Книга - Pieces of Eight

Pieces of Eight
John Drake


The second in the rip-roaring adventure series of ‘Treasure Island’ prequels for fans of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’Once comrades-in-arms, now sworn enemies: Joseph Flint and Long John Silver have a score to settle.Marooned on a remote Caribbean island with his loyal crew and a fortune in buried treasure, Silver awaits the return of the man who left him there.In order to defeat Silver and claim the island back as his, Flint will need to raise an army – no easy feat for the man most wanted by the Royal Navy.But with disease running rampant on the Island and the net closing on Flint, time is running out for both men. But who will survive – and who will get the gold?







PIECES OF EIGHT

JOHN DRAKE







For my son my pride and inspiration, my critic and my friend.




Table of Contents


Chapter 1 (#u6c49b479-9946-5b3d-a843-f31da2bd41ad)

Chapter 2 (#ubaae6078-3fd0-5e6a-aead-bddec5570dba)

Chapter 3 (#u4a54f293-90e0-5f14-a55f-08208ad2d33d)

Chapter 4 (#ua1dc0a1f-ca8b-5773-b301-81135142dfb8)

Chapter 5 (#u8c5668e2-2530-52d0-99a7-867dd348ae4f)

Chapter 6 (#u892a7307-6e4c-50b1-bc60-bf18977f3073)

Chapter 7 (#uf3813aaf-fae1-55ef-851c-f936e99d6831)

Chapter 8 (#uc1354111-1f53-5a37-88a3-1a4310927c92)

Chapter 9 (#udf41c93b-a3ee-55ae-8a02-65c33f44c247)

Chapter 10 (#ufb614ad7-d941-52f9-a786-139451dc8ec1)

Chapter 11 (#u67744a43-646a-5939-838f-ac40db6f6a50)

Chapter 12 (#uc62e84fa-f304-5e5e-bc2e-d782d180694a)

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)

Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

By the same author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




Chapter 1 (#u290d5c57-2e90-510e-9dca-388a83445eee)


11 a.m., 15th November 1732 The Chapel, Salvation House St Pancras Court, Opposite the Smallpox Hospital London

The corpse lay in a lake of blood that drenched its pious black coat, its lank white hair, and the clerical bands that descended from its comprehensively slit throat where bone gleamed from the bottom of a tremendous slash. The mutilating fury of repeated knife strokes had rendered the face unrecognisable, such that the victim’s identity was given only by his clothes and the wide-gaping mouth full of long brown teeth that were one reason–though not the only one–that he’d so seldom smiled in life.

“Good God!” said Captain Peter Garland. “Cover him up, and get the women out of here!” He looked to Mr Bains, the house steward, and then to the two menservants, and finally to the herd of maids and cooks peering in horror through the chapel door. But none of them moved.

“Pah!” said the captain, and set about doing the job himself. A sea-service officer in his thirties, Garland had faced shot and shell, and this wasn’t the first time he’d dealt with dead men and the pieces of them. He stepped up to the altar, laid aside the wooden cross, ripped the white altar cloth from its moorings and draped it across the body of his late brother-in-law, taking care that, whatever else showed, the face was covered.

“So!” said Captain Garland, looking away from the corpse to the bloodstains on the whitewashed walls. “What happened?”

Mr Bains was trying his best, but he was an elderly man, long in the reverend’s service, who–along with the rest of the congregation–had thought him the font of all wisdom. And now here was the reverend dead and murdered in his own chapel! Bains stood weeping and wringing his hands with his entire world overturned, the women wailing at the sight of him and the two male servants snivelling besides.

“Brace up, man!” cried Captain Garland. “Brace up all of you, dammit.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bains. “Sorry, sir. We didn’t know if you would come.”

“What?” said Garland, “D’you think that man–” he pointed at the corpse “–could keep me from my sister? My Rebecca–her that was a mother to me when our own ma died?”

“God bless you, sir,” said Bains.

“God bless you,” said the rest.

“So! Where is she? And m’nephew?”

“Upstairs, sir. In the parlour.”

They were halfway up the stairs when three blows sounded on the front door knocker, and everyone jumped. Again nobody moved so Garland went down and opened the door himself. Outside was a carriage and pair that he’d not even heard arrive, what with his mind so full of other things. A coachman stood in the doorway in his caped cloak and livery hat, wrapped in scarf and mittens against the cold.

“Ah!” said Garland, peering out into the miserable grey November where the coach body swayed as a fat gentleman in boots and greatcoat was helped down by one of his footmen. “Sir Charles!” he said, and ran forward to shake his friend’s hand.

“Captain Garland!” said the other. “Came as soon as I got your note.” He was a middle-aged, heavily overweight man, who moved slowly and breathed with difficulty, except when standing still or sitting down. “T’aint my jurisdiction, this,” he cautioned, “and the proper authorities will need to be informed.” he peered at Garland, “You do know that, don’t you?”

“Yes-yes-yes!” But you must have experience of such cases.”

“What cases?”

“Damned if I know, Sir Charles. It was only chance that I happened to be in London and Bains knew where to find me. I sent for you the moment I heard…” He looked around. “I’ve not set foot in this house in years!”

“Have you not?” said the other, and Garland saw that all eyes were on him.

“Now then!” he cried, clasping his hands behind his back. “Silence and pay heed! This gentleman is Sir Charles Wainwright, Police Magistrate at Bow Street, who is here to take this matter in hand.” He looked at his friend. “Sir Charles…?” he said.

Sir Charles took charge. Getting the basic facts from Captain Garland, he directed a number of sharp questions at the reverend’s servants, then stumped into the chapel–respectfully doffing his hat as he did so–and poked the cloth off the corpse with his walking stick.

“Bless my soul!” he said. “Not the sweetest sight, is he?”

“No,” agreed Garland.

Sir Charles looked round the chapel, noting its severe simplicity, disdain of decoration, and rows of plain wooden chairs.

“What denomination worships here?” he asked. “Quaker? Moravian?”

“Presbyterian,” said Garland. “A branch, at any rate: ‘Church of the Revelationary Evangelists’. Or at least that’s what they were calling themselves when last I was here.”

“Aye,” said Wainwright, nodding, “these dissenters are morbidly fissiparous.”

“They’re what?”

“Dividing: always dividing. That’s what you get for denying the authority of the bishops!”

“Hmm,” said Garland. “Well, he was very strong in his beliefs, my brother-in-law. It’s why I was turned out of his house–for I used to be one of them, d’you see,” he shrugged. “But I was in love with the service, and wanted to be like my shipmates and say chaplain’s prayers.”

Sir Charles turned from the hideous corpse, looked the chapel up and down, and sniffed.

“Place stinks of soap and polish. Never seen anywhere so clean in all my life, I do declare!”

“Huh!” said Garland. “That’s the reverend! Detested dirt of all kinds. Every stick and pot scrubbed, and the servants made to bathe daily in a wash-house out the back.”

“What?” said Sir Charles, incredulous. “Every day? It’s a wonder they didn’t leave him.”

“Not they! Not once he’d got his hooks into ’em. Terrified, they were.”

“Of him?”

“Him and his good friend the Devil!”

“What about the family? How did he treat them?”

For a moment Captain Garland seemed lost for words. He was a plain man bred up to a hard service where a loud voice satisfied all needs of communication…but that wouldn’t do now.

“There’s only his wife–m’sister Rebecca–and her son,” he said. “And Rebecca…well, she was a woman, and to him all women were damned as pedlars of lust, while children were damned as fruits of lust…” He bowed his head in memory, “He used to say to them…he used to say to m’poor sister and her boy–and I heard this m’self, mind–he used to say…” Captain Garland stood silent as he tried to bring himself to repeat the words. Finally he shook his head, and rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes.

He looked at Sir Charles. “He weren’t very nice to them. Can we leave it at that?”

“Bless my soul!” said Sir Charles, for Garland had shed tears. “Come along, Captain. Enough of this–let’s see the widow.”

The stairs to the first floor were a fearful obstacle to Sir Charles, and it was a long, slow climb, but finally–led by the miserable Bains–he and Garland entered the front parlour: another fiercely scrubbed room, almost bare of furnishings, where they found the reverend’s wife and son, sitting waiting in a pair of Windsor armchairs.

“Good day, ma’am,” said Sir Charles, advancing towards her, then stopping short as he saw the blood spattered over her clothes. The woman sat unmoved. She was a tired creature: wrinkled and prematurely old, with wispy hair and sad eyes.

“Ma’am?” repeated Sir Charles. But she never even blinked.

“Rebecca?” said Garland in a hushed voice, shocked at the sight of her. “It’s me, m’dear. Little Peter that sat on your knee…” Odd as the words were from a grown man, they stirred the woman and she looked up at them.

“I did it,” she said. “And it may not be denied, for ‘Every man’s work shall be made manifest’–First Corinthians, chapter three (#u4a54f293-90e0-5f14-a55f-08208ad2d33d), verse thirteen! And I am not ashamed: ‘I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith’–Second Timothy, four: seven! And if I have sinned, then, ‘Charity shall cover the multitude of sins’–First Peter, four: eight!”

“Sir Charles,” whispered Garland, “she’s raving! She’s come adrift and cast loose her moorings.” But he whispered too loud.

“No!” said Rebecca sharply. “It is my husband who was mad! Thus I killed him because he had gone too far. ‘Behold! Now is the accepted time’–Second Corinthians, six: eight!”

Sir Charles sighed and turned to the boy sitting alongside her.

“Now then, my lad–”

“He must have seen it, sir,” said Bains, who was hovering at the door. “He was in the chapel with her, sir. They went in together.”

“Yes, yes!” said Sir Charles, waving the servant away. He turned back to the boy. “My lad, I am a magistrate and I must ask you what has gone on here?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Then why your mother covered in blood?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Sir Charles asked more questions, but learned nothing. Finally he took Garland aside.

“He’s a good boy. Credit to his mother, poor soul. He’ll not betray her, while she, poor soul, has lost her mind. I’ve seen the like before: husband a bully, wife stands it twenty years, then one day takes a knife and stabs him fifty times!”

“Aye,” said Garland, nodding, “that’d be the way of it–and the swine deserved it, too! ’Tis only a pity she did it in front of the lad.”

“Indeed,” said Sir Charles, “But I know a doctor who’ll say what’s needed to keep her from the hangman and safe in a private madhouse.” Sir Charles glanced at the boy. “What about him, though? Shall you take him?”

“That I shall!” said Garland. “I’ve no other family, aside from the sea-service, so I shall enter him as a gentleman volunteer, first-class, and it shall be my pleasure to help him up the ladder!” He turned to his nephew and, managed a smile: “Now then, young Joseph,” he said, “come along o’ your uncle Peter and you shall be a king’s officer one day, and maybe even a captain. How’d you like the sound of Captain Flint?”




Chapter 2 (#u290d5c57-2e90-510e-9dca-388a83445eee)


Early morning, 30th September 1752 The southern anchorage The island

“Remember,” said Long John, “a round turn and two half-hitches! Keep it simple. Don’t go trying to work a Turk’s head, nor a cable-splice!”

Ratty Richards, ship’s boy, grinned. “Aye-aye, Cap’n!” he said. Skinny, tired, and dripping wet, he was the only one of the seventy-one men and three boys on the island who could dive in six fathoms of water and still do a few seconds’ work at the bottom.

“You sure, lad?” said Long John. “You’ve already had a good whack. You don’t have to go again if you don’t want to…”

“I’m ready, Cap’n!”

“Ah, you’re a smart lad, you are. I knew it the moment I set eyes on you. So here’s your sinker and in you go.”

Splash! Ratty Richards rolled over the gunwale of the skiff into the cool water, one hand pinching his nose and the other clasping the heavy boulder that would take him down. As he sank, the safety line round his waist and the heavy rope looped through it paid out from their coils while Long John, Israel Hands, Sarney Sawyer and George Merry leaned over the side to see him go down.

“Bugger me!” said Israel Hands. “Is this goin’ to work, John? I’ve lost count how many times he’s been down.” He sighed heavily. “Don’t want to drown the lad.”

“Oh?” said Long John. “Weren’t it yourself as pleaded for the Spanish nine?” He jerked a thumb at the sea bed. “For myself, I’d not’ve tried to raise a twenty-six-hundredweight gun with this–” He looked at the two boats, joined by a pair of spars, floating with barely a yard between them. Long John and Sawyer were in the skiff, with Hands and Merry in the jolly-boat; Ratty Richards’s rope fed into a heavy block suspended from the spars and then to an iron windlass that had been firmly bolted to the midships thwart of the jolly-boat. The block-and-tackles were sound, but the boats were too small. Unfortunately, they were the only boats on the island.

“He’s down, Cap’n!” cried Sarney Sawyer, looking below. “And he’s workin’ on her. Go on Ratty, my son!”

“Go on, Ratty!” they all cried, peering through the clear water pierced to the bottom by the hot morning sun, showing every movement the boy made.

Down in the booming depths, the weight of water crushed Ratty’s chest as if a horse were rolling on him, and he strained to remember his orders. Water bubbled from his mouth as he grabbed one of the gun’s dolphins. The Spanish founders had followed obsolete style in adding these elegant decorations, but they were ideal for work such as this. The plunging sea-beasts, cast integral with the barrel, formed loops of iron perfect for lifting the gun. Ratty tugged the rope from the line round his waist then slid it through one dolphin and into the next.

So far, each attempt had failed. Now, lungs pounding, he struggled to secure the rope. In a ship, he could tie a knot without thinking; it was bred into him, instinctive. But not down here.

He threaded the rope through the second dolphin…around turn… Ratty passed the rope around itself…and two half hitches… he tied the first hitch…torture and suffocation…he fumbled for the second hitch. He lost the rope. He fumbled again and again…blindness and agony…fear of death…Ratty kicked his bent legs almightily against the gun, launching himself like a soaring lark…up, up, up, frothing and bursting and spouting breath and blood and stretching for the blessings of light and air.

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” he thrashed and splashed and breathed water and choked and broke surface.

“Gotcher me lad!” cried Long John, hauling him into the skiff and dumping him between the thwarts.

“Urgh! Uch! Yuch!” Ratty’s guts vomited seawater and his eyes stared wide, not quite believing he wasn’t dead.

“Did you do it lad?” said Long John, looming over him. “Did you make fast and secure?”

“Dunno,” said Ratty.

“Bugger!” said Israel Hands.

“Clap a hitch there, Mr Gunner!” said Long John, and laid a hand on Ratty’s shoulder. “This man’s done his best, and no man can’t do no more!” He stabbed a finger. “Or p’raps you’d like to heave off your britches and take a dive yourself?”

“Not I,” said Israel Hands. “Ah, you’re right, John! Bloody gun’s too big. What we needs is a proper longboat, and a good big ’un.”

“The which we ain’t got,” said Long John.

“Aye, but the gun did have dolphins,” said Israel Hands wistfully. “And Flint left us this, or we’d never have tried.” He patted the powerful iron windlass that sat beside him, “I wonder what he wanted with it?”

“Nothing good,” said Long John. “And I’ll have less jaw and more work, if you please, Mr Hands, else we’ll never recover your blasted nine-pounder!”

Silver sighed. They were marooned on the island, with Flint’s treasure buried who-knows-where, and Flint liable to return at any moment with a shipload of men hell-bent on skinning, gutting and roasting every one of them. Since they couldn’t build a vessel to carry all hands before Flint returned, and none could be left to face him, their aim was to defend the island. But how? Long John worried worse than anyone, being in command, for he’d been duly elected captain by all hands…excepting only Mr Billy Bones, who was still loyal to Flint, and who couldn’t now be harmed because he was the only man capable of navigation and would be indispensable if ever they did get off the island.

And so the old guilt came pressing down upon Long John for his total inability to master the art of navigation…

Israel Hands saw the look on his face.

“Easy John,” he said. “We follow where you lead. We all…”

“Cap’n!” cried Sarney Sawyer, hauling on the rope. “He done it! The little bugger done it!”

