the law of Moses, viz: forty lashes – barring one – upon the bare back …”
And so it went on. There were twenty-three articles in England’s book, mainly self-evident statements of the need for discipline on board any ship that ever went to sea in all of mankind’s history. There was much other good sense too, on such matters as forbidding the dangerous business of smoking below decks, and the filthy business of pissing in the ballast, which lazy sailormen will do who can’t be bothered to go to the heads on a dark night. Anyone caught doing that was obliged to drink a pint of the same liquid, piping hot, donated by his messmates. Also, there were ferocious punishments for taking private shares of the loot before its formal division. In all these matters, the articles were similar to those in use by numerous other freebooters and buccaneers currently doing business in the Indian Ocean and Caribbean.
But England’s articles had some extras. He punished rape by castration, torture by hanging, and sodomy by dropping the offenders over the side, bound together, with roundshot tied to their feet. These eccentricities the crew took in good part (even the astounding prohibition of rape) because England was a fine and lucky seaman with a nose for smelling out gold.
So the new brother worked his way through the list till he came to the end, where followed four clear signatures, one obviously that of the draughtsman of the articles, plus a few painfully worked names such as children might attempt, then several hundred crosses, marks and scrawled drawings: some of fish, or birds, or animals, some of hanged men, some skulls-and-crossbones, and one splendid likeness of a face, the size of a penny piece, as finely drawn as the work of any London caricaturist, which was the mark of an illiterate man who nonetheless had this remarkable gift. Each mark had a name beside it in the draughtsman’s hand. Many (including the likeness) were neatly ruled out in red ink, with a date beneath it. These were the dead.
The Englishman sighed. He took up the pen, dipped it into the ink, and paused. In fact he was only half an Englishman, for his seafaring Portuguese father had married an English girl and settled in Bristol. The son had taken his father’s size and strength, his mother’s yellow hair, and at thirteen had run away to sea to escape his father’s belt. His name, as given to him by his father, had been João De Silva: a foreign-sounding name to some and therefore tainted, but not to him. Unlike the vast body of land-rooted, home-fast Englishmen, he had no disdain of things foreign, because seafaring men are an international breed taught by hard reality to know that all races have their strengths and weaknesses, and the only thing that matters is how your shipmate behaves when the sea turns nasty – and certainly not the land of his birth. But for all that he was still an Englishman in his loyalties, and so he signed with a flourish as …
Chapter 2 (#ulink_b9189095-7748-5e1b-8226-dc75c9c1ad1a)
4th January 1749 Aboard HMS Elizabeth The Caribbean
Captain Springer controlled his anger with effort.
“Lieutenant Flint,” he said, “I swear that if I hear that tale once more, I shall put you in irons.”
“Will you, though?” said Flint. “Then I pray that you may be cursed as I was. Four years under Anson, suffering scurvy, shipwreck and sores, only to see thirty-two wagons full of gold unloaded at London, and not a penny piece was my share!”
Springer glanced around the quarterdeck. The mids and the seamen were muttering and looking sly. Mr Bones, the master’s mate, was staring attentively at Flint as if waiting for some word of command. Springer ground his teeth, Bones was Flint’s man through and through, while next to him, Dawson, the sergeant of marines – who was loyal to Springer – was glaring his contempt at this public squabbling.
“Mr Flint,” said Springer, “a word.”
Springer walked up the sloping deck to the weather side and waited for Flint to join him while the crew looked on in wary fascination. Springer was pure tarpaulin: lumpish, heavy and elderly with a fat lower lip, watery eyes and a bristling white stubble that no razor ever conquered, while Flint was smooth as a cat, with an olive, Mediterranean skin. He moved like an athlete and had a beautiful, brilliant smile. He was slim-built and only of average height, but men always thought of him as tall.
Together, these two opposites stood locked in argument in their long blue coats with the brass buttons.
These uniform coats were badges of rank which few officers were wearing as yet, for they were an innovation introduced only the previous year. But Elizabeth’s officers all had them, thanks to Lieutenant Flint, who, wanting a smart ship, had spent his own money to get them – including one for Springer, who’d never have bothered if left to himself.
But if the coats were uniform, nothing else was: not the shirts, nor breeches, nor shoes, nor the big straw hats the two men wore against the sun. Nonetheless, the coats served their purpose of marking out the wearers as officers of His Majesty King George II. In fact, since Elizabeth was sailing with a reduced, peace-time, crew, they were the only two commissioned officers on board, and it was sheer madness for them to be seen in open dispute before their men.
“Mr Flint,” said Springer, “look about you. If we continue in this manner, there’ll be no discipline worthy of the name in this ship. So, listen to me: I am resolved to proceed to São Bartolomeo according to my orders –”
“And leave a fortune in prize money to pass by?” said Flint. “We named this ship Elizabeth when we took her, but she was Isabella la Católica before that, and she’s Spanish from keel to maintruck. We could use that to come alongside of any Spanish ship –”
“But we ain’t at war with the Dons!” said Springer. “Can you not appreciate that, you bugger? Not since last year!”
“Bah!” said Flint. “There’s no war, but there’s no peace neither. Not out here. It’s dog eat dog: us and the Dons and the French! And I know ports where a prize’ll be bought for cash money and never a question asked.”
“No …” groaned Springer, and he wavered. He distinctly wavered, and Flint spotted it instantly and changed tack. He was exceedingly charming when he chose, and now he spoke sweet and friendly.
“See here, Captain, sir,” he said, “there’s a way to square the matter between us, I do declare. Indeed, I take my oath on it, for I’d not see a brother officer suffer in such a matter.”
The words meant nothing, but they were so fairly spoken that Springer relaxed. The scowl left his face and he gave Flint his entire attention.
Ah-ha! thought Flint, and rejoiced, for it was his guess that deep within Captain Springer there was greed that was just itching to be squared with duty, if only the means could be found.
“The fact is, sir …” said Flint.
“Aye?” said Springer.
“… I lost my share of the greatest treasure ever taken because of that bastard Anson, and I’d not see you lose your own best chance –”
But Springer snarled like a wolf as Flint struck a wildly false note by harping back upon the great wrong that had scarred his life.
Flint had sailed with Anson on his famous circumnavigation of 1740–44, when the Manila galleon was taken: the most fabulous prize in British naval history. But before that, Flint’s ship Spider had foundered going round the Horn, and Anson had taken her people into his own ship, Centurion, where Spider’s officers had nothing to do and were rated “supernumeraries”. As Flint told the story, this meant that they fell into legal limbo and got no share of the loot: a monstrous injustice, but one that a man got sick of hearing about.
“Mr Flint,” roared Springer at the top of his voice, “you will attend to your duties this instant, or I’ll not be answerable.”
Barely in control of himself, Springer turned away and yelled at Sergeant Dawson, “Turn out your men, damn your blasted eyes! Bayonets and ball cartridge!”
Dawson yelled and hollered and a company of marines doubled up and formed on the quarterdeck with steel gleaming at the tips of their musket barrels.
“Mr Bones!” cried Springer. “Muster all hands!”
“Aye-aye, sir!” said Mr Bones, and after a deal of cursing, kicks and blows, and a rushing of bare feet, Springer’s eight-score seamen poured up from below, and down from the rigging, to fill the waist. There they stood, squinting up at the quarterdeck in the sun, on the hot deck, in the mottled shade of the towering canvas high above their heads.
So, with his officers and marines behind him, Captain Springer reminded his crew of their duty under his orders from Commodore Sir John Phillips, which orders were to occupy, fortify and hold the island of São Bartolomeo. He reminded them of the strategic importance attached to the island by Sir John. He further reminded them of the dreadful penalties provided for disobedience under the Articles of War.
The crew stared sideways at one another, for they knew all this already. They also knew all about Flint’s “secret” plans for privateering. They knew because Lieutenant Flint had made it his business that they should know, and thereby they knew that Springer’s speech was not for themselves but for himself and Lieutenant Flint. Springer no longer trusted either, and was parading the power of the King’s Law to deliver the two of them from temptation. And for a while, the stratagem worked.
So His Majesty’s ship Elizabeth sailed steadily southward from the Caribbean, heading for a certain latitude and longitude that Commodore Phillips had got from the last survivor of a Portuguese barque wrecked on the coast of Jamaica. Elizabeth was a big ship, of near eight hundred tons, mounting twenty brass guns. She was old fashioned, with a lateen sail on the mizzen, a spritsail under the bow, and steered with a whipstaff. But she was well found and comfortable and, with so few men aboard, and fair weather and no war actively in progress, Elizabeth should have been a happy ship. But she was not.
As far as the foremast hands were concerned, Elizabeth was becoming a hell-ship. This was thanks to Mr Flint, who, having failed to bend Captain Springer to his will, was taking out his spite on those beneath him. As first officer, he had unbounded opportunity for this, together with a natural aptitude for the work.
Naturally he flogged the last man down off the yards at sail drill. Naturally he flogged the last man up with his hammock in the morning. Any vicious brute would think of that. But it took Joe Flint to punish a mess by making them serve their grog to another mess and stand by while it was drunk. And it took Flint to set the larboard watch tarring the decks for the starboard watch to clean – and vice versa.
His repertoire was endless and creative. A man who prized his three-foot pigtail was made to cut an inch off it, for the crime of sulking. Flint contrived to detect a repetition of this crime each day until the pigtail was entirely gone. Likewise, a man caught sleeping on watch was made to throw his savings overboard, and another who doted on a particularly fine parrot was obliged to give it up to Flint, though in this case a quirk of Flint’s character drove him to take the bird – for its own good, he said – in order to save it from the filthy words the lower deck were teaching it.
This he believed to be a cruelty, which he despised. For, whatever his attitude towards men, Flint could stand no cruelty to animals, and undoubtedly the bird flourished under his care as never before. Soon, he and it were friends, and he went about with it riding on his shoulder, which was a great wonder to the crew.
But mostly Flint’s tricks were cruel, and a particular favourite of his was to offer escape from flogging to any man who would play “Flint’s game” instead.
“Mr Merry!” said Flint, the first time this offer was made. “I see you’ve been spitting tobacco juice upon my clean decks. There’s two dozen awaiting you for that. Is not that so, Mr Bones?”
“Aye-aye, Mr Flint!” said Billy Bones, who followed Flint like a shadow. “Shall I order the gratings rigged, sir?”
George Merry stood trembling in fear of the cat, while his mates bent to their work and looked down, for it was unwise to catch Mr Flint’s eye when he was in a flogging mood.
“No,” said Flint. “Here’s Mr Merry that would escape a striped back, if he could, and I’m resolved to give him that chance.”
Billy Bones stared in amazement, and George Merry’s face lit up with hope.
“Will you play ‘Flint’s game’ instead, Mr Merry?” said Flint, tickling the green feathers of his parrot.
“Aye-aye, sir!” grinned Merry.
“Good,” said Flint. “Fetch a small cask and a belaying pin, Mr Bones, and put it down here.”
Flint had George Merry sit to one side of the cask, cross-legged, while he sat on the other, and the heavy oak pin was placed on the cask between them.
“Gather round, you good fellows,” cried Flint at the furtive men watching from afar, and soon a crowd surrounded the cask. “Now then, Merry,” said Flint, smiling, “here’s the game: I shall put my hands in my pockets, while you shall put your hands on the rim of the cask.”
Merry did as he was told and an expectant silence fell.
“Now,” said Flint, “choose your moment, Merry, and pick up the pin. If you pick it up, you go free.” Merry leered confidently at his messmates. “But,” said Flint, “if you fail, the game continues until you choose to take two dozen as originally promised.”
Merry considered this. He looked at Flint. He looked at the belaying pin, only inches from his fingers. He stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth to help himself think … and reached for the pin.
Crunch! The pin beat down on Merry’s fingertips, drawing blood from a broken fingernail. Flint had moved faster than thought. A roar of laughter came from the onlookers, Merry howled in pain, and the parrot on Flint’s shoulder screeched and struggled and flapped its wings in disapproval of the proceedings. It stamped and cursed and nipped Flint’s ear.
“Ouch!” said Flint. “What’s the matter with you?” And he shook the bird off to fly free and nestle in the maintop, chattering and muttering to itself. Meanwhile Flint smiled and replaced the pin and stuck his hands in his pockets.
“Play on, George Merry,” he said, “or take the alternative.”
Merry instantly snatched at the pin … and thud! It smashed blood out of his thumb, to more laughter from all sides. And so it went on, until Merry could stand it no more and begged for a flogging, which Flint graciously allowed.
As for the parrot, in time it came back to Flint, since no man beneath him dared feed it, and Captain Springer – drunk or sober – did not care to. It even seemed to be begging his forgiveness, for it began preening him, taking a lock of Flint’s long, black hair and gently pulling its formidable hooked bill down the length of the strand.
Ever afterwards it took flight whenever men were flogged or abused. Eventually it developed a frightening prescience of Flint’s moods, for it had grown to know him very well, such that even before Flint grinned and gave the word, it flew off because it could not abide the cruelty. The bird was innocent, but the foremast hands saw things differently. They hated the parrot. They called it Cap’n Flint, and on those fell occasions when it flew from its master’s shoulder, and no man knew what might follow, they groaned and whispered:
“Watch out, mates … the bird’s in the maintop!”
And yet there was still worse to come from Flint and all hands soon had warning of it.
The formalities of the service had to be observed before George Merry could be flogged, since only the captain could order it, and Merry was clapped in irons awaiting his captain’s judgement – which was indeed a formality but took time.
Thus Merry had to wait for his punishment, which took place during the forenoon watch of the day after he’d played Flint’s game, when all hands were mustered to witness the defaulter lashed to a grating to receive his promised two dozen. Being already in severe pain from the battering he’d had from Flint, George Merry took his flogging with much groaning and weeping, which disturbed an already unhappy crew far more than a usual flogging when a brave man clenched the leather between his teeth and refused to cry out.
