Silver (31 page)

She stepped into the sea, where she thought the sandbar must be submerged, and felt it hard and ridged beneath her feet. This made her remember Moses walking through the waters of the Red Sea, and Christ himself gliding across the Sea of Galilee – but such ideas were soon washed away. Within a minute she was gripping long fronds of bracken that flopped over the edge of the Rock. Then she was hauling herself up the sheer sides and balancing on the rim, with the ferns and other plants swaying around her.

So far as she could tell, the little island was no more than half a
dozen yards wide in every direction, and hollow like the mouth of a miniature volcano. But whereas a true volcano would have a crater as bare as the ravine she had just left, the declivity here was very spongy, because it was covered with the dead leaves of plants that grew above it.

When Natty stepped among these plants they seemed to embrace her eagerly, caressing her face with their long fingers, which had a delicious scent of rotten wood, and leading her down and inwards towards the centre of the nest. Here the noise of the storm was miraculously stilled, and the rain became a slowly falling dew. It was impossible for Natty to resist her weariness any longer; impossible not to stretch out and sleep. As she did so the latticework of leaves closed above her head, obliterating the storm entirely.

I shall now leave Natty in her nest and return to my own story – which must begin with the account of how I occupied myself in her absence. This was a bitter time, haunted by fears for her safety, but I was not allowed to shrink from the world and fret in solitude. On the contrary, I found things happening to me that I could not avoid and cannot forget.

The birds in our estuary began their squawking and chattering as soon as the sun came up. Yet I knew before I hung over the side of my bunk, and saw the smooth pillow on the bed below me, that Natty was not there. The silence in the cabin was too absolute. My first thought was: she had fallen asleep on deck, where I knew she had stayed with Scotland. But when I had pulled on my day-shirt and clambered up the companionway, I found nothing except
footprints in the dew, which had covered the surface of the ship as thickly as a layer of paint. From this I learned they had paced the deck for a while, then padded towards the landward side of the
Nightingale –
where they disappeared. When I called up to Mr Lawson, to ask whether he had seen them, it was clear from the yawning that preceded his answer – ‘No’ – that he had been asleep for the past several hours. I cursed him and turned to scour the undergrowth, which sunlight was now heating into lurid yellows and greens. In my heart I already accepted I would not see them. They had gone.

Gone where? If there had been traces of a third set of footprints on deck, I should have thought one of the pirates from the stockade had taken them – or maybe some other inhabitant of the island of whom we presently knew nothing. But there was no evidence for this sort of kidnap. No sign of a stranger, and no trace of a confrontation. Natty had left by choice – unless Scotland had suddenly changed from being a grateful friend into her enemy. This seemed so unlikely I did not consider the possibility for more than a moment.

But if she had left by choice, what did she plan to do? Explore the island? Not in darkness. Escape with Scotland? Impossible. Although I knew an affection had sprung up between them, it was not of this kind. Would they, then, have devised a plan they thought might do some good for the rest of us? This seemed probable – and impetuous, to say the least.

I told myself it was only a matter of time before they would reappear through the undergrowth, and we would be happy again. But when Captain Beamish came on deck he soon dashed these hopes. He did not even trouble to condemn Mr Lawson for failing to see their disappearance; he simply called him down from his position in the crow’s-nest, told him to get along to the galley and feed himself, then accepted with a long face that Natty was lost in
a hare-brained scheme of some kind. ‘She is her father’s daughter,’ he whispered to me; I took his words as a sign of the trust he kept in me.

I was comforted by this, as I was by the rest of the crew now arriving on deck. They looked a ragged party in the early light, with their crumpled clothes, and their hair any old how – all rubbing at their eyes or munching on apples they had snatched from Mr Allan’s barrel. But they were good fellows. The day before, they had put their lives in danger for the general good, and not forgotten their duty to one another. At the same time, I thought they would be no match for the pirates. They were men of a later time, and sailors not warriors. Unless we could establish a definite advantage, they were more likely to end their days on Treasure Island than they were to leave it with their fortune.

It was clear that when the captain had ended our conversation the previous evening, he was still considering the various courses open to us. We might negotiate with Smirke and his men. Or we might attack them. Now it seemed there was no alternative; Nat was at risk, he announced, and must be rescued.

The decision provoked a cheer from the men, although when I saw them clapping one another on the back they seemed more concerned to bolster their courage than show how warmly they agreed with their commander-in-chief.

‘Bo’sun Kirkby,’ said the captain – at which their noise immediately stopped, and so confirmed it was not quite heartfelt.

The bo’sun stepped forward, pulling his beard straight and standing to attention as well as he was able. His cap was pushed back on his head, showing a white line on his forehead where the sun had not yet ebonised him.

‘Yes, Captain.’

‘Bo’sun Kirkby, I want you to hear what I have to say, and
tell me whether you agree. This is not the time for any of us to harbour doubts.’

I thought this was clever, since it gave an appearance of democracy to what was in fact an order.

‘I want you to agree,’ the captain went on, ‘that in all probability Master Nat has fallen into the hands of our enemies, along with Mr Scotland.’

‘In all probability, Captain,’ said Bo’sun Kirkby, seeming rather surprised to find so large a word fitting into his mouth.

‘I want you to agree that although we do not know the conditions in which they are held, they are probably dangerous.’

‘Most likely dangerous, Captain.’

‘I want you to agree that we should visit the stockade with a view to rescuing Master Nat, by force if necessary.’