“What’s that, Mr Bosun?” Silver was so deep in thoughts of Flint that he’d forgotten the Spanish gun.

“He made fast the line, Cap’n!” Sawyer grinned. “Double grog for Mr Richards, and no mistake!”

“Did I do it?” said Ratty, “I thought I didn’t.”

“Well, you did, lad,” said Silver, “and well done indeed, for it was you alone as was down there! So it’s all hands to the windlass!”

In fact, there being only two cranking handles and little room for manoeuvre, it fell to George Merry and Israel Hands to man the windlass. As the two of them groaned under the strain and the pauls of the windlass clattered merrily, Long John, Sawyer and Ratty Richards peered intently at the black shape of the gun, half-buried in sand, still in the wreckage of its carriage.

With Merry and Hands heaving on the rope like a pair of tooth-pullers on a molar, the windlass began to slow, the rattling giving way to a groaning of the rope, until suddenly the gun gave a mighty tremble. Then:

“Whoa!” they all cried as the nine-pounder lurched almost free of its carriage, hanging on by one half-shattered capsquare. Having cleared the swirling, sand-clouded bottom, it now hung, swaying to and fro on the rope, rocking the boats alarmingly.

“’Vast hauling!” roared Long John. “All hands stand fast!”

Nobody moved. They hung on, white-faced, until the gun finished its turning and the boats stopped plunging. It was fearfully easy to overturn boats and, swimming was rare among seamen; of those aboard, Ratty was the only one who could swim. If the boats sank it would be death for all but him.

“Right then, lads,” said Long John, when the boats had steadied, “handsomely now, and up she comes. Give way!”

Hands and Merry cranked the handles round, but much more slowly now. The rope grew taut as an iron bar as the gun rose from the sea bed. Straining and groaning, the two men laboured and the gun moved inch by painful inch…and then stuck.

“Stap me, John!” gasped Israel Hands. “Can’t do it.” He and Merry were soaked with sweat and their arms trembled with the effort.

“Lay a hand there, Mr Bosun!” said Long John, and he and Sawyer clambered awkwardly from skiff to jolly-boat, cramming themselves alongside Hands and Merry. With the strength of four men behind it, the windlass began to turn again. Until:

“Ahhhh!” The gun broke suddenly free and spun viciously on the rope. Both vessels wallowed violently; Silver and Sawyer were sent tumbling as the jolly-boat rolled gunwale under and began to sink, while the joining spars lifted the skiff out of the water entirely.

“We’re goin’!” screamed George Merry.

“Cut the line!” yelled Silver, struggling to dislodge Sawyer, who had landed across his one leg, stunned senseless by the fall. Hands and Merry, cramped against the windlass, pulled their knives, but Merry’s was knocked from his hand as the boat lurched, while Hands was held fast by the iron handle jammed into his chest and could only hack feebly with his left hand, barely able to reach the rope.

“God save us!” screamed Israel Hands. “She’s lost!”

“Gimme a cutlass!” yelled Silver, for he’d left his own weapon in the skiff. Ratty scrambled to pick it up and made to throw it–scabbard, baldric and all–across to his captain.

“No!” cried Silver. “Draw the bugger!”

“Here, Cap’n!” said Ratty, passing the blade, hilt-first.

“Ah! said Silver and sat up, grabbing the gunwale to steady himself. With the boats going over, over, over…he swung with all his might…and thump! The rope snapped like a gunshot, the jolly-boat rolled, the skiff hit the water, spray flew in all directions and Silver, Israel Hands and George Merry wallowed in the saved but half-sunk boat as flotsam, jetsam and the bailing bucket washed around their knees.

“Ohhh!” said Sarney Sawyer, roused by the wetting.

For a while four men and a boy sat gasping and glad to be alive.

“That’s enough!” said Silver, finally. “We’ve got the four-pounders out of Lion and we’ll have to make do with them. Let’s get ship-shape and pull for the shore. And that bugger–” he jabbed a thumb at the lost nine-pounder–“stays where it is!”

Soon they were pulling past the burned-out wreck of Lion herself, beached in the shallows of the southern anchorage. Once she’d been a beautiful ship, but all that was left of her now was the bow and fo’c’sle, clean and bright and untouched by the fire that had destroyed her. Aft of the mainmast, she was black, hideous and chopped-off short.

“Huh,” thought Silver, “’tain’t only me what has a stump!”

He stared miserably at the wreck where it lay canted over: masts and shrouds at a mad angle, and yards dug into the shallow, sandy bottom. It felt indecent, gazing upon the insides of the ship with everything on view instead of planked over. These days she was more of a shipyard than a ship; her decks rang to the thump and buzz of tools as a swarm of men, led by Black Dog, the carpenter, carried out Long John’s orders to salvage everything useful: guns, rigging, timbers and stores.

“Cap’n Silver!” cried Black Dog, as they pulled level. “A word, Cap’n.”

“Easy all,” said Silver. “Stand by to go alongside.” The awkward double-boat nudged up against the wreck until Silver sat almost eye-to-eye with Black Dog, a tallow-faced creature who never darkened in the sun, and who’d lost two fingers of his left hand to Silver’s parrot, back in the days when it was Flint’s. He was working, bare-legged with slops rolled up, on the waterlogged lower deck, and he touched his brow in salute.

“Cap’n,” he said, “see what we found!” Then he yelled back over his shoulder, “Haul that box aft!”

A rumble and bumping followed as a man came backwards, dragging a large sea-chest. It was like any other seaman’s chest, except that the initial “B” had been burned into the top with a hot iron, and the corners were somewhat smashed and broken by rough usage.

“What’s this?” said Silver.

“Why, it’s Billy Bones’s!” said Israel Hands.

“That’s right, Mr Gunner,” said Black Dog. “You and me had the ballasting of the old ship, and we came to know every man’s sea-chest what had one.”

“That we did, Mr Carpenter,” said Israel Hands. “But it ain’t right that a sod like Billy-boy should get his precious goods back when better men than him has lost their all,” he scowled. “And him the bastard what started the fire in the first place! I say we open her up and divvy her out!”

“Belay that!” said Silver. “How many times must I tell you swabs that we needs Billy Bones plump and fair and on our side?”

“Easy, Cap’n,” said Israel Hands. “We knows it, but we don’t have to like it.”

“Like it or not,” said Long John, “just you heave that chest into this boat, and back to Billy Bones it goes. I needs a word with the swab and this’ll make it all the easier.”

Later, Long John led Billy Bones away from the palm tree to which he’d been tethered to the camp of tents set up on the shores of the southern anchorage, which was Silver’s headquarters. Cap’n Flint, the parrot–who hated boats and had waited ashore–was back on his shoulder. Silver moved at ease over the soft sand, thanks to the wide wooden disc secured around the end of his crutch to stop it sinking. He was fast as any ordinary man, and faster than Mr Billy Bones, who plodded deep and slow, puffing and blowing as he went.

Billy Bones was a big heavy man, broad-chested, with thick arms and massive fists. He was a pugilist of note, the terror of the lower deck, and had once been a sea-service officer: one of the old school, with mahogany skin, a tarred pigtail and pitch-black fingernails. But the service had lost him to Flint. For Billy Bones was Flint’s through and through. That was why he’d set fire to Lion and why now–even though Silver was the only man in the world who Billy Bones feared, and Silver was armed and he was not–Billy’s arms were secured with manacles and two men walked behind him with muskets aimed into his back.

“Now then, Billy-my-chicken,” said Long John, drawing to a stop. Even leaning on his crutch he was taller than Bones, just as he was taller than most men. He took off his hat, wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief, and stared into Billy Bone’s eyes, until Bones flinched. “Huh!” said Silver, and Billy Bones bit his lip and looked sideways at Silver’s big, fair face. Silver wasn’t a handsome man like Flint, but he had the same overpowering presence, and he made Billy Bones nervous.

“See that sun, Billy-boy?” said Silver. Bones looked up at the blazing sun, climbing to its full height in the deep blue sky. “Precious close to noon, and it’ll soon be too hot to fart, let alone talk, so I want this over quick.”

“What?” said Bones, eyes widening in dread. “What d’ye mean?” He glanced back at the two men with muskets.

“No, no, no!” said Silver. “Not that, you blockhead. If I’d wanted you dead, I’d have hung you. There’s plenty of men wanting to haul you off your feet, and only myself stopping ’em.”

“Well what then?” said Bones, still mortally afraid.

“Just look,” said Silver. Bones looked. He saw the sands shimmering with heat, and the salvage crew wading ashore from the wreck, all work having stopped, while men fresh from other duties were getting themselves into the shade of the neat rows of tents where all would soon be sleeping until the mid-day heat was past.

“Look at what?” said Bones, deeply puzzled. Long John sighed.

“Billy-boy,” he said, “you never were the pick of the litter when it came to brains! I meant you to see the works what’s going forward.” Bones blinked, still fearful, not knowing where this was leading. Silver looked at the coarse, thick face with its deep-furrowed brow, and sighed that such a creature could wield a quadrant while he could not.

“Billy,” he said, “did you ever know me to lie?”

“No,” said Bones after intense pondering.

“Did you ever know me to break a promise?”

“No,” said Bones, with surly reluctance.

“Heaven be praised! Then here’s a promise: If you come and sit with me in the shade of them trees–” Long John pointed at the line of drooping palms that edged the vast curve of the sandy shore “–and if you promise to listen fairly and act the gentleman…why! I’ll send these two away,” he nodded at the guards, “and I’ll send for some grog and a bite to eat. But if you try to run, Billy-boy, or if you raise your hand…I promise to shoot you square in the belly and dance the hornpipe while you wriggle. Is that fair, now?”

“Aye,” said Bones, for it was much what he would have done in Silver’s place, especially the shooting in the belly. So they found a comfortable place to sit, and took a mug or two, and some fruit and biscuit, and Long John brought all his eloquence to bear on Billy Bones.

“Billy,” he said, “Flint’s been gone a week. My guess is he’ll head for Charlestown to take on more men and arms, and he’ll come straight back, at which time I want to be ready. He’ll have greater numbers, but we’ve got plenty of powder and shot and small arms, and most of the four-pounders saved out of Lion, besides which Israel Hands says there’s the wreck of a big ship up in the north anchorage, with nine-pounders that we could use, though they’re too heavy to move very far.”

“Aye,” said Bones, “that’d be the Elizabeth. I sailed aboard of her with Israel and…” He dropped his eyes.

“And Flint,” said Silver, “Never mind, Billy-boy, for it comes to this: You know the lie of this island: latitude, longitude and all. I want you to tell me how soon Flint’ll be back, so’s I can be warned.”

“And why should I help you?” said Bones.

“First, ’cos I saved your neck from a stretching–which it still might get, if you ain’t careful–and second because we’ve found your old sea-chest, with all your goods aboard, and none shall touch it but you.”

“Oh…” said Billy Bones, for a seaman’s chest held all that was dear to him. “Thank you,” he mumbled, and thought vastly better of Long John. But Silver’s next words stung him.

“Good! Now listen while I tell you how that swab Flint has betrayed you.”

“Never!” said Bones fiercely, making as if to stand.

“Billy!” said Silver. “Don’t!” And he laid a hand on his pistol butt.

“You daresn’t!” said Bones, but he sat down again.

“Billy,” said Silver, gently, “Flint left you, and ain’t never coming back except to kill you, along of all the rest of us.”

“Huh!” sneered Bones. “You just want that black tart–Selena. You can’t stand that Flint’s aboard of her, fuckin’ her cross-eyed!”

“Ugh!” this time the pistol was out and cocked and deep denting Billy Bones’s cheek. Silver was white and he leaned over Bones like a vampire over its prey.

“Don’t you ever say that again, you lard-arsed, shit-head, land-lubber! Just listen to me, Billy, for there’s things about this island that ain’t right and I need you to explain ’em, and I need you to make ready for Flint–’cos if you won’t help, then we’re all dead men…but you the first of all of us! So what course shall you steer, Billy-boy?”




Chapter 3 (#u290d5c57-2e90-510e-9dca-388a83445eee)


15th August 1752 The Bishop’s House Williamstown, Upper Barbados

The Bishop of Barbados refused.

“There can be no wedding!” he said. “I am well aware that Mr Bentham–who is a damned pirate–enters into so-called marriages every time he visits this island, choosing as his bride any trollop that takes his fancy, and whom he might have had for sixpence, and whom afterwards he abandons!”

“Quite so!” said his chaplain, standing beside him in nervous defiance of the crowd of garishly dressed, heavily armed men who were crammed into the bishop’s study.

“I’m sorry, Your Grace,” declared Brendan O’Byrne, who commanded the intruders. He was frighteningly ugly and the gallows were groaning for him, but he’d been raised to give respect to a bishop. “I’m afraid you mayn’t say no, for I’m first mate to Captain Bentham, and Captain Bentham is resolved upon marriage. So, will you look at this now?”

He produced a little pocket-pistol, all blued and gleaming. Then, showing its slim barrel to His Grace, he explained what he was going to do with it, and had his men remove the chaplain’s drawers and breeches, and bend the chaplain over a table, to demonstrate precisely how it would be done.

Five minutes later, His Grace was stepping out under a burning sun, sweating in mitre and chasuble, with crosier in hand. His chaplain followed bearing a King James Bible and a Book of Common Prayer while attempting to keep the hem of the bishop’s robes clear of the mud and dog-shite of Queen Mary Street, main thoroughfare of Williamstown.

Beside the bishop marched O’Byrne, arms crossed and a pistol in each fist, while two dozen of his men capered on every side, taking refreshment from bottles. No matter how the bishop looked with his quick, clever eyes, there was no way out but forward, and he made the best of it by smiling to the cheering populace who’d turned out for Danny Bentham’s latest wedding.

“Bah!” said the bishop in exasperation as O’Byrne turned him left into Harbour Street, in sight of the dockyard and the Custom House with its Union Flag, and a small group of the island’s foremost citizens: those who by blind-eye and bribery allowed outright piracy to flourish when it was stamped out in every other place but this.

“Cap’n!” roared O’Byrne, seeing Danny Bentham among them. He waved his hat in the air. “Give a cheer, you men!”

“Huzzah!” they cried.

“Huzzah!” cried the mob, and everyone dashed forward, the bishop and his chaplain bundling up robes, dropping and retrieving sacred books, and managing by sweat-soaked miracles of footwork to avoid falling over completely, Finally, bedraggled and gasping, they arrived at the Custom House, where a wizened man in a red coat stepped forward to greet them.

“My lord!” said Sir Wyndham Godfrey, the governor, doffing his hat and bowing in his ceremonial uniform as colonel of the island’s militia. The bishop caught his breath, took the thin hand, and nodded curtly. The governor had once been an honest man who fought corruption, but now he was a figure of pathos: disease and the tropical climate having taken their toll.

Standing next to him was Captain Danny Bentham, with his bride-to-be. He was a huge man, six foot five inches tall, muscular and upright, with blue eyes, a heavy chin and a thick neck. He wore a gold-laced blue coat, a feathered hat, gleaming top-boots, and a Spanish rapier hung at his side. Sir Wyndham introduced this thieving, murdering rapist as if he were a nobleman.

“It is my pleasure, Your Grace, to present Captain Daniel Bentham, a worthy master mariner and owner of two fine vessels.”

“Milord,” said Bentham, taking the bishop’s hand. “Gaw’ bless you for agreein’ so kindly to do the honours!” The voice was soft but the handshake crunched like pincers. The bishop winced as he looked up into the tall man’s eyes, and was surprised at Bentham’s youth, for the big chin was as smooth as a boy’s.

“And this is my little Catalina, milord.” A small, plump tart was pushed forward in a cheap dress, a lace cap, and half-naked breasts. She was a mulatta: dark-skinned, pretty and with big eyes, the sort that Danny Bentham liked. He gazed upon her with urgent lust, hoisted her off her feet, and kissed her deep and hungry, with loud groans of pleasure.

His men cheered uproariously and fired pistols in the air, while Sir Wyndham and his followers simpered, and the bishop wished his post abolished and himself back in England, albeit as the lowest curate in the land.

