Flint and Silver (48 page)

    She could see he wasn't the same man though, for he would fly into tempers as he'd never done before, and was highly dangerous when he did so - dangerous to the men, that is, not to her. She thought that perhaps this was because of the headaches he was suffering from the wound in his head, and which Mr Cowdray had had to close up again where Flint had popped the stitches. And perhaps he missed the parrot, although he never spoke of it.

    Fortunately the crew were even more afraid of him now than they'd been before, since he was unpredictable, and old certainties had had to be thrown over the side. And this was just perfect as far as Selena was concerned. Indeed, she hoped that they sizzled and fried in fear of Flint, because it meant that they behaved themselves better towards her. There were no more hungry leers from the men, nor dirty words from the boys. It was all "Yes, Miss Selena" and "No, Miss Selena" and she could go where she liked on the ship and never worry.

    Nor was Flint peeping through his holes in the cabin walls. Those, mysteriously, seemed to have been closed up - she'd long since found out where they all were. On the other hand, he'd taken to kissing her hand, and putting an arm round her waist whenever she stood beside him. This seemed to please him, and she suspected that it was a new alternative to his old games.

    Beyond that, she had to face the fact that she was parted from John Silver, with no prospect of seeing him again. And that was bad. She could only wait, and watch for opportunity.

    To encourage opportunity, she made a point of getting Flint to explain to her exactly how a pistol was loaded and fired, which he did with much amusement until - with daily practice - she learned the business so well that she could load without looking and could hit whatever she pointed at.

Chapter 54

12th September 1752

Morning

Spy-glass Hill

    Silver was getting about more easily. The carpenter had fixed a disc of wood round the bottom of his crutch so the staff stuck out an inch for use on firm ground, while the disc stopped it digging too far into sand, or the soft, boggy ground of the jungle or marshes. Now he was taking stock of the island, and was up on its highest point, for a good view. But the view wasn't good. Not at present. And neither was the air as fresh as usual, not with the hot sun and the present company.

    "Who'd this be then?" said Silver, looking down at the bloated, maggot-wriggling corpse lying stretched out under a nutmeg tree. "Jimmie Cameron, wouldn't you say?"

    "Aye, Cap'n," said Israel Hands. "And Franky Skillit's over there, with his arse as bald as his head and a pistol ball in his belly. It must be him, 'cos he's the only one of the lucky six as shaved his noggin."

    The parrot squawked and rubbed its head against Silver's.

    "Ah, my pretty," said Silver, and tickled its feathers, "you've seen a deal of wickedness in your time, ain't you now? And I don't doubt you could tell how these poor sailormen came to die." The parrot bobbed its head, and gently nipped Silver's ear. It had taken to him at once. Its wounds hadn't been serious. It had been tired mainly: tired in body and in spirit, that was all. In a couple of days it was flying again, and had hopped on to Silver's shoulder as if it were the natural thing to do. Silver was the one who'd been feeding it, after all.

    "That makes four of 'em, Cap'n," said Israel Hands, "what with Peter Evans on the beach, and Iain Fraser over there -" he pointed towards Flint's great rock. "D'you think it was Flint what done for 'em?"

    "Well it weren't their mothers!"

    "And what about Rob Taylor and Henry Howard?"

    "He'll have done for them too, somewhere… Ugh! It stinks up here. Come on, Mr Gunner, let's go below." He set off, and then stopped as a thought came to him.

    "Israel, old shipmate," he said, "don't you wonder what'd have happened if you and Blind Pew and Sarney Sawyer had tipped me the black spot that night aboard
Lion
? Maybe you'd have made your peace with Flint and had a ship under your feet this very minute."

    "No, Cap'n," said Israel Hands. "No/" He said it vehemently, as if he'd been accused of a foul deed. "We wasn't coming with no black spot! Not us, Cap'n! We was coming to say we was all with you. We'd talked it over, and we'd decided we should've voted with you on the burying of the goods. Flint gave the game away on the island when he said
Walrus
and
Lion
was each to fire into the other, should either try to go ashore.
The bugger was setting us against one another!
You was right all along, and we was come to say we was sorry."

    "What?"

    "Aye, Cap'n! There weren't a man aboard then, nor ain't there a man on this island now, as wouldn't follow wheresoever you lead, and I take my affy davy on it!"

    John Silver had to take a hard grip on his emotions to avoid giving way like a woman. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth.

    He sighed, and rubbed his eyes, and smiled at Israel Hands. There was much to do in this vile place, for never doubt that Flint would be back, and back with plenty of men, just as soon as he could contrive. And there was still the awful fear for Selena, and the thought that he might not see her again. But Long John Silver could face up to that, as long as he had a good crew behind him.

    He turned and led the way down the goat track. He was quick and nimble on stony ground like this, and he was head and shoulders taller than any other man. He wore his scorched blue coat with the big brass buttons, and under his hat was a red silk handkerchief bound round his head as a sweat- band. There were two pistols in his belt and a cutlass at his side, and the green parrot was perched firmly on his shoulder.

    "Come on, Mr Hands," he said, "there's work to do!"

Afterword

WRITING FLINT AND SILVER

    I wrote
Flint and Silver
to resolve the questions that Robert Louis Stevenson left unanswered in
Treasure Island,
one of the best-loved classics of English literature, but one which delivers a story plucked out of history like a carriage from the middle of a train. Questions are begged from end to end of the book: How did Long John lose his leg? Where did he get the parrot? Who was the black woman that he married? Who was the hideous Captain Flint? And above all, the question of questions that surpasses all others: Why did the pirates bury their treasure?

    This is a puzzle that bellowed and roared for explanation because the concept of buried treasure has so deeply penetrated our mythology that almost nobody sees a question there at all, despite the fact that there is a profound contradiction in the idea of pirates burying their treasure.