Bo’sun Kirkby, whose face was now reddening with the effort of standing to attention for so long, replied very determinedly to this. ‘By force, Captain,’ he barked.

‘I want you to agree that if Master Nat is not in fact a prisoner inside the stockade, we shall have other duties to perform there.’

‘Other duties, Captain.’ Bo’sun Kirkby said this in a more pausing voice, as if he did not entirely understand what he had heard. The captain evidently thought he had not been sufficiently clear, at any rate, and interrupted his catalogue.

‘By which I mean the following,’ he said. ‘The courts may not yet have abolished the dreadful trade of slavery, but they surely will, and we can surely anticipate their actions.’

Bo’sun Kirkby brightened considerably, now he caught the drift.

‘Anticipate very firmly, Captain.’

‘To be specific,’ the captain continued, ‘I want you to agree these other duties will be to set free Mr Scotland and his friends, and to oppose our enemies if they oppose us.’

‘Likewise oppose very firmly, Captain.’

‘And once we have achieved our objective in this regard, we will continue our search for the silver – assisted by Mr Scotland.’

‘Very ably assisted, I am sure.’ Bo’sun Kirkby looked to heaven as he said this, wearing a very gleeful expression.

‘And I want you to agree that this will be done with all possible speed,’ the captain went on.

‘With all possible speed,’ said the bo’sun, lowering his gaze again and looking the captain in the eye.

‘But not with so much haste that we run unreasonable risks.’

Another look of bewilderment clouded the bo’sun’s face, and his shoulders drooped. It was a signal for their conversation to take a new shape. Hitherto, as I understood it, the captain had tried to rally our spirits by addressing our difficulties in a way that smacked somewhat of comedy. From this point onwards, reason and gravity were the order of the day. The change must have altered the atmosphere of the
Nightingale
, since Spot, who had been listening in silence from his perch in the roundhouse, now suddenly remembered to grieve for his mistress by shouting, ‘Take me back! Take me back!’

The captain did not so much as glance in his direction, but pulled us into a tighter circle and reminded us what we had learned from Scotland the previous night, and what had since been spread among the men more generally. In addition to Smirke and Stone and Jinks, there were ten guards who had survived the wreck of the
Achilles
, making an unlucky total of thirteen. Although Scotland had thought they did not have much in the way of guns and gunpowder, it was clear that a small amount had been held in reserve – and this, when combined with the strength of their defences, their knowledge of the island, and the arms they had dug out of the earth, could be said to amount to a considerable armoury.

The captain did not want to admit how this compared to our
own situation, but a glance round the deck, and especially towards our useless gun, for which we had no ammunition, made it clear as day. Our numbers were almost the same as the pirates’, but we were men (and a boy) who had never shouldered arms, and had little appetite for fighting. Our weapons were few. Our knowledge of the island was paltry. We lacked the element of surprise that might have been our one advantage before Natty embarked on her adventure.

A silence fell as the captain asked us to reflect on these things – a silence interrupted by the creatures that continued their lives around us: their jabbering and screeching echoed off the surface of the river as it squeezed out to sea. But when I looked into the faces of my fellows, I did not find any hesitation or uncertainty, only resolution. I wished my father and Mr Silver had been there to see it as well; the story unfolding before us was so like their own, and yet so different. The captain’s plan pitched a new expectation of happiness against the brutal fragment of the old world that still remained on the island.

Not that Captain Beamish would have admitted this himself; it was purely my conception. He was entirely matter-of-fact when he continued speaking. It would be foolish, he said, to approach the stockade in broad daylight, when the pirates could very quickly organise against us, and the prisoners were likely to be scattered. Better if we made a sensible delay, and arrived at first light.

‘Who shall go?’ now became the question, with the loudest voices suggesting it should be all of us – until the captain brought us to order again. Rather than make a single rush, he said we should divide into two parties: one for the expedition (as he called it); the other to guard the
Nightingale
, then sail her out from the inlet and back along the coast towards the Anchorage, where she would collect the prisoners after their liberation. He said this so easily and
so fast, it sounded like a thing that had been ordained, and not something fraught with dangers. Mr Lawson, he said, would stay on board with five other shipmates necessary to man the ship. The rest of us would cross the island under his own command. As the words left his mouth he looked directly at me, by which I knew I would be with him. I wanted nothing else.

When these arrangements were settled, and further details had been added to our plans, and more breakfast taken, and pipes smoked, and ropes curled, and sails examined, a large part of the morning was already passed. Yet the remaining hours of the day seemed to stretch very long and vacantly ahead of us.

In such emptiness it was impossible not to encounter Natty at every turn of my mind. One moment I saw her safely hidden in some cranny of the island – asleep and ignorant of all our worries. The next, she was a prisoner in chains, and subject to terrors I could not completely imagine. In either case – and in all the variety that lay between, where I saw her lying injured, or eaten by wild animals, or lost – the effect was to make me very melancholy. While the crew attended to their tasks of ordering and reordering materials around the deck, and Mr Stevenson returned to his place in the crow’s-nest, from where he kept a lookout over the estuary, and Mr Allan shut himself in the galley to prepare the fish he had pulled from the river for our supper, I went to the prow of the
Nightingale
and climbed along the bowsprit until I sat with my legs dangling either side, staring ahead as if we were sailing into the jungle and its leaves were parting as easily as the sea.