Silver (12 page)

Because of the eagerness with which she told this brief history, I might easily have thought Natty felt some affection for the bird. But I noticed that all the time she spoke, she kept her fists clenched tight – as if she were fired more by anger than fondness. For my own part, I could only repeat the name to myself in a state of astonishment. In all my father’s stories of Treasure Island, the bird had been a constant presence – perching and fluttering on Mr Silver’s shoulder, and shrieking his dreadful cry. ‘Pieces of eight!’ He had become as vivid to me as Israel Hands himself, or Blind Pew, or any of the rest of the buccaneers.

‘Will
he
pray for us, do you think?’ I asked Natty with a sort of smile.

Natty did not reply, but lifted her face and stared into the bird’s unblinking eyes as though daring him to fly through the glass and attack her. It occurred to me that she was remembering times when she had felt these very talons nipping at her flesh, and this very beak. As I considered this, I decided she might in fact be the reason why Captain Flint was inside the case, and not still alive.

Eventually, and still without saying a word, Natty hoisted the cage in which her own bird crouched mutely on his perch, and led me downstairs into the street. Here, instead of heading directly towards our ship, she surprised me by turning into an alley that ran adjacent to the Spyglass, and re-entered the building through a side door. I found myself in a dim parlour where the bricks of the floor had been deeply gouged by barrels rumbling across them.

‘What now?’ I wondered aloud, but Natty would not tell me.

‘Wait,’ was all she would say. ‘Wait and look after Spot.’

I did as she told me, but this was evidently not what the bird wanted, since as soon as I took hold of his cage he began calling
the command ‘Stand by to go about; stand by to go about’ – while Natty disappeared into a narrow passageway. I had no choice except to remain alone, doing my best to calm the bird by repeating his name in what I hoped was a soothing voice. My efforts seemed only to deepen his dislike of my company.

When Natty returned, it was my turn to be speechless. The young woman who had left a moment ago, with her brown shawl and her plain woollen dress and her short black hair, had come back transformed into a boy with knee-length white linen trousers, a smart blue sailor’s jacket, and a large cocked hat that slumped conveniently low over the forehead and concealed much of the face.

‘Nat Silver,’ she said, with her usual simplicity. ‘I don’t believe we have met.’

‘How do you do, sir,’ I said, recovering myself and giving her my hand to shake. Her own hand felt very slim in my grip. This, combined with the softness of her skin, and the beauty of her face, on which there was not a single whisker but only a faint down, made me certain that her attempt to live in disguise would not go undetected for long. I did not want to say as much, thinking she would be disappointed.

‘How old are you, may I ask?’ I said, still with a pretend gentility.

‘This is not a game,’ she replied – and frowned, which made her hat sink still further forward.

‘I know that,’ I said. ‘But I must tell you: I think that if you claim to be younger than you are in fact, you might be more credible.’

Natty threw me an irritated glance, then saw that I only meant to make myself useful.

‘Sixteen,’ she said.

‘Too old,’ I replied.

‘Fifteen, then.’

‘Fourteen,’ I told her. ‘Admiral Nelson was at sea by fourteen. I doubt whether he looked any older than you.’

‘Very well, fourteen’, she said, after a pause – then rubbed both hands over her face as though to coarsen her cheeks, and cleared her throat to roughen her voice as well. With that, she evidently felt she had taken enough advice, seized Spot’s cage from my hand, and strode outside into the sunlight with a rolling sailor’s gait.

As we dodged westwards, along streets that lay parallel to the river, the sight of Natty now looking so gallant and handy prompted me to a question I had not previously liked to ask – though it had been much in my mind. Would we have any protection in the ship, in case we came under attack?

I expected Natty to look down her nose and accuse me of being a coward, so felt relieved when she merely said, ‘I have asked my father about this.’

‘And what did he tell you?’

‘He told me we do not live in a barbarous age, and need not fear that kind of danger.’

‘You mean there are no arms on board?’

‘I did not say that. I believe there are a few. Pistols. Swords.’

