Flint and Silver (36 page)

    There was a roar of laughter at that. Not that they wanted Flint dead. Oh no. It was just that they wanted a little bit of time, left by themselves, to do something they'd been dreaming about for many long weeks. The pack of them got up and leered at Selena and slowly moved towards the wheel.

    "Parrrrr-son!" said a voice, sing-song, soft and mocking.

    "Parrrr-son!" said another.

    Cowdray took Selena's arm.

    "Get below," he said.
"Now!
And don't show yourself till the captain's back."

    She frowned.

    "It's hot down there. It stinks of tar…"

    "Good God Almighty, girl…
get below!"

    Cowdray pulled her towards a hatchway. She took one more look at the men and stopped resisting. He led her down the companionway, towards the stern and Flint's cabin.

    "Get in there. Stay in there. Lock the door!" He listened to the growling and arguing now coming from above. He sighed.

    "Dear me! Dear me!" he said. "Give me that -" he pointed to a brass-barrelled blunderbuss hanging in a rack among the armoury of weapons Flint kept in the cabin. She snatched it and held it out. But she hung on to the gun and looked him in the eye.

    "Doctor," she said.

    "Yes?"

    "Thank you!"

    Cowdray sighed. "Good God, madam, I do but what I can."

    "So where's your fancy words? Your Latin?"

    "Madam, there's no time for that!"

    "Say some - for luck."

    "Oh… Godalmighty… Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit!"

    "What's that?"

    "Virgil: 'The time will come when this plight shall be sweet to remember.'"

    "Yes!" she said and kissed his cheek.

    This stirred emotions of every kind within Mr Cowdray's breast and loins, for she was very lovely and he was only a man. Still, he'd set himself a role to play - a bold one and a fatherly one - and so he played it. He
was
a surgeon, after all, and the practice of surgery breeds hard decisions and firm resolve.

    "Ahem!" he said. "Poor soul!" And he patted her hand. "Now, I shall stand here until things are quiet." He looked nervously towards the rumbling and shouting above. "Then I shall bring food and water, so you need not emerge till Captain Flint returns. The captain will put all to rights. Meanwhile, shut the door and lock it!"

    "Where's the key?" she said.

    "Good God, madam," said Cowdray, "damned if I know. Search! Search!"

    He pulled the door shut and put his back to it. He cuddled the short, heavy firearm and wondered if it were loaded. Then he wondered why he was doing this at all. The men would never listen to him. He was no fighting man. He'd not hold them off for one second, should they come in force. The best he could offer would be a few moments of bravado… perhaps waving the gun at them… It might stop them… though probably not… and then he'd have to drop it and let them pass, just to save his own life. And in that case a locked door wouldn't stop them either, and God help the black girl.

    In fact, everything now depended on Parson Smith, a creature who - in Mr Cowdray's judgement - was a slobbering libertine, and a figure of fun to the foremast hands. Cowdray wondered what in the Devil's name had persuaded Flint to raise such a creature into a position of authority. The bloody parrot would have been a better choice.

Chapter 38

6th September 1752

Late afternoon

The island

    "Here it is!" said Flint, and knelt to pick up the shirt, which moved slightly, all by itself. It was rolled into a bundle, tied up by the sleeves. He held it up. It moved again. Something was inside: something alive.

    "There's our dinner!" he said cheerfully, and laid it aside in the shade.

    Iain Fraser blinked uneasily. He'd noticed Flint wore no shirt. Flint was bare-chested under his coat and had been since he'd gone off alone while the burial party set up their marker. He'd gone off "to find a site for a bearing". When he came back, his shirt was gone. Fraser had noticed that, but never mentioned it. Maybe some of the others had noticed it too. But nobody said anything. With Flint it was unwise to mention things that might be unwelcome.

    "And now, here we are…
Farter
," said Flint. "Halfway up Spy-glass Hill, and the very spot I marked earlier when I made my reconnaissance." Flint indicated a rock the size of a house: flat, smooth and sunk in the earth to form a platform about ten feet long by twenty feet wide, and a foot above the ground. "This will do nicely…
Farter."

    "Aye-aye, Cap'n!" said Iain Fraser, so used to his ugly nickname that he answered to none other. At least he did when he was with his mates, who'd almost forgotten why they called him it. But a suspicion itched in his mind that Flint used the nickname more often and with more relish than others did.

    "Well then, Farter," said Flint, "isn't this just the spot? Don't we have a fine view from here?"

    Fraser looked around. The air was fresh and clean. The festering swamps of the southern anchorage and the tropical jungles that surrounded it were nearly four miles away and a thousand feet below. Here was pleasingly open ground: stony underfoot with flowering broom and other shrubs, and with little thickets of nutmeg trees contrasted by a few pines of tremendous size.

    Flint breathed the sweet air, he stretched his arms, he tickled the parrot and smiled upon Farter Fraser - the only man of the burial party who would need any special attention. Flint caught Fraser staring steadily at him - and then instantly dropping his gaze. Oh yes! Farter Fraser was by far the most intelligent of them, and would long since have been rated a petty officer but for his hopeless weakness for rum. That and the stink.

    "Well," said Flint, "go to it with a will, Farter! There's our shipmates down below, working like plantation niggers, and ourselves idling away the hours."

    "Aye-aye, Cap'n!" said Fraser, and he glanced at the four men, little dot-figures in the distance, alongside the spar that they'd raised as a marker. Then, catching the merest hint of a fading in Flint's smile, Fraser swiftly laid down his bundle, opened it and set Flint's compass on the rock, together with his notebook and other tackles. The compass was a heavy, boxed instrument, normally used in
Walrus's
longboat, and almost the size of those in a ship's binnacle.