Once Merry was taken down, and the decks hosed clean, eight bells were struck for the turn of the watch, when the navigating officers took their noon-day observations; for which ceremony Mr Flint demanded an absolutely silent ship. After that, the hands were sent below for their dinner, the best time of the day, with full platters and the happy communion of messes clustered at their hanging tables on the gun-deck, where pork, pease, pickles and biscuit were shovelled down throats with a generous lubrication of grog.
It was a noisy, happy time, except for George Merry and his messmates. George himself sat painfully upright, bound in the vinegar and brown paper that the surgeon declared was the best thing for a flogged back. With his broken fingers, he could eat and drink only because his messmates fed him and held his mug to his lips.
“Ah, George Merry!” said a voice from the next-door mess. “I sees you be in poor straits.”
“That I be, Mr Gunn,” said Merry, nodding politely towards Ben Gunn and his messmates, who were quartermasters, rated able to steer the ship. They were the elite of the lower deck and aboard Elizabeth they were always addressed with the honorific “Mister”.
“So,” Ben Gunn declared, “you thinks you be in pain?”
“Aye, Mr Gunn,” said Merry, and bit his lip.
“And you thinks you be hard done by?”
“That I does!”
“Then listen,” said Ben Gunn and beckoned his messmates and George Merry’s to lean closer. Ben Gunn was a serious and sober man, if a little strange. He was much respected for his skill, but was distant – even odd – in his manner, as if his mind steered a different course than that of other men.
“You’ve heard Flint tell of the Manila galleon,” he said, “and how he was done out of his share for being supernumerary?”
“Aye!” they said, and could not help but look over their shoulders in fear of Flint.
“Then heark’ee, my lads, for he don’t tell the whole tale.”
“No?” they said, barely breathing.
“No, he don’t, not the half of it, for I had it in full from a poor soul, long gone, what sailed in Spider under Flint.” Now they were transfixed and, sensing the mood, men from other messes were leaning close. “Supernumerary, he was,” said Ben Gunn, and tapped the table in emphasis, “for Anson diddled him, and he didn’t even diddle him fair! He done it – which is to say, he said he done it – ‘cos of what Flint had done aboard of Spider.”
Now the whole gun-deck was listening. They were listening, but Ben Gunn was gone off in his own thoughts.
“What was it, Mr Gunn?” someone prompted. Ben Gunn started.
“Why, it were the Incident,” he said, and lapsed into silence again.
“What Incident?” said a voice. “What’d he do, Mr Gunn?”
Ben Gunn sighed. “He meant it for a good thing,” he said, “for he were a fine officer in them days, and he meant no harm. But it got twisted into a cruel thing …” He looked around, fixing men’s eyes in emphasis. “It got twisted … and not entirely by his own fault, mark you! And it became such that, by comparison, we be living like lords aboard this ship today, and happy that we ain’t in Spider.”
“Tell on, Ben Gunn!” said his messmates, looking at one another, for even they’d not heard this before.
“It were known as the Incident, for that’s how Anson named it when he used it as an excuse to do Flint out of his share.” He looked round again. “Flint were betrayed, shipmates. Anson betrayed him, and Flint were turned by that betrayal, for he worshipped Anson.”
“So what happened, Ben Gunn?”
Ben Gunn struggled within himself, searching in his limited store of words for the things he would have to say. These were not things that decent sailormen talked about. The task was dreadful hard for Ben Gunn, and the whole deck waited in silence for him to speak.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_239dd7ff-d3ea-54c4-baaa-3b360b40836c)
21st May 1745 Aboard Victory The Indian Ocean
John Silver and Captain Nathan England walked the quarterdeck side by side, with every other man deferring and keeping clear of their private conversation. The weather was hot and good. The ship sailed easily, the guns were secured, and most of the men idling.
“Articles, John! Articles is what makes us what we are.”
“Which is pirates,” said Silver.
“No!” said England. “If I’m a pirate, then Drake was a pirate, and Hawkins and Raleigh too, and all the rest of ‘em that did what I do. And didn’t they come home to knighthoods and estates?”
“But the law – King George’s law – will hang us if they catch us.”
“Which they won’t.”
“But they would.”
“God bless your soul, John! And wouldn’t Queen Bess’ve hanged Drake, if she’d caught him at the wrong time?
She’d’ve done it to please the King of Spain! She did what she had to, and so do I.”
“But …” said Silver.
“JOHN!” yelled England, loud enough to shake the t’gallant masts, and all hands turned to look. England’s face reddened with anger. “Avast, you swabs!” he cried. “Look to your duties!” And every man turned away and found something to be busy with. They did as they were told, without resentment and of their own free will.
“There!” said England. “D’you see that? Was that pirates, or free companions?” He waved a hand at the crew. “That’s real discipline, John. The discipline of free men. That’s articles.”
“Bah!” said Silver.
“God damn you, you ignorant bugger!” said England, biting down on his temper. Then, “Ah!” he said, as an idea struck him. “Come along o’ me, John Silver, and I’ll show you something, by God I will!”
England stamped off, slid down a companionway, and led the way below decks to the great cabin, right at the stern of the ship. Unlike some, England used his cabin not for display but as a place of work, where he could bring together his officers when he needed to make plans. There was a big table and some chairs, and a profusion of cupboards and drawers and pigeonholes for the storage of charts and other papers.
“Secure that hatchway!” said England, pointing at the door. “Not that I don’t trust the hands, but some things are best kept out of temptation’s way.” Then he fumbled for a key, unlocked a cupboard and pointed to the big, black ledger that lay inside.
“Book of Articles!” he said with reverence. “The very same in which you signed your name. And here beside it is the flag beneath which we buries the dead.” He laid a hand on the black cloth. “And then there’s this!” He took out a snuff box. It was nothing special. It wasn’t gilt or enamelled. Not the sort of thing that would have graced a gentleman’s waistcoat. It was a large, plain box, neatly carpentered from some hard, black, African wood.
“Now you just look at this, my boy, and you tell me if that was the work of bloody pirates!” He held out the box. Silver took it.
“Well?” said Silver.
“Well, open the bugger!” said England. Silver fumbled for the catch, and sprung the box open. He looked inside and saw nothing … just two round pieces of paper, each about an inch across, each faintly dirtied with charcoal that had long since rubbed off.
“Aye!” said England, seeing Silver’s expression. “Not much to look at now, are they? But each one of them got rid of a captain. By one of ‘em Davies was removed by Latour, and by the other Latour was removed by myself.” Silver took out one of the papers. He turned it over. The single word Deposed was written on the fresh side. The same word was on the other paper.
“What are these?” said Silver.
“The black spot, my son,” said England. “This is the means whereby the lower deck gets rid of a captain it doesn’t like.”
“The black spot?” Silver said, grinning. “Sounds like boys at play!”
“Huh!” said England. “You just hope you never see one handed to you! For it’s a summons from the crew to stand before them and be judged. No man may harm one who gives him the black spot, nor stand in his way as he seeks to deliver it. No man may even lay a hand on one who is found in the act of making a black spot. And as for him to whom they deliver it – why, he must stand judgement by vote of the whole crew, be he even the captain himself.”
England reached out and took the papers. He held them up one at a time before Silver’s eyes.
“This one was for Captain Danny Davies who had greedy fingers for other men’s shares. Him they hanged from the yardarm. And this one was for Captain Frenchy Latour, that brought bad luck upon us one time too many! Him we stripped bollock-naked and heaved over the side to see if he could swim to Jamaica from ten miles offshore.”
“Aye,” said Silver, “but what does it mean?”
“It means, my son, that we sail under the rule of law on board of this ship. We sail under the rule of law every inch and ounce as much as if we were on board of a ship of King George of England, or King Louis of France, or King Philip of Spain! Their laws is all different, ain’t they? And ours is too, but it is law! It is articles! And that’s why we ain’t pirates!”
He spoke with such passion and such obvious sincerity that Silver nodded. He’d now heard these same arguments repeated so many times that he was losing the will to fight them; and in any case, nobody likes to think the worst of himself, so even the cleverest man will accept a weak case if it suits his self-esteem to do so.
“Now then,” said England, “no more o’ this, for it ain’t why I sent for you.” He stared at Silver thoughtfully. “You’re a good man, John Silver, and the crew like you. You know what they call you?”
Silver grinned. “Aye!” he said.
“Well?” said England. “Out with it!”
“Long John,” said Silver.
“Aye! Long John Silver, ‘cos you’re the tallest man among us, and one o’ the best. You’re a seaman to the bone, and there’s not a man here that would dare to fight you. You’re a man that others will follow.” Silver shrugged, England laughed. “It’s true,” said England. “So here’s the case, Long John Silver. I have it in mind to make an officer of you on board of this ship. You have the natural gift of command, and more than that you know your letters and your numbers, which is as rare among seamen as balls on a eunuch! I shall rate you as third mate and start your education this very day.” He clapped Silver on the shoulder. “What say you, Long John?”
“Thank you, Cap’n,” said Silver, beaming with pleasure and raising a hand to his hat in salute.
“Good!” said England. “So what do you know already? Can you steer a course?”
“Aye!” said Silver, confidently.
“Then show me,” said England. “We’ll go this instant to the ship’s wheel!” He smiled and led the way.
“Cap’n!” said the first mate, who was standing by the helmsman.
“Cap’n!” said the helmsman.
“Let Mr Silver take a turn,” said England. “The course is north by northwest, Mr Silver, and keep her as close to the wind as she’ll bear.”
The helmsman waited till Silver had taken a firm hold on the other side of the big wheel with its out-jutting handles, and when Silver nodded, he stood back and left the ship to Silver’s hand, with England and the first mate looking on.
It was easy. Silver had done this a hundred times before on other ships. He was a fine steersman, keeping careful watch on the sails, and holding the ship true to her course with minimal pressure on the wheel. The task is harder than it seems and few men could have done it better. England grinned. The mate grinned, and word ran round the ship that Long John was at the helm.
“Would you change the set of her sails, Mr Silver?” asked England, nudging the mate.
“I’d shake a reef out of the fore topsail, Cap’n,” said Silver. “She’ll bear it, and she’ll steer all the easier.” And when this was done, and Victory did indeed answer the helm more sweetly, there was an actual cheer from the crew, now eagerly looking on.
“Well enough,” said England. “Stand down, Mr Silver, and we’ll look at the transit board, and you shall tell me its purpose aboard ship and how it is kept.” Again, Silver smiled. He waited till the helmsman had control of the wheel, then stepped forward to the binnacle housing the compass, and picked up a wooden board hanging on a hook. It had a series of holes drilled in it, radiating out from the centre in the form of a compass rose. There were a number of pegs to go in the holes, each peg attached to the board by a thin line.
“Well, Cap’n,” said Silver, “every quarter-hour by the sand-glass, the log is hove at the stern to find the speed of her through the water.”
“Aye,” said England. “Let’s say the log’s been heaved, and her speed is five knots …”
“So,” said Silver, “that’s five knots for a quarter-hour, north by northwest.” And he set a peg in the board accordingly, and looked at England. “For that is the purpose of the board, Cap’n: to keep a reckoning of her course and speed, every quarter-hour, throughout the watch.”
“Splendid!” said England. “And what happens at the end of the watch?”
“Why,” said Silver, “the officer of the watch –” he instinctively touched his hat to the mate – “he takes the board and marks out how she’s run – her course and speed – during the watch.” He paused for he was now entering unknown waters. “He marks it out on the chart, Cap’n …” Silver blinked. “Which is all I knows o’ the matter.” His smile faded a little.
“We’ll come to that!” said England confidently. “But first, here’s the end of the forenoon watch about to be struck …”
Clang-clang! Clang-clang! Clang-clang! Clang-clang! The bell sounded from its little temple at the break of the fo’c’sle.
“Eight bells! Change the watch!” yelled the boatswain, and there was a rumble of bare feet on the boards as the hands of the starboard watch ran to relieve the larboard watch, who were now standing down. They doubled to it like men-o’-warsmen because Captain England would have it no other way. At the same time England’s servant came up from below with a big triangular wooden case. He opened it and presented it to England.
“Cap’n,” he said respectfully, and England took out a complex ebony instrument with brass scales, a miniature telescope, and lenses, filters and other mysterious appendages besides.
“This is a quadrant, Long John,” said England. “For this first time, I shall instruct you in its use, but afterwards, the second mate shall be your teacher.”
He nodded at the second mate, who touched his hat respectfully before taking his own quadrant out of its case and standing beside the first mate, who already had his quadrant ready.
“ ‘Tis noon,” said England. “The ship’s day begins at noon, each day, and at that time we …” England paused. “Long John?” he said. “What is it?”
Silver was looking at the quadrant. It unsettled him. It worried him. He’d seen officers using quadrants and the like ever since he first went to sea. But he’d never before been asked to use one, and he stared in morbid dread at the unfathomable complexity of the thing. Some men are disturbed by heights, some by spiders or snakes. Some cannot bear to be enclosed in a small space. Long John was weighed down by the thought of having to swallow such an appalling meal of abstract thinking, which was so different from the simple, physical seamanship that he’d learned by hard labour.
“No matter, Cap’n,” he said. “Show me the workings of her.” Long John was no coward. So he took the quadrant when England offered it, and he paid his best attention to the explanations, so carefully given, and he did his best to ask questions.
But it was no good. The worry turned to fear: fear of being exposed as an incompetent before England and the crew. Later, in England’s cabin, when the captain tried to explain latitude and longitude and how a ship might find its way across the empty oceans, it was even worse. Long John tried to the very utmost of his ability, but the bearings and degrees and minutes had no meaning to him. Instead, his head felt thick and hot, a band of pain clamped round his brow, and his eyes watered like a blubbering child’s. Finally, as England waved a pair of elegant brass dividers with blue-steel needle-points, trying to explain dead reckoning, Long John Silver swayed and stumbled with nausea, and had to be helped into a chair by a dumbfounded Nathan England.
“What is it, John?” he said. “Have you got the ague? Is it some damned fever? What is it, shipmate?”
“Can’t do it, Cap’n,” said Silver. “Show me any other task. Let me dive for gold on the sea bed. Let me lead boarders into a three-decker’s broadside. Anything.”