Natty’s reticence suggested that she herself thought our supplies might be insufficient, but was not willing to admit her father had given bad advice. I suspected this even more strongly when I heard a note of chiding come into her voice.

‘I have told you before, Jim. Captain Beamish is an excellent fellow. My father has settled everything for the boat. He has paid for everything. It is very good of him.’

This made me feel put out. ‘I did not suggest otherwise,’ I told her – although when she did not answer, I knew I should not say any more. Indeed, I felt our adventure was so tainted by my own guilt in stealing the map, I should not quibble with any of the other arrangements, but generally follow where Natty led. I did not even feel it proper to mention that our map showed there were arms
buried on the island, since I did not want to strengthen the idea we might need them. I had raised the subject in the first place and now I regretted it; I held my peace.

Perhaps Natty reckoned my silence was a proof of speechless excitement, because we were about to set sail. And I admit: by the time we reached the dockyard I was once again almost tongue-tied. Although I had lived beside the river (I might almost say
on
the river) all my life at home, and considered myself an authority on tides and currents, boats and shipping, and every kind of man, woman and creature that splashed along its banks, I had never before seen such a prodigious concentration of watery energy.

The smell of tar and freshly cut wood was wonderful – as wonderful as the figureheads of the ships all around me which had looked at the other side of the world, and now were jutting above my own head, and also above the heads of sailors with rings in their ears and whiskers curled into ringlets and pigtails. If I had seen as many kings or ambassadors I could not have been more delighted. The whole purpose of humanity seemed suddenly to be the exchange of one element for another, because the Great Flood would soon begin, and anyone who did not find a way of living
on
the water would shortly be drowned
in
it.

A dozen – more – individual quays extended from the dockside, and along each were sailors loading, unloading, haggling, cursing, heaving and sweating. The number of ships crowded into my view was too numerous to count – some sparkling with new paint, some drab from long voyages, like migrant birds that had suffered in their journeys. Above them rose a myriad of masts – some slender, some brutish, some as high as steeples, and all supporting so many hundreds of pieces of rigging the sky actually seemed dark with them.

I would have liked to stop and admire, but was so instantly caught
in a great current of busy-ness, there was no time for reflection. Indeed, it would be better to say that Natty and I entirely
surrendered
to the place, since we soon felt as helpless as corks in a stream. This meant I passed the last part of our journey in a strange state of passivity – and was not in the least surprised (though at the same time astonished) to find that after swirling through assorted eddies and rapids we should come to rest at last beside a ship that seemed even more elegant and interesting than the dozens of other beauties we had already passed by.

She was a breed I had often admired from my perch in the Hispaniola: a Baltimore clipper, some hundred feet long, with two masts (both distinctly raked), a bowsprit made like a dagger to cut the waves, a flush deck, a beam rather great for her length, but the most graceful and easy lines. Had my father been at my shoulder, he would have said she was
sired by war, mothered by piracy and nursed by cruelty –
except that her nature had evidently been tamed and turned to peaceful ends, since a roundhouse had been added close to the wheel. This looked to have a clear view of every horizon, and gave the suggestion that a cruise would be preferable to warfare.

My impression grew stronger as I approached the stern, and saw a bo’sun’s chair was rigged over the rail. In this sat a man who was stripped to his trousers, and working with a pot of paint to change the original name of the ship, the
Nightingale
, so that it read: the
Silver Nightingale
. The word ‘silver’ was there, of course, to manifest her owner, and to make him almost a member of the crew.

‘The
Silver Nightingale
,’ I said aloud, in a state close to wonder. ‘This is ours.’

‘The
Nightingale
is ours,’ Natty repeated, with a similar kind of awe in her voice, which I dare say owed something to pride in seeing how well her father had provided for us. ‘I told you; you
need not have worried. Everything is prepared. The captain is waiting here now.’

Even before she finished speaking, Natty launched up the narrow gangplank to land herself in the stern of the vessel. Had she arrived in a more forward part of the deck, she would have remained in plain view; here, however, an arrangement of weatherboards and railings had been added to form a barrier against the waves, and this concealed her entirely.

