Flint and Silver (15 page)

    She had her hair bound up in a silk handkerchief of deep scarlet, and she was dressed in a shirt and a pair of white duck slops, secured round the waist with a black leather belt. The clothes had belonged to one of the ship's boys: a scrawny, undersized twelve-year-old, and had been given to her on Flint's orders as being nearest to her size. But the result was a tightness around the behind, and bare legs from just above the knees, and a want of buttons around the neck that left more velvet-black skin gleaming in the sunshine than was entirely wise.

    She was nervous with the motion of the ship. Billy saw that she'd be casting up her accounts before long, like any green sailor. Then he looked around and saw that there wasn't one man on deck who wasn't staring pop-eyed at her, and those below were being called up by their mates so as not to miss the treat.

    For that matter, Billy felt his own desires stiffening, and that was after a glutting, unrestrained debauch ashore that normally left him contented for weeks. Billy Bones entirely revised his opinion of black girls and looked at Flint out of the corner of his eye. By Satan! The captain was a man, and no mistake. He saw the satisfaction on Flint's face at the crew's reaction to his little prize.

    "Selena, my dear!" called Flint. "Come aft!" Billy could see that she didn't know where
aft
was, but Flint beckoned and she half walked, half staggered along the deck to join him. And then Billy Bones saw the most surprising and wonderful thing: Silver was scowling. Silver's beaky nose was out of joint. Someone had shoved a pint of mustard up his arse, and Billy Bones could see who it was. A dull grin broke across his greasy face. He followed everything that happened next with utmost attention.

    "Selena," said Flint, making introductions as if he were on a flagship and she were a duchess, "may I present my quartermaster and good companion, Mr John Silver."

    Billy Bones saw the fine lips twist and the nose flare and the hands go to the hips.

    "Huh!" she said, and Billy Bones held his breath. Skin, salt, bugger and burn him if this didn't look ripe! The little bitch was facing down Long John Silver like he was a foremast hand caught thieving from his mates; while Silver, by heaven, couldn't meet her eye. Billy actually saw Long John blush and blink and look from Flint to the girl and back again. Billy snorted with glee, and hastily made a show of clearing his throat and going to the rail to spit tobacco juice from the plug he kept eternally working in his mouth. But he came back sharpish to watch the next round of the contest.

    "Why, what's this, John?" said Flint.

    "We've met," said the girl.

    "Aye," said Flint, "in Savannah."

    "Yes," said the girl, "in Charley Neal's liquor shop." She looked at Flint. "Your friend thought I was something that I am not."

    Billy Bones whistled silently to himself. She was powerful uppity for a nigger-woman. But then he remembered who her protector was.

    "If that was the way of it, miss," said Silver, "then I'm right sorry, and I take my Bible oath on it." He turned anxiously to Flint, who was looking on in amusement. "A word in your private ear, Joe," he said, but Flint let go a blast of laughter. He slapped his thigh and petted his squawking parrot, and took off his hat and fanned himself. Then he held his sides and started all over again. Once Flint started laughing, it was hard for him to stop.

    "Why, John," he said, between gasps, "don't tell me we both chased the same hind, and I was the faster?"

    "No!" said the girl.

    "No!" said Silver.

    "No?" said Flint.

    "We'd best talk, Joe," said Silver. "A woman is the worst luck that's possible to bring aboard a ship."

    Billy saw the fun drain out of Flint in double quick time. Flint's eyes went wide and round and white, which was a dangerous sign.

    "Now, would that be
you,
John Silver, questioning me?"

    "Aye," said Silver.

    "So!" said Flint.

    They stared at one another as if no other person was within miles. The moment was intensely painful to each. Their friendship was still at its height. Then Flint shook himself and forced a smile, and tried another laugh - though not a very good one - and clapped Silver on the shoulder.

    "John, John, shipmate," he said, "let's not you and I quarrel."

    "Never at my choosing," said Silver, making his own best effort to force things back the way they'd been before.

    "Then why ever?" said Flint, and smiled almost naturally.

    "But we must talk, Cap'n," said Silver, glancing at Selena, and Flint's eyes grew round again, but he held his course.

    "Aye," said Flint, "what can't be cured must be endured, as the doctors say." And he looked at Billy Bones and Selena. "My dear," he said, "this gentleman is Mr Bones, my first mate." She looked at him in a way that would have got her the back of Billy Bones's hand under other circumstances. "And, Mr Bones, this lady is my ward, Selena. I hand her into your personal safe-keeping, Mr Bones, and will inquire of you should any man treat her with less than proper respect."

    "Aye-aye, sir!" said Billy Bones.
Ward
indeed. But if that's what Flint said, then so it should be. "You can leave the hands to me, Cap'n," he added.

    "Oh, I do, Mr Bones. Indeed I do," said Flint. "And now, John, let's settle this matter over a glass of rum, like good companions, eh?"

    "With all my heart, Cap'n," said Silver, and the two of them went below. Billy Bones's spirits fell when he saw that, but he perked up later when a raging and a hollering of voices could be heard coming up from Flint's cabin. Billy guessed the stern windows must be thrown open for the fresh air, since the sound was coming up over the taffrail. He would dearly have liked to get himself and his ears astern to hear what was being said, but he dared not. In any case the little madam was wandering round the deck among the men, and his presence was badly needed beside her.

    She was still hanging on to whatever came to hand, bracing herself against the heaving deck which she hadn't yet come to terms with, but she didn't seem one bit afraid, and she wasn't going to be sick after all. She stared at every ordinary item of the schooner's gear as if it was all brand new and she didn't know a jibboom from a jackstay. In due time, the wheels of Billy Bones's mind turned, and he managed to calculate that this was indeed the case, what with plantation slaves not being bred up to the ways of the sea.

