Silver (39 page)

Our delay had only been a form of kindness, but we did as he asked, scattering along the shoreline and talking quietly to one another. I came in between Bo’sun Kirkby and Mr Tickle, so that I could point out my secret.

At first they were disbelieving, as I had been; having accepted the likelihood of Natty’s death, they could not easily reject it again. But when their cautious signals across the water were greeted by the voice we all recognised, they were convinced – and felt some of the happiness I knew myself.

‘I’d given him up,’ said the bo’sun, which was more than he had previously admitted. Mr Tickle would not go as far as this, but kept saying, ‘Nat’s a good lad; Nat’s a good lad; Nat’s a good lad,’ as if he had taken a lesson in conversation from Spot. To celebrate, he then lit his pipe for the first time in a long while – whereupon the breeze promptly blew an unusually thick shower of sparks into his beard.

The same breeze was also bringing our little gallipot of a boat towards us more speedily, since it had now escaped the drag of the river-current. It made a cheerful sight cresting through the surf, although there was not enough room on board for more than a dozen of us at a time; there would have to be five, if not six, separate journeys between the
Nightingale
and the shore until we were all safely on board. The prospect of this delay was troublesome, since we felt Smirke and the others might return at any moment. Although one of the men in the boat had brought a rifle, and the other three swords, we barely matched the number of our enemies – which I calculated was ten, including Smirke and Stone, and who owned more weapons than they had so far used against us.

When our jolly-boat finally slid up the sand, I therefore set about handing our charges aboard with the utmost haste. But this was not easy. Every one that I helped had been frail to the point of exhaustion when we first released them from their quarters. Now, after cowering in the open, witnessing further cruelties, and thinking they might be exterminated at any moment, many were
unable to stand. Fear had turned them into rag dolls. Some were so confused they even mistook their rescuers for enemies – and feebly resisted us, scratching and moaning; one bit Mr Tickle on the chin (which he scarcely felt through his beard), and I myself had to chase through the waves after a young woman who cringed from the hand I had raised to help her; she shivered in my grasp as I led her back to the boat.

Faced with these difficulties, Bo’sun Kirkby decided that Scotland and Mr Tickle and I should accompany the first party to the
Nightingale
, before returning for the second. Myself because I would then be able to rescue Natty in person, as we stopped en route at the White Rock; Scotland because he could reassure our friends in a language they understood. As soon as the boat was filled, I ran back along the beach to persuade Scotland he must do this.

I expected some difficulty, because I assumed Scotland would be concentrated on his grief. In fact he hesitated for no more than a moment – a moment in which he stared into his wife’s face, and touched her hair with a most lingering tenderness. Then he rose to his feet.

‘I have seen Master Nat,’ he said – which took me aback, since I did not think he had been looking at the world.

‘She …’ I began, meaning only to state the obvious: that she was alive. But in my excitement I had misspoken.

‘She,’ said Scotland, with a grave bow. It was not a question. It proved that he knew the truth of Natty’s situation, and had considered it a secret worth keeping.

‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘She.’

‘I have always known,’ he said. ‘But I saw she had her reasons for keeping herself in disguise. You both did.’

‘Thank you for understanding,’ I told him, and gave him my hand. Once again his palm felt very rough against my own.

‘Well,’ I went on, ‘she is safe, at any rate.’

Scotland sighed, then narrowed his eyes and looked towards the White Rock, where Natty now appeared to be sitting among the ferns. He seemed about to speak, and because I thought he would make a comparison between his situation and my own, I interrupted in order to spare us both.

‘We can collect Natty on our way,’ I told him. ‘She will be safe on board the
Nightingale
, while we finish here.’

‘She will have something to tell you,’ he replied.

‘She will,’ I said, assuming he meant we would be pleased to be reunited.

Scotland shook his head. ‘You will see,’ he said – and almost smiled. Then, evidently feeling he had strayed too far from the one thing he wanted to think about, he turned again to gaze at his wife.