    Burial means safe storage. It means planning for the future. But pirates had no future. They did not look forward to retirement in Eastbourne with a service flat, BUPA and a plasma TV. They lived fast and died young with the navies of at least three countries trying to catch them and hang them. So when they got hold of some money they blew it on sex, alcohol and gluttony, and then went out and got some more money, and so on and so on, until the hangman got hold of them.

    Faced with these questions, and knowing that Robert Louis Stevenson was not going to answer them, I decided to do so on his behalf by writing a series of books about what happened before
Treasure Island
, and hoping that, if I did it well enough, he might forgive me should we meet in some other place.

    To increase my chances of forgiveness, I read and re-read
Treasure Island.
I went through it page by page, taking notes and producing a cross-referenced file of information with which my book should be in harmony. If
Flint and Silver
is to be a "prequel" it should contain nothing irreconcilable with
Treasure Island.
This does not mean that I never departed from - or even contradicted - some of Stevenson's detail, but that I did my best never to do so in ignorance, or without good reason. For instance,
Treasure Island
is a children's book, because Stevenson wrote it for his thirteen-year-old step-son Lloyd Osbourne, who wanted no women in the story: a perfectly reasonable sentiment for a thirteen-year-old, but I am older than that and I write no books without women and the delights and sorrows that go with them; so my work is not for children.

    Conversely, I was absolutely true to Stevenson in correcting a false impression, universally held, of Long John Silver himself. Almost everyone knows Robert Newton's incomparable representation:

    "Ah-harr, Jim lad!" of Long John. But who knows that this boozy, greasy, squinting creature is nothing like the Long John that Stevenson created? The real Long John was, in Stevenson's words:

    … very tall and strong, with a face as big as a ham. Plain and pale but intelligent and smiling… clean and pleasant-tempered.

    Of all the actors who have played Silver, the closest, in my opinion, was Charlton Heston, and even he was too old at the time. If you want to picture Long John, think of a young Charlton Heston, swinging a broadsword as he did in
El Cid.

    I kept Silver's speech and character as close as possible to Stevenson, though stressing Silver's belief that he was a "gentleman of fortune" and not a pirate. But I plead guilty to making him younger than Stevenson did. He imagined Silver as middle-aged, while I've re-incarnated him in the prime of manhood. Likewise I've romanced Silver's lady, Selena, very considerably. Stevenson refers to her as an "old negress" and she never makes an appearance in his book, whereas my Selena is young and delectable, for she is the heroine, and must be lovely, as an irrefutable requirement of good story-telling.

    Flint, the other major character, was long dead in
Treasure Island
and Stevenson gives no clue to his appearance, though his many references to Flint point to a monster in the shadows. "He was the bloodthirstiest buccaneer that ever sailed," says Squire Trelawney. "Blackbeard was a child to Flint. The Spaniards were so prodigiously afraid of him, that, I tell you, sir, I was sometimes proud he was an Englishman." Here was the opportunity to create something special, and I have tried. He could not be a simple brute but someone with glittering talents as well as psychotic menace. Hence Joe Flint with his holy-sadist father, his lightning reactions, his amoral cunning, his beautiful clothes, his gleaming smile… and his little problem with women. Flint, of course is the answer to the great question "why was the treasure buried?" It was buried for Flint, to be exhumed by Flint, for Flint's exclusive use, and perhaps with Billy Bones allowed to carry the weight of it.

    Poor, loyal Billy Bones. He is a brute: a thumping, bruising brute, just as Stevenson described him, though younger and bigger. But the notebook and quadrant in his chest in
Treasure Island
showed that he was a literate, numerate brute and capable of plotting a course. So I made him a master's mate. He was no mere "hand before the mast" and he was much wronged by his idol and master. Left to himself in the Royal Navy, Billy Bones would have been a perfectly decent ship's officer, no worse than many others with thick boots and heavy fists.

    Further characters likewise spring from Stevenson. I have described the flogging of Ben Gunn which began his descent into insanity. Blind Pew, who terrified me as a child, I made into "Mad Pew": sinister and peculiar even before he lost his sight. Israel Hands in
Treasure Island
was the drunken thug who chased Jim Hawkins up the mast with a knife. But Stevenson also said that Hands was Flint's gunner, and a gunner was a senior officer, responsible for guns, carriages, shot and powder. He kept written records of these expensive stores, and he held the keys to the magazine, where a single act of carelessness could destroy the entire ship. Apologies to Stevenson, but this is inconsistent, and my Israel Hands is a sober and thoughtful man. He is Silver's chief ally, and a considerable expert in the use of the nine-pounder gun.

    My favourite character is Cap'n Flint, the parrot. I had almost finished writing the book when, by chance, I met a parrot at an antiques fair in Staffordshire. It was a huge bird, sitting on the shoulder of a lady - one of the traders - nuzzling her ear and preening her hair, taking a strand in its beak and gently running down the strand towards its end. Later I read of Dr Irene Pepperberg whose research suggests that parrots have an intelligence equal to that of the higher primates, with the bonus that they can speak. Thus I learned that the fantasised intelligence I had given to Cap'n Flint was perfectly reasonable. Parrots really are that clever. And they can crack Brazil nuts in their beaks, or bite off Black Dog's fingers.

    Other characters such as Captain Springer, Midshipman Hastings and Midshipman Povey are entirely mine and are as true to the period as I can make them. Thus midshipmen were sometimes very young. Nelson famously went to sea at twelve and his contemporary, William Dillon, states in his memoirs
²
that he went to sea aboard HMS
Saturn
in 1790 aged nine and a half years.