“What d’you mean, lad?” said England, more concerned than he’d realised. England had no son. He had no family at all. He’d taken powerfully to John Silver and it had become England’s hope and pleasure to see the younger man advanced in his profession.
“Can’t do it, Cap’n,” Silver repeated. “Not with charts an’ all. Please don’t ask me.”
“Nonsense!” said England. “Everyone thinks they can’t do it at first. We shall persevere.”
And so they did. Neither man was one to give up easily. They persevered for weeks. Sometimes Long John even thought he was getting a grasp on the thing. But the best he ever achieved was like the performance of a clumsy musician who sounds one plodding note after another, to the dismay of those around him, and to his own despair, recognising his failure.
“How can it be, John?” said England at last. “I’ve seen you calculate the value of a ship’s cargo down to the penny – and that done in your head without pencil and paper. How can you manage that, yet not master this piece of glass and wood?” He held up a quadrant.
“Cargoes is things I can touch,” said Silver. “But that bloody thing …” he stared hopelessly at the instrument “… that’s black magic!”
England sighed. “It’s no good, is it, shipmate?”
“No,” said Long John. “And happy will I be to try this no more!”
“So be it,” said England. “I shall rate you as an officer, nonetheless: whether it be coxswain, master-at-arms or something of my own invention, for I still say that men follow where you lead. But the fact of it is, John Silver, that only a gentleman and a navigator may command a ship, and I fear you will never be one.”
Chapter 4 (#ulink_0ecbe448-b438-5c06-ad4a-7b1a25705d2c)
4th January 1749 Aboard HMS Elizabeth The Caribbean
Flint crept silently down a companionway, drawn by the unnatural silence on the dinnertime gun-deck, which should have been rattling and echoing with noise. The silence could only mean some punishable insubordination and it was his delight to catch them at it. He was enjoying the anticipation of a hunter who takes his prey unawares, especially when at last he stepped through a hatchway and caught sight of the whole crew gaping at Ben Gunn, their stupid mouths hanging open, still speckled with food and dripping with grog.
This was the delicious moment. The moment just before the trap was sprung, when a word from him would jump the swabs out of their skins. Prolonging the pleasure, he nuzzled his parrot and held his hand over its beak to keep silence. Flint wondered what the solemn and miserable Ben Gunn might have to say that could so captivate them.
Had he been only a little more patient he would have found out; and then he too would have been captivated. He would have been captivated, bound in chains and sunk beyond soundings in the limitless depth of interest in what Ben Gunn was about to reveal … but he couldn’t contain himself. The anticipation of the moment was too exquisite.
“What’s this?” he boomed. “Is there disaffection among the hands? Is there wickedness in the wind?”
A hundred men leapt in terror as the fear of hell took their hearts with an icy claw, for they’d spun round to see Flint, smooth and shining, neat and suave, with his parrot on his shoulder. He gazed upon the sea of terror and shook with laughter, tickled beyond bearing by their comical faces. His parrot flapped and cackled, he snapped his fingers and stamped his foot in glee. Then he walked up and down between the mess tables, making jokes and clapping men on the shoulder in merriment. The coin of Flint’s character had spun and come up bright, and now he worked black magic with his charm and his wit, and there wasn’t a man present who could help but like him, and smile in admiration of him.
Afterwards, though, nobody could ever persuade Ben Gunn to finish his story, and the mystery of an unspeakable past hung about Flint and made them fear him more than ever.
And all the while Springer watched in dull, uncomprehending hatred. He was sixty-two years old. He’d been at sea fifty years. He’d learned his trade in King Billy’s time, when precious gentlemen despised the service, and he knew no other way than a rough way. He’d kicked arses and knocked men down all his life, and he believed flogging was the only way to keep idle seamen to their duties. What’s more, Elizabeth under Flint’s hand was the tightest ship Springer had ever known. And yet … there was something about the way Lieutenant Flint went about his duties that upset Springer, and it nagged at him that he couldn’t make out what it was.
The sorry truth was that Springer had not the wit to distinguish the ruthless, straight discipline that he practised himself – and which seamen respected – from the sadism inflicted upon them by Flint. So Springer avoided Flint and spent many hours in his cabin, reading and re-reading Commodore Phillips’s orders and studying the rough map that Phillips had got from the hands of the dying Portugee. Phillips’s eyes had blazed over the island, thinking it would be another Jamaica: a sugar island to coin money. Springer hoped Phillips was right, and he hoped he might get his hands on a little of the money.
Then he’d roar for his servant to bring a bottle, and he’d damn the lure of Flint’s plan, which he knew might bring a quick return, whereas any benefit from the island was far distant and entirely dependent on the goodwill of the commodore, whose arse was as tight as a Scotchman’s purse.
In fact, Springer need not have worried about Phillips’s greed, because the commodore would soon be incapable of enjoying that deadly sin. In a matter of weeks, a violent storm would run Phillips’s squadron on to a reef off Morant Point, Jamaica, with the loss of over a thousand men. This catastrophe would leave all knowledge of the island of São Bartolomeo exclusively in Springer’s command, to the degree that even the name São Bartolomeo would never be heard again.
What Springer should have worried about was the temper of his crew under Flint, whose reign over the lower deck was unpredictable in the extreme. On the positive side, Flint had some excellent qualities. He knew the name of every man on board, and all their characters and peculiarities. He was a superb seaman and navigator, and his exacting standards were evident in the gleaming brass and snow-white decks. Above all, men leapt to his orders like lightning.
Many of the crew, led by Billy Bones, would have followed Flint into the cannon’s mouth. Billy Bones was a big, plain, simple man with a dog’s need for a master. He had enough education to find his latitude and plot his course. He had enough – plenty enough and more – of muscles to knock down any man he didn’t like. Beyond that, he had the wit to recognise Flint’s talents, and to envy the swaggering style and bearing of the man – a style and bearing which shone so brightly compared with his own, with his leathery face, his knotted hands and his tarred pigtail.
But Billy Bones saw no further and no deeper, and certainly acknowledged no fault in Flint. This was partly because he didn’t want to: he’d found his idol and that was that. But there was more. There was fear. There was a great fear that Billy Bones bowed down to and which made his idol all the greater.
With Flint, everything hinged on fear. At a deep and instinctive level, all men look at each other on first meeting to assess who’d prevail in a fight, but no man had ever looked into Flint’s eyes without blinking, for there was something about Flint that was manic and unholy, something best left unchallenged. Something that resonated with the horrors hinted at by Ben Gunn.
In some officers, this could have been a strength: an instant source of discipline. But in Flint’s case it was an iron lid screwed down on a boiling pot. As his cruelties grew steadily worse and resentment festered among the men, Captain Springer, who could not bear what Flint was doing, stayed mostly below decks, thereby removing the restraint his presence would have had on Flint’s behaviour. It was a situation that could not last. The lid must eventually blow off the pot.
But Phillips’s mysterious island came first. Having run up the Trades to get wind of the island, according to the rough chart, Elizabeth ran south-southwest and made a commendable landfall. Springer and Flint (and even Billy Bones, with deep-furrowed brow and tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth) had completed a most effective piece of navigation.
The hail of “Land ho!” from the masthead brought a surge of excitement, and the hands ran to the fo’c’sle and into the foremast shrouds to see. Even Springer came up on deck, bringing his chart. Flint raised his hat and smiled. All hands cheered, and for a moment everyone was happy.
“The anchorage is to the northeast, Mr Flint,” said Springer, offering Flint his first sight of the dead Portugee’s map.
Flint studied the crude sketch and sneered.
“Pah!” he said. “Damn near useless. No soundings, no bearings. We shall have to go in like an old maid in a dark bedroom.”
“Not at all, Mr Flint,” said Springer. He’d become protective of the old chart and, besides, he hated Flint. “This is a good, safe anchorage, and we have no need to fear.”
“Hmm,” said Flint, spotting the bleary-eyed look on Springer’s face and wondering how much drink he’d got down him. “We’d be as well to sway out the launch, though, and sound ahead as we go, don’t you think, Captain?”
“Aye-aye, sir!” said Billy Bones, at Flint’s elbow, and he turned to give the order. Springer’s face filled with indignation.
“Belay that!” he cried. “Mr Bones, keep your bloody trap shut, you insolent sod! I’m master here and I shall con this ship safe to her anchorage, and there won’t be no need for bloody boats!”
Flint blinked in amazement and Billy Bones’s jaw dropped.
“But –” said Bones.
“Shut your mouth, you mutinous bastard, and attend to getting the guns run out!” said Springer, and turned to his bulldog. “Sergeant Dawson,” he cried, “muster your men! I’ll have an armed landing party ready against any eventualities.” Springer turned to Flint and Bones: “Against all eventualities!”
Some hours later, the big ship worked round the northernmost tip of the island, keeping well out to sea, for vast rollers thundered ashore at every point, throwing up clouds of spray off huge rocks where hundreds of black beasts, glistening like monstrous slugs, cavorted and displayed themselves in the angry waters. Those who’d seen the like before named them for their mates as “sea lions”.
A line of great hills, one a small mountain, rose up from the island, and trees of every kind covered the land. Huge pines towered above the rest, and sea-birds swooped and rose over all. There was some muttering that this was too small an island to be another Jamaica, but for all that the spirits of the crew lifted as it rose from the sea and revealed its secrets.
“There!” said Springer. “See the anchorage, Mr Flint? Good enough for a first-rate, say I!”
Flint looked through his glass and nodded.
“Room enough, Captain,” he said. “But I’d still like to know what depth of water was under my keel as I went in.” Having already heard Springer’s views on the matter, Flint paused and chose his words with utmost care, before adding, “Could we not send the launch ahead, sir, sounding as she goes, just to be sure?”
“Nonsense!” said Springer, so poisoned with hatred for Flint that he would deny his own half-century of experience in order to prove the man wrong. He was damned if he would pay attention to anything Flint said. Not if the sod fell on his knees and begged.
“Strike the courses and reef the topsails,” said Springer loudly. “And I’ll slide her in as pretty as poke up a tart’s arse!”
He glared at all around him defying any of them to say otherwise, and men sniffed and muttered and went about their business, while Flint shook his head and turned away. Springer was captain and Springer had his way.
The eastern side of the island was more sheltered and less battered by the waves. The anchorage opened between low cliffs like a softer, southern version of the fjords of Norway. Inside, it widened somewhat and ran for a couple of miles to a sandy, white-and-yellow shore, with thick undergrowth and green-top trees bent over the beach. Behind that, the land rose fast and sharp to high ground on all sides. It was indeed a fine anchorage, fit for a squadron of the line.
In a ship steered by a whipstaff, the helmsman – Ben Gunn on this occasion – wielded the big, vertical lever from beneath the quarterdeck, and looked out through a scuttle, giving him a view of the sails and the sky. He had a compass to steer a course by, but could see nothing else. Consequently, when coming into an anchorage, he relied entirely on the orders of his officers. Thus Springer stood by the scuttle and Ben Gunn awaited his commands.
Meanwhile, the marines remained ready to defend the ship, the gun crews stood by their pieces; the boatswain’s crew assembled at the cathead to cast off the ring-stopper and let go the anchor; the few idlers aboard got themselves where the best view was to be had, and all hands enjoyed the thrill of expectation that comes from exploring a new land. There might be gold, silver, tigers, unicorns, drink, savages … women!
The island stretched out its arms and folded them in, and waited dark and mysterious. The waters were calm, the wind was fair, the ship glided deeper and deeper into the anchorage. She came in bold and confident at a cracking pace, so that Captain Springer might show Lieutenant Flint how to come to anchor like a seaman, and not a lubberly fop … And just at the very second Springer was drawing breath to give the order to drop anchor, eight hundred tons of timber, spars, rigging, iron, brass, biscuit, salt-pork, gunpowder, canvas and men came to a full and shocking stop as the Elizabeth ran judderingly aground.
Two men fell out of the rigging into water too shallow to cover their knees. The fore topmast snapped and came down in ruin. Flint stamped his foot in disgust, the boatswain swore, everyone else looked at his mates and sneered, and Captain Daniel Springer knew himself to be a bloody fool.
Chapter 5 (#ulink_1695ddf7-8971-596a-b594-6a73f662e139)
1st June 1752 Savannah, Georgia
The news of Flint’s arrival ran through Savannah in minutes, and every soul – man or beast – that was not physically chained down, ran to the riverside to see Flint’s ships work slowly up river, through muddy waters that ran some forty feet below. Soon the best part of a thousand people lined the banks, shouting, calling, waving and pointing out the sights to one another. There were redcoats, slaves, children, merchants, dogs, whores, seamen and even a few Indians, all shoving and jostling for a place. Flint’s men were renowned as big spenders and their arrival would benefit the whole community.
Down on the river, Captain Flint himself strutted his quarterdeck in a fine new suit of clothes, and his first mate Billy Bones bawled and roared and drove the crew to their duties as the three ships came to anchor, flying British colours out of respect to His Majesty King George II. Walrus, Flint’s own ship, was the biggest of them, followed by the brigantine Chapel Yvonne out of Le Havre, and the scow Erna van
Rijp out of Amsterdam. Both the latter showed signs of damage to their masts and rigging: damage temporarily repaired for a short voyage.
Up on the river bank, Mr Charles Neal, a stocky, respectably dressed man, sweated in the oppressive heat, and shoved as close to the edge as he dared to catch Flint’s eye. At once, Flint swept off his hat and bowed low.
“Ah,” said Neal, and raised his own hat. He sucked his teeth and hissed in irritation at the damage to the brigantine’s mainmast. He could see that he would have to replace it before the vessel undertook a proper voyage. He shook his head and wondered if the likes of Flint ever considered the consequences (that is to say, the cost) of damaging so expensive an item as the mainmast of a ship. He supposed not.
“Boy!” he said, summoning the slave who followed him about with a big parasol to keep off the sun. “Best speed now! Run back to the liquor shop. Tell Selena to get out all the best. Every table and chair in the house, and all the girls washed and cleaned. Tell her I’ll be along later with Captain Flint.”