“My little Catalina,” said Bentham, putting her down and wiping the slobber from his lips. “Fresh from the Brazils, milord, and speaks only Portugee, of which I has a few words meself. So she don’t know all our ways.” For some reason this provoked laughter from Bentham’s men, but he swiftly went among them and restored order with his fists and shining boots.

The rest of it passed in horror for the bishop, as a procession set out from the Custom House, led by the garrison band and a company of grenadiers. Next came the bishop and the Happy Couple, followed by the governor and prominent citizens, then the populace in general, with slaves, dogs and hogs to the rear.

The destination was Miss Cooper’s whorehouse, a large, stone-built mansion to the windward side of Williamstown, all laid out for a huge banquet.

But first there was the wedding ceremony, which took place in Miss Cooper’s salon: a splendid chamber, but it was Sodom and Gomorrah combined, so far as the bishop was concerned. He looked despairingly at Captain Bentham standing before him doting over his Catalina, while behind them the room was packed stinking full and sweltering hot with coarse and leering persons, mostly drunk and none of them quiet, with the governor and his entourage long gone.

“Ahem!” said the bishop. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here this day in the sight of God and this congregation…”

Eventually they let the bishop go, shoving him out the front door, his chaplain close behind. There, Mr O’Byrne capped insult upon injury by presenting each clergyman with a gratuity of fifty Spanish dollars in a purse tied up with ribbon.

Bang went the door, and they were free. For an instant the bishop stood trembling and close to tears. Then he snarled, “Give me that!” And, snatching the chaplain’s purse, he hurled it, together with his own, straight back into the house through one of Miss Cooper’s windows. If he’d hoped the gesture to be accompanied by the smashing of glass, he was disappointed; all was thrown open for the cool night air. “Bah!” he cried. “A lost labour and an affront to God!”

“What is, Your Grace?” said the chaplain.

“This!” said the bishop, spreading his arms to encompass the entire island.

Inside, roaring and swaying in unison, the men of the company were helping Cap’n Bentham upstairs for his wedding night, bellowing obscene advice. The women, meanwhile, were assisting the new Mrs Bentham out of her clothes, before tucking her into the house’s best bed.

“Ah!” said Bentham at last, leaning his back against the locked door, and “Huh!” as from outside there came the rumble and thunder of Mr O’Byrne removing all those who would have pressed their ears to the wood for further entertainment.

“Now, my little Catalina!” said Bentham.

“Oh, senhor!” she said, and the blood pumped into his loins at the sight of her, sat small and helpless against the pillows, with a linen sheet pulled protectively under her chin. Miss Cooper’s girls had expertly combed out her hair and spread it around her shoulders, while Catalina herself had been a virgin recently enough to remember a maiden’s modesty, and to deliver a representation of it sufficiently convincing for Danny Bentham.

“Senhor,” she pleaded, “seja delicado…”

“Be gentle?” said Bentham. “I’ll show you gentle, my girl!” and he swept off clothes, boots, belt and sword, to stand magnificently naked before his bride, legs spread wide and hands on hips.

“Oh!” said Catalina, sitting up straighter and staring in wonderment, for Danny Bentham’s body was something to see: slim-waisted, smooth and muscular, with long legs, strong arms, and gleaming skin. Catalina thought it a sight to please any bride–apart from the undoubted presence of a fine pair of breasts and the undoubted absence of anything between the legs that stood to attention, or even dangled at ease. In fact there was simply nothing. (Indeed there was doubly nothing, since to explain his smooth chin, Cap’n Bentham called daily for razor, soap and water, and having nothing else to shave, shaved what he had.)

“Hmm…” said Catalina, who understood a lot more than these stupid English thought, and who’d never for a moment believed she’d got a permanent husband: one that would last longer than the dollars she’d been paid. But she had thought she’d got a handsome husband and had been looking forward to the wedding night.

Que piedade, she thought; what a pity. But Captain Bentham thought otherwise. There was not the slightest equivocation in “his” mind as he leapt on to the bed, throwing sheets aside and seizing his wriggling, naked bride with absolute conviction, abandoned passion, and remarkable technique, for Danny Bentham liked women, and only women, and had learned how to please them.

Outside, Mr O’Byrne was at his station, lounging in a chair backed against the door with a bottle of rum for company, still keeping dirty-minded eavesdroppers from their sport.

“Uh! Uh! Uh!” came Bentham’s voice, muffled through the door.

“Go to it, me hearty!” said O’Byrne, and drank a toast.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” came the other voice.

“Give her one for me, by Christ, Cap’n!”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!”

“Go on, my galloping boy!”

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh!”




Chapter 4 (#u290d5c57-2e90-510e-9dca-388a83445eee)


Two bells of the forenoon watch (c. 9 a.m. shore time) 7th October 1752 Aboard Walrus The southern Caribbean.

“No!” said Selena, “I won’t go below. I want to see.”

“Damn it, girl, do as you’re bid,” said Flint, while beside them at the tiller, Tom Allardyce the bosun worked hard not to notice the argument, focusing instead on the ship they were chasing.

“She’s Dutch, Cap’n!” he said. “Round stern and bilanderrigged, and she’s hard up in a clinch with no knife to cut the seizing!”

Flint snapped out his glass and looked. Allardyce was right–he must have marvellous eyes: it was a Dutchman, heavily storm-damaged, and plodding along helpless. So much the better! He turned to Selena. “Go below, girl!” he muttered. “Don’t play the little madam with me!” Then he raised his voice cheerfully to the men standing to the guns and ready at the sails: “There’s our dockyard, lads!” he cried. “Our planking and rum, and our pickles and pork!”

The men cheered. Walrus had taken a battering in the fight against Lion; heavy shot into her hull had spoiled stores, sprung leaks, wrecked her windlass, and blown away her binnacle and compasses. Desperately short of provisions and fit only for a short voyage, Walrus remained sound aloft. Now, charging onward under foresails and gaffs, mainsail and topsails, she was going like a mail-coach on a turnpike.

“Go below!” said Flint. “There’s danger…and things unfit for you to see.”

“No!” she said. “Not this time. I won’t be shut up below!”

Flint’s eyes showed white all round. Nobody said no when Flint said yes. In agitation he reached up to his shoulder to pet the parrot that was his friend and darling…and which was no longer there because he’d lost it to Silver. Just as he’d got Selena, Silver had got the parrot.

“Huh!” he said, snatching down his hand before anyone should see. “You shall do as you are bid!” And he grabbed Selena, pulling her close and breathing the scent of her. He breathed it deep and felt her warmth and looked into her eyes. This was a new game. He knew it. She knew it. He’d been playing it ever since the island: finding excuses to brush past her, to touch her, and even–on one occasion–attempting to slide a hand inside her shirt to touch her naked skin.

Yes. A shining dawn was breaking for Joe Flint. Thanks to Selena, his lifelong, shameful incapacity seemed to be on the mend, and the dormant contents of his breeches were stirring. Conversely, Selena felt that for her the sun was going down. Flint was master aboard Walrus and would take whatever he wanted the instant he became capable of taking it.

“Flint!” she said sharply. “Look!” Flint turned and saw every eye was on himself and the lovely black girl in her boots, shirt and breeches, with two pistols stuffed in her belt. It’d been Flint’s joke to rig her out like this, but by God Almighty didn’t it just suit her! And now the swine were ogling and nudging one another for the fun of seeing a shapely seventeen-year-old defying him on his own quarterdeck.

Flint measured choices: he could wrestle her bodily through a hatchway–proving to all hands that she was beyond his command; he could order someone else to do it–allowing another man to handle her…or…

He came to a swift decision. “So be it, my chick!” he cried, slapping her backside merrily, as if it were the biggest joke in the world to have a woman on deck as the ship went into action. Turning to his men, he smiled his glittering smile…and it worked! For Flint was a man to admire: handsome, charismatic and splendid.

“A-hah!” roared the crew, united in shared pride of their magnificent captain…even if he was a mad bastard that popped out men’s eyes like pickled onions when the mood was upon him.

“So, my dear,” Flint said to Selena, smiling and smiling, “do try to keep your limbs clear of flying shot, and let’s see how much you relish what you now shall see!” He dropped his voice: “Because you won’t like it, not one little bit, that I do most solemnly promise you!”

The chase was short, for the wretched bilander was as slow as Walrus was fast. As soon as he came within cannon shot, Flint broke out the skull and swords–his personal variation of the black flag–and on the upward roll discharged a thundering load of chain-shot into the Dutchman’s rigging: some ten pounds of iron apiece from each of Walrus’s seven broadside guns. It was more to terrorise than to disable, for the bilander was already in ruins aloft: jury-rigged on the stump of her foremast, most of her bowsprit gone and the big crossjack yard on her mainmast fished with a spar where it had sprung.

The Dutchman shuddered under Walrus’s fire and those aboard were blinded in the smoke. She was a little ship, no more than sixty feet in the hull and a hundred tons burden, with an old-fashioned rig and shallow draught to suit the Netherlands’ waters. Against the heavily armed, sharp-keeled Walrus she was already lost. But she raised the red, white and blue of her native land and fought like a tiger.

One after another, the four one-pounder swivels that were all she had for a broadside blasted their charges, hurling dozens of pistol-balls across Walrus’s decks, prompting roars of rage as men were struck down or staggered back under the impact of shot, even as they stood ready to hurl grappling lines.

“Bastards!” cried Walrus’s men.

“Give ’em another!” cried Flint. “Grape and round-shot!” And it was a race between his gunners and the Dutchman’s as to who would fire next. The Dutchman won, and got off just one more volley of canister, killing a few more of Flint’s men before Walrus’s main battery, thundering fire and smoke, comprehensively smashed in the Dutchman’s bulwarks, blasting half her men into offal, and sending her swivel guns tumbling into the air as iron wreckage.

“Stand by, boarders!” cried Flint. “Put us alongside of her, Mr Allardyce!”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

The two vessels rose and fell, rubbing paint and splinters off one another as the grappling lines bound them together.

“Boarders away!” cried Flint, leading the scramble up on to Walrus’s bulwark. He leapt aboard the Dutchman followed by nearly sixty men, all of them armed to the teeth, fighting mad and seeking vengeance for their dead and wounded mates.

A mere handful of the Dutchman’s crew remained alive amongst the wreckage of broken timbers, shards of iron, smashed gratings and hanging sails that encumbered the narrow, smoke-clouded deck. It was hard enough to walk the deck, let alone fight on it. But fight they did, with pike, pistol and cutlass, led by a man in a grey coat boasting a big voice.

“Christiaan Hugens!” he cried, calling on the name of his ship.

“Christiaan Hugens!” cried the others, and then it was hand-to-hand.

Slick! And a man shoving a blade at Flint found the steel parried and himself spouting blood from a cut throat. Thump! And another man, pulling the trigger with his pistol aimed right at Flint’s chest, found Flint gone and a cutlass cleaving his own skull. But that was all the fighting Joe Flint had to do that day. Six men cannot fight sixty. Not for long, however brave they may be. Soon all was quiet except the sounds of the sea and the groaning, creaking of ships’ timbers.

A thick, squat man came lumbering through the wreckage. He was Alan Morton, Flint’s quartermaster, and he saluted Flint with his best man-o’-warsman salute: hand touching hat and foot stamping the deck.

“Cap’n,” he said, “there’s just three o’ the buggers left alive, and a dozen o’ dead-’uns, mostly killed by our gunfire afore ever we stepped aboard.” He pointed to the three prisoners, waiting by the mainmast. “There they are, Cap’n. Shall we slit ’em and gut ’em?”

“Good heavens, no!” said Flint, jolly as ever after a fight. “Not at all, Mr Morton–I have other plans for them.” He smiled and most cordially took a handful of Morton’s shirt front to wipe the blood off his cutlass. “Just make the gentlemen fast and we’ll see to them later. But now we have work to do.”

Flint sighed inwardly. It was on such occasions that he missed Billy Bones, who’d once been his first mate, and whose heavy fists had driven men to their duties without Flint having to do the tiresome work of punching heads and kicking behinds. Flint sighed wistfully. Bones did so wonderfully have the knack of terrifying the men, combined with just the perfect quantity of initiative: enough to fill in the outline of his orders without ever daring to question them.

“Huh!” Flint peered at Morton, now shuffling his feet and looking puzzled under his captain’s gaze. The low-browed, stupid clod was the best fist-fighter on the lower deck–which was why he held his rating–but like the rest he was infected with the equality of those blasted “articles” which were Silver’s legacy to Walrus; Silver who, believing himself a “gentleman of fortune” had drawn up a list of articles like those of Captain England, Captain Roberts and all the other pirates who wouldn’t admit what they were.

The thought that Morton believed Flint was captain by consent and could be deposed at will made Flint laugh out loud. Morton, basking in the sunshine of Flint’s merriment, grinned back at him.

“So,” said Flint, “here is what we must do, Mr Morton…”

“Aye-aye, sir!” said Morton, saluting and stamping again. At least he was keen.

The rest of the day passed in work: intense and heavy work, as everything useful was stripped out of Christiaan Hugens, which proved to be an expedition ship, fitted out by Utrecht University and sent to study celestial navigation in the West Indies, in the hope of advancing Dutch trade. Flint gleaned that from the papers in her master’s cabin. He had no Dutch, but many seafaring and astronomical words were similar to the English equivalents, and he filled in the rest by intelligent guesswork.

This was one of the rare occasions when Flint was happy to take a prize which carried no rich or valuable cargo: no silks or spices, no bullion nor pieces of eight–the fine Spanish dollars that the whole world used as currency. No, this time his most pressing need was ordinary ships’ stores. He especially valued the excellent compasses, charts and navigational instruments.

Flint’s men also took sheet lead, nails and carpenter’s tools to repair the shot-holes Lion had blown through Walrus’s hull, along with some spars and planking, a windlass and a fine new kedge anchor that was better than Walrus’s own.

They took particular delight in seizing Christiaan Hugens’s entire stock of foodstuffs: salt beef, salt pork and biscuit, together with more exotic victuals: ham, cheeses, tongue, tea, coffee, gin, brandy and wine, for the ship was only two weeks out of Port Royal, Jamaica, and was bursting with fresh provisions. There was even a coop full of chickens on the fo’c’sle; these hardy fowl survived the battle only to have their necks pulled by Flint’s cook, to provide fresh meat for the gluttony and drinking that always followed the taking of a prize.

Later, with a fiddler playing and all hands half drunk and full of good food, and the blazing hulk of the Dutch ship lost under the horizon, Flint stood before the tiller, with Selena, Allardyce and Morton beside him, to address the crew. Mr Cowdray, the ship’s surgeon, who had been busy with the wounded below, now joined them on deck. Like the rest, he was in his best clothes for the occasion. He nodded to Selena, who smiled.

For Selena, this was a cruel time. John Silver was stranded on Flint’s island where she might never see him again, while Flint’s stunted desires for women were changing and growing. She desperately needed a friend, and–aboard this ship–Mr Cowdray was the only honest man.

“Well,” he said, “have you seen a battle?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you think of it?”

“I’ve seen worse.” It was true. She had.

“Hmm.” Cowdray frowned. “Be careful. There might be more.”

“What?”

“Brothers and fellow gentlemen of fortune!” cried Flint, in a great and happy voice. Cheers followed, with raised bottles and hearty toasts. “Thank you, brothers!” said Flint. “Look at our ship! Go on, my lads, look at her!” That puzzled them. They stared around almost nervously. “Soon she’ll be good as new,” said Flint. “Re-fitted, re-provisioned, leaks plugged and rigging spliced. We’ve all the tackles and all the gear…and her luck shall be re-made!”

That was clever. They all knew Flint’s treasure had been left behind on the island and that, until she was stabbed in the back by Billy Bones, Lion had had the better of them. Nobody dared say it who sailed under Flint, but they all feared their luck was broken. Now they cheered and cheered and cheered.

“Brothers!” cried Flint, raising a silver tankard. “Here’s to old friends and new luck!”

“Old friends and new luck!” they roared.