    The trouble was that Billy knew he must either follow her round like a nursemaid, or at least take a turn about the ship to warn the hands what would happen to them should they not mind their manners. So he had to abandon the fascinations of eavesdropping just at the very moment when he was learning to relish them.

    Round the ship he went, as fast as he could, to give the crew their orders in the hope that he could get back to the stern without delay. But to his surprise he found that the men were not interested in the juicy bit of tail that was parading itself round the deck, because another piece of news had sped round the ship ahead of him. All the crew wanted to hear about was the split between Flint and Silver. And there was a dimension to this that had hitherto escaped Billy Bones's understanding, for he'd been too busy rejoicing at Silver's fall from the post of Flint's chief favourite.

    "Which are you for, Mr Bones?" said Mad Pew, way down below where he had a little cabin - dark, close and lantern- lit - for his sailmaking gear. There was no other person present, but Pew looked around as if for hidden listeners in the shadows, and he nipped Billy Bones's arm with hard sinewy fingers in the way he had when talking, which made men's flesh creep. Billy guessed that Pew was frightened, but it was hard to read Mad Pew's expression when he was disturbed in any way, for on those occasions such a twitch jumped in the corner of his eye that it was impossible to notice much else about him.

    "Haul off, you bloody lubber!" said Billy Bones, shuddering and shaking off the thin, strong hand. "What the buggeration d'you mean, 'which one'?"

    "Flint," said Pew, "or Sil-ver?" His Welsh voice made two sounds out of the name.

    "Bladderwash!" snarled Billy Bones, "You fucking mad bastard!" And he read Pew the rule book concerning black girls aboard ship, and went stamping on his way. But the next person he met was Israel Hands, the gunner, coming out of the magazine, and Israel Hands was not mad, nor a fool, nor anything other than a prime seaman.

    "Bad business, Billy," said Hands, with a deadly serious look on his face.

    "What is?" said Billy Bones, staunchly managing not to grasp the point.

    "Why… Flint and Silver, shipmate," said Israel Hands. "If they steers their separate courses, then some'll go with the one, and some the other."

    "Bollocks!" said Bones. "Who'd follow any other man than Flint?"

    "Aye…" said Hands carefully. "Who would, an' all?"

    "See?" said Billy Bones, believing he'd won the argument.

    "Let's hope things don't turn nasty, Mr Bones," said Israel Hands, "or none of us'll dare to sling a hammock for fear of a knife from below whiles we sleep."

    Billy Bones thought this over and shook his head.

    "No," he said, "not aboard the old
Walrus.
Not while we're jolly companions one and all."

    "Aye," said Israel Hands. "Whatever you says, Mr Bones." But he was glad that, as master gunner, he slept in a nice solid wooden bunk.

Chapter 14

30th May 1749

Dawn

Elizabeth's longboat

The South Atlantic

    "We're all going to die," said Mr Midshipman Hastings, "and that's God's truth." And he curled himself into a ball in the sternsheets of the wallowing longboat.

    "Hell and damnation, George," said Mr Midshipman Povey, kneeling down and putting his hands over his friend's ear so he could whisper without being heard, "If you don't buck up soon, that's just what we shall do. Now bloody well stand up and do your duty! I can't do it, I'm too small. They won't listen to me."

    "Shan't," said Hastings, "it's too much." He shoved Povey's hands away and looked up at him. "Just too much! All
that
on that stinking island… and now this -" He raised his head slightly, peered between the backs of the three marines sat stolidly on the aftermost thwart, as a protective screen from the hands.

    Povey followed his gaze. Rough, fearful faces glared back in a mass. The men were growling and moaning. Worse still, some of them were sobbing in despair. Cast loose upon the deep without charts, compass, instruments or any hope of

    salvation, they were twenty-three lost souls a tiny wooden shell, surrounded by an endless desert of ocean.

    If they were lucky and the weather was foul, they might be swamped and drowned. But given fair weather… it would be a hideous lingering death by thirst: the worst of all ways for a seaman to die. Povey's heart sank.

    "Oh, what's the use…" he said.

    "What's goin' on!" said one of the hands, reading Povey's expression. He lurched forward, trying to see what the mids were doing, only to be grabbed by a marine and thrown back to his place.

    "Fuck you, lobster!" said the seaman, and sneered. "You ain't got no bloody musket now, have you? Don't you touch me, you bloody lubber!"

    "Aye!" growled the rest.

    "Where's the rum?" said one.

    "AYE!" they cried, and surged forward in a body to seek an answer.

    The boat rocked horribly as a fierce struggle took place between seamen and marines. There were no weapons among them - they'd been plucked clean of those - but there was gouging and kicking, and heads slammed hard against the planks.

    "George! George!" said Povey. "For God's sake stand up!"

    The longboat was a big one - thirty-six feet long by a dozen broad at the waist. She was ponderous and heavily timbered, but with twenty-one men fighting viciously on board of her, she was rolling gunwale-under and shipping it green.

    "George!" said Povey, shaking the other as hard as he could, but Mr Midshipman Hastings sat staring with his mouth hung open, head lolling from side to side with the sickening motion. "Right then," said Povey, "here's the way of it, George Hastings."

    He let go of Hastings and fell back. "If you won't stand up and do your duty, as the senior of us two, then… then… I'll cut you in town, I'll tell my servants to shut my door to you…
and I'll never speak to you again!"

    "Oh…" said Hastings, and sat up just as a seaman threw himself clear of the fight and landed belly-down between Hastings and Povey, and got both hands lovingly round the rum cask. His feet were firm caught among the bellowing crowd forrard so he couldn't get up, but from the look on his face, he wasn't ever going to let go.

    "Ah!" said Hastings, struck with inspiration. He scrambled to his feet and began kicking the seaman's hands and fingers with all his might.