Neal thought of Selena. She would do the job. She was his best girl. For that matter, she was his best man – he laughed at his little joke. She was the only one he could trust. The best of all his people, and she’d been with him only thirteen months, and even she didn’t know how much he now relied on her. It was his good fortune that she had come to Savannah. But then, where else could she have gone? This squalid colonial outpost on the banks of the Savannah River was the only place where she could hide.
The town was no place for a man like Charley Neal, who’d been destined for the Inns of Court (or at least their Dublin equivalent) until his temper and fists intervened. Savannah sweltered and stank. It festered with diseases. Its houses were hovels of rough-hewn timber shared by men, hogs, horses and slaves, all living in a constant shadow of danger from the Indians in the surrounding forests.
Mother of God, thought Neal, it’s worse than a bog-house shit-hole!
But then he shrugged and reflected that here, at least, he did not need to watch his back as he would have done in Ireland. Here, almost everyone was welcome: English, Irish, Scots, Swiss and Germans – even dissenters and Jews – and all were left alone, and none pursued for little sins in past lands. Little sins like the mashing and smashing of a holy Jesuit Father who’d tried to take an unholy interest in one of his pupils.
Only Spaniards were banned outright from Savannah since their king had his own ideas about who owned Georgia and who did not. Spaniards were banned and Catholics very unwelcome, so Cormac O’Neil had trimmed his name slightly, and risked his soul considerably, by affecting the protestant religion. And now, Charley Neal consoled himself that Charles was not the most protestant of English royal Christian names, and hoped that God might forgive him in the end.
More to the point, Savannah was teeming with growth. It was close enough to the Caribbean sugar islands to trade with them – and there were other opportunities too. Very profitable ones, since it was acknowledged that, in Savannah, King George’s law ran only on Sundays. And in the absence of law, business worked excellently on trust. Thus Neal’s dealings with the likes of Captain Flint were conducted on that basis. Flint trusted Neal to receive the ships he brought in and to turn them into cash, while Neal trusted Flint to cut his throat if ever he attempted deceit.
Half an hour later, a roaring crowd of townsfolk arrived at Neal’s liquor shop, following at a respectful distance behind Flint, who was arm-in-arm with Charley Neal himself. The liquor shop was a long, dark timber shed with seating for hundreds on low stools arranged around long tables, with fresh sand and sawdust on the earth floor. There were storerooms attached for the drink, and a cook-house to provide food. At one end stood a row of jugs and barrels from which the drink was served. Here stood Selena in front of a row of girls, mostly black, waiting like gunners at their pieces before battle was joined. Neal looked at Selena as he entered and nodded in approval.
Their eyes met and she nodded solemnly, and without smiling, the little madam, as if he didn’t know all about her.
In fact, he did know all about her. She was a runaway. Worse, she’d committed murder. Selena had turned up on his doorstep with a sack made of bedlinen, crammed with gold and silver items she’d stolen from her master’s “special house”. She had money too, doubtless taken off his dead body when she’d finished shoving a knife in him, or shooting him, or bidding farewell to him by whatever means a slender girl finds to do away with a fourteen stone man. And then she’d got as far as Savannah!
Neal shook his head in wonder. How did a sixteen-year-old manage that? She’d run in the night, with no plan and nowhere to go in all this wild land with its scalping, cannibalistic savages. No doubt she’d bribed and paid her way, either with money or that other currency that God gave women for the temptation of men. That would have been easy enough. She was uncommonly shapely and her face was pretty as a doll’s.
“Ah well!” he said. He was over sixty and not greatly troubled by these things any longer. His passions focused on his strongbox. So he’d taken her into his household, claimed an honest quantity of her money, and made her his own legal property, safely secured with all necessary papers and her life’s history washed clean of all stain.
And now she was amassing her own small pile of gold, running the liquor shop – and running it well. As Charley Neal had anticipated, everything was ready to receive his guests. A host of horn tankards stood deployed like a regiment on parade. Corks were drawn and barrels tapped. The cook was blowing up the ashes of her fire while her helpers sliced the pork and slit the fish, and the shutters of the long windows were thrown open for the air, with shades of sail-cloth braced outside to keep off the sun. In one corner, the house band of musicians were already playing. There were two fiddlers, three pipers, a horn-blower and a mulatto drummer, groaning, twanging and battering away at a pace to set the pulses racing.
Thus entered Flint and Neal, followed by Billy Bones in the company of Mrs Polly Porter, owner of the biggest breasts in Savannah, who never laid down for less than gentlemen or those in possession of a Spanish Dollar. Then came Flint’s officers, his men, and all the lesser folk, until the house was filled to the very limit of its capacity to receive them.
It was instant bedlam. Selena and her girls were run off their feet, dealing with the wants of the mob and keeping eager hands out from under their skirts. Food and drink poured down throats, cash poured into the strongbox. Songs were called for, and roared out to shake the walls. Those who felt capable got up and danced. Men piddled in corners, fights flared and died, hogs scavenged scraps, and here and there a copulation beneath a table caused the pots to shudder above, while folk peered below the planks and urged the amorous couple to go to it.
Selena herself served Neal and Flint.
“Selena!” said Neal, taking his rum punch.
“Mr Neal!” she said, and “Sir!” to Flint, who was handsome, with a most beautiful smile and gorgeous clothes. He was by far the finest man she’d ever seen.
“My dear,” said Flint, looking her over.
Ah ha! thought Charley Neal, spotting advantage. “Be nice to the captain,” he mouthed at Selena. But Selena had other work to do, so this duty passed for the moment.
Meanwhile Selena cast an eye over Flint and his crew – and was fascinated by what she saw. She was surprised at how young they were. Aside from some of the officers, they seemed mostly in their early twenties. They were tanned like old leather, and dressed in their best shore-going rig: white ducks, buckled shoes, coloured shirts and stockings, and silk handkerchiefs bound round the skull. They were tattooed and pierced with gold earrings, and each man bore enough arms to start a small war.
But what marked them out from common seamen even more than the pistols and blades was the fact that every man had the authentic look of trouble about him. Savannah was no place for weaklings, but even by Savannah standards, Flint’s “Chickens” stood out as hard cases. Fortunately, today they were in the best of spirits.
When, after some hours, they managed to drink themselves unconscious and things became quiet again, Flint and Neal withdrew to Neal’s house to discuss business, leaving Selena and her crew to clear up the mess. She was in the storeroom, sorting out full bottles from empties, when a sound made her turn around. Selena jumped when she saw the man. This wasn’t one of the drunken swine from the main room, risen on his hind legs to search for more drink; he was stone-cold sober and his clothes were fresh. She’d not seen him before. And yet she already knew him. Or at least she’d heard of him. Flint and his men were the talk of Savannah, and she’d heard plenty about them from Charley Neal, whose business it was to know what went on among his dangerous clients. These men could have one leader one day, and another on the next. Neal had to be ready for such changes and did his best to keep up with the various plots and rivalries.
So Selena already knew quite a lot – by reputation – about the man who’d just come in. He was very tall, with yellow hair, long limbs and large hands. His face was wide and his eyes large and intelligent. He was remarkably neat and clean, and everything in his manner and bearing told her that here was a man quite out of the ordinary. He looked down into her eyes and smiled.
“John Silver at your service, ma’am!” he announced, and bowed like a courtier, sweeping off his hat.
“Long John!” she said. “You’re the one they call ‘Long John’.”
He smiled again, as if pleased with her.
“The very same, ma’am,” said he. “An’ a smart little thing you are an’ all, to spy me out so quick. Smart as paint, you are, I saw it the instant I clapped eyes on you.” He cocked his head on one side in surprise. “And gifted with the speech of a lady, too! Now I wonder how that might be?”
Selena shrugged off this potentially dangerous question and threw back one of her own.
“Long John Silver,” she said, “the one that Captain Flint is afraid of?”
“What?” said Silver, surprised. “And where should a pretty little thing like yourself hear such wicked lies?”
“From the trash in there,” she said, glancing towards the big room with its stupefied inhabitants. “They say you were great friends once, but he’s afraid of you now.”
“Ah, well, there we have it,” he said, nodding wisely as if perceiving some happy explanation of what had seemed like bad news. “ ‘Tis clear that some of the poor lads …” he ticked off names on his fingers: “George Merry, Mad Pew, Black Dog and some others …” He frowned and shook his head like a parson reflecting on favourite pupils who can never quite get the catechism right. “And even Mr Billy Bones himself … ‘Tis plain that some o’ my shipmates just cannot keep a hitch on their jawing tackle, once the first bottle has gone down.”
But then his smile came back and he reached out a long arm and patted Selena’s bare shoulder in avuncular fashion.
“So there y’are, my dear. Weren’t no cause to believe none o’ them. Not at all.”
Selena frowned in her turn and shook off his hand. She didn’t follow the logic of his argument, nor really what he was talking about.
“But whilst we’re on this tack,” said he, genuinely curious, “just what were those lubbers a-saying about old Long John? And why in heaven’s name should Joe Flint be afeared o’ me?”
“Because you want to take the ship from him,” she said, repeating what she’d heard from a score of drunken lips.
“Shiver me timbers!” said Long John, staggering back with every convincing show of horror and amazement. “Me heart fair bleeds to hear of such wickedness from so sweet a child as yourself.” He grinned and shook his head. As far as Long John Silver was concerned, there was no captain other than Flint, whatever might be the gossip on the lower deck, and whatever Flint’s little weaknesses.
But then Silver moved a pace closer and ran his hand lightly down her cheek. She twitched away as she realised that he only wanted what all the others wanted. She tried to slip by him, but he was too quick and kept between her and the door.
“I can prove my loyalty to the dear captain,” he said, manoeuvring her into a corner, “for if I had wanted the ship, then … why, I’d have took her!” He seized Selena’s wrists and pulled her close. “For I’m a man as takes what he wants, my dear.”
“But you can’t!” she said, once more quoting from the drunken gossip of Flint’s men. “Because you can’t set a course, not with charts and quadrants and dividers.”
Silver’s face worked horribly as Selena’s words stuck a red-hot iron right into his most tender, most shameful, and most agonising weakness.
“Can’t I?” he snapped.
“No!” said she. “You can’t, because it’s gentleman’s work, which Captain Flint can do because he is a gentleman!”
“Flint?” he choked. “Flint … is … a … gentleman?”
“Yes,” she said. But he did not reply. The spasm of laughter was so uncontrollable that he could barely breathe, let alone speak.
Chapter 6 (#ulink_aede7ccf-0073-546c-b070-518f1237bc98)
30th January 1749 Aboard HMS Elizabeth The island
With the entire crew looking at him in judgement, and the ship fast aground in proof of his guilt, Captain Springer reddened and seethed and trembled.
Springer was not a clever man nor a gifted one, nor even one with any particular aptitude for his career. He’d only gone to sea in the first place because his seafaring father had sent him, and he’d learned his seamanship through hard work and hard knocks.
He had managed, through a certain dogged bravery, to win promotion in action. He was well aware that he was lucky to have risen as far as he had, and that his skills were few: he knew how to stand the enemy’s fire and how to keep the lower deck to its duties; he knew how to run down his latitude to a destination … and that was it. He hadn’t the cleverness of Flint, and nowhere near his skill as a navigator, and now he felt himself the victim of some plot of Flint’s. Well, he was having none of it. It weren’t his fault, so it had to be someone else’s.
“You bloody lubbers!” he roared at everyone in general. “You whore-son, bastard, nincompoop parcel of landsmen …”
He raved and swore, ignoring the cries of the men who’d been thrown overboard by the impact of the ship’s running aground. It was lucky for them they were in such shallow water or they’d have surely drowned. He damned and blasphemed and blasted and cursed, and comprehensively lost the respect of his people in a rage of temper that every one of them knew ought rightfully be directed at himself.
“Sergeant Dawson,” he screamed, at last and inevitably, “rouse me out that sod of a helmsman and I’ll see the backbone of him at the gratings before five minutes is out. And all the lookouts too, and all the shit-heads that went overside … and … and …”
He cast about in anger and every man wisely dropped his eyes, though one was too slow, “And that sod there!” he cried. “Him as dares to look his lawful captain in the eye in that insolent manner!”
This was a desperately bad course to steer.
For one thing, Springer was ignoring the accustomed usages of ship’s discipline that required the boatswain and his mates to administer discipline. To employ the marines was an affront to every seaman aboard, as well as being a naked display of direct rule by musket and bayonet. Even worse was Springer’s singling out Ben Gunn the helmsman – a man so respected by the entire ship’s company that it would be deemed a severe insult to the lower deck to flog him, unless his dereliction of duty was severe and was obvious to all hands, whereas in this case it was physically impossible for Ben Gunn, in his station at the whipstaff, even to have seen what hazards the ship might be running on to.
What Springer was doing was bad and despicably stupid.
But one after another the five men were stripped, triced up and given two dozen – including Ben Gunn, despite growls of anger from the crew, to which Springer responded by ordering his marines to level their muskets at the hands. This was utter madness, and even the marines were groaning as the cat fell, stroke after stroke, on Ben Gunn’s skinny back. When he was taken down, the poor creature was no longer the same man, for his pride was broken and his mind was wounded far worse than his body.
To say, therefore, that Elizabeth was an unhappy ship would be a very masterpiece of understatement. The mood of the ship’s people was even worse than it had been under Flint; then, at least there had been moments of laughter. Everything that later happened on the island stemmed directly from Captain Springer’s staggering failure of leadership. An explosion was now inevitable. But for a few weeks the disease festered under the skin and no eruptions were visible. This was thanks to the urgent need for action to get the ship afloat again.
First, Springer tried to warp her off. In theory this was a simple task which involved passing a hawser ashore to be made fast to a strongpoint such as a mighty tree. The hawser would then be bent to the capstan and all hands would heave the capstan bars around to haul the ship off the sandbank.