“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest…” began Flint, lifting up his fine, ringing voice and the fiddler following him.

“Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” roared the crew.

“Drink and the devil had done for the rest!”

“Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

When he chose to be, Flint was irresistibly charming and now he worked his magic, with verse after verse of his favourite, hideous song, each more grim than the last, but always seeming funny when Flint sang it; he passed from man to man, pulling noses, clapping shoulders, poking ribs, and all the while dancing to the beat of his own song. Even Selena and Cowdray laughed, who both should have known better. As for the crew, they worshipped and adored their captain in that happy moment.

But Cowdray was right. There was worse to come.

“Now, shipmates!” cried Flint when the song was done, and he beamed at the close-packed ring of red faces, leering as the tropical sun went down. “Now, my jolly boys…” And Flint changed the entire mood with a solemn expression and hands raised to heaven. “Lads, let us remember those of our brothers foully slain in today’s action. Those slain against all the laws of war, when we had offered honourable surrender!”

“Aye!” they roared.

“What’s he saying?” said Selena to Cowdray. “That’s nonsense.”

“I think you might wish to go below, my dear,” said Cowdray.

“Why?”

Cowdray looked away. “Experto credite!” he said. “Trust one who knows.”

Selena paused. She looked at Cowdray. He was a scholar who loved Latin, and had the habit of spouting it when swayed by strong emotion, be it happiness, fear…or shame.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Just go below.”

“I see you recognise the villainy we endured today!” cried Flint. “And since we still have, under hatches, three of the guilty ones…” A deep and animal growl drowned out his words. “Silence between decks!” cried Flint, and instantly they obeyed.

“Since we have three of them, I have made preparations in the name of justice.” He grinned wickedly. “Justice–and your amusement. So, clear the decks, and hold your patience!” He nodded to Allardyce and Morton, who had their orders and immediately stepped up to the lee rail.

There was an intense buzz of conversation among the hands as Allardyce and Morton took a two-fathom plank (fresh from Christiaan Hugens) and shoved it over the lee rail so that half its length stuck out over the side, while the rest remained inboard, nailed firmly to the top of a heavy barrel. When this was done, they went below and brought up one of the prisoners. Barefoot, wearing only a pair of calico slops and with his hands tied behind him, the man was already shaking with fright, and he flinched pitifully as Walrus’s crew bayed like the mob at the Roman games. Finally, Allardyce and Morton heaved him bodily up on to the plank, where he stood swaying and shaking and gazing about in terror.

“What is this?” whispered Selena to Cowdray.

“I don’t know. This is new.” He turned to face her. “But I am going below now, and I think you should too.”

“No…”

“Selena, please follow me.”

“Can’t we stop him?”

“Flint? Never! But I beg you, on my knees, not to see this.”

Selena, horrified and fascinated, remained where she was.

Cowdray sighed and shook his head. “On your own head be it!” he said, and vanished down the quarterdeck hatchway.

“Brothers!” cried Flint. “Those who know me will recall some of my merry games–Flint’s games!”

“Aye!” they roared, nodding at one another in glee. There was one that they knew all too well, played atop an overturned tub with a belaying pin, where all the player had to do was move faster than Flint to avoid getting his fingers broken. They laughed and laughed, even those whose fingertips had been smashed. Indeed, some now displayed their scars with pride, and laughed louder than all the rest.

“But this is a new game,” said Flint, lowering his voice like a conspirator. “And this the first time it’s been tried. So watch me, shipmates. Watch and learn!”

With that, Flint picked up a boarding pike and began to sing his song again:

“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest…” He cocked an ear to the audience.

“Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” they cried, and burst into laughter as–on the word rum–Flint pricked the victim’s side with the sharp point of the pike.

“Aaah!” cried the man.

“Drink and the devil had done for the rest…”

“Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

Flint jabbed again, sharp on cue, and blood flowed. Selena, sobbing, finally took Cowdray’s advice and ran below.

“Aaah!” cried the victim.

And so it went on. Since the plank led out over the side, even the dullest spectator knew how the game must end, and any fool could simply have driven someone off its end with prods of a pike. But Flint was an artist. He worked to music and to rhythm, constantly leading his man to the end of the plank, then allowing him to stagger to safety, only to drive him back again or push him to one side, then to the other, with a dozen wounds oozing blood and the poor devil deranged with horror and begging in his own language for mercy.

The special horror of it was any man’s innate fear of falling, especially from a wobbling plank run out over the ocean, so the victim collaborated in the entertainment, even torturing himself by fighting to keep his footing, leaning against the sharp point that was driving him into the sea in a desperate attempt to resist the final plunge, hands-bound, into the hungry waters below. And Flint’s evil genius–his unique gift–was to make this funny.

Finally, when Flint judged the time was ripe, he paused proceedings for conversation with the victim.

“My dear fellow,” he said, “King Richard of England was ransomed with one hundred thousand marks. What will your nation pay for you?”

This brought howls of laughter from the crew, and desperate pleas–understood by nobody–from the victim.

“What will you give me then for your life?” said Flint, snarling and vicious now, rousing the blood lust of his crew. “Nothing?” said Flint. “Then take this…” Slowly and deliberately he pushed the steel pike-head into the man’s flesh, forcing him agonisingly backward, resisting all the way and spattering blood and sweat, shaking his head and grinding his teeth.

“Goodbye!” said Flint, and pushed him off the edge with a final thrust.

The crew shrieked in delight and Walrus rolled heavily as they rushed to the side to see him drown.

The game wasn’t over yet, though. It was time for the second Dutch prisoner to be brought up, the man in the grey coat who’d led the fight by Christiaan Hugens’s people. He was fit and muscular with sandy hair, a beard and moustache, and high, slanted cheekbones that made him look more Slav than Hollander. He struggled cunningly as he was dragged forward, being particularly nasty in the way he kicked: cracking sharply into shins and stamping a heel sideways into one man’s kneecap such that he limped ever after. But finally he was heaved up on the plank and menaced by blades so he couldn’t jump off.

The game proceeded as before; the crew, deeper in drink by this time, were bellowing Flint’s song, while their captain danced and spun and switched hands on the pike-staff, all the while jabbing and jabbing and jabbing. As before, it ended with the prisoner, dripping blood, at the end of the plank with the pike’s tip in his guts and Flint demanding a ransom. The only difference was that this man spoke English. He spoke it well enough to curse Flint–which Flint played upon with cruel skill to make the game even more entertaining. His men were near paralysed with laughter and begging for him to stop.

“King Richard of England was ransomed with one hundred thousand marks…” said Flint.

“You go fuck your mother!” cried the man.

“Sadly she is deceased so I cannot,” said Flint. “But what will your nation pay to ransom you?”

“Damn you to hell!”

“Where else? But how much?”

“Bastard!”

“Perhaps,” said Flint. “But how much?”

Finally, judging his moment, Flint turned nasty, spitting out his words in anger.

“I say, for the last time, what will you give me for your life?” He twisted the pikehead into flesh.

“Argh!” gasped the man on the plank.

“Nothing?” said Flint. “You have nothing for me? Then over you go!” And he readied the pike for a long, slow thrust.

“Longitude!” cried the man.

“What?” said Flint, lowering the pike.

“I give you longitude. I find it at sea.”

“Nonsense,” said Flint, “that’s impossible!”

“No! I do it by lunar observation.”

Flint blinked, and his heart began to thump as he realised what quality of man he was about to push into the sea: a man who offered longitude in the face of death. Flint thought of every year’s crop of shipwrecks and the thousands drowned, the rich cargoes lost through ignorance of a ship’s true position. Fine navigator that he was, he was limited like all others to working by latitude. If he could find longitude at sea, it would give him the most colossal advantage over the rest of seafaring mankind…It was an undreamed of prize. It was magnificent. It was priceless. Flint made another quick decision, this time an easy and obvious one.

“Take him down!” he said. “You! Allardyce and Morton! Take him down and free his hands.”

The crew didn’t like it. They didn’t know longitude from a loblolly boy. They wanted their fun, and they bellowed in anger at being deprived of it. Allardyce and Morton worked fast. They hauled the man off the plank and dragged him aft, followed by Flint.

“Get him below, quick!” said Flint.

“No!” said the man. “I am Cornelius Van Oosterhout. I am a Christian and I do not move from here.”

“What?” said Flint. “Are you mad? Get down to my cabin this instant, before they turn ugly.” He looked at the crew, muttering and scowling.

“You want longitude, yes?” said Van Oosterhout.

“Yes,” said Flint. He wanted it like all the jewels of Arabia.

“Then you save the man below. He is from my crew. If you put him there–” he looked at the plank “–I tell you nothing. I jump in the sea. You don’t need to push!”

“Poppycock!” said Flint, sneering. “Do as I say, or I shall put you back on the plank, and you’ll sing any tune I choose!”

“No,” said Van Oosterhout firmly. “One day I stand before God. I am responsible. You save two, or you save none. It is your choice.”




Chapter 5 (#u290d5c57-2e90-510e-9dca-388a83445eee)


Morning, 24th September 1752 Charlestown Bay, South Carolina

Drums beating, colours flying and bayonets fixed, the eight hundred men of the Craven County Regiment of Militia marched splendidly into the tented camp established on the southern bank of the Ashley River where it opened into Charlestown harbour, less than a quarter of a mile from the town itself and close enough that their fifes and drums could be heard from the city walls. The officers were in British scarlet, with gorgettes and soldierly cocked hats, while the ranks wore whatever was practical for campaigning in the field. But every man shouldered a Brown Bess musket and carried sixty rounds of ball cartridge in his pouch, and stepped out to the beat of the drum.

They advanced in two columns, and between them–escorted, guarded and enclosed–came the Patanq nation: First the warriors, then the old men, then the women and children burdened with all the nation’s goods. The marching militia–in columns of three–just covered the three hundred and four warriors, leaving the tail of old men, and women and children stringing along behind. Nobody worried about them.

The formation was received with drum-rolls and dipped colours by the remaining five militia regiments of the Royal Colony of South Carolina, paraded in arms, and which–together with the Craven County Regiment–numbered close on six thousand men, not to mention the three troops of horse militia that trotted outside the marching columns, with spurs and broadswords jingling, and who were over one hundred strong in their own right.

Mounted, uniformed, and with flashing swords drawn in salute, the colonels of the five regiments stood before their men, with Colonel Douglas Harper of the Charlestown Regiment–who was the senior–in the middle and a horse length to the fore, an aide on either side of him.

They sheathed swords and Colonel Harper spoke to the young officer to his right, who on other days was his eldest son Tom.

“Fine sight, Lieutenant!”

“Indeed, sir!”

“What a day for the Colony!”

“Aye! Damned Indians.”

“Hmm,” said Colonel Harper, and pondered, for he’d been a great man in the Charlestown fur trade, and had grown rich by it, and every fur he ever sold was trapped and brought in by the Indians. Still…he looked back at the walls of Charlestown, which weren’t there to protect against the French and Spanish only, but against Indians too. And today the Colony was taking the wonderful opportunity to rid itself of the entire Patanq nation, all fifteen hundred of them, in their moccasins and blankets. These days they weren’t the most numerous of the Indian nations, but they were Indians and times were changing, and better they should live anywhere other than South Carolina, and preferably in the moon if only they could be got there. So thought Colonel Harper.

“Pa?” said Lieutenant Harper.

“Colonel!” corrected Harper.

“Sorry, Pa…Colonel.”

“Well?”

“Why’s there so many of us? All the regiments? There’s more of us than there is of them, even counting the women and little ’uns!” Harper frowned.

“Don’t you ever listen? Haven’t I told you about them savages?” Colonel Harper was fifty-five years old and had been more things than a trader. He’d fought the Patanq in his time, and shuddered at the thought of it. Especially the recollection of going to battle against them in the woods. “Listen, boy, if there’s enough of us here today to put the idea of fighting clean out of their heathen heads, then there’s not one man too many! So shut up and face your front.”

Colonel Harper looked at the Indians, raising dust as they tramped in, bedraggled from their long march. In fact Tom was right in a way; there were not more than a few hundred warriors in all. But you never knew with the Patanq. They moved like ghosts, you wouldn’t hear them coming, and you’d only realise they’d cut your throat when your shirt front turned red.

He turned in the saddle and raised his voice:

“Three hearty rousing cheers for the Craven County men. Hip-Hip-Hip…”

Thundering cheers bellowed out as the mustered regiments raised their caps on their bayonets and gave three tremendous huzzahs. In response to the cheers, bells clanged and pealed from the town.

“Colonel?” said a voice from his left: Lieutenant David Harper, his second eldest, and by far the brightest son. “Is that the Dreamer?” He pointed to the head of the Patanq column.

“Aye,” said Colonel Harper, pleased that one son had paid attention, “that’s him, their famous medicine man. And that’s Dark Hand, the war sachem, or chief, at his side.” Harper looked at them as they came past. He knew Dreamer very well. Him and all the Patanq leaders. Now he drew steel to salute them. And the sachems raised their right hands formally to acknowledge him. For they knew him, too.

There were a dozen of them, leading their nation in procession with Dreamer and Dark Hand. Dreamer was a small, shrivelled man, marked by long illness. He looked a miserable creature beside Dark Hand, but he was the soul of the Patanq nation, and a formidable negotiator–as Harper knew all too well, having attended the lengthy council sessions that had brought the Patanq here today, granted safe passage and a fleet of six ships to carry them off, along with the gold they’d accumulated through years of fur trading and bringing in scalps for the bounty.

The thought of scalps made Harper glance nervously at the warriors, fearful creatures that they were…tall men every one: lithe and muscular, upright, hook-nosed, black-eyed and stone-faced. They wore bright-coloured trade blankets round their shoulders and carried long guns in their arms. Their heads were shaven except for dangling, befeathered queues, their cheeks were tattooed in geometric lines and they wore silver nose-rings and elaborate, beaded jewellery.

At last the Patanq came within sight of the harbour, and the ships anchored under the guns of Fort Johnson, with the launches and longboats beached and ready on the shore. And a chatter arose, first from the sachems, and then from the warriors. Harper shook his head in wonder. This was an unheard of vulgarity for the Patanq, who habitually endured the shocks of life in silence. But the chattering was nothing to the shrill cries of the women and children, to whom the ships and the boats and the endless rolling waters were magical wonders.

They surged forward, led by the matriarchs who even the warriors must treat with respect. They shouted and yelled and urged the children forward, elbowing aside the Craven County Militia, who grinned indulgently and opened ranks to let them through. After all, who were they to stand in the way of Indians about to board ship and sail away for ever? So the militiamen grinned, the young girls shrieked, the children laughed, and the watching regiments cheered in delight as the women and children of the Patanq nation ran headlong down to the shore.

The sachems and warriors maintained their dignity, keeping a steady pace and manly bearing. But Harper saw that some of them were in doubt and arguing noisily.

Oh no! he thought, and a tingle of fright shot up his spine. Don’t let them baulk at the last moment. Please no. Not after all this…

“Colonel,” said his second-eldest, “what’s going on, sir? Some of their chiefs are stopping.”

“No they’re not,” said the colonel. “They’re just puzzled. Most of these have never seen the sea before, nor ships neither. They’re surprised, that’s all.”

He wanted it to be true, but it wasn’t. As the arguments grew, the sachems came to a halt, and nervous conversations began among the colonels behind Harper, and among the troops too. Up and down the lines of infantry, men stopped cheering and began fingering their muskets and wondering if they might have to use them. Harper took a deep breath. He couldn’t let all this come to nothing.

“You two follow me,” he said to his sons, “the rest of you stand fast!” He was digging in his spurs and riding forward, wondering what he’d have to say, what he’d have to offer them, when he saw Dreamer raise his hands and lift up his voice to address the sachems in the Patanq tongue. “Whoa!” said Harper to his horse, and patted her neck. His heart thumped as Dreamer spoke, and spoke…and then the sachems were following behind the medicine man like lambs, down towards the shore and the boats and the laughing women.

The fearful moment had passed.