Without any further hesitation, I followed where she had gone, and dropped down into the ship. Away to my left, a gang of men had formed a human chain, conveying boxes and chests and trunks and all manner of containers up from the quay – and I shall return to them in a moment. For now, my eyes were fixed on the
Nightingale
herself. A well-scrubbed deck of broad planks, with the shadows of rigging swaying gently back and forth across them. A low bulwark, painted fresh green. A hatch shaped like a tortoise shell that shielded steps leading below deck. An old brass long-nine gun – which was evidently more for ornament than use, since the scuttle where her cannon balls were once stored was now used for oilskins and ropes, which I saw in sleepy coils. At the foot of one mast – nothing. At the foot of the other – a large barrel, filled with ripe rosy apples. The roundhouse which I have already mentioned, and now saw was very snugly fitted out with a table and benches. No wheelhouse, but the wheel itself studded and strapped with shining brass. And beside the wheel Natty, or Nat, as I reminded myself to call her, speaking to a man the size and shape of a bear on his hind legs.

‘Jim,’ Natty called. The new rough note in her voice made me smile, which I hoped would be understood as nothing more than a friendly greeting. ‘This is Captain Beamish.’

I walked up to him and gave my best salute, which he returned much more smartly, then removed his hat – an ancient tricorn – and
tucked it beneath his arm. Cropped brown hair and whiskers. Wide handsome face. Bright blue eyes that might have been made of salt water and sunlight. These narrowed very shrewdly, inspecting me from top to toe. Whatever estimate he made about my seaworthiness seemed to satisfy him, for after a while he solemnly extended one hand.

‘Mr Hawkins,’ he said in a warm voice.

‘Captain Beamish,’ I replied, sounding as expert as I knew how.

‘I never knew your father,’ he said, which was bolder than I expected, and left me a little uncertain how to reply. Seeing my confusion, he pressed on. ‘I never knew him but I honour him. In silence.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, recovering myself. ‘And it is my own wish to travel as myself, not as anyone’s relation.’

As I said this, I wondered whether I was offending Natty, who was known by the crew to be Mr Silver’s child, although not his daughter. But she seemed to think our cases were different, and smiled at me.

So did the captain. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I am glad we are all of one mind. We will tell the crew you are on board as a friend and companion to Master Nat. Are you happy with that description?’

‘Perfectly, sir,’ I said, and dared not turn aside to see what Natty herself might think. The fact she said nothing was a sufficient answer for me.

‘Very well,’ the captain said again – then paused and lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘But I must ask you at once, my lad: have you brought us what we need?’

Our captain was a man whose good heart showed in his kindly face – but what of the others aboard the
Nightingale
? Natty had insisted they were not the same kind of men that had sailed on the
Hispaniola
with our fathers – but the dozen or so now working behind me seemed
a motley crew
, as the saying goes. The eldest was the bo’sun, a brown old sailor with a barrel chest and a smooth beard like a badger’s coat; he was overseeing the proceedings. Beside him was a much shaggier fellow, with earrings in both ears and a snub yellow pipe that poked through the wild grey fuzz engulfing his face. Another, whom I took to be the cook because he wore an apron already stained with gravy, seemed so thin and delicate I wondered whether we should ever get enough to eat. A fourth who caught my eye was working beside the steps that led below decks, and
when the others began singing a stave, he turned his head aside to show he was not inclined to join them. As he did so, I noticed his mutilated ear and recognised him from the taproom of the Spyglass. I told myself I must have misjudged him there, since I could not imagine the captain employing the kind of person I had originally supposed him to be.

I have made this sound like a long scrutiny; in fact it was nothing of the sort – just a glance that ended as the captain released me from his handshake.

‘Very wise,’ he said, in a rolling voice that belonged to the West Country. ‘Our business can wait a while. Just so long as you have what we require; that is all I need to know. Hold it by you a moment longer.’

He meant the map, of course, which it had never been my intention to deny him. But now that I had been given credit for keeping it secret, I pretended that discretion had always been my aim – and changed the subject.