In practice, the effort failed. Despite the disciplined effort of teams of men passing the line ashore in the launch, sweltering their way along the shoreline to find a suitable tree, and despite the combined strength of every man aboard, pushing their hearts out on the capstan bars, Elizabeth never budged. Springer had brought her in at the flood of the high tide, such that there’d never be another inch of water to be had under her keel to lift her off. In fact, each time the tide went out, she appeared to settle in deeper. So each high tide, Springer tried another trick, each more desperate that the last, each seeking to give the capstan a better chance to pull the ship clear.
“Give a broadside, double-shotted, to shake her off, Mr Flint!” cried Springer. “That’ll break the suction.” So the island echoed to the boom of Elizabeth’s guns. But the ship never moved. “I’ll lighten her, Mr Flint,” said Springer. “Strike all topmasts! All boats out of the ship, and all spare sails and spars.” That failed too. “Guns and carriages ashore, Mr Flint,” said Springer wearily on the fourth day. “And all stores out of the hold. Everything that ain’t scarfed and bolted into the hull.” But, despite the enormous labour, Elizabeth – now more hulk than ship – simply wedged herself deeper into the sand.
As the boatswain’s pipe delivered the final call of “ ‘Vast hauling” and a hundred sweat-drenched men collapsed at the capstan, Springer chewed his knuckles in despair. Around him his officers were glaring at him in open contempt and the men were seething with hatred for Springer, and with fear at the prospect of being unable to get off the island. The crew were exhausted. The ship was gutted. Ashore lay a vast pile of ship’s stores: arms and artillery, food and drink, clothing and tools, all under a miniature town of spar-and-canvas tents above the tide-line. And in the midst of it all Captain Springer was helpless, hopeless, guilty and angry. For the first time in his career, he did not know what to do.
And so, Lieutenant Flint, who’d watched incredulous as his captain dug himself into the pit, saw that his moment had come. Thanks to Springer’s disgraceful behaviour certain wicked temptations had been laid before Lieutenant Flint, which even he fought off at first, but when they came knocking at his door, grinning and winking, day after day after day … Well, finally he gave up the fight and embraced them.
“May I speak, sir?” said he, all humble and respectful.
“Damn your eyes, you evil sod,” said Springer, “this is all your doing.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” said Flint, ignoring the words, which in truth had no meaning anyway. Springer wasn’t even looking at him.
“I have a suggestion, sir,” said Flint.
“Bollocks!” said Springer.
“Aye-aye, sir,” said Flint. “But we can make Portsmouth yet, sir, and do our duty to the Commodore.”
“What?” said Springer, beginning to take notice. “Can’t you see it’s hopeless, you prick-louse?” Springer gestured at the ship. “She’ll never come free. Can’t you see that, you slimy sod?”
“Indeed, sir,” said Flint, “the ship is lost. But we can build another from her timbers. We have all the tools and the necessary skills. We could easily build a vessel capable of reaching Jamaica, let alone the Spanish Americas.”
Springer gaped at Flint, consumed with relief … and then with envy and hatred. Why hadn’t he thought of that? It was bloody obvious once it was pointed out.
“I further suggest, sir,” said Flint, “that you might consider bringing the men together at once to announce your decision, and that you might further consider the issue of double grog to all hands in respect of their exceptional labours.”
Billy Bones, standing as ever in Flint’s shadow, grinned to himself. He’d make sure everyone knew whose idea it was to get them back home.
“You back-stabbing bastard!” said Springer bitterly, and he glared at Flint. “It’s all you, you sod. It’s a plot!”
“Indeed not, sir,” said Flint, and permitted himself the hint of a sneer, for although there had been no plot before, there was one a-hatching now.
But Springer had no option other than to make the best of it. He had all hands piped to the quarterdeck rail, then he made his speech and ordered double grog. They cheered him for that, knowing there was a way home tomorrow and a roaring debauch tonight. Double grog meant a full pint of strong Navy rum per man, and even sailors got drunk on that.
For the next two days, Springer’s crew were the happiest tars in the service, since on the first day they were mainly unconscious and on the second they were recovering in a warm bliss of recollection. On the third day, Flint, Billy Bones and the boatswain’s crew set them to work with the aid of rope ends knotted tight and soaked in salt water to give a good whack. The crew had had their fun, and now it was time to put the captain’s (that is to say, Lieutenant Flint’s) plan into operation.
The carpenter and his mates set about erecting a small shipyard ashore and hacking planks and timbers out of the ship herself. Another team, under the gunner and his mates, erected sheer-legs, block and tackle, and with the steady labour of twenty chanting seamen, dragged cannon bodily up to the cliff-tops at the mouth of the inlet, and established batteries to command the sea approaches.
At the same time, half the marines under one of the midshipmen began exploring the island to determine whether any danger lay at their backs. The other half, under Sergeant Dawson, deployed on the outskirts of the shore-works, in open order with ball cartridge loaded, to give warning of any attack.
Meanwhile, the cook and his mates served up victuals, the cooper filled the ship’s butts with fresh water, the surgeon drew splinters and sewed up cuts, the sailmaker cut up Elizabeth’s sails and re-sewed them according to the new pattern designed by Lieutenant Flint, and the boatswain’s crew steadily stripped the rigging and fittings out of the ship, and set up a store tent ashore. And just to keep them busy, those men not already employed were sent out in a boat, rigged for sail, with another midshipman in command, to take bearings around the entire island, and to take soundings besides. This would enable a proper map to be made.
The true master of all these works was, of course, Lieutenant Flint, who excelled himself in the efficiency with which he flogged the men to it, and in the ingenious punishments devised for those who incurred his displeasure.
“Three days without water for you, my chicken,” for a boatswain’s mate who’d smashed his toes with a dropped roundshot, which Flint interpreted as malingering.
“The one to lash the other, by turns,” he pronounced on two seamen who’d dropped a compass out of a boat in twenty fathoms. “And to continue until one or the other drops,” he smiled. “So lay on, my hearties, for whichever beats the hardest will take less back.”
And so it went on:
“Gagging with a marlin spike, while lashed to a spar in the sun.”
“No grog until within soundings of England.”
“No sleep for two nights.”
“Ducking to the count of fifty.”
“To play Flint’s game, or take two dozen.”
The result of all this was, firstly, that – in the absence of a maintop – Cap’n Flint the parrot spent a lot of time perched among the trees; and secondly that Elizabeth’s crew were prevented from being mended and made sound by the busy works that Flint himself had set in motion. Under any hand other than Flint’s, the men would have recognised the good sense of what needed to be done. They would have rejoiced in the escape from marooning, and they would have given of their best.
Alas, Flint could not deny himself these vicious pleasures. As for Captain Springer, he was worse puzzled than he’d been when at sea with Flint. He still couldn’t put a finger on what was wrong with his first lieutenant, and was furthermore weighed down by the guilt of running his ship aground and not knowing how to get her off. So he took to skulking in his tent and emptying bottle after bottle to take away the despair. He left everything to Flint, unless Flint positively forced him to play a part.
One day, three weeks after they’d come ashore, Flint came to his tent with just such an intrusion.
It was hot, terribly hot. Springer’s tent, rigged under the shade of trees along the shoreline, kept out the sun, but not the still pressure of heat. As usual, all work had ceased for the middle hours of the day when the sun blazed fiercest. A cable’s length away, where the new vessel was growing, the steady thud, thud, thud of the carpenter’s adze had come to a halt, along with the battering of mallets driving in trenails, and the groaning of saws shaping the timbers afresh. All hands were asleep, save those unfortunates on watch. Clad in an open-neck shirt, wide ducks, bare legs, with the sweat glistening on his heavy face, Springer snored in his hammock.
Two figures came scrunching across the shimmering white sand and into the dark of Springer’s tent. Flint and Billy Bones were coming to call. Flint with his eternal parrot on his shoulder, and Billy Bones in his wake.
“Cap’n, sir?” said Flint, rapping his knuckles on the spar that acted as a tent post.
“Uh? What?” said Springer, starting out of his doze. Flint nudged Billy Bones and nodded his head quickly towards the empty bottles under Springer’s hammock. Bones leered back. They’d become very familiar, these two.
“Sorry to disturb you, Captain, sir,” said Flint, advancing into the tent with a paper rolled up in his hand.
“Damn you, you bloody sod,” said Springer with reddened eyes. “Whassit now, you rat-piss streak of piddle?” He reached for a pistol that he kept by him and cuddled its heavy brass butt.
Flint saw the movement and smirked. Springer’s face swelled and his teeth ground together. He hated Flint beyond reason, and the more so because he didn’t know why. But his fingers twitched and lay still. He was a law-abiding man, incapable of putting a pistol ball through another officer in cold blood. Anyway, he was half asleep, half drunk, and having trouble keeping awake.
“Here’s the chart, sir,” said Flint, displaying the finished map of the island. “You’ll see I’ve taken the liberty of naming the prominent features: Spy-glass Hill, Mizzenmast Hill, North Inlet, and so on.” He pointed with his finger: “And here, sir, you can see that there is a better harbour than this, to the south.” He nudged Billy Bones again, craftily so Springer could not see. “But, of course, we never got the chance to try it.”
“Damn you, you whore’s whelp … you walking abortion … you …” Springer mumbled on and Flint spoke over his incoherent curses.
“I’m glad you approve of the chart, sir,” he said sarcastically. “For it was drawn entirely by myself.”
He rolled up the chart and produced another paper showing the lines of the little sloop that the carpenter’s men were building. “But that is not why I am here, sir, disturbing your rest.” He made a show of presenting the plans to Springer. “Here’s our little Betsy, sir. She’ll be sixty tons, two masts, sweet as a nut, and able to bear six guns.” He flicked a glance at Billy Bones, then continued: “Six guns and maybe forty men. Fifty at the uttermost, sir. We cannot build her bigger.”
“Damn you …” murmured Springer and fell completely asleep.
“So most of the people must stay on the island, sir …” said Flint, making a pantomime of deference to the unconscious Springer, “… while Betsy sails to bring rescue to those who remain.”
It was the plain truth and Flint had known it from the moment he and the carpenter had designed the new vessel. There was only so much that make-and-mend initiative could achieve, and some of Elizabeth’s timbers were rotten besides. The carpenter had been sworn to silence under pain of death at Flint’s own hand, should the secret leak out, plus the promise of being one of those to be embarked in the new ship.
But it would eventually become obvious to even the stupidest among the crew that there would not be room for all of them aboard Elizabeth’s child. Any decent officer would therefore have summoned his men, given them the truth at once, and trusted to their good nature as seamen to understand that there simply was no other way forward. And any decent crew would have understood. But Lieutenant Joseph Flint had fallen so deeply into temptation that he was now driven by quite another logic than that which applied to decent officers who led decent crews.
“Thank you, sir,” said Flint, as Springer – lost in sleep – snorted and gargled like a hog. “Bah!” said Flint. “Will you just look at the swab?” He plucked out the pistol from under Springer’s hand and turned to Billy Bones. “Give me your chaw, Billy,” he said.
“What?” said Bones, his brow furrowed in puzzlement.
“What, sir!” said Flint. “Just spit out your chaw, at the double now.” Flint held out his hand.
“Me chaw?” said Bones, tested beyond comprehension. “Into your hand, sir?”
“Spit!” said Flint. “Now!”
“Aye-aye, sir!” said Bones. He’d seen the look in Flint’s eye and dared not disobey. So he leaned forward and spat out a plastic gob of black-brown tobacco, sticky and slimy with saliva. It splattered into the palm of Flint’s hand. Flint smiled without the least sign of disgust. He squeezed and moulded the tobacco to his liking, then he filled half the barrel of Springer’s pistol with sand, and rammed the sticky plug of tobacco down on top of it as a wad. Finally he deftly replaced the pistol without waking Springer.
“There,” he said quietly as he wiped his hands on Billy Bones’s shirt. “Just in case he ever gets the courage, eh, Mr Bones?”
“Aye-aye, sir,” said Billy Bones.
Then they walked out again into the fierce heat and the high, blazing sun.
“We’ll set them building the blockhouse tomorrow, Billy-my-chicken,” said Flint, “and you can let the word out among the people that Captain Springer is going to abandon them.”
Billy Bones licked his lips. He blinked and trembled. He muttered and groaned. He summoned every grain of his courage … and he ventured to dispute the matter.
“Bugger of a risk, this mutiny, begging your pardon, Cap’n,” said Bones, instinctively adding that last word – the supreme honorific of his vocabulary – in the hope that it might protect him. It was an arm raised in anticipation of a blow.
“Billy-boy, Billy-boy,” said Flint in a peculiar soft voice, without ever giving Bones so much as a glance, reaching instead to pet the green bird that clamped its claws in his shoulder and chuckled and nuzzled his ear. “Don’t ever question my orders again. Not so long as you wish to live. Do you hear me?”
Billy Bones was armed equally as well as Flint with pistols and cutlass. He was the bigger man, being taller and broader in the chest. He was a man in the prime of his strength and was used to keeping discipline over the scum of the lower deck. But he gulped and swallowed in terror, he bowed his head, he shook in fright. Then he took refuge in the seafaring man’s universal safe response to the words of his betters.
“Aye-aye, sir!”
Chapter 7 (#ulink_2c165ead-7817-59f8-af65-12ff6fd4d1ad)
1st June 1752 Savannah, Georgia
As Long John laughed, he took care to keep an eye on the girl. He laughed till his belly ached at what she’d said. He laughed wildly over the thought that – of all the warped and twisted fiends that came in nightmares – Flint might be a gentleman. It was the solemn way she’d said it. It was the innocence of it, God love her, with her plump little arse and her big eyes and her bouncing tits. So even with the tears blinding his eyes, Long John kept a close watch on her, and on the room itself, Charley Neal’s liquor store.
The door was the only way out. The walls were heavily built, with one high window covered by an iron grille to make sure that the liquor did not wander off during the night. Still laughing, Long John kicked the door shut behind him, and leaned himself against it to make entirely sure she’d not escape.