After a moment of silence, he called to a friend in the group of others now milling around the jolly-boat. This was a grizzled fellow about twice his age, whose bowed shoulders, and scarred face and hands, showed the sufferings he had endured on the island. In spite of this, he lolloped across the sand in loose and easy strides, and spoke very affectionately with Scotland. I could not understand what he said, but guessed the gist of it when he sat down at the feet of Scotland’s wife, with his hands on his knees. He was to keep guard, until Scotland returned. Scotland thanked him, then bowed and crossed himself, and walked away beside me without once looking back.

As we scrambled aboard the jolly-boat, it was obvious that unless we remained very still in our places, and kept the balance, we would all soon be tipped into the sea. Even as it was, waves grabbed at us hungrily, so we were soon ankle-deep in water. Mr Tickle, who had appointed himself leader of the oarsmen, kept up a low rumble of curses.

I was squeezed between Scotland and Rebecca, the prisoner who had introduced herself to me when she emerged from the log-house holding her Bible. The Good Book was now clasped tight between her hands, as though it could be relied on for buoyancy, and her chin was resting on her chest. In spite of this, I could hear that she was singing – if a whisper can be called a song. I recognised it as that fine old hymn ‘The Shepherd’s Hand’:

I listened to these verses in a respectful silence. Scotland, who surprised me in almost everything he did, was not so patient. Even before the song was done, he lunged forward to one of the oarsmen recently arrived from the
Nightingale
and asked a question. What with the hubbub of wind and the waves, I did not hear the answer exactly – only that it contained the phase ‘to avenge us’; Scotland’s response, however, was clear enough. Muttering, ‘Very good; very good,’ he rummaged in a little cabinet under his seat, and took out an object the size of a man’s head, which had been covered with a thick cloth then tied with string.

As our oarsmen worked the boat round in the water, until the prow faced towards the White Rock and the
Nightingale
beyond, I
asked what the parcel contained. Scotland placed it cautiously on his bare knees and stared at me with his head held sideways, like a blackbird listening for a worm in the ground. ‘It is our weapon,’ he said, then added in a whisper: ‘Look over by the Rock’.

I did as he asked – and was astonished he had spoken so calmly. Not a hundred yards away, emerging from the mouth of the largest of the streams that poured into the Anchorage, was a roughly made canoe in which sat Smirke and Stone, paddling very hard and efficiently and heading in the same direction as ourselves. So long as they remained in the smooth freshwater, they made rapid progress, carried by the strong force of its current. When they reached the open sea, however, their speed was not so great – although both bent to their work furiously, and dug their paddles into the water as if the devil himself were chasing them.

Except: it was not fear of what lay behind that drove them on, so much as their desire to reach what lay ahead. I assumed this must be Natty, who was now clearly visible in her strange little fort. Cowering among the ferns with her hat squeezed down onto her head, and her knees pressed tightly together, she looked more like a child accused of a misdemeanour than a young woman in danger of losing her life. The sense of her innocence made my heart fly towards her like an arrow, and I heard myself call her name aloud repeatedly – ‘Natty! Natty! Natty!’ – as if this would somehow quicken the rhythm of our oars.

But the jolly-boat was not built for speed, and continually shipped water. The prow laboured through the waves. Spray spattered in our faces. Everything about us seemed heavier, and slower, and more cumbersome by the minute. And more nearly helpless, too, which I could measure by watching how Natty gradually sank down further and further among the ferns – but still could not make herself invisible.

I could do nothing but sit in my place as Smirke and Stone raced their canoe alongside the little island with a final surge of strength. And nothing again as I watched them make a deft manoeuvre whereby Smirke stayed aboard, keeping things steady, while Stone leaped to capture their prey. I saw the tall ferns shake at one end of the Rock, then in the middle, then at the other, then back in the middle again, as Natty played a quick and humiliating game of hide-and-seek. Eventually there was a violent trembling of the long stems, and a cry as Stone fell on her (so I imagined) like a hawk on a lark.