Dreamer turned to face Harper and lifted his hand. Harper raised his hat and bowed, and rode back to his place at the head of the colonels, heart thumping and head dizzy with relief.

At dusk there was a formal council. Dreamer and his sachems sat down with Colonel Harper, the other colonels and the leaders of the city of Charlestown. To the white men it was long, incomprehensible and tedious. But it was necessary. It was part of the passing away of the Patanq nation from its homeland.

Next day the Patanq embarked. And it took all day to get them out and aboard the six ships, for there were serious matters of precedence to be considered, and families and clans to be kept together. There were long discussions, led by Dreamer, and the sachems, while Colonel Harper and the rest of the South Carolinians did no more than stand by and watch.

But some of the white men–while they were glad the Indians were going–were puzzled as to the reason.

“Why are they doing this, Colonel?” said his second-eldest, as they sat on their horses and looked on.

“They have their reasons, Lieutenant.”

“Where are they going?”

“North! At least, that’s what they told me.”

“But why are they going? They’ve been fighting us on and off since white men came here. Why should they give up their lands and pay in gold to be taken into ships and carried away?”

Harper sighed.

“Boy, you’ve asked me that a hundred times these past months, and I just don’t know.”

“But this has been planned for over a year, and you’ve spent weeks among them. Didn’t you ever ask?”

“’Course I did, but they’d never tell me.”

“Not anything? Not at all?”

Harper paused and gazed out across the harbour, where busy boats slid across the water like insects with flashing limbs, and the decks of the six ships swarmed with excited Indians. Only a couple of dozen Patanq remained ashore, climbing into two big boats with oarsmen ready, helmsmen at the tillers…and Dreamer looking on, determined to see all his people safely away before he stepped into a boat himself.

“I don’t know the truth of it, boy,” said Harper, “but it’s all to do with him.”




Chapter 6 (#u290d5c57-2e90-510e-9dca-388a83445eee)


Dawn, 1st October 1752 The southern anchorage The island

Billy Bones was pumping ship among the trees, only his broad back visible as he turned away for privacy, fumbling with the falls of his breeches and aiming at the roots of a big palm. Grunting in relief, he let loose a stream like that of a brewer’s dray horse.

“Can you trust him, Cap’n?” said Israel Hands, a hundred yards off, preparing to help launch the jolly-boat. It was rigged for sail, with provisions for a week, two men standing by as crew, and Long John ready seated in the stern-sheets. Silver shrugged his shoulders.

“We got to trust him, shipmate. There ain’t no other way.”

“Then let me come along o’ you.”

“Can’t do that, matey. There’s too much to do and too few to do it. I want you out with your party, along o’ Sarney Sawyer and Black Dog and their crews. I want this island mapped and charted, and not an inch that we don’t know the bearings of.”

“But, John, it might be half a year or more before we sees Flint again.”

“Not him, Israel!” Silver thumped the gunwale. “Not him, my cocker! He’ll flog all hands to their duties, and whistle up the Devil if need be.” He shook his head. “No, he’ll be back before you can blink, and we has to be ready.”

“Then take the pistols off Billy-boy. At least do that,” said Israel Hands.

“No,” said Silver, “them are to show we trust him.”

“But we don’t.”

“Israel!” said Silver, taking hold of his arm. “Yes, we do, and I’ll tell you for why…” He nodded in Bones’s direction. “I saw the look on the bugger’s face when he opened his sea-chest and saw the cargo untouched. He piped his eye like a babby.”

“Looks as though he’s done,” said Israel Hands, for Bones was now busy shaking off the last drops. Heaving everything back into place, he turned towards the boat, making fast his britches as he stumped across the sand, head down, lips pursed.

In addition to restoring Bones’s pistols and cutlass, Silver had issued him with a blue coat and tricorne to signify that he was, once more, an officer and jolly companion. Now he gazed upon these icons of resurrection.

If a thing’s worth doing… he thought. But even then he knew that Billy would turn traitor the instant he caught sight of Flint.

“Come aboard, Mr Bones,” said Silver with a smile.

“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” said Billy Bones, touching his hat with utmost respect. The broad nose occupying the centre of his rough, heavy face was a constant reminder of the need to show respect to Silver, for it was Silver who’d flattened it, in past days aboard Walrus. Billy’s piggish eyes blinked nervously as–seaman born and bred–he gave a hand to shoving the jolly-boat out till she floated, before leaping aboard with the others.

The two seamen immediately took up their oars in the rocking boat, set them in the rowlocks, feathered, and looked to Silver for orders.

“Give way!” said Silver, and the boat shot forward, clear of the shore. “Take the tiller, Mr Bones, and set a course for Foremast Hill.” He looked at the oarsmen. “We’ll set sail, just so soon as she’s clear o’ the inlet. Wind’s fair from the west.”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n.”

Out they went, pulling through the land-locked waters where–surrounded by hills and jungle, and shielded by the mass of a craggy islet that was the island’s companion–the winds blew feeble and erratic. As soon as they cleared the narrows and came about, with the heights of Haulbowline Head on the starboard beam, the fifteen-foot boat began to lift and plunge, and all aboard her felt their spirits lift as the fresh salt smell, the wind and spray and the wheeling gulls blew away the foetid heat of the enclosed anchorage.

“Make sail, lads,” said Silver, and in came the oars, and up went a gaff and headsail, to fill in the steady westerly blow, driving them onward. The speed was exhilarating. Too small for deep sea work, and dangerously stretched even for a coastal cruise, the jolly-boat–chosen for the job because she was all they had–was rising to the occasion magnificently.

“Fine sport, there!” said Silver, pointing to the honking, trumpeting sealions that frolicked–fat, black and slippery–among the breakers pounding the rocks off Haulbowline Head.

“Fine for them, Cap’n,” said Billy Bones, with a broken-toothed grin, “but not for us.” It was the first time Silver had seen him smile. “And there’s the Cape of the Woods to clear, half a league ahead, so I’ll steer a point to windward, to give us sea-room.”

“Well and good, Mr Bones,” said Silver approvingly. “I see you knows your island.”

“Aye, Cap’n, ’deed I do. When I was here under…” His words died.

“Tell the truth and shame the Devil, Mr Bones!” said Silver. The two seaman were looking on with round eyes. “When you was here under Cap’n Flint…”

Billy Bones swallowed, studied the sea rather than Silver, and went on, “When I was here…before…we…that is he… charted her from north to south and east to west, and all the seas around.”

“So he knows the island well?”

“Every blessed inch.”

“And the seas to the north? Does he know what lies there?”

Bones bit his lip and mumbled. If ever a man wore his thoughts on his face it was Billy Bones, and Silver knew he’d touched on something important. But he let it pass, and waited until they’d forged further out to sea, where more of the island’s mysteries became visible over the line of cliffs.

“Mr Bones,” he said, “d’you see Spy-glass Hill, there, fair on the starboard bow?” he pointed at the great hill–more of a small mountain–that rose above all else on the island: heavily wooded at its roots, but almost naked near the peak.

“Aye, Cap’n.”

“And d’you see how it’s flattened at the top?”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

“And I s’pose you know why Flint–who gave it its name–called it Spy-glass?”

Billy Bones said nothing.

“He called it that, Mr Bones, because it’s the finest lookout point on the island, except for one thing. D’you know what that is?”

“No, Cap’n…well…yes, Cap’n.”

Ah, thought Silver, so you’re coming about, Mr Bones.

“What is it, then?” he said.

“You can’t see to the north,” said Bones. “There’s a spire of rock in the way, right at the top. The Watchtower he called it, but it was one of his jokes. It’s smooth as a church steeple, and you can’t climb it, and short of months of work by engineers with gunpowder, you can’t get rid of it, nor get round it, nor cut a way to the top.”

“Thank you, Mr Bones,” said Silver. “So the Spy-glass is blind to the north.”

“That she is, Cap’n.”

“And can’t be cured. Not without months of work, as you say.” Silver paused. “So! How long have we got, Mr Bones? You’re the navigator. You know Flint better than any man. Where’s he gone? How long till he gets there? And how long till he comes back?”

There was a lengthy silence as Billy Bones considered his loyalties. Finally–Silver had been quite right–what brought Bones round was the thought of all his precious things, given back to him, safe and sound, in his old sea trunk.

“It’d be Savannah first, Cap’n, to get money out of Charley Neal, his agent.”

“Aye,” said Silver, who knew Charley Neal as well as Flint did.

“Then maybe to Charlestown, which is only a day’s sail north, given fair winds. It’s a big enough seaport for him to get more ships and men, and take on powder and shot and so forth.”

“And then back to us here?”

“Aye.”

“So how long till we see his blessed face?”

Billy Bones closed his eyes and did heavy sums in his head. He alone, of those on the island, knew exactly where it lay. Silver, Israel Hands, and one or two others could make a rough guess, but Billy Bones knew. After much pondering, he spoke.

“Best he could do is about three months, I’d reckon. But it could be much longer if there’s hurricanes, or if he’s becalmed, or if…”

“Or if there’s fire, wreck or mutiny,” added Silver, laying a hand on Billy Bones’s shoulder. “I know, Mr Bones. Three months is what I’d have guessed myself, but thank you for your opinion, the which I value greatly.”

After that, Silver sat quiet and studied the island as it sped past: cliffs and shingle, grey vegetation streaked with yellow sands, and an occasional mighty pine rising like the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. For some reason, Silver thought it a miserable sight. Bones was busy with his steering, but Silver saw the same solemn mood on the faces of the two seamen, and that weren’t right! They had a fair wind, a lively boat and should have been merry. Seamen lived for the moment, mostly, and the present moment was jolly enough.

It was the island, he thought. It depressed him and he couldn’t think why. He looked at its hills and plains and jungles. It was like Jamaica, with every landscape from Norway’s to Africa’s, yet perverse, for in the southern anchorage the noon-day heat would sizzle your eyeballs, but at night and in the morning it could be thick with chilly fog.

And then John Silver bowed his head as depression led to despair, because it led to Selena, the woman he loved, and that with a fierce intensity for her beauty and her dainty grace, and her sweet little face looking up at him as she said John. Flint had taken her. She was away with him to Savannah and Charlestown. Silver groaned. The last he’d heard, Flint couldn’t do his duty where women were concerned, but you never knew with him. You never knew what he’d do next. He might be ramming and boarding her this minute!

“Shite and corruption!” cried Silver.

“What?” cried the others, looking around in alarm. “What is it, Cap’n?”

“Uh!” said Silver, snatched from his thoughts. “It’s the leg,” he lied, “the one as ain’t there. It pains me sometimes.”

“Ahhh,” they said, and nodded.

“Happens sometimes,” said Billy Bones. “Take a pull o’ the rum, Cap’n.”

* * *

After a few hours’ steady sailing they arrived at a vast sandy beach near the north end of the island, which offered a good landing place for Foremast Hill: the shabby, northern relation of the mighty Spy-glass. They dragged the boat beyond high tide, and took a rest and a meal in the shade of the shoreline trees–mainly pines and live-oaks, with thick broom bushes between, a world as different as could be from the jungles of the southern anchorage, for a strong wind blew off the sea here, and it was cooler by far.

Later they trudged to the modest summit, no more than a few hundred feet, Silver as agile as any of them, hopping smartly along on the hard, stony ground, and merry again too. It was work that drove his pain away, not rum, and there was plenty of work to do.

“Here we are then, mates,” he said cheerfully when they reached the top and paused to gaze at the splendid view around them–shimmering ocean, deep-blue dome of sky, rolling hills and forests–while insects chirped, birds sang, and the heavy breakers rumbled against the island’s shores. “This is a good spot for a lookout,” said Silver. “And I shall station men here with stores and a glass, even though it’ll be a fair run to bring news to us…” Then he saw that Billy Bones wasn’t paying attention. Bones was peering fixedly towards the northern inlet, the island’s other anchorage, clearly visible below. He was staring at the wreck of a ship, a big three-master in a state of utter ruin.

“Mr Bones!” said Silver sharply. “Won’t you join us?”

“Beg pardon, Cap’n,” said Billy Bones, guilty as a schoolboy caught playing with himself.

“Oh,” said Silver, “I see you’re casting an eye over the old Elizabeth.” Bones said nothing. “The ship what you and Flint took from King George?” Billy Bones flinched. His memories of that atrocious mutiny were shameful, for he’d been an honest man before Flint got hold of him.

As ever, Billy Bones’s thoughts were plain on his face, and Silver smiled. “Never mind, Mr Bones, King George can only hang you once, and he’ll do that anyway for your being a gentleman of fortune! So come along o’ me and look to better days.”

“Thank you, Cap’n,” said Bones, touching his hat, and came as close as ever he did to changing masters.

“Now see here, Mr Bones,” said Silver, producing a telescope from one of the deep pockets of his coat; “I’ve been up here before, and there’s a thing I’ve brought you special to see.”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n.”

“Can you see, Mr Bones, to the south, to the east and to the west…there’s clear blue ocean?”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

“But look to the north, and look to a compass point east and west of north on either hand.” Billy Bones looked. “D’you see the fog-banks there?”

“Aye,” said Bones.

“And d’you see the broken water an’ all?” Billy Bones peered hard. He swallowed, he fidgeted, he blinked. He said nothing. “Here–” said Silver, handing him the telescope. Bones drew it and took a brief look, and gave it back to Silver.

“It’s an archipelago of rocks and islands, mostly half-sunk, and there’s massive sandbanks like the Goodwins,” he babbled nervously. “And there’s always fog about, for a vast oceanic current of cold water wells up from below, and meets the warm wet air–” he waved a hand. “And the sands are all around, and there’s more ’n we can see, an’ no ship can’t come safe to this island, but from the south…”

Bones stopped in mid-flow as he saw the expression on Silver’s face.

“Why, you’re a sharp ’un, Mr Bones,” said Silver. “All that from one squint through the glass?” Silver laughed. “And arky-pel-argo? And oshy-anic? Shiver me timbers, but them’s monstrous words for the likes of you!” He put his head on one side. “You knew all that already, didn’t you, Mr Bones? You knew it ’cos Flint told you!” Billy Bones fell silent again. “Never mind, Mr Bones,” said Silver. “I thank you for warning me, fair and square, that we must look to the south for Captain Flint, which should make our work all the easier. I’ll keep a man up here, just to be sure, but the main danger comes from the south–don’t it, Mr Bones?”

This was plain truth–at least, Silver thought so–but Bones just mumbled and looked at his boots.

“Huh!” said Silver, and shook his head.

There was no more work that day. It was late afternoon, and Silver wouldn’t risk the island’s coast in a jolly-boat except in full daylight. They made camp by the beach, lit a fire, and settled down for the night.

Just before Silver fell asleep–and into nightmares of parting from Selena–he thought how nervous Bones had been when talking about the rocks and sandbanks. Now what could have caused that? Obviously it was one of Flint’s secrets; Bones must be frightened of giving something away. Was it that Flint wanted rival treasure-seekers wrecked on the sandbanks or lost in the fog? Silver didn’t know. But he wondered just what Flint had told Billy Bones about his precious archipelago.




Chapter 7 (#u290d5c57-2e90-510e-9dca-388a83445eee)


Three bells of the first dog watch 11th October 1752 Aboard Walrus The southern Caribbean

It was some days before Cornelius Van Oosterhout and Teunis Wouters became gentlemen of fortune, and even then only with Captain Flint’s most grudging approval, for he hated all the nonsense–and equality–that went with it, and he insisted–with much truth–that there was heavy work to be done: replacing the smashed windlass, making proper repairs to the plugged shot-holes, and trimming the ship afresh, now that her hold was bulging with stores.

Much of this time, Captain Flint spent in discussion with Van Oosterhout in Walrus’s stern cabin, where Flint’s big table, which all but spanned the cabin, was covered with charts, papers, navigational instruments and books of tables wherein numbers marched in ranks and columns, smart as Prussian guardsmen. They were books so boring as to suck the life out of most men. But not Flint. In him they excited all the lust of the Devil in pursuit of a soul.