He took these unconscious precautions because Walrus had been months at sea and not a sight of anything female had Long John taken in all that time, and when coming ashore to Charley Neal’s house Long John was as used to making up for lost time as any other seafaring man.
Finally, Long John drew forth a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. He took a deep breath, sighed happily and smiled at Selena, who all the while had kept an even closer watch on him than he had upon her. She was watching and waiting. She knew precisely what was in the man’s mind, and she knew that all the other girls were at that very moment laid on their backs with drunken sailors snoring contentedly between their legs, breeches blown to the four winds and hairy buttocks displayed to the world. She knew too, that each girl would be clutching a fistful of gold, which (after Neal’s percentage) they would keep for their own selves.
“Now then, my girl,” said Silver, “what might your name be? For I’ve taken the most powerful fancy to you, and no mistake!”
The words were true in a constricted sort of way. Long John looked at Selena in the dim light of the hot storeroom and he liked what he saw. The cheap cotton gown was her sole garment and it was thin. It covered her nakedness for decency’s sake, but all the pleasures beneath jutted and curved most appealingly.
“My name is Selena,” she said. “And I’m no whore.” She had made her decision and set down the rules. All she had to do now was enforce them.
“Indeed you ain’t,” said Long John. He smiled and produced a large gold coin. He held it up and turned it so it gleamed and shone.
“It’s no use,” she said.
“Oh?” said Silver, and looked at her afresh. “Aye,” he said thoughtfully, and nodded. “You ain’t like some o’ them dog-faced drabs neither, nor ain’t you neither. You’re quality, my girl. That you are!” He produced another coin. She sneered. He produced a third. There was now more money on offer than Selena could earn in years by any other means.
“I told you, John Silver, it’s no use. I’ve never been a whore, and I’m never going to be one.”
“Oh?” he said, with a sneer of his own. “Don’t tell me there’s been a virgin found in Savannah, for there ain’t never been one yet!”
She blinked, considering her own precise status in that regard, following attentions pressed upon her by a certain Mr Fitzroy Delacroix, who had once been her owner. Long John grinned, mistaking the signs.
“Well, there you are then, my little bird,” he said. “What was good for them, is good for me. And I ain’t no Jew nor Scotchman when it comes to paying the reckoning.” He flourished his three gold pieces. He set them on a nearby barrel. He thought the matter settled. “This’ll do nicely,” he said, looking round the room. “Private like, and quiet as a church.”
He threw off his hat and pulled his shirt over his head. He was a fine-muscled man: strong in the arms, flat in the belly, with a dominating physical presence. Selena crushed the impulse to run because there was nowhere to go. Instead, she stood her ground.
“I said, I am not a whore!” she cried, with all the force in her body, but she was seized by two powerful hands and hoist up off her feet, her eyes level with his.
“Well then, madam,” said Long John, glancing at the gold pieces, “just what is the price, then?” He grinned. “And don’t I get a little something for what I already laid down?”
He tried to kiss her lips, but she turned her face away. He ran his tongue all over and around the silky black column of her throat. She stayed rigidly still. He gave up. He set her down. He was puzzled and annoyed.
“Beach and burn me, girl!” said Silver. “Just how much d’you expect? You’re a rare fine shaped ‘un, I’ll grant you that, but this ain’t Paris nor London, and you ain’t King George’s mistress!”
“I told you. I’m not a whore!”
“Oh yes you are!”
“Oh no I’m not!”
“No?”
“No!”
“You bitch!”
“You bastard!”
“Whore!”
“I AM NOT A WHORE!”
In his anger and balked desire, Silver swung back his hand. But when it came to it, he couldn’t bring himself to strike the small, helpless figure. So he sighed and growled and cursed. And then, eventually, and very late in the day, it occurred to him that it just might be a good idea to pay some attention to what she’d been saying.
“Are you really not a whore?” he said.
“Are you deaf!”
“But all Charley’s girls are.”
“EXCEPT ME!”
“Oh … well … I …”
He fumbled for words. He was a stranger to the art of apologising and no words came. Instead a heavy guilt fell upon him: the guilt that sits on a man who knows he’s behaved very badly. Beyond that, as he looked at Selena, a tiny barb had been driven into Long John Silver, and it smarted. For a long time he didn’t even recognise what was happening, because he’d not had such feelings for years.
He picked up his clothes and his money and left, slamming the door thunderously behind him. And later, when he encountered Polly Porter, who’d gone out for a breath of air while Billy Bones was asleep, and she – ever open for business – welcomed him with open arms, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. There was no joy in a sweating copulation with a fat tart when his mind was full of the small, lovely, black figure staring back at him with fierce determination.
When Long John was gone, Selena was seized with a terrible shaking. She’d kept herself bold and calm while danger threatened and, now that it was gone, her legs shook and her teeth chattered, and there were tears too. There was a great quantity of these. She was very young and entirely alone and the world was a very hard place.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_8b8823c8-92db-5797-9ec5-f381142dd609)
20th February 1749 The island
Billy Bones trod heavily across the sand, making his way towards the marine sentry on guard at the latrine trench.
It was night but there was a bright moon and the marine recognised Mr Bones easily by the hulking shoulders and the blue officer’s coat with its rows of shiny buttons. Also there was a heavy ‘Pfff! Pfff! Pfff!’ of exhaled breath in time with the laboured footfalls, which was unique to Mr Bones. It was his unconscious and wordless protest at the need to struggle over soft sand in a hot climate.
The wretched marine drew himself to attention and reviewed all those little sins of omission and commission in the doing of his duties of which private soldiers can be found guilty by any superior officer who has a mind to do so.
It was bad enough being stuck out here by a stinking bog-pit to make sure that the bastard matelots shovelled sand over their shit when they’d shat, but it weren’t fair – not at all – for Mr bastard Billy Bones to come out to check that all was to rights. It was usually one of the mids, and they were all right. A quick “All’s well?” and off the little bastards went, holding their bastard noses. Then a shudder of ice ran down the marine’s backbone.
“Mygawdamighty!” he said as he realised what a fool he was, being afeared of Mr Bones, for if the bastard officers were walking the guard posts themselves and not sending of the mids … then the next one might be … Oh my eyes and soul … the next one might be Flint!
“Stand easy there!” said Billy Bones. “All’s well?”
“Aye-aye-suh!” said the marine, looking rigidly to his front.
“Huh!” said Billy Bones. He looked all around into the dark, as if a horde of wild savages was creeping inwards with sharpened spears. It was all for show, of course, as everyone now knew the island was uninhabited.
“Keep a sharp look out,” said Billy Bones.
“Aye-aye-suh!” said the marine. But Billy Bones lingered, cleared his throat, spat, and condescended to conversation.
“Damned hot,” he said.
“Aye-aye-suh!”
“Shouldn’t wonder if we don’t have fever on the lower deck before the week’s out.”
“Aye-aye-suh!”
And so they continued for some little time until one Emmanuel Pew came out to relieve himself in the trench. Pew was known to his mates as Mad Pew for his speaking of the Welsh language, and for being not quite right in the head.
“Ah,” said Billy Bones, and he waited until Pew had finished grunting and heaving, and had hauled up his breeches and buckled his belt. Then he turned and affected to take note.
“You there!” said he. “Damn your blasted eyes! Shovel away there with a will, like the blasted surgeon says, or I’ll flay the living skin off your blasted back!”
Pew jumped in terror and filled in half the trench in the excess of his desire to please Mr Bones.
“Now, back to camp at the double,” said Billy Bones. “And I’ll walk beside you so you don’t drown yourself falling into the blasted ocean.”
The marine went limp with relief as the big figure rolled away, puffing and cursing beside the thin, nervous, dark-eyed matelot who’d become the target of his attentions.
“Serve the bugger right!” thought the marine. “Bleeding mad bastard that one is an’ all, that bastard Pew.”
But the aforesaid Mad Pew was the objective of Mr Bones’s walk out to the latrine trench. As ever, Billy Bones marvelled at the acuteness of Flint’s observation, and his penetrating knowledge of the characters of the men.
Flint knew that Pew went to shit well after lights out, because at that time there was nobody there, and he wouldn’t be jostled and hurried. Some men are like that, and Flint’s knowledge of Pew’s habits enabled Billy Bones to get him alone for a few minutes’ conversation in the dark, with no possibility of being overheard. It thereby enabled Billy Bones to put certain proposals to Pew, and to ask certain questions of him, without risk of a hanging for the pair of them. And of course – did Mr Bones but know it – the fact that Lieutenant Flint was no part of the conversation meant that there was absolutely no risk to Flint himself. Indeed, Flint would have been the first to denounce Billy Bones as a traitorous mutineer, should the need arise.
So Billy Bones sounded out Pew and explained that Captain Springer was going to abandon him to his fate, but that there was a way out which was very much to Pew’s advantage. Pew nearly dropped in his tracks with amazement once or twice, to hear such things from Billy Bones. But he saw reason.
Over the next few weeks, Billy Bones had similar conversations with a number of others, all carefully chosen by Flint, and always in circumstances where Flint was saved harmless from any consequences, and always where nobody could see or hear what passed between Billy Bones and the other. Each man chosen was a skilled seaman, and together they formed the nucleus of a crew: Ben Gunn the helmsman, Israel Hands the gunner’s mate, Peter Black (better known as Black Dog) the carpenter, and Darby M’Graw the master-at-arms. These, together with Mad Pew the sailmaker, were the principal figures in Flint’s plan, but there were others too: foremast hands to haul on lines and work a ship.
Thus all this dangerous, careful work was planned by Flint, while all the actual risks were taken by Billy Bones. In this secret division of labour, Joe Flint wasn’t quite the perfect judge of men that he thought he was, for Flint believed it was no end of a joke that Billy Bones should stand between himself and danger, and what a fool Bones would think himself should he ever find out. But the truth of the matter was different. So great was Billy Bones’s devotion to Flint that he’d gladly have volunteered for the duty, if ever it had occurred to Flint to be honest with him. But such a thing would never have occurred to Joe Flint.
All the while, up at the North Inlet, close alongside the hull of the dead Elizabeth, the building of her daughter Betsy came forward in promising style. The carpenter’s crew laid her keel, raised up her ribs and planked her hull. They set her beam ends in place and fashioned old spars into new masts, and fitted her out with pumps and capstans, gratings and ladders, and all the complex gear that must be crammed into a sea-going vessel.
As these vital works proceeded, Mr Flint kept himself mightily busy – and clear away from Billy Bones – in building an impressive fortification at the other end of the island. For this major work he took nearly half the able-bodied men, with a month’s supply of food, and all the tools the carpenter could spare. They tramped across the island, and Flint took some more detailed observations of its geography as they went. Finally he chose a site on a thickly wooded hill, with a spring of clear water welling up near the summit.
“You will fell all the trees within musket-shot of this point,” he told the two midshipmen he’d brought with him as his subordinates.
He reached up and scratched the poll of his green parrot. This had become a habit of his when wrapped in thought. The midshipmen looked at one another and at the size of the pines on the hill, and they were glad that they wouldn’t personally be doing the physical labour.
“You will trim and shape the trunks, and they will be used to build a blockhouse according to this plan,” said Flint. He produced a rolled-up paper and looked around the hot, thick, pine-smelling forest with its buzzing insects and soaring trunks. There was not a rock or a bush or a bank of earth; only columns of living wood and the sandy soil beneath. There was nothing to rest the paper on.
“You there – Billingsgate!” he called to a seaman standing a respectful distance away, burdened with a heavy bundle of canvas for making tents. “At the double now! Here, Fido! Here, Prince! Good dog!” He smiled his shining smile and the seaman dropped his bundle and sped forward. “Down, Rover!” said Flint, forcing Billingsgate on to all fours. “And don’t you move, not on fear of a striped shirt.”
The man’s back formed a sufficient table to spread Flint’s plan. Like everything Flint did, it was beautifully done. It showed a loop-holed blockhouse of heavy timbers, with an encircling palisade of split logs. The mids leaned forward and examined the design. The more intelligent – or perhaps not – of them, Mr Hastings, frowned and spoke up.
“Please, sir,” said he, “don’t this plan more readily suit a defence against armed men already ashore? So wouldn’t we be better strengthening the seaward batteries up at … ugh!”
He shut up as the elbow of his less – or perhaps more – intelligent comrade, Mr Midshipman Povey, caught him hard in the ribs. He looked up to see the deadly smile splitting Flint’s face, for Mr Hastings had spoken the unchallengeable truth. Flint’s blockhouse was a nonsense. Any threat could only come from the sea and was best countered by batteries covering the few places on the island where ships, or ships’ boats, could make a landing. But from Flint’s point of view, the blockhouse was a most wise and sensible thing to build, since it kept himself so visibly away from Mr Bones’s politics at the other end of the island.
“Mr Boatswain!” he cried, and acting-boatswain Tom Morgan came doubling through the tree trunks. “Get yourself a cane, Mr Morgan, and stripe this insolent child a couple of dozen across the fat of his arse.” The colour drained from Mr Hastings’s face and he swallowed hard. Flint turned his face to the other mid. “And then deliver two dozen unto this one, for he’s as insolent as the other.” Flint smiled and tickled his parrot. “I’ll not have nasty young gentlemen answering back to their betters.”
Two weeks later the blockhouse was built and ready for occupation. Where only virgin forest had stood, there was now a great clearing with a massive log-house in the centre, surrounded by the stumps of the trees that had been sacrificed for its construction. As a fortification, it was thoroughly well made, commanding a clear field of fire in all directions, while the six-foot palisade was well placed to break up an assault, but too insubstantial to enable an enemy to take shelter there.
Had there been any real need for such a building, it would have served to perfection, and Flint even attended to minor details such as the fact that there was no natural basin around the spring from which water might be drawn. He had a large ship’s cauldron brought up, and the bottom knocked out of it, so it could be sunk in the ground at the spring-head to provide an artificial tank that constantly filled and brimmed with fresh water.
