Flint and Silver (37 page)

    "Aaaaaaaaagh!"

    "I think that may be a snake."

    "Aaaaaaaaagh!"

    "A rattlesnake."

    But Iain Fraser paid no attention to Flint. He ran aimlessly in all directions, issuing thunderous farts, while three and a half feet of serpent hung writhing and lashing to his right hand, which was firmly clamped in its jaws, while its blunt tail-tip issued the dry rattling clatter for which its family is named.

    "Dear me," said Flint, as Fraser stormed past on a southern run. "Could I suggest you retrieve your knife and cut off its head?"

    Flint even exerted himself so far as to pick up Fraser's dirk and to hold it out, butt-first, for Fraser to grab on the return leg. Fraser took the blade, but hadn't the dexterity to achieve very much, left-handed. All he did was anger the snake by scratching its scaly hide with superficial cuts which persuaded it to dig in all the harder.

    Eventually, when his breath failed, Fraser sat down, heaving and sobbing, on the big grey rock with the snake still firmly attached to his hand.

    "Help!" he pleaded. "Help, Cap'n."

    "Don't rightly know how, shipmate," said Flint. "Though I do believe that they generally let go of their own accord, once they've bitten enough."

    Eventually that's exactly what the snake did do. But by then Fraser was on his back with a fat, blue hand, eyes closed and breath rasping in his throat.

    The snake would have made off, but Flint knelt down and played with it, tempting it to strike at one hand, and catching it behind the head with the other as the coils of muscle launched it at glittering speed. The snake was fast, but nowhere near as fast as Joe Flint. It wasn't mad like him, either, and it didn't laugh.

    The parrot watched from a branch in a pine tree. It squawked as Flint led the snake, strike by strike, on to the rock, and there stamped on its head and killed it.

    Then Flint went over to the recumbent Farter Fraser to make sure of him too. As he wielded the victim's own knife, the parrot squawked and rocked from side to side and shuffled its feet on the branch, and finally it uttered a deep groan. It groaned as clear, and as sad, and as pitiful as any human being.

Chapter 39

6th September 1752

Four bells of the forenoon watch (c. 10 a.m. shore time)

Aboard Walrus

The southern anchorage

    Mr Smith, acting-first mate, had already been sweating, tropical hot in his long blue coat, and now he sweated more.

    He cursed in affronted jealousy as Selena followed Cowdray down below, like a lamb. He ground his teeth in rage as the insolent scum of the lower deck dared to sneer and shuffle towards him in mutinous display where he stood at the break of the quarterdeck, by the binnacle and the tiller - the very temple and altar of authority in the ship.

    He looked for support and found none. He frowned mightily. There were others aboard - men rated petty officers - who should have stood by him: the quartermasters, the master-at-arms, and especially Mr Allardyce, the boatswain. All these should have done their duty… but see! They were scowling with all the rest. Scowling and jeering, and now they were brazenly calling him "Parson" again. They all wanted a go at the black girl, and were damning his eyes if he stood in their way.

    It was insufferable! Unsupportable! Outrageous!

    It was also throat-slittingly dangerous. But Parson Smith didn't see that. He was so thickly armoured in his own self- esteem that he never stopped to wonder what the crew would do with him once they got their hands on him.

    After all, why should he fear this collection of rogues and imbeciles when he was under the personal protection of Captain Flint? He who had been singled out and chosen by the captain and offered great rewards…

    "Now see here, Mr Smith," Flint had said on the voyage down to the island, "I have sent for you because I know you are a man of learning." He'd smiled and invited Mr Smith to walk the deck with him, and engaged so openly in conversation that Smith had duly been dazzled.

    "You are our purser, are you not?"

    "Yes, sir," said Smith.

"Aye-aye, sir!
" corrected Flint with a kindly smile.

    "Aye-aye, sir!" said Smith.

    "Our purser, yet here's myself in need of a navigating officer."

    "Now that you have lost Mr Bones, sir?"

    Flint smiled a weary smile. "Quite so, Mr Smith."

    "Oh?" said Smith, scenting advantage.

    "Mr Smith, are you familiar with your Pythagoras?"

    "Oh yes, sir!"

    "And your Euclid?"

    "Oh yes, sir! And Newton's Fluxions besides!"

    "I knew it, Mr Smith! I saw the mathematician in you!"

    "Oh, sir!"

    So Mr Smith got his long coat, and his big hat, and Mr Bones's empty cabin. He was furthermore given the use of Captain Flint's spare quadrant, and was instructed personally by the captain, with the result that, while still some hundreds of miles from Flint's island, Mr Smith - from his own calculations - was well on course for an accurate landfall.

    "Well done, Mr Mate!" Flint had said, as Smith showed his latest position on the chart, some few days from the island. "Now, here's the sun over the yardarm, and the men about to go to their dinners. Will you join me, Mr Mate, for a glass in my cabin?"

    "With pleasure, Captain!" said Smith, and puffed up enormously as he sauntered in Flint's wake, with servants taking care of their instruments, and all the crew looking on as he went below to take wine with the captain.

    "Your health, sir!" said Flint, seated at his table. "You have the makings of a damn fine navigator."

    "Yours, Captain!" said Smith, and came near to blushing as Flint beamed at him.

    "So you could find this island of mine?" said Flint. "You could set out from Bristol and find it?"

    "Given a good ship and a crew, and charts, sir?" Smith nodded in pompous dignity. "Yes, sir, I believe that I could." He was justifiably proud of the fact and it showed.