At this point we were still a few dozen yards off the Rock, but the sight and sound of the capture was so alarming, it produced an even greater effort from my shipmates. We ploughed through the last stretch of water with a terrific splash, and scraped against the pale boulders exactly as Stone dragged Natty into the canoe and Smirke began to paddle them all back towards the shore.

He could not easily do this, thanks to Natty – who was struggling very fiercely. One of her feet kicked out sideways and caught Smirke such a blow across the knuckles, he took his hand off the paddle for a moment, and shook it. Stone, meanwhile, was aiming to land a clout on her head with his own paddle, like a man trying to stun an eel – but the more determined he became, the more she wriggled, and the more their boat wobbled, and the more inclined he was to use a different kind of force.

I knew this because I saw him suddenly shrug, and straighten, and reach one hand inside his long coat – towards the pocket where he kept his silver pistol.

‘Strike them amidships!’ I shouted to my mates, urging them to make a collision that would knock Stone off balance. The oarsmen needed no further encouragement. With every ounce of strength they could muster, and all the weight of our passengers combined,
we hit the canoe dead centre. Stone did indeed lose his balance and fell down very smartly, with his legs over his head in a most ridiculous posture. Smirke was more composed, if a man can be called such a thing when his face is buckled with rage.

I assumed the canoe would sink – which had been my intention. But nothing behaved as I thought it would. The canoe merely creaked, and staggered, and spun sideways, then began dragging alongside us, making our gunwales squeal.

The faces of all three on board were now inches from my own – Stone once more expressionless as his name, Smirke with his eyes rolling and large mouth gaping like a water-spout, and Natty imploring. ‘Jim!’ she called, in a voice I cannot forget; it was the moment I felt sure she had never forgotten me, and the moment I thought I had lost her for ever.

It was not my voice that reassured her, although I believe my eyes looking into her own told her everything she wanted to know. It was Scotland’s voice. While our two boats were still locked together, he sprang to his feet, causing us to sway violently in our seats.

‘Jump!’ Scotland shouted, and flapped his left hand – meaning that she must leap into the open sea, rather than into our boat – while with his right he lifted the parcel he had been balancing on his knees. The cloth had now been removed, and I saw what had been concealed. One of the baskets the captain and I had brought back from our expedition. A basket made of plaited grass, topped with the small cap. A basket that contained the snakes.

While Scotland continued to hold his arm high above his head, the cap began to fidget as if the contents were boiling; then it slipped off and fell into the boat. Scotland said nothing. He did not look up – so did not see the glistening bodies that began to uncoil into the air. But their effect was extraordinary. Although the creatures
themselves seemed calm, with stiffened bodies craning from side to side with great curiosity, everyone who saw them began to panic.

Some of our passengers were so frightened I thought we might capsize. In fact there was a quite different kind of catastrophe. Scotland’s right foot was planted on the bench that ran around the jolly-boat, while his left was on the gunwales; beneath him, the faces of Smirke and Stone were twisted in horror, as they understood what a pestilence he was about to bring down on them. They seemed paralysed. Natty, whom I glimpsed in a blur, was more nearly in control of herself, and had already started to wriggle overboard.

I told myself this is what Scotland wanted her to do, before tipping the snakes onto her persecutors. But in the unsteadiness his own courage had produced, he lost his balance. He was himself pitched into the canoe along with the basket, instead of throwing nothing but the snakes.

Wind and waves shrank to a murmur. The sobbing in our boat became a sigh. The roaring of the pirates was nothing. As far as I was concerned, the only sight in the world was Scotland’s long body tumbling through the air and sprawling onto our enemies. The only sound was his voice calling again, ‘Jump out, Nat! Jump out!’

This seemed so complete a scene, I did not immediately notice it contained other elements. One was Natty slithering over the side of the canoe and already splashing in the water before Scotland’s fall had ended. She then swam very quickly towards the jolly-boat, and reached the side opposite from where I was sitting; I lost sight of her as other hands stretched to lift her in. The next was Scotland’s basket jarring against the inside wall of the canoe, and four or five snakes spilling out like locks of curly grey hair.