With the blockhouse built, Flint left a guard of four marines to occupy it, and marched his command back to the North Inlet, the Elizabeth, the Betsy, and Captain Springer. The long, straggling column, heavy-laden as it was (by Flint’s own design), laboured heavily to complete the journey and suffered various casualties. One man broke his leg, one got lost, four developed severe blisters from the straps of their packs and fourteen presented themselves to the surgeon with rashes from poisonous jungle plants.
Flint dealt promptly with all these accidents. He had the gratings rigged and awarded a dozen each to the rash-sufferers for carelessness, two dozen to the lost soul for stupidity, three dozen to the blister brigade for incompetence in lashing their kit, and four dozen to the broken leg (so soon as he could stand on it) for wilfully rendering himself unfit for duty.
With these punishments and others, there was now hardly one man of the three hundred foremast hands and petty officers that once had been Elizabeth’s people who had not felt either the lash or some more spiteful punishment. The mood of the crew was sullen and resentful, and only one push was needed to drive them to the great leap that Flint had planned: some of them … enough of them … sufficient for Flint’s purpose.
By now, too, Betsy looked like a ship rather than a collection of timbers. Her lower masts were stepped, and her standing rigging in place. The carpenter and his mates had even contrived to serve her hull with pitch and paint, to offset the worm. All she needed was men turning the capstan and she’d warp herself sweetly down the greased slide-way already laid out before her, and she’d swim in the waters of the North Inlet.
Flint saw that things had reached the moment of truth, and he held a conference that very night, safely away from the camp and out in the dark forest, with Billy Bones and some others including Israel Hands and Black Dog, who were the most intelligent, and others who were the least stupid of the chosen ones. Flint explained what each of them had to do, and made each man repeat it until it was clear they’d understood. Hands and Black Dog learned fast enough, but for the rest Flint had to keep his temper entirely under control. For once, he had to be patient and encouraging as these morons stumbled and mumbled and struggled towards learning their parts.
He could not afford any noise or dispute at this stage, for now he, Joseph Flint, was personally involved, and the danger to himself was acute.
Chapter 9 (#ulink_aab03fe6-6b34-5550-a0b2-097893e495d2)
3rd April 1751 The Delacroix Plantation, South Carolina
Selena fought all the way, but her mother was twice her weight and three times her strength. The woman just put her head down and took the blows she received from her daughter and never gave back one – which amazing behaviour frightened Selena more than anything. Instead, her mother got sullen and angry and tried to persuade.
“What you do, girl?” she cried as she pulled Selena along. “You think you not like all women? You think you better? You … you … you …”
But her words failed. She’d never learned English very well and she switched to the liquid speech of her homeland, which the youngsters like Selena barely understood – for it earned the toe of the overseer’s boot to be heard “talking African”.
But this time Selena’s mother didn’t just speak it: she bellowed it. And since it was dusk, and the day’s work was done, the people came to the doors of their shacks as Selena was dragged by. They came to see what all the fuss was about. When they saw, they understood and they laughed or pitied according to their individual character. Mostly the men looked at Selena and licked their lips and thought their own thoughts, but the women screeched and laughed and slapped their sides in happy chorus.
“It’s your time, girl!” they cried. “Now you just like all the rest!” And they nodded to one another in righteous enjoyment at the fall of one who had put on such airs.
“Where’s Miss Jeanie?” they mocked. “You want me to call her from Paris?”
And the children hopped and capered along behind, laughing and mimicking, even though they didn’t understand. But they would, given a few years; especially the girls.
Yard by yard, Selena was hauled away from the neat line of shacks and out towards the big house. The crickets sang, the moon came out, the stars shone, and soon the children scampered back home with final jeers, for they were getting too near the big house, and knew better than to make trouble there.
The big house was ablaze with light and music. The master and mistress were entertaining. White-folk visitors were come from far away beyond the plantation, where no slave was allowed to go. There were carriages drawn up outside the big house, but that was at the front, which was forbidden to Selena and her mother. Instead, Selena was dragged the last few hundred yards to where Sam the overseer lived in his smart, plank-built house with the veranda and the whitewashed walls. Sam’s house stood way out from the shacks where the common folk lived, and close enough to the big house to be ready for the master’s call.
Sam was a greatly privileged creature. He wore shoes and a white man’s hat, and was even trusted with a gun, and now he sat with this badge of office across his knees as he rocked on his own porch.
Selena’s mother dragged her up the steps and brought her before Sam. He was a big, hard young man, chosen for his ability to knock down any other slave with his fists. But he smiled and shook his head in admiration of Selena.
“My oh my!” he said. “Ain’t you just ripe and ready.” He slid his hand into Selena’s cotton dress and reached for one of the hard breasts that were bouncing so appealingly as she struggled.
“No!” barked Selena’s mother, and caught Sam’s arm a blow with her fist. “She not for boy like you!”
Sam snarled and raised his musket butt to smash the woman flat. He was top dog and didn’t take no crap from nobody.
“Hold you hand, nigger-boy!” cried the woman. “My Selena, she be Master’s girl – yes? Master do what she say – yes? Selena say, ‘Flog Sam black ass’ – Master flog Sam black ass!”
Sam froze. It was true. It could happen. So long as the master’s fancy lasted, he’d give a girl most everything she wanted … especially if it was so little a thing as flogging an uppity slave. Sam had seen too many floggings to suffer one on his own sweet hide. He doused his anger and lowered his gun.
He said nothing, but got up and led the way to the “special house” down in the hollow by the river, among the trees and out of sight of the big house, where it had been placed by a thoughtful husband to spare the blushes of his wife. What the mistress did not have positively thrust before her eyes, she could contrive not to know. Indeed, as far as the mistress was concerned, what went on in the house in the hollow served the invaluable purpose of focusing her husband’s attentions where they would do the most good and the least harm.
Sam had the keys to the special house. He unlocked the door and lit the candles inside. He looked sidelong at the two women to see their wonder at the fine things on display, things no field slave ever saw: the curtains, carpets and furniture, the silks, satins and linen, the wines and food, the big bed, the great mirrors and the gold-framed paintings of naked white women, luscious and plump. Tonight there was also a big bathtub, with water, soap and towels, and a selection of brightly coloured dresses.
“Now you get that girl ready, you hear?” said Sam, for the benefit of his dignity. “You get her clean and dressed up right pretty, or it gonna be your black ass gets flogged!” With that, he straightened his shoulders and marched off, master of the field.
Selena’s mother sighed.
“Get you clothes off, girl.”
“No!”
“Get you clothes off. How me clean you, if you not take off clothes?”
“Take me home. I wasn’t bred for this!”
“No! You stay here. You stay!”
“Why?”
This simple question finally broke the dam of Selena’s mother’s emotions. The woman burst into loud slobbering tears and called Selena a wicked girl who’d see her ma and pa sold away and all her brothers and sisters too.
“Sold away!” cried Selena’s mother, voicing the dread fear of the plantation slave. “Sold downriver. Me never see you. Me never see me man. Me never see me childrens. Never never never. That what you want? You creature!”
“No!” screamed Selena, and stamped her foot. “But why should it be me?”
“ ‘Cos Master want you. That why he let you live in the big house! That why you get fancy clothes and fancy words. You got them ‘cos he want you for fancy piece!”
“No! Miss Eugenie – Jeanie – she loved me!”
“Huh! She love you when you small. You was her nigger doll. And now she gone to Paris for schooling and left you behind when she could’ve taken you with!”
“No!”
“No? So why you back in fields? Why you sleep in Mumma’s house and not Miss Jeanie’s room?”
“It’s all your fault! You told me to smile at the master in the first place!”
Selena’s mother bit her lip and the strength drained out of her indignation.
“Well,” she said, searching for words. She searched hard and came up with a powerful word: a white man’s word. “I told you to smile ‘cos it proper,” she said, and nodded in satisfaction.
“Huh!” sneered Selena. “ ‘Proper’, you say? I say you just want all the things I can get you while I’m the master’s girl!”
If a woman with skin the colour of black velvet could have blushed, then Selena’s mother would have done it. Since this was impossible, she took her daughter by the hair, stripped her naked, lifted her bodily into the bathtub, and doused and soaped and scrubbed the slippery body as if she’d have the skin off it. Then she laid on with the towels, bound up the girl’s hair to look nice, and crammed, jammed and rammed her into the first dress that came to hand.
“Now hear me, Selena,” she said, with a face as grim as a bulldog’s. “Me don’t want no more. You always stamping and cussing. You always having you way. Me always let you. Me let you, ‘cos you fine and you pretty.”
She stood back, hands on hips and leaned forward so her nose was an inch from Selena’s.
“Now you pay me back, girl,” she said. “You bump you ass for Master. You bump real good. You think on me. You think on you father. You think on you brothers and sisters.” In a final burst of anger, her voice screeched in fury, hitting a pitch previously unsurpassed. “If you not do, then no place for you in me house. Not food, not fire, not water. Nothing! NOTHING! You hear me?”
There was silence as the two looked at one another, balked in anger. Then, seeing the faintest flicker of a downcast eye from Selena, and seeing that the girl made no move to run, the mother said, “Huh!” loudly. Then she cleaned up the bath things, made everything neat and tidy, hauled the bath outside and emptied it, and marched off back to her own place, and her husband, and the rest of her eight surviving children.
She was a good woman. She was doing her best, under iniquitous rules, for all those who depended upon her. She was the exact moral equal of a noble commander who wins glory by sacrificing a regiment to save an army. She wept all the way home, nonetheless.
Left alone, Selena first did some weeping of her own. Then she threw some things about and broke glass and china. Then she looked at herself in a mirror, admired the incredible gown, and then she sat down on the big bed to think. Ideas sped and tumbled through her head with the wild energy of a sharp and penetrating brain. But she saw no way out, other than the one her mother had specified.
Thus she came to a decision. First she brought herself to face and accept her betrayal by Miss Eugenie. She cleared that monstrously difficult fence with valiant courage and with maturity beyond her years. She did it all by herself and with none to advise her. Next, she accepted her duty to her mother, to her father and to her family. Finally she lay back on the bed, spread her gown to best advantage, and waited for the master. But the master did not come, and eventually, being unused to staying awake at the end of a hard day’s work, Selena closed her eyes and went to sleep.
She was awakened by a fumbling at the front of her gown and a man’s drink-loaded breath wheezing in her face. A fat belly pressed down upon her with the buckles of his clothes scratching. Hands squeezed her breasts and a foul mouth pressed on hers, licking and sucking.
At forty-six years of age, the master, Mr Fitzroy Delacroix, had long since established his etiquette where slave-girls were concerned. He liked them young, he liked them slim, he liked them full-breasted and he liked them virgins. The delight of slave-girls, to his way of thinking, was that you could do what you damn well liked to them, when you damn well liked, and not have to waste hours bringing them to the boil like you did with decent white women. As for whores, slaves beat them every time because you didn’t have to pay and you couldn’t get poxed.
Added to these usual benefits was the particular one that Selena had been his own daughter’s playmate, raised alongside her, and equipped with the speech and manners of a white girl to the degree that – for some time now – Delacroix had been just itching to get his hands on her. Thus it was very much the case that his daughter’s desire for a wider education and her hopes of fluency in the French language were far from Delacroix’s only reasons for sending Miss Eugenie to Europe.
Not sharing Delacroix’s point of view, Selena struggled furiously and got a ringing box round the ears in reply. Delacroix laughed and threw her skirts over her head. Holding her down by the wrists, he buried his nose into the soft recess between her thighs and gorged like a hog at a trough. Enjoying himself hugely, he rolled to one side to unbutton himself and haul out his shaft. But, freed from his weight, Selena leapt up and darted to the door … which was locked.
Delacroix positively roared with laugher, and staggered after her with his drawers round his ankles and his paunch wobbling over his upstanding lust. He grabbed at Selena, but he was full of drink and she ducked under his arms, snatched up a silver candlestick and swung it at his head. He just managed to raise his arms in defence and the blow thumped painfully into his left elbow. He fell back, stumbled and sat down heavily on the floor, legs stretched out in front of him.
“Ow!” he said, rubbing his elbow in surprise. “Well, I’m damned!” And he doubtless was, for those were his last words on earth.
With a huge quantity of food and drink in his stomach, and sick from the pain of the blow, Delacroix suddenly vomited heavily, gulped and choked … and inhaled a good lungful of half-digested beef and claret. He then throttled and kicked for a minute or two, before expiring purple-faced and pop-eyed at Selena’s feet, with his tongue lolling out of his open mouth.
Philosophers would argue that Delacroix was entirely responsible for his own death – and a shameful death too – from gluttony and attempted rape, but Selena knew that the world would see things differently. A slave found with her dead master was just meat on the hoof. They’d not ask her what had happened. They’d simply hang her.
Fear and panic surged out of the dark corners of the room. There was no refuge on the plantation. They’d hang any slave who tried to help her, and her mother’s house was the first place they’d look – even supposing for one minute that her mother would take her in. But beyond the plantation was the great, wide world: the outside world that Selena had never even seen, let alone visited. And now she had to get out into that world and make her way, and not get caught. And all she had to guide her was her own native wit.
Chapter 10 (#ulink_e5d06eb2-9e93-5dd9-8b30-7fd172feb26d)
24th March 1749 The island
On the morning after his secret conference, when Flint had taken his irreversible step and now stood at risk of betrayal by too many men for him to face down, he went to Captain Springer.
The man was sunk beyond belief in drunkenness. As far as Flint could judge, Springer was a worse hulk than Elizabeth. He was decayed and rotting in his tent. Flint sighed. By the look of Springer, this would delay vital preparations by a week or more; or at least by however long it took to get Springer off the rum and looking like some passably good imitation of an officer. But since Springer was unconscious, Flint went and found Springer’s servant and put Billy Bones to work, kicking the servant’s unfortunate arse around the camp for sufficient time to drive home the message that the captain was to receive no more strong drink, no matter what threats or entreaties he might offer.
In the event, Flint was lucky. Springer came from a tough old breed, and his liver was so powerfully exercised by its life’s work that it had him sobered up that very evening.