“The tables are the key,” said Van Oosterhout the first time they were brought out. “Are you a navigator, Captain? How good a landfall do you make?” And he twirled the ends of his moustaches, brushing them fiercely upward, all the while casting an appraising eye at Flint like a schoolmaster quizzing a pupil.

“I can get to within ten to twenty miles of my destination,” said Flint, “running down my latitude.”

“Hoof!” said Van Oosterhout, puffing out his cheeks. “Good! Most men are wrong by scores of miles, maybe worse! Me–I get to within a few miles.”

Flint met the Dutchman’s challenging gaze with a frown. Either the man was a liar or the finest navigator God ever made.

“So,” said Van Oosterhout, “we begin the explanation. Longitude is time, and time is longitude, yes?”

“Yes,” said Flint. “And on land we find longitude from observation of the occultation of stars. But it needs a steady surface and repeated observations from the same site over many days. So it can’t be done at sea.”

“Oh, but it can, Captain,” said Van Oosterhout. “Imagine, it is night; I take a quadrant. I measure the height of the moon. I measure the height of the chosen star. I measure the angle between the star and the moon. And so to the calculations…”

The first time Van Oosterhout determined Walrus’s longitude, Flint worked separately–using Van Oosterhout’s tables and method–to see who should finish first. Flint worked swiftly but the task took hours, and when he was done, Van Oosterhout was waiting with a smile on his face. Eventually Flint smiled too. It was nothing that he couldn’t learn in time, but he wasn’t going to waste hours every day in tedious calculation.

So Van Oosterhout was rated as first mate; or, as Flint saw it, a navigating engine for heavy mathematical labour…which happened to suit Van Oosterhout splendidly, for he relished the work and constantly sought to improve it by practise. But he had other skills too, as Walrus’s crew discovered when one of them, a carpenter’s mate named Green, walked past the new first mate without a respectful touch of his hat and casually knocked Van Oosterhout aside.

Green was a big man who thought himself superior to mere Dutchmen, but Van Oosterhout reacted with lightning speed, flashing one hand across Green’s face to draw attention, poking his eyes with two fingers of the other hand, deftly tripping him as he staggered blinded, and then stamping between his legs…And all done so neat it was more like a dance than a fight.

“Ahhhhh!” said the fallen one, and “Ooof!” as Van Oosterhout stamped again and drove the breath from his belly. But Green was a hard man and now he was angry. He jumped up, only to find Van Oosterhout calmly waiting, poised like a pugilist but with hands open-palmed, not clenched. “Swab!” said Green, and went for the Dutchman hammer and tongs. At least he tried to, but couldn’t get to grips. Instead he was repeatedly tripped and thrown, and kicked in painful places, until even his mates laughed at him. Finally, trembling and sweating with not a drop of fight left, Green thought it best to beg forgiveness and hobble away.

“It is called silat,” said Van Oosterhout, when Flint asked about this peculiar manner of fisticuffs. “My father served the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie. What you call ‘Dutch East India Company’. Thus I was born in Batavia where the natives fight this way. It is a great art.” He shrugged. “I know a little.”

“I think you are modest, Mr Van Oosterhout,” said Flint.

“Perhaps.”

After that, the hands remembered their manners where Van Oosterhout was concerned, and Flint realised that he’d got a proper first mate–not just an arithmetician.

Meanwhile repairs proceeded, until eventually the works were complete and Walrus was as well-found as if fresh from a royal dockyard. The crew, who’d been waiting for this moment, came to their captain in a body, seeking boldness in numbers as they faced him on his quarterdeck. Even so they were at the limit of their courage, standing with their hats in their hands, and grubby fingers to their brows.

The quartermaster, Morton, with a good tot of rum inside him, was their spokesman. Those behind egged him on, while poised for retreat should Flint turn nasty.

“A word, beggin’-yer-pardon, Cap’n, beggin’-yer-pleasure…”

“Oh?” said Flint, acting surprised, as if he hadn’t seen this coming. “And what would that concern?” He blinked dangerously.

“All’s got to be made shipshape according to articles, Cap’n.”

“Aye!” said his mates, trembling.

“What has, my good man?” said Flint.

“New brothers, Cap’n. The old ship–why, she’s runnin’ slick as grease, an’ the work’s done, and…”

“Stop!” said Flint sharply, and forty men flinched as he raised his hand, but they relaxed when he smiled and continued: “The work is done when I say that it is done.”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n, that it is, sir,” said Morton, attempting to bend his squat body into a bow. But still he pressed on, insisting with desperate politeness that the two Dutchmen must sign articles and become brothers according to tradition.

Watching from the fo’c’sle, Selena and Cowdray saw the terror that Flint inspired, and the cruel wit that alternately made men shake with laughter and then with fear as he mocked and resisted their entreaties.

“He’s mad,” said Selena, “you know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Cowdray, “I know that very well. Piscem natare doces–you’re teaching a fish to swim.”

“Then why do you stay with him? I’m a prisoner, but you’re free.”

Cowdray gave a grim laugh. “Free till the hangman catches me, you mean.”

“But you can say you were forced.”

“Perhaps.”

“You’re a surgeon–and a fine one. You saved Long John’s life!”

“I’m glad of that.”

“So why do you stay with him?”

Cowdray looked away, then at the crew as they roared at Flint’s latest joke.

Flint was prancing about in his laced coat, plumed hat and bright sash: handsome and brilliant with shining eyes and teeth.

“He saved me,” said Cowdray, “when I was ready to open my veins.”

“How?” said Selena.

“In Charlestown, where we’re going; I was fallen very low. I was pox-doctor and abortionist to the town.”

Another roar of laughter from the crew. Cowdray looked miserable, and hesitated, and finally took the risk, and told the rest of his story, for all men wish sympathy from a beautiful woman.

“Selena, I’m a simple man. I know surgery, anatomy, and craft. I learned by doing and not from books. And when I began developing theories that the physicians didn’t like, I was laughed out of my post, and then from England–even though I was right.” He shook his head. “They hated me for being right, and they sneered that I learned Latin to try to be like them. And I still use Latin, even now, which shows what a fool I am!” He smiled weakly, and glanced across at Flint. “But him…he needed a ship’s surgeon. He could find none better, so he took me. And I can never cease to be grateful. For now I am a surgeon again, and a good one, as you say.”

“Bring forth the postulants, Mr Morton!” cried Flint, conceding at last. “Bring forth the Book of Articles! Bring forth the black flag…and bring forth the fiddler and the rum!”

“AYYYYYE!” they roared.

Having plenty of time, and only two brothers to induct into the fellowship, Flint’s crew, led by Allardyce and Morton, made a holiday of the affair and wallowed in the full ceremonial. Van Oosterhout and Wouters were stripped, blindfolded and subjected to a variety of horseplay, and to duckings in a big tub brought up from the hold for the purpose. But finally Allardyce called for silence and off-hats, and the two men, dripping wet and gleaming white in their nakedness, were brought before Flint, and before the Book of Articles which had been laid reverently on a table spread with the black flag.

Van Oosterhout was made to read the articles aloud, then the two Dutchmen signed their names beneath all the others–mainly crosses and similar scrawl–already in the book.

Afterwards, when Van Oosterhout was dressed, and before he could take too much of the rum now going round–and for which he definitely had the taste–Flint drew his first officer aside for another private conversation in his cabin.

“There’s much for you to learn, Mr Mate,” said Flint.

“Aye-aye, sir,” said Van Oosterhout, grinning and red-faced.

The grinning stopped when Flint told the story of his island, explaining what had happened there, and what had been left behind, and how he intended to get it back…and just how large Van Oosterhout’s share would be. A story which captured Van Oosterhout’s profoundest and uttermost attention.

Naturally, the version of the story which Flint presented was one which reflected to John Silver’s utter discredit, depicting him as a master of spite, greed, and treachery. And as always with Flint, it was amazing how few lies he needed to tell in order to give the exact opposite of the truth.

Finally he produced a map: the map, the map of the island. The only map in existence which showed everything of the island, including its true size, the extent of its surrounding archipelago, the location of the treasure…and the latitude and longitude.

“Ah!” said Van Oosterhout. “Was it you found the longitude?”

“Yes,” said Flint. “An earlier map existed, but the latitude and longitude here–” he tapped a finger on his map “–were found by myself.”

“I congratulate you, Captain,” said Van Oosterhout.

“Thank you, Mr Mate, but I direct your attention to the archipelago, which I was the first to survey and to chart properly, and the details of which are known only to me.”

“Wait, Captain,” said Van Oosterhout, befuddled by drink and confused by conflicting emotions. This was the same murderous pirate who’d killed his friends and burned his ship, yet now he was treating him as an equal–even a favourite–and offering a share in a fortune. “Why do you show me these things? It is great confidence in me…why do you do this?”

Flint gazed at Van Oosterhout’s solemn, gleaming face. The temptation to laugh sprang urgently within him and was instantly suppressed. Instead of laughing, just for once, Flint told the truth…or half of it, at least.

“The reason I confide in you, Mr Van Oosterhout, is because I stand in vital need of your skills. Thus I must have another navigating officer aboard, in case of any accident to myself.”

Van Oosterhout nodded and Flint smiled, for he’d not mentioned the other reason for his trusting the Dutchman, which was Mr Van Oosterhout’s sure and certain fate, the moment he was no longer needed. Meanwhile…

“Look here at the archipelago,” said Flint. “Do you see? There is something here that will be of utmost use to us…”

Van Oosterhout looked, and listened carefully, and nodded in approval, and even made constructive suggestions of his own. In the days that followed, Flint found him to be an excellent officer, obedient, dutiful and competent. Soon all matters of navigation were delegated to the Dutchman, leaving Flint with two nasty festering splinters to trouble him.

First, Flint’s vanity was wounded that any man should be his master as a navigator; second, he was deeply jealous when Van Oosterhout, like Cowdray, found natural companionship with Selena. This was a new emotion for Joe Flint; being incapable of physical love, he’d always been immune to jealousy. But Selena fascinated him, and was beginning to arouse the sort of passions any normal man felt for a woman. And this fierce resentment at Selena’s friendships with other men was made all the worse because Flint could not admit his feelings to himself.

And there was more. Something heavy and dark that sat upon Flint’s soul. These three–Selena, Cowdray and Van Oosterhout–whom Flint could not harm or remove, now constituted a faction that would constrain his behaviour. It was like the days when he’d sailed with Silver and was constantly looking over his shoulder to see if he approved…tainting his enjoyment of practices such as playing with prisoners. Flint sighed. The plank would not be appearing again for a while, and just when he’d discovered its possibilities!

By day, Flint bore these burdens manfully: there was much to do in driving the ship hard, watching constantly for another prize on the horizon–not to mention avoiding the ships of the various navies that infested these waters. These activities kept Flint merry all day, and Walrus’s people enjoyed a pleasant voyage to Savannah. But by night Flint groaned for the loss of the freedom he’d enjoyed on his island. At night, in his dreams, that part of the human mind which is animal, primeval and beyond conscious control, punished Joe Flint with memories of the most dreadful time in his entire life. The time when he had enjoyed no freedom at all, only bitter constraint…His childhood.




Chapter 8 (#u290d5c57-2e90-510e-9dca-388a83445eee)


8 a.m., 15th November 1732 The Chapel, Salvation House St Pancras Court, Opposite the Smallpox Hospital London

Twelve-year-old Joseph Flint stood trembling as his father got up from his prayers. The Reverend Mordecai Flint rose like a great, black snake, turning to face the wife and son who had so inexcusably interrupted his devotions. Although no speck of dust was suffered to exist within the chapel, he brushed his knees with a clean white handkerchief, which was then painstakingly folded before being returned to his pocket. When this was done he positioned himself, back to the altar, looming over them in his pious black coat, ominously stroking the clerical bands at his neck.

The reverend was a man of tremendous intellect; dominant, charismatic and vastly learned in Holy Scripture. Years of profound study and introspection had resulted in an unshakeable conviction that he was damned for uncleanliness of spirit, and he had therefore made it his life’s work to save those less wicked than himself–in particular, those he loved–in the hope they might yet be shriven by repentance. It was his tragedy–and still more that of those around him–that not a drop of love did they see, only an ocean of chastisement and castigation. Thus Joseph Flint flinched as his father stared at him, and clutched at his mother’s hand for comfort.

“Wretches!” said the reverend. “‘Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.’” He cocked his head expectantly…

“Daniel, five: twenty-seven,” said Joseph and his mother in unison. The reverend nodded and turned his eyes on his wife.

“So,” he said, “you come again to me, even into God’s house, with the matter that I have declared closed. I see it in your eyes! ‘All is vanity and vexation of spirit!’”

“Ecclesiastes, one: fourteen,” said Joseph’s mother. Then: “Mr Flint!” she cried, that being the constant manner of her address to him, for he was not ordained but self-appointed, and well he knew it. She took a step forward, shaking off Joseph’s hand. “Mr Flint,” she said, and the colour drained from her face and her eyes began to blink. She screamed in his face, her body shaking with rage, “You took our Joseph to the Turk!” She seized Joseph’s shoulder and thrust him forward. “See!” she cried. “Our boy stands before you even now, with the poison in his arm!”

Joseph sobbed as the awful weight of their emotions fell upon him. He clutched his bandaged arm and bowed his head, and believed that he was to blame.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m so sorry.”

But his guilt was nothing compared with his father’s. The reverend groaned as pain wrenched the depths of his belly. For he’d broken faith, even if in a noble cause. And worse than that…far, far worse…he’d been found out!

“Ah!” said Joseph’s mother, seeing his reaction. “You hypocrite! You swore on the Bible! You said that you would not do it…and you did!”

And so the parents screeched, and as the child looked on the hideous quarrel grew until words became blows and finally…Joseph Flint watched as his mother drew the hidden knife. He stood, eyes wide, as she fell upon his father and cut his throat. He looked on as she sat upon the reverend’s prostrate body and plunged the knife again and again into his face, paying back thirty years of mental cruelty with thirty seconds of demented revenge.




Chapter 9 (#u290d5c57-2e90-510e-9dca-388a83445eee)


One bell of the afternoon watch 2nd October 1752 Aboard Hercules off Cape Castillo, Niña de Cuba

Since Captain Bentham liked music, the ship’s band of musicians was scraping and blowing fiercely even as the bosun’s pipes saluted the coming-aboard of Captain Parry of Sweet Anne, and Captain Nichols of Favourite: these gentlemen, and their first mates, being summoned aboard the flagship for a council of war. The noise was terrific, and powder smoke swirled as the guns of the three ships added their voices to the din.

All was good fellowship and satisfaction, what with Captain Bentham having led his squadron safe and sound from Upper Barbados, making landfall exactly as he’d boasted and with fair winds and a swift passage besides.

Of the greasy mob that filled Hercules’s maindeck, only Brendan O’Byrne was frowning. He frowned because he hadn’t the guile to hide his feelings, and he was scrutinising the new arrivals as they clambered over the rail, in their best clothes and their best hats, and into the arms of Cap’n Bentham and his crew, to be welcomed as jolly companions.

Ugh! thought O’Byrne There it was: the look. He’d seen it on three faces. Not Cap’n Parry’s, God bless him! Not him, for he knew Danny Bentham of old. But his first mate didn’t, and Cap’n Nichols didn’t, and nor his first mate neither. So they were staring at Cap’n Bentham in the way men did who met him for the first time.

So it was a puzzled, questioning look and one that tormented O’Byrne. Worse still, it filleted the backbone out of him, so instead of being fired with manly anger he was cast down and enfeebled.

The fact was that O’Byrne couldn’t bear any insult to Cap’n Danny. Not when his feelings for the captain were so intense, and their precise nature–stemming as they did from his own nature–were a mystery even to himself. For while O’Byrne didn’t normally care for women, any feelings towards men were ruthlessly denied…such that Cap’n Danny was a unique door through which desires might emerge that otherwise must be contained.

With a heavy sigh and a shrug, O’Byrne told himself that it was all part of the privilege of sailing under Cap’n Danny–like never mentioning the captain’s latest wife once Williamstown was under the horizon.