    "There, Farter," said Flint, tapping the compass. "Lesser men than ourselves would build cairns, or blaze marks upon trees and expect to find them on their return. But we shall take bearings from the immovable and the unsinkable!" Flint stamped his heel on the mighty rock and knelt down to take a bearing of the burial site where the gold had been buried.

    And then Flint frowned. He laid aside the pencil and notebook that he was using to record the bearing. He stood up. He tipped back his hat. He scratched his head and peered thoughtfully at the burial site so far away and yet in plain sight. And then he shaded his eyes and looked southwards, and miles further, out to the anchorage where
Walrus
and
Lion
lay. There wasn't much that could not be seen from here and Flint managed a mighty sigh.

    Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Fraser had caught the change of mood and was watching intently. Well and good. Let him watch. Flint scowled and bit his lip and took a few paces up and down the rock. He turned as if to speak to Fraser. He blinked and shut his mouth. He paced the rock again. He stopped and stared at the burial party.

    "No!" he murmured. "Not them. Not Henry and James and Franky. Not little Rob!"

    "Cap'n?" said Fraser. Drury Lane had lost a mighty actor in Joe Flint, and his audience was too captivated not to respond.

    Flint jumped as if pricked.

    "Fraser," he said, "Iain, lad… forgive me, shipmate, it's just that…"

    "What, Cap'n?" said Fraser, now seriously alarmed, for Flint's face was grey and there were tears in his eyes.

    "Iain," said Flint, "I'd hoped to spare you this. I'd hoped it would keep until we were back afloat with our comrades around us…" He frowned. "Those we can trust, that is!"

    "Trust, Cap'n?" said Fraser. "Trust who?"

    "It's a plot, Iain!" said Flint, as if sunk in tragedy.

    "A plot?"

    "Aye, lad! Did you think poor Peter Evans died naturally?"

    "No, Cap'n…" said Fraser. He said it very carefully indeed, and avoided Flint's eye, for he'd thought a bit since sunrise and he'd come up with some very plausible explanations for creeping night-time horrors and howls in the dark, not to mention who it might have been that had strangled Peter Evans.

    "Ah!" said Flint. "I always knew you were a sharp 'un, Iain, and I am resolved to take you into my confidence, for I'm putting together a new crew - a crew that I can trust… even if it must be a greatly smaller crew."

    "Oh?" said Fraser, instantly appreciating that even so large a sum as eight hundred thousand pounds would be all the more for being shared by less. This beautiful thought cleansed his mind of any suspicion of his noble captain. It cleansed it, purged it, scrubbed it and purified it of any such wicked thoughts.

    "Aye, lad," said Flint and, reaching into his pocket, he came out with a bottle. He pulled out the cork and took a gulp. Fraser smelt rum and licked his lips. The day was improving, minute by minute.

    "Here, shipmate!" said Flint. "Sit alongside of me on this old rock, and take a drop, and I'll tell you the length and breadth of it."

    So Captain Joe Flint and Iain
Farter
Fraser shared a pleasant half-hour, and a full half-bottle - most of it going to Fraser as Flint explained the burdens of command and the awful iniquities of treacherous shipmates, such that no man could tell whom to trust, nor from which direction a fatal stab might come. The sad conclusion of this tale was that all aboard
Lion
and most aboard
Walrus -
were back-stabbing, no-seamanly lubbers who were out to steal other men's shares, and so should be denied their own… such that the goods would be shared not between one hundred and forty-seven men but twenty-five!

    Farter Fraser beamed happily as he got up to go and piss, which eventually he had to do. He lurched off on wobbling legs, with the rum warm and cosy in his belly.

    "God bless you, Cap'n!" he said. "And a clap o' the pox on them others!"

    "Thank you, lad," said Flint, pointing. "And just you go over
that
way, shipmate, and you can bring back that old shirt of mine, and we'll have that rabbit out for our dinner. A bit of fresh meat, shipmate!"

    "Aye, shipmate!" said Fraser, greatly daring. He undid his britches, relieved himself, buttoned up, and staggered over to Flint's shirt, which lay squirming in the shade of a broom bush.

    "A rabbit?" he said. "Bugger of a funny shape for a rabbit!"

    "Open it, lad," said Flint. "You'll see. The rabbits hereabouts ain't like ours in England."

    Fraser fumbled with the shirt. Drunk as he was, he couldn't manage to untie the sleeves. So he picked it up to bring it back to Flint. But he dropped it. He laughed. Flint laughed. The shirt wriggled and gave out a peculiar pattering, scratching sound.

    "Whassat?" said Fraser, and Flint's parrot spread its wings and flew away. Flint hardly noticed it go. He was at his sport, as the parrot was well aware.

    "It's the rabbit, lad," said Flint. "Never mind untying the knots, Iain lad, just out with your knife and cut the damn thing open!"

    "But it's your shirt, Cap'n," said Fraser.

    "God bless you, lad, don't mind that," said Flint. "We're men who soon shall own half of England! What's a shirt to us?"

    "Aye!" said Fraser, shaking his head at his own stupidity for not thinking of that. He fumbled at his belt and pulled out a dirk half the length of his arm. It had a keen edge and a decent point, but in his fuddled state it took a while for Fraser to get it properly into the shirt and rip open a hole.

    He peered into the dark recesses of the shirt where it lay writhing on the ground.

    "Bugger of a funny rabbit," he said.

    "Just stick a hand in and pull it out," said Flint, and stood up and moved closer for a better view.

    "Aye-aye, Cap'n, God bless you!" said Fraser, still full of wonderful thoughts of riches. After a brief groping, he added, "Aaaaaaaaagh!"

    "Why stap my vitals!" said Flint. "Do you know, Farter, I think you may be right. I really don't think that is a rabbit after all."

    "Aaaaaaaaagh!"

    "Do you know, what I think that is, Farter?"