Then, after a day spent in blinding headaches and purgative vomits, Springer was fit to walk, talk and to be washed and shaved and put into a clean shirt by the morning of the day after. Flint duly presented himself at the captain’s tent, and – as his deputy and representative during the captain’s indisposition – he gave Springer an account of all the island’s news that was masterly in the very small proportion of untruth that was added in order to deceive Springer completely, and to set him off on the false trail that Flint had planned.
When Flint was done, and was standing humbly before his captain with his hat in his hands, Springer glared at him with bloodshot yellowed eyes and with hatred that could have been cut into blocks and sold by the pound as rat poison. But Springer knew his duty (or so he thought), and he never hesitated.
“Muster the men, you bloody lubber!” he growled. “This is your fault, as I’ve always said, and I’ll see you broke for it as soon as we rejoin the squadron!”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” murmured Flint, with downcast eyes. And after suffering a sufficient quantity of oaths and curses from Springer, Flint withdrew, found Billy Bones, and gave his final instructions.
Half an hour later, every soul on the island, excepting the four marines still guarding the useless blockhouse, were mustered on the beach under the hot sun, before the tented encampment and the almost-completed Betsy, while stuck on her sandbank a cable’s length off, the empty corpse of the Elizabeth was a constant reminder of past failures, and a spectator to what happened next.
Springer got up on a chest, the better to speak to the men. He sweated heavily in his uniform coat and cocked hat, and his shirt and stock. But these were the indispensable icons of his rank, especially given the shockingly ugly mood of the men. Springer had never seen the like before, and he stuck out his chin and clenched his fists in anger. He wasn’t the man to tolerate skulking and scowling from the lower deck, as they would bloody soon learn!
Around him, in their blue navy coats, stood Lieutenant Flint, Acting-Master Bones, and five midshipmen. The surgeon and the purser stood to one side of them, with a group of senior warrant officers including the boatswain, the gunner and the carpenter. Further off still was the comforting block of twenty-nine marines, drawn up with bayonets fixed, under Sergeant Dawson and two corporals.
Facing Captain Springer, divided into starboard and larboard watches, stood nearly two hundred lesser folk and foremast hands of the manifold varieties of their kind: topmen, coopers, waisters, cooks, afterguard, boys and so on. Springer ground his teeth at the muttering and scowling that came from them, and the insolence on their stupid faces.
“Avast there!” he bellowed. “Silence on the lower deck!”
They looked at him and waited, still defiant but listening to what he might have to say. When it came, it wasn’t very much, and it wasn’t very clever. Springer was no maker of speeches: he simply stamped and spouted and told them to do their duty and God help them as didn’t! Since the men had already been flogged and punished beyond all reason, this was the last thing they wanted to hear. But Springer didn’t know that, for Flint hadn’t told him, and finally, the captain got round to the subject of leaving the island.
“Our new ship lies a-waiting and ready to bear away for Jamaica!” he cried, pointing to the Betsy. “She’s well found and ship-shape and will bear fifty men …” At this there came a deep, animal growl from the belly of the crowd. “Silence!” yelled Springer, but all he got was a chorus from the play so lovingly crafted by Mr Flint, who nearly choked with laughter as his actors delivered their lines.
“What about the Dons?” cried one.
“What if they come back?” cried another.
“AYYYYYE!” the crowd roared.
“What?” yelled Springer. “What bloody Dons?”
“Them as was seen from Spy-glass Hill!”
“Them as was looking for a landing!”
“They’ll murder every man jack of them as gets left behind!”
Now other voices joined in, genuinely frightened of a mass slaughter at the hands of the Spaniards. Frogs and Dutchmen was one thing; even the Portuguese; but they’d get no precious mercy out of the Dagoes!
“Mr Flint?” said Springer, looking down at his subordinate. “What the poxy damnation are the sods blathering about?”
“I cannot imagine, sir,” said Flint with a sneer. “Why don’t you ask the men?” In that instant, seeing the look in the other’s eyes, Springer came as close as he ever did to understanding Flint and to guessing what was actually underway.
“You whoreson bastard!” he said, and he cast about, this way and that, wondering what to do next. He was the very picture of indecision, and to the angry mob in front of him, he looked exactly like a man who’d been found out.
“See!” cried Israel Hands. “The bugger knew it all along. He’s leaving us to the bloody Dons!”
“No!” cried Springer. “No! No! No! The ship’ll take a good fifty, maybe more, and I’ll come back for …”
“And who’s to say who goes and who stays?” cried George Merry, in wild terror. Swept on by the furious emotions around him, Merry – who in any case was not one of the brightest – was now so deep into the role given him by Flint, that he actually believed it.
“ARRRRRGH!” roared the crew.
“Sergeant Dawson!” screamed Springer, as the mob rolled forward. But Dawson was already giving his orders.
“Make ready!” he barked, and twenty-nine muskets snapped into the left hands of their bearers, enabling the right hands to cock the locks. A howl of fright went up at this show of deadly force.
“Bastards!” cried Israel Hands and, reaching the climax of his own part, he produced a hidden pistol: a little one, small enough to hide under his few clothes. He took a breath. He ran forward, and while the marine’s muskets were still pointing harmlessly upwards he let fly with his pistol.
“Ahhhh!” screeched a marine, and dropped his musket as the ball took him in the face and smashed his jaw. It was the first blood. The wretch continued to bawl and groan, but his mates straightened up, as they’d been taught, and faced their front.
“Present!” cried Dawson, and the muskets swept down to bear on the mob.
CRACK! Another shot came out of the mob: Black Dog this time, with the second of Flint’s own pair of pocket pistols. The ball flew nowhere. The cries of the mob became general, and a hail of two-pounder, swivel-gun shot (distributed earlier by Billy Bones) was thrown by muscular arms to arch up, and drop viciously down on the redcoats. One marine went down stunned. More shot flew and the mob charged.
“Fire!” cried Springer.
“Fire!” yelled Dawson.
BA-BANG-BANG-BOOM! Twenty-seven muskets blazed together at such close range that powder-flash singed the hair of the maddened seamen at the front of the mob, while Captain Springer hauled out his own pistol and discharged it at Israel Hands, who was running at him with a drawn knife.
Instantly, fifteen men went down, struck by musket balls, and Springer fell backwards off the chest with the thumb and two fingers blown off his pistol hand, and one eye put out by flying fragments of the burst barrel. Being half-blinded, he did not notice that Israel Hands simply ignored him, leapt over his fallen body, and ran off after Flint, Billy Bones, Black Dog, George Merry and about fifty others.
While these favoured ones vanished into the jungle at the edge of the beach, a hideous, murderous fight took place: marines, mids and warrant officers against the remaining seamen. It was bayonets, dirks and swords, against knives and fists. It was entirely hand-to-hand, for the marines had no chance to reload. Consequently the struggle between former shipmates lasted only as long as it took for all parties to exhaust their strength and fall back sickened by what they had done, or rather what they had most cunningly, deliberately and skilfully been caused to do, by Lieutenant Joseph Flint.
The final tally was forty-five dead, including most of the marines, Sergeant Dawson, Captain Springer, most of the mids, nearly all the warrant officers and a large number of seamen. Many more were wounded, some grievously. But there was a still worse moral effect of what had been done. This was to place the greater part of those alive entirely beyond the law, and in all probability under delayed sentence of death at the hands of the service they had just betrayed.
The surviving marines were safe. The two surviving midshipmen were safe, as were all the rest who’d fought for their King and his laws. But the rest had shared in a mutiny, and an extremely bloody one at that. They had been a part of the ultimate crime, the crime which the Royal Navy would never, ever forgive – they had slain their captain. They now faced either permanent exile from their native land or being hunted down for a naval court martial, and the short, jerking journey up the yardarm with the aid of a running noose.
Thus the survivors broke naturally into two parties that limped and bled and drew away from one another as far as they could go. The smaller party, perhaps thirty strong, consisted of the mids, the marines and the purser, plus those seamen and petty officers who’d remained loyal. This party had two muskets, a few pistols and a pair of midshipman’s dirks between them. The larger party, nearly two hundred strong, carried off the rest of the marines’ firelocks and ammunition. Being the stronger, they took command of the camp and immediately broke open the spirit casks and proceeded to get roaring drunk.
In this condition, they were later visited by Captain Flint, as he was now known, at the head of the only body of men on the island who were sober, under discipline, and fully armed from the supply of weapons thoughtfully hidden in the woods at Flint’s orders. Flint told his followers – Israel Hands, George Merry and the rest – that they were restoring order and conquering mutineers. This was abject nonsense, but it served, and a second slaughter followed, since Flint’s real purpose was to eliminate from the surviving seamen as many as possible of those whom he felt unable to trust in the greater purpose which was to come.
When the sun set that night there were less than a hundred men left alive on the island. Flint stood in the dying light and eyed the wreckage and slaughter all around. He stroked his parrot and smiled.
“Well, Billy-boy,” he said to the creature that clung to him even closer than the green bird, “it seems we are become free men, to go a-privateering after all. Isn’t it a shame that Mr Springer never saw reason in the first place, to save me all this trouble?” And Flint laughed and laughed and laughed.
But there had to be a few more risings of that sun before Flint got entirely what he wanted. To begin with, Betsy wasn’t quite as ready for sea as had been hoped, and vital work remained to be done, and also Flint had to deal with the remaining loyal hands on the island.
Some of them weren’t hard to find, since they came limping into the camp at North Inlet in ones and twos, begging for food. The others were hunted down with whooping and haloo-ing and merriment, at least on Flint’s part, for he took a lead in all such congenial operations, leaving Billy Bones the task of completing Betsy’s fitting out.
“Chop ‘em down, lads!” he cried, on the first occasion they took captives. “Chop ‘em down like so much pork!” But in this he was baulked. To his surprise, his men turned nasty as their consciences stirred. After all, as far as they knew, they’d mutinied in face of abandonment and certain death, and then they’d fought the marines when fired upon. But they’d never set out to cut the throats of their own shipmates. What’s more, the captives included Mr Hastings and Mr Povey, the last surviving midshipmen: two youngsters who were good officers and popular with the crew.
Flint glowered and cursed, but saw that he could not oppose the men in this matter. He was well aware that not everyone on the lower deck was stupid. Some were capable of working out that Flint had taken command from Captain Springer by force. In that case, what was good for Springer might become good for Flint, should Flint upset the men too much. This gave Flint a nasty fright. It was his first sight of a problem that – for all his cleverness – he had not foreseen, and which would come back to sit upon his shoulder like his parrot. Given his great pride and vanity, it was deeply disturbing.
But the prisoners were spared: all of them.
Finally in late May of 1749 when Betsy was warped out into the North Inlet, laden with men and stores and guns, to spread her sails and head north, she towed astern of her a longboat containing the remaining loyal hands. There were twenty-three of them, but the longboat was a good, big one, so they weren’t too crowded. They had their own store of food and water too – the crew had insisted on that – and this proved a blessing, since soon after Betsy had left the island under the horizon, the towline somehow got slipped during the dead of night.
Flint explained that this had been an unfortunate accident which was all for the best, since it removed those who had unaccountably refused to win wealth and riches by privateering. For their part, with the longboat gone and nobody forced personally to witness what might be the fate of the boat’s occupants, the crew allowed themselves to believe Flint’s words, and were thereby led down a slippery path towards outright bloody-handed piracy.
In this profession – having at last got what he wanted – Flint proved a passing fair success. Or perhaps he just was lucky. Whichever, he took some good prizes, and beat up and down the Caribbean for many jolly months before fate caught up with him.
Chapter 11 (#ulink_1f4d2fd1-17b3-5223-8792-54b0900ac1ed)
1st June 1752 Savannah, Georgia
In Selena’s world there was no time for self-pity. When the shaking stopped, she went back to work.
She picked her way over and around the customers in the liquor shop, and made an effort to clear up the mess that they had made. Some of them were stirring now, and calling for more drink. Selena served them, and prodded the other girls awake to help her.
Later in the evening, after lamp-lighting time, when Flint and Neal came back to the liquor shop, a second round of debauchery was well under way. Flint and Neal were like brothers; satisfied with their business and now looking to take a drop or two in celebration. Flint merrily kicked three or four men out of their chairs and swept their pots and plates off the table to make way for himself and Neal. Roars of approval greeted their arrival, and the musicians woke themselves up and joined in the din.
This time Flint leapt on a table top, threw back his head and led the singing. His men cheered madly when they heard the song, for it was a piece of his own creation, that he sang only when in the best of spirits. Joseph Flint sang beautifully, with a high, carrying voice that was lovely to hear, and once heard never forgotten. He gave each line of the song, with his men roaring out the chorus.
“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest –” “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” “Drink and the devil had done for the rest –” “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” “But one man of her crew alive –” “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” “What put to sea with seventy-five –” “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
The song went on, verse after verse, getting steadily grimmer and darker, but with Flint so beaming and charming, acting out the horrors of the story in such splendid good humour that everyone laughed at the wickedness he was proclaiming.
When he finished, he sat down to mighty cheers, and smiled like the sun in his glory. Neal smiled too, though he’d no taste for Flint’s kind of music. His mind was still full of delightful calculations concerning the cargoes in the holds of Flint’s two prizes. Selena came to their table at once, with rum. Flint raised his glass to her in a polite toast. His sharp eyes swept her up and down. He frowned. He saw the miserable expression on her face and her red eyes.
“What rogue has upset you, my African Venus?” he said. He stood up, and took her chin gently in his fingers, the better to study her. “I dare swear you’ve been crying. Just tell me who it was,” he said, in a soft, quiet voice. “Just tell me his name and I’ll have the liver out of him. I’ll rip it out, and slice it narrow, and feed it to him in strips.” Charley Neal blinked anxiously. When other men said things like that, they weren’t really thinking of opening a man’s belly and sticking a hand inside to pull things out. But when Flint made the threat …
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John Drake
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Фэнтези про драконов
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Rip-roaring adventures for fans of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and Patrick O’ Brian, in these pirate prequels to ‘Treasure Island’.