    "Then your future is assured, Mr Smith," said Flint, showing wolfish teeth.

    And indeed Mr Smith's future
was
assured. Like any sensible mariner, Flint wanted a spare navigating officer. Unfortunately, that could not now be Billy Bones, for he was destined for other duties. That had been decided. So, without Billy Bones, what if Flint were to fall ill or otherwise to become incapacitated while
Walrus
was home-bound with a certain cargo under hatches? What then, if there were no man to set a course? What would become of poor Joe Flint?

    Hence the time and effort to train up Mr Smith. But once in sight of England, that gentleman's future was assured beyond doubt. Meanwhile there was something else.

    "Mr Smith," said Flint, after a few glasses had gone down, and the acting-first mate's face was glowing nicely, "Mr Smith - or may I take the liberty of calling you by your baptismal name? Ewyn, is it not? And you must call me Joseph."

    "Oh, sir!" said Smith, enormously flattered, and he licked his lips with so wet a tongue, and peered so bloodshot-misty- eyed through his little round spectacles, that Flint's greatest weakness nearly let him down once more. But not quite, and Flint managed - though only just - to keep a hold on his solemnity.

    "Ewyn," said Flint, "I seek your advice on a most personal matter…" he paused, "… one so personal that I barely know how to begin."

    "Oh…
Joseph
?" said Smith, sitting up, and dragging a handkerchief across his sweating face - to clear for action, as it were - for he was an addicted nosy parker, and his greed for other people's troubles was unlimited.

    "This black girl of mine," said Flint.

    "Yes?" said Smith, and Flint shook his head, and dithered and muttered, and blushed and sighed, and took another glass and sighed again, and dropped his gaze to the polished table top.

"Yes! Yes!"
said Smith, and an erection rose between his thighs in sheer anticipation of what might follow.

    "The fact is… Ewyn," said Flint very softly, "she has certain
appetites.
.. doubtless innocent, and doubtless commonplace among her own folk, but which she wishes me to satisfy… and… and…"

"And?"
gulped Smith in a half-strangled voice.

    "I find that they are more than my strength can achieve," said Flint. He looked up and saw Smith's goggling eyes and drooling lips, and nearly lost control again. Out of sight beneath the table, he resorted to the technique of peeling back his left thumbnail with his right index finger, which delivered such pain that he was saved from laughter.

    "I find, Ewyn," he said, "that the variety, the frequency, and the
exoticism
of her desires are more than one man can sustain - at least a white man - and therefore… Ewyn… I ask you… as the only gentleman aboard… the only man of education…"

    "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!" said Smith, his mind and member united in their closeness to ejaculation.

    "Dear friend!" said Flint, with a grateful smile.

    "When? When?" said Smith.

    "Ah," said Flint, "another glass, Mr Mate?"

    "Yes, Joseph!"

    Flint gave a small laugh, then smiled like a father. "Better make it 'Captain', dear friend, just for the while."

    "Aye-aye, Captain!"

    "Mr Smith," Flint sighed, "if only you knew the burdens of command."

    "Captain?"

    "And treachery, Mr Smith."

    "Treachery?" Smith's mind was blurred with drink, but this was news.

    "We are betrayed by all aboard
Lion,
and most aboard
Walrus!"

    "No!"

    "Yes - the burying of the goods is but a ruse to save them!"

    "Save them…
for whom?
" said Smith, who was not quite a fool.

    "Thyself and myself, Mr Smith, and those few whom we can trust."

    "Few?"

    "Just enough to work this ship back to England - say a dozen hands."

    "Twelve?" said Smith, and his mouth gaped open.

    "Yes, Mr Smith. A vast fortune, divided by eighteen."

    "Eighteen?"

    "Of course - twelve hands, plus you and I."

    "But does not that make fourteen?"

    "No, Mr Smith, for you and I shall have
triple
shares."

    "God love and save us!"

    "And of course, you jolly dog," said Flint, winking broadly, "once this ship has the goods under hatches, and our business with the traitors is done, and we're safe on course for England… then I'll give you my cabin and my key, and you can take that piece of black mischief in there, and do what you like to her!"

    "Ooh!" said Smith.

    "But before that, Mr Smith, there are some immediate duties for you to perform. You must be my eyes and ears aboard
Walrus,
for I shall have duties ashore. You must hold the ship for me, and beware of John Silver and beware of the crew. So pay close attention to what I shall tell you now…"

Chapter 40

6th September 1752

Two bells of the forenoon watch (c. 9 a.m. shore time)

Aboard Lion

The southern anchorage

    Israel Hands's Spanish gun was in all respects ready for action. It needed only to be run out and a linstock's match applied to the touch-hole.

    "Well done, Mr Gunner!" said Silver. "And well done, Mr Boatswain!"

    "Aye-aye, Cap'n!" they said.

    "Aye," said Silver, and nodded in satisfaction as he looked up and down
Lion's
ninety-by-twenty-foot main deck, which was buzzing and clattering with pointless activity.

    Lines were being spliced and un-spliced. Hatch coamings were being levered off with crowbars - to the screeek of nails - and then promptly hammered back again with thundering blows. The carpenter's men were sawing old timbers inch by inch into sawdust, with mighty saws. The topsails were being bent and un-bent and bent again to their yards. A squad of musketeers was drilling by the stern rail, going through the postures of loading - though with empty air - and levelling astern and crying
Bang!
as they pulled their triggers.

    There wasn't a busier crew this side of the Bedlam madhouse.