Fortunately, Cap’n Danny himself was immune to such concerns. He was what he was, and he was used to it, though he swaggered a bit at first meetings, and took care to deepen his voice.

“Rum!” cried Bentham now. “And lay out the chart!” The crew cheered, and with much good humour kegs of spirits were brought up from below decks. A big empty cask was then up-ended by the landward quarterdeck rail to serve as a table, and as the shipmasters and their leading men gathered around it, all hands pressed forward, as befitted their status as equals under the articles they’d signed.

“So,” said Bentham, one finger on the chart and one pointing towards land, three miles to the north. “That there’s Isabel Bay, into which the River Ferdinand runs. The bay’s a thousand yards wide at the mouth, between Cape Castille and Cape Aragon, with a great anchorage within, and Isabel Island sits between the two capes, like a sausage in a dog’s jaws.”

“So where’s the fort?” said Captain Parry.

“And the dollars!” said Captain Nichols.

“See here–” said Bentham, studying the chart “–to the east of Isabel Island is sandbanks and shoals. The safe channel lies to the west, between the island and Cape Aragon, past the fort, which is down here at the southernmost tip of the island.”

Nichols took off his hat and fanned himself against the heat.

“If we take the channel,” he said, “we’ll be under fire from the fort all the way in. An’ it’ll be eighteen-pounders at least, and maybe twenty-fours.”

“It’s twenty-four-pounders,” said Bentham, “but we’ll go in at sunset with the light in the gunners’ eyes, and them having to split their fire between three ships, and ourselves firing back to hide us with smoke.”

“Hmm…” they said.

“And,” said Bentham, “the fort’s got emplacements for thirty guns, but there’s only a dozen pieces within the walls.”

“Aye,” said Parry, nodding, “that’s often the way of it. No bugger’ll pay for the full set! Not King George, King Louis, nor the King o’ the Dagoes.”

“A dozen twenty-four-pounders?” said Nichols. “That’s still enough to sink the three of us, even with the sun in their eyes.”

“Not if they’re spread round the fort, so as to cover an attack from any side,” said Bentham. “There’s only five guns facing the channel, and the guns aren’t exercised more than once in three months!”

“How d’you know that?” said Nichols.

“Same way as I know that an’ more,” said Bentham. “The fort’s a slaving station–blacks is offloaded there from the middle passage, and paid for from a chest of dollars in the fort’s strong room–an’ there’s never less than twenty thousand dollars in the chest!”

“Ahhh!” they said.

“But how’d you know?” said Nichols.

“Ask him–” Bentham winked confidentially at O’Byrne “–he’s the boy for secrets!”

O’Byrne stepped forward, cheered by the merry recollection he was about to share.

“We know,” he said, “’cos we took a Dago slaver in June. And when we’d done pluckin’ ’em, we hung the crew by the ankles and I beat their bollocks with a belaying pin until they told us all they knew.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” cried Danny Bentham, holding his crotch with both hands and staggering bandy-legged as if in agony. That drew a great laugh, for men followed where Bentham led. He had that gift. He cut a fine figure–and was respected for being big and dangerous; especially dangerous, for Bentham could turn nasty over a wrong word or a sour look, and then God help any man within reach of his long arm and his Spanish sword.

So they laughed, Nichols, Parry and the rest, and they nudged one another and were impressed. And when Danny Bentham explained his plan for taking the fort, they cheered from the bottom of their hearts. Across the water, Sweet Anne’s, and Favourite’s people cheered along with them, for they caught the merry mood even if they didn’t know what was afoot.

As the sun set, Sweet Anne and Favourite formed line astern on Hercules, and the three came up the Ferdinand River with the flaming sun to larboard and the guns of the fort booming and thudding ineffectually on their starboard beams. Just as Bentham had predicted, they came through unscathed, and in the great anchorage to the north of Isabel Island they found five slavers that duly lowered their colours, and cringed in fright, and begged only to be left alone.

At dawn the three ships, now double-anchored, hoisted out their longboats. Loaded with armed men, they pulled for the northern end of Isabel Island, each with a ship’s captain at the helm: Bentham leading, followed by Parry, followed by Nichols.

“Give a song, you men!” cried Bentham, leading off with the first line:

“Farewell an’ adieu to you fair Spanish ladies…”

“Farewell an’ adieu for ’Tis parted we’ll be!” they sang.

“For we have our orders to sail home to Eng-er-land…”

“And t’will be a sad time till we shall see thee!”

And thus, with a great deal of noise, and much waving of blades and firing off of pistols, the three boats crossed the anchorage to their chosen destination, which was thickly wooded and the only part of their journey that was not under plain sight from the fort at the other end of the island.

In due course, the three longboats emerged from the cover of the trees, and only the oarsmen and helmsmen could be seen as the boats returned to their squadron, passing out of view behind the flagship. Then came more roaring and carousing and the boats emerged, dense-packed again, pulling strongly for the shore. As before, they returned with just oarsmen and helmsmen to take on yet another load of armed men. And so it continued, to and fro.

These activities were studied with interest by a group of gentlemen peering through telescopes on the northern ramparts of the fort. They wore the cocked hats of sea-service officers, and their blue coats and red vests marked them out as men of the Real Armada Española: the Spanish Royal Navy.

Their commander, Capitan de Navio Frederico Alberto Zorita, turned from his telescope to smile at his subordinates.

“And so they spoil a good plan!” he said.




Chapter 10 (#u290d5c57-2e90-510e-9dca-388a83445eee)


Dawn, 2nd October 1752 The southern anchorage The island

“All hands mustered and ready for to march, Mr Gunner!”

“Very good, Mr Joe,” said Israel Hands, and did his best to look over the men as Long John would have done.

There were a dozen of them, paraded on the beach, with muskets, water canteens, and big hats constructed of sliced and plaited palm-leaves for protection against the sun. They stood grinning and yarning, some of them chewing tobacco, but they were cheerful and ready, and Israel walked up and down the line, making sure that each one had a good pair of shoes, and water in his canteen rather than rum, and that no lubber had primed his firelock without orders.

“You! And you!” cried Israel Hands, picking two of the nimblest. “You’re the advance guard, which shall march ahead as lookouts.” Then he picked the two biggest: “You two shall follow on behind, a-walloping and a-belting of them as won’t keep up!” The men laughed.

“And the rest shall proceed in line astern of myself and Mr Joe, and shall attend to my signals–” He put a bosun’s call to his lips and blew a single sharp note. “Well?” he said.

“Forward!” they cried.

“And this?” he said, blowing a sharp double-note.

“’Vast heaving!” cried some.

“Belay!” cried others.

“Stop!” said Israel Hands. “That’n means stop!”

“Stop!” they said, nodding.

“And this?” A long trembling call.

“Enemy in sight!” they roared.

There were a few more simple signals: easily understood, and a credit to Israel Hands’s capacity to innovate, since never before had he led men through a forest.

“Stand by!” cried Israel Hands.

“Huzzah!” cried the men.

“Forward!” cried Israel Hands.

In single file, they set off up the beach towards the palms, leaving the tented encampment almost empty. “Camp Silver” they were calling it now. A few men were still working on the wreck of Lion, while most of the others had already left–on Long John’s orders–on expeditions led by Black Dog and Sarney Sawyer.

There was also a small guard of ten men left to defend the camp with a quartet of four-pounders charged with canister and mounted in their carriages on firing platforms of ships timbers, the better to load and train in case of attack. These men were also responsible for Long John’s parrot, who’d never go willingly into a boat–even with him–and awaited its master’s return here, with its own perch and a supply of food and drink, and a bit of shade rigged over it.

The bird squawked at Israel Hands as he scrunched past, ankle deep in sand, bobbing its head in greeting.

“Ahoy there!” it cried, and Israel Hands grinned, knowing himself favoured, and he plodded on.

He smiled again as he looked at Mr Joe marching ahead, a heavy Jamaican cane-cutlass in his belt, ready to clear a path if need be. The lad was a slim, wiry black who’d grown up with such a quick temper that he failed to see the joke when an overseer, finding Joe bent over to cut cane, had merrily cracked his arse with a whip. Thus Joe replied with a cutlass slash that removed a diagonal quarter of the overseer’s head, plus all hope of promotion for Joe in his career as a plantation slave, obliging him to seek advancement elsewhere.

Israel Hands grinned at the thought. Joe was quick and intelligent, and under Hands’s instruction he was speedily learning his letters and his numbers, to the point that he was now rated gunner’s mate, and addressed as Mr Joe by all hands, even Long John himself.

Joe had his little faults, of course. He could not stand to be teased, and he was dreadfully afraid of the dark, since as a child he’d been told by his mother that, if he didn’t behave, at midnight the Jumba-Jumba man would come in his big black hat and fetch Joe away in a sack. Even at nineteen years of age, Joe was still looking out for him, but Israel Hands thought no worse of the lad for that, since all sailormen believed such things: Mr Hands himself–when alone–would never look over the side at night for fear of seeing Davy Jones, the hideous fiend that lay in wait for the souls of drowned men.

A day’s marching, with stops for meals and the heat of noon, had taken Israel Hands’s team clear of the palms and sweltering jungle that lined the island’s southern shores. Steering by a small brass compass, they had moved steadily north into a terrain of sandy hills interspersed with small, open clearings surrounded by broadleaf trees: mainly live-oaks, but with an increasing number of pines, and all with dense foliage at their bases. With night falling, they set about making camp–and made their first discovery.

“Look, Mr Hands,” said Joe. “You see them stumps there?”

“Aye, lad,” said Israel Hands. The spot they’d chosen was a clearing that the forest was slowly reclaiming. About a dozen big trees, all pines, had been felled many years ago, leaving stumps which were now so heavily overgrown with moss and fungus, and so surrounded by undergrowth and young trees, that it was hard to spot them. But they were there if you looked; proof that men had been this way before.

“Looks like this island ain’t so secret as some would believe!” said Israel Hands.

“Aye, Mr Hands,” said Joe, peering into the darkness between the standing trees. “Now we get back with the others, eh? And we make the fire?”

“Aye,” said Israel Hands, smiling, for the others were only a few steps away.

That night Joe had the horrors and no mistake. He woke constantly. He heard noises in the night. He got up and paced about, and repeatedly told the sentries to keep a sharp lookout.

“Yes, Mr Joe! No, Mr Joe!” they said, levelling their muskets at nothing, just to keep him quiet.

They all thought him a bloody fool, until early next morning when the expedition made its second discovery. As the sun came up, those on guard duty saw a figure peering at them from behind a tree: looking, but afraid to come forward.

“There he is, Mr Hands!” said one of the sentries. “It’s a white man, not a savage. Miserable-looking sod, though.” He cocked his musket. “Shall I take a pop?”

“No!” said Israel Hands, as the camp stirred and men gathered around him. “I think I know who that is!” He stepped forward and called out:

“Ahoy there! Come alongside! We’re all friends here. Friends and jolly companions.”

There was a stir of surprise as the bedraggled figure left the cover of his tree, and–with utmost nervousness–crept forward, hunched over in humble supplication, with fearful eyes staring out of a simple, pleasant face. He was bareheaded, bare-chested and barefoot, deeply sunburnt with a sprouting beard and hair like broken straw. All that he had in the world was a pair of breeches, an old belt, and a sailor’s knife in a sheath. But the thing that drew gasps of surprise was the creature holding his hand like a child and scampering along beside him: a large and most beautiful monkey.

The ape was handsomely marked, with thick fur–mostly dark brown, apart from its creamy breast, arms and face–and a shock of black, upstanding hair on top of its head. It had the most appealing and intelligent face and came forward entirely without fear.

When the man thought he was close enough, he stopped, and began to speak in a self-pitying whine.

“I’m Benn Gunn, I am,” he said, shaking off the monkey and clapping his hands together as if in prayer. “Poor Benn Gunn, what’s lived alone for weeks with not a bite of Christian food, nor what’s not spoke to a Christian soul.”

“Step up, Ben Gunn!” said Israel Hands. “You know me, don’t you?”

“That I do, Mr Hands,” said Ben Gunn. “An’ you knows me, for I’m Ben Gunn what was blown clear o’ the old Walrus in the battle, and what clung to a shattered timber and what floated ashore and what’s lived on fruits and roots these past weeks and never a taste of pork nor cheese…especially cheese.”

Ben Gunn was duly fed and watered, and the monkey became an instant favourite for its friendliness and cleverness. Jumping from man to man, it took the bits of fruit they offered, and looked its benefactors in the eye with the most charming expression.

“Bugger’s almost human!”

“Ain’t he a jolly little bleeder!”

“Look at the little face on him–he’s laughing!”

“Chk-chk-chk!” said the monkey, climbing into Mr Joe’s arms and reaching its small, inquisitive hand towards one of the pistols hooked to his belt.

“Belay!” said Joe, laughing. “Don’t touch that, child, else you be blowin’ me bollocks off me!” And the men laughed.

But always the creature ran back to Ben Gunn.

“Followed me, he did,” said Ben Gunn, stroking its head. “There’s a whole tribe of ’em in the trees, up that way–” he pointed vaguely into the forest. “Don’t reckon they ain’t never seen men before, and they’s tame as pussy-cats…ain’t you, matey?”

“Chk-chk-chk!” said the monkey.

The rest of Israel Hands’s expedition was uneventful, except that it took nearly five days to reach the far north of the island and return to Camp Silver in the southern anchorage, not the two days they’d expected. Sarney Sawyer and Black Dog told the same tale on their return–the island was at least twice the size they’d supposed it to be, based on what Flint had told them.

There was just one further discovery to be made, which awaited Israel Hands on his return.

“Look, Mr Gunner,” said one of those who’d been guarding the camp. He was holding out the remains of a small, broken egg. “Long John’s parrot laid it. It’s a she!”

“Well bugger me tight!” said Israel Hands. He looked at the big green bird, rocking on its perch nearby. “That’ll tickle Long John when he gets back!” Hands halfway reached out to stroke the bird, but then recalled Black Dog’s missing fingers and thought better of it.

“Bugger me tight!” said the parrot.

Silver’s voyage round the island, taking bearings and soundings, took a week. The morning after the jolly-boat had finally grounded in the shallows of the southern anchorage, he called a council of his leading men in his tent–the biggest in the camp–where there was a table and some chairs saved out of Lion.

First on the agenda was the matter of Ben Gunn. With his monkey trailing along behind him, Gunn was brought before them. He stood outside the big tent, in the cool of the early morning, awaiting their judgement.

“Well, Ben Gunn,” said Silver, “it appears you’ve been Flint’s man. So, whose man are you now?”

Ben Gunn blinked in fright. He shuffled his bare feet in the sand, and looked up at the tall figure of John Silver in his blue coat. He marvelled at the sight of Captain Flint’s parrot on Silver’s shoulder, nuzzling his ear as once it had Flint’s. Ben Gunn was further puzzled by the presence of Mr Billy Bones, standing alongside Israel Hands, Black Dog and Sarney Sawyer. The latter three, he knew to be Silver’s men…But Billy Bones was Flint’s to death and beyond…or so Ben Gunn believed.

“Mr Gunn’s been living wild,” said Israel Hands. “He’s more than half witless and he was frightened to come near us. He was starving when we found him, weren’t you, Ben Gunn?”

“Aye,” said Ben Gunn. “Mr Hands gave me some cheese!” He smiled. “He likes cheese, does poor Ben Gunn!” The smile died. “An’ he don’t like bein’ hungry, an’ he don’t like bein’ lonely, an’ he stands ready now to sign articles and do his duty…if only he might have permission to come aboard.” And with that he raised a dirty finger to his dirty brow, and held it there, mouth open, awaiting Silver’s decision.

“Huh!” said Silver. “Come aboard, Benn Gunn! There’s work to do, and a need for hands to do it. You shall sign articles, and be judged afresh.” He pointed to a gang of men standing ready with their tools for the day’s work clearing the final remains of Lion. “You join them there. At the double now!”

“Aye-aye, sir!” said Ben Gunn joyfully, and he skipped off at great speed before Silver should change his mind.

“Poor sod!” said Sarney Sawyer.

“He were a good man once, Mr Bosun,” said Israel Hands. “He were a prime seaman, till he got flogged and it turned his mind.”

“Flint’s work?” said Sawyer.

“No,” said Billy Bones stoutly, “Cap’n Springer’s! That no-seaman swab as ran the Elizabeth aground. Ben Gunn was at the helm, and Springer flogged him for it, though it were Springer’s fault, as all hands knew!”

“Aye,” said Black Dog and Israel Hands.

“Flint warned him!” said Billy Bones. “Flint wanted a boat ahead taking soundings, but Springer wouldn’t have it. Flint had the right of it all the while.”

“Aye!” said the others, for it was true.

“Flint’s a seaman and no mistake!” said Black Dog admiringly.

“Aye!” they said, nodding in united agreement.

“Split my sides!” cried Silver, who’d been listening in growing amazement and anger. “It sickens my heart to sail with you!” he glared at them. “Have you lubbers forgot what Flint did to Springer and the rest! And have you forgot who’ll be back here in a month or two, a-cuttin of our precious throats if we don’t look sharp!”

“Oh…” said Israel Hands and Black Dog, while Billy Bones blushed and studied his boots.

“Now batten your blasted hatches till you’re spoke to,” said Silver. “And come along o’ me!”

He led the way to his tent and sat down, fuming, and daring any man to speak before he was allowed.

“Put your blasted chart there, Mr Bones,” he said, “and find something to hold the bugger down!”

Billy Bones produced a big, rolled chart, which he laid flat on the table–and for want of anything better, pinned it down with his pistols.

“Now, see here,” said Silver, as they all leaned over the map, “this is Mr Bones’s map, drawn of its shores and with all included as you swabs has learned from marching up and down of it…” He waited till they’d had a good look, then produced another sheet, this time showing the planned location of four forts.

“And now here’s my own plans, drawn by myself,” he said, and calmed as he warmed to his subject. “What do you lubbers know of entrenchments and suchlike…?”

Hours later, Sarney Sawyer and Israel Hands, sent about their duties, had a brief word while spades, picks and axes were handed out to their men.

“Was Long John ever a soldier?” said Sawyer.

“Not him!” said Hands. “Begotten in the galley and born in a boat.”

“So where’d he get all that learning about forts?”

“Along o’ Cap’n England. He were the one for forts, was England.”

“And Long John served under him?”

“Aye, in the days when John had ten toes.”

What Israel Hands didn’t say was that England had a reputation for cracking forts. He cracked them like walnuts. But he’d no reputation for building them. Israel Hands shrugged. Perhaps it was the same thing in reverse. He hoped so, because forts were desperately dangerous things; especially for a sailorman.




Chapter 11 (#ulink_bef01def-3a12-5d56-b984-de5ff6f34abf)


Afternoon, 3rd October 1752 Fort Ferdinand Isabel Island, Niña de Cuba

Capitan Zorita looked at the two tenientes and five young guardia marinas who were under his command in the task of stiffening the defences of Niña de Cuba against the coming world war. Zorita pointed at the longboats and their bustling crews, and he shook his head at the puzzled faces of his subordinates.

“Do you not see through it?” he said. “It’s an old trick of the English pirates–Morgan and England used it on many occasions.” There was a silence and all present tried to avoid his eye.

“So!” said Zorita, and shrugged. “Well, gentlemen, you must listen carefully, for the object of these…activities,” he looked at the boats, “is to make us think that a major force has been landed for an assault upon the northern walls of the fort, compelling us to move our guns up here, leaving the other walls undefended.”

“Oh?” they said, for they’d been duly deceived and would have done as he said.

“But,” said Zorita, “they’ve overdone it. Let’s say each of those boats holds thirty men, besides the crews. That’s ninety per trip, yes?”

“Yes, Capitan!”

“And this is their fourth trip, making three hundred and sixty men landed.”

“Yes, Capitan!”

“Which is a great number of men to land from ships of their modest size.”

“Yes, Capitan!”

“But what they’re actually doing is rowing ashore with the men sitting upright, and rowing back with them hidden in the bottom of the boats.”

“Ahhhhhh!”

“And if they keep on doing it, then I’ll be certain it’s a ruse, for they’ll be pretending to land more men than they could possibly have on board.”

That night there was a great lighting of campfires and making of noise at the north end of the island, where those ashore–under Cap’n Bentham’s orders–gave the fort to believe that a large storming party was bedding down for the night, ready for an assault next day. Meanwhile the same boats that had been busy all day crept quietly down the eastern side of Isabel island with muffled oars, making their way slowly across the shoals and sandbanks to land a large force of men on the beach facing the fort across a few hundred yards of still water.

Neither was it a quiet night in the fort, where Capitan Zorita ensured that guns were indeed moved and prepared, and the ready-use lockers filled with cartridges and shot, and the crews made sure of their duties.

At dawn, Bentham’s northern shore party opened fire on the fort with a six-pound gun, brought ashore for the purpose and emplaced on planking so the trucks of its sea-carriage shouldn’t bog down in the soft ground.

Bang! went the gun, and its cannonball screamed through the air and…crunch! It buried itself harmlessly in the twenty-foot thickness of brick-faced earth ramparts that formed the outer defence of the fort’s inner stone walls. It did no harm, and wasn’t meant to. The gun was burning powder only to keep the fort’s garrison focused on the northern wall. In that case, the six-pounder crew might have taken early warning from the fact that the fort didn’t bother to reply to the insult…

Down at the southern tip of the island, Danny Bentham–followed as ever by Mr O’Byrne–waved a cutlass over his head, called for three cheers, and led the rush to the boats, which were swiftly launched and oars manned, and filled in deadly earnest with armed men–over two hundred of them–equipped with scaling ladders, ropes and grappling hooks.

“Now, my boys,” cried Bentham, “pull your hearts out! Break your backs! It’s Spanish dollars for all hands, and whores aplenty!”

Clank! Clank! Clank! The boats drove forward, crammed with yelling, cheering men, aiming for the south-east walls of the fort, which by Cap’n Bentham’s matchless cunning would have empty emplacements, blind of guns.

Unfortunately they weren’t the only boats setting forth with deadly intent, and four gunboats pulled clear of the small jetty that Bentham should have noticed as he came up Ferdinand channel. Each was nearly twice the length of a longboat, driven by fifteen pairs of oars and commanded by a guardia marina–a midshipman. And each mounted a twenty-four-pounder in the bow: a tremendous armament for so small a craft, and one that was capable of swift movement, to fire from any quarter, irrespective of wind and weather.

“Pull!” cried the guardia marinas, leaping with boys’ excitement as the graceful oars beat and swayed, sending the gunboats forward like the triremes of Athens. Capitan Zorita watched from the walls of the fort. He nodded. He knew now that he’d guessed correctly, for his lookouts had heard the boats in the night, even with muffled oars. The pirates were making their real attack on the south-east. The demonstration before the northern walls was a sham…one which served Zorita well, since by placing so many men ashore the pirates would have left their ships half-manned, firmly anchored, and utterly vulnerable to what was bearing down upon them as fast as Zorita’s oarsmen could pull.

“With me! With me!” cried Bentham as he leapt over the bow of his boat, splashing knee deep into tepid, flat water and charging up the beach towards the walls of the fort and the V-bottomed dry-ditch that encircled it. There came a huge cheer and a roar from those behind him, and Bentham’s heart soared in delight at his own cleverness, for not a gun was in action in the walls ahead, and not a single snout of a firing piece was visible in the embrasures that faced him.

A rumble and battering of shoe leather, and screeches and cries from all hands brought the pirates to the brink of the ditch, and still no gunfire. Bentham was yelling at the men, shoving half a dozen of them into the ditch to form a human bridge, and leading the way over, boot heels grinding into arms and shoulders, standing on the narrow walkway under the wall, and unwinding the line and grapnel from his waist, and beginning to swing it, O’Byrne beside him, ugly face yelling in delight, and more and more men and ladders raising and figures scrambling up and over the wall…

And then the wrath of God beat down upon Bentham’s men. The sound alone was enough to strike men bleeding and broken. The orange flame seared and sizzled. It scorched and burned and turned living bodies into blackened, red-glowing rags of meat.

An unseen heavy gun had fired from the inner angle of one of the fort’s bastions, from an emplacement designed for just such a moment, and which enabled the gun to fire horizontally across the face of the wall. Capitan Zorita had prepared most carefully and made best use of the guns that he had. Thus the load was double canister: forty-eight pounds of musket balls, sewn up in canvas bags: some eight hundred projectiles blasted forth in a hideous cloud by gunners who instantly served their smoking gun, ramming home a second charge, and running out and firing again.

“Fire!” cried the senior guardia marina, and four heavy guns thundered and slid back up the ingenious slides designed to absorb their recoil. Even so the gunboats heaved backwards, but the oarsmen took the way off them and lined up the boats again, so their guns bore directly into the stern windows of the chosen ship: Favourite was its name, picked out in yellow paint just over the rudder.

The range was too close for a miss and the gunboats were placed so that they could fire into Favourite from a position where none of her guns, nor those of her consorts, could retaliate. That was why Favourite had been chosen. Like everything else in the Spanish attack, it was logical, skilful and effective.

“In your own time, now…fire at will!” cried the senior guardia marina, but he needn’t have bothered. The gunners were fighting mad, delighted to punish a despicable enemy, and cheering at every ball they sent tearing from end to end of the damned-to-hell pirate ship with its black flag and its crew of heathen savages come to burn churches, rape maidens and to piss upon the holy banner of Spain.

Bentham was lucky. So was O’Byrne. So was Parry. By the caprice of war, they were untouched. Captain Nichols was not lucky. He was among the one hundred and sixty-three left dead or wounded. Or perhaps he was lucky, since he was killed outright, unlike the man next to him: still alive and sat stupefied with the side of his skull blown away and mashed brains running down his neck.

Captain Danny led the rout. He ran. All those who could came after him, to the total of twenty-eight fit men. They managed to launch a boat, and pulled away, closing their hearts to their shipmates that slithered after them on shattered limbs, begging not to be left behind. They didn’t need to close their ears, for they were all deaf for days afterwards, thanks to the concussion of the single gun that had ruined their attack with just a few rounds fired at point-blank range into a packed and helpless target.

Hercules and Sweet Anne likewise cut their cables, abandoning Favourite to the enemy. And they too were lucky, for there was just enough wind in the anchorage for steerage way, and just enough hands aboard to man the guns. But even so they were comprehensively shamed, for once the gunboats had smashed Favourite into a wreck, and seen her heel over till her yards touched bottom in the shallow bay, they went after the pirates like hungry sharks, seeking to get under their sterns where no enemy gun could return fire, and the pirates all the while manoeuvring crabwise, constantly attempting and failing to deliver a broadside of grape into their agile enemies.

Only at the mouth of Isabel Bay, where the fresh wind gave advantage to the ships, did the gunboats back oars, but they had the satisfaction of one enemy sunk, dozens of prisoners taken for the hangman, and a goodly tonnage of shot sent thumping into the two ships that they’d driven off for the honour of His Catholic Majesty King Ferdinand VI.

Then, as the oarsmen headed for home with the guardia marinas standing at their tillers, heads held high, perhaps they were careless, perhaps they dwelt too much on the hero’s welcome awaiting them ashore, else they should have seen the longboat creeping out from behind Isabel Island, and pulling desperately after the pirate ships. As soon as they were sure the gunboats weren’t coming after them, this bedraggled crew raised a shirt on an oar and waved it to attract the attention of uncaring shipmates who were forging out to sea under all plain sail.

“Bastards!” said Bentham. “Can’t they see us?”

“Swabs!” said O’Byrne. “Wouldn’t trust a mother’s son of ’em!”

“The sods are going to leave us!”

But they didn’t, and Bentham and the rest were saved. They were saved by that last, pitiful companion of the desperate, the sentiment that remained in Pandora’s box when all the world’s evils escaped. For when those aboard Hercules saw the longboat, they found that they still cherished hope: the beloved hope that the storming party might have come away from the fort laden with Spanish dollars.

So Hercules backed her topsail, hove to, and took the longboat aboard. Then all hands peered mightily into the bottom of her for any sign of treasure chests.

They found no treasure, only their captain and twenty-eight desperately shaken men, most of whom hadn’t even the strength to go down to the spirit room to get drunk. They just called for rum and sat about looking dismal, some sobbing with self-pity, when their mates asked what had happened.

Only O’Byrne was anything like himself. He went round cussing and blinding, and punching the heads of all those he considered to have been safe aboard while better men died. But even that was only for show. They could tell. So it was a dangerous time for Danny Bentham and there was much muttering in corners as Hercules rolled onwards and left Niña de Cuba behind.

Facing mutiny, a more honest captain than Bentham would have told the truth and trusted his men, while a more sinister captain would have terrified them. But Bentham was only his modest self, and aside from a talent for skewering men with a rapier, his only real gift was to cut a dash. So he put on some good clothes, and told all hands what he was going to do next, by heaven, and he uttered great lies and swore fat promises. And what with O’Byrne and Parry and the other survivors wanting never to hear of Isabel Island again…he got away with it.

So, no black spots were made nor passed into Cap’n Danny’s hands. But he knew that he was humiliated, and that one more failure would see him rising to the yardarm, his hands tied behind him.

Danny Bentham needed a success. He needed one badly.




Chapter 12 (#ulink_15db6400-7116-50c8-8f3a-9bdb5b60dcb6)


10 a.m., 12th November 1752 Half Moon Bastion, Bay Street Charlestown, South Carolina

Captain Flint was surprised. He was surprised because Mr Meshod Pimenta had finally said something surprising.

So far this morning, Joe Flint, Charley Neal and Selena had toured–in succession–the Ashley Bastion, The Pallisades, Granville’s Bastion, a bastion whose name Flint had forgotten, and had gazed upon a twelve-foot moat. All the while, Pimenta had refused to discuss business, lecturing instead on the enormous, concrete-faced earthworks and the great numbers of guns that made the walled city of Charlestown one of the most powerful fortifications in the entire British colonies. When he was not doing that, he was praising the city for its energy and resourcefulness in recovering from the hurricane, which–he said–had thrown it flat on its back in September.

Charley Neal had arranged the meeting and Flint was in his shore-going rig: plain hat and coat and no weapons–at least none visible. He’d insisted on having Selena in tow, dressed in some plain but respectable women’s clothes he’d found for her, because he was jealous of Van Oosterhout and Cowdray and wouldn’t leave her on the ship with them. He’d even acquired a nice respectable name for the occasion; in Charlestown he was Captain Garland, that being Uncle Peter’s name, who’d first taken him to sea, and his mother’s maiden name besides. Pimenta, though, knew exactly who he was.

To make matters worse, it was a horrible day: grey, cold, drizzling with rain, and the waters of the Cooper River flowing dark and dismal. Flint, unused to tolerating fools, was heavy with dull rage with Pimenta’s endless prattle about the great world war that was coming, the war which according to him would be the conclusion of all previous colonial wars: King George’s War, Queen Anne’s War, and the rest.

Pimenta said this would be the final fight for the North American continent. He said the Catholic French would march down from Montreal with beating drums. He said the Catholic Spaniards would march up from Florida with banners flying. He said the heathen Indians would fall upon the loser with scalping knives.

Flint was bored. War between various combinations of Britain, France and Spain was the natural condition of the world he knew. He could imagine no other state of affairs. All he cared about was raising a loan so he could hire ships and men to re-take his island. But Pimenta spoke only of war…until Neal and Selena hung back to look at one of the big rampart guns, which she then proceeded to explain to him, Selena now being knowledgeable about such things where he was not, to his considerable amusement and admiration.

Then Pimenta surprised Flint.

The short, fat young man, in his expensive, untidy clothes, stuck a finger under his hat, ran it through his curly black hair, scratched his head, and stopped talking. He stared at Selena, and sidled up to Flint, coming far closer than Flint liked. He took Flint’s arm and whispered:





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