Flint and Silver

“Oh yes you are!”

“Oh no I’m not!”

“No?”

“No!”

“You bitch!”

“You bastard!”

“Whore!”

“I AM NOT A WHORE!”

In his anger and balked desire, Silver swung back his hand. But when it came to it, he couldn’t bring himself to strike the small, helpless figure. So he sighed and growled and cursed. And then, eventually, and very late in the day, it occurred to him that it just might be a good idea to pay some attention to what she’d been saying.

“Are you really not a whore?” he said.

“Are you deaf!”

“But all Charley’s girls are.”

“EXCEPT ME!”

“Oh … well … I …”

He fumbled for words. He was a stranger to the art of apologising and no words came. Instead a heavy guilt fell upon him: the guilt that sits on a man who knows he’s behaved very badly. Beyond that, as he looked at Selena, a tiny barb had been driven into Long John Silver, and it smarted. For a long time he didn’t even recognise what was happening, because he’d not had such feelings for years.

He picked up his clothes and his money and left, slamming the door thunderously behind him. And later, when he encountered Polly Porter, who’d gone out for a breath of air while Billy Bones was asleep, and she – ever open for business – welcomed him with open arms, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. There was no joy in a sweating copulation with a fat tart when his mind was full of the small, lovely, black figure staring back at him with fierce determination.

When Long John was gone, Selena was seized with a terrible shaking. She’d kept herself bold and calm while danger threatened and, now that it was gone, her legs shook and her teeth chattered, and there were tears too. There was a great quantity of these. She was very young and entirely alone and the world was a very hard place.

Chapter 8 (#ulink_8b8823c8-92db-5797-9ec5-f381142dd609)

20th February 1749 The island

Billy Bones trod heavily across the sand, making his way towards the marine sentry on guard at the latrine trench.

It was night but there was a bright moon and the marine recognised Mr Bones easily by the hulking shoulders and the blue officer’s coat with its rows of shiny buttons. Also there was a heavy ‘Pfff! Pfff! Pfff!’ of exhaled breath in time with the laboured footfalls, which was unique to Mr Bones. It was his unconscious and wordless protest at the need to struggle over soft sand in a hot climate.

The wretched marine drew himself to attention and reviewed all those little sins of omission and commission in the doing of his duties of which private soldiers can be found guilty by any superior officer who has a mind to do so.

It was bad enough being stuck out here by a stinking bog-pit to make sure that the bastard matelots shovelled sand over their shit when they’d shat, but it weren’t fair – not at all – for Mr bastard Billy Bones to come out to check that all was to rights. It was usually one of the mids, and they were all right. A quick “All’s well?” and off the little bastards went, holding their bastard noses. Then a shudder of ice ran down the marine’s backbone.

“Mygawdamighty!” he said as he realised what a fool he was, being afeared of Mr Bones, for if the bastard officers were walking the guard posts themselves and not sending of the mids … then the next one might be … Oh my eyes and soul … the next one might be Flint!

“Stand easy there!” said Billy Bones. “All’s well?”

“Aye-aye-suh!” said the marine, looking rigidly to his front.

“Huh!” said Billy Bones. He looked all around into the dark, as if a horde of wild savages was creeping inwards with sharpened spears. It was all for show, of course, as everyone now knew the island was uninhabited.

“Keep a sharp look out,” said Billy Bones.

“Aye-aye-suh!” said the marine. But Billy Bones lingered, cleared his throat, spat, and condescended to conversation.

“Damned hot,” he said.

“Aye-aye-suh!”

“Shouldn’t wonder if we don’t have fever on the lower deck before the week’s out.”

“Aye-aye-suh!”

And so they continued for some little time until one Emmanuel Pew came out to relieve himself in the trench. Pew was known to his mates as Mad Pew for his speaking of the Welsh language, and for being not quite right in the head.

“Ah,” said Billy Bones, and he waited until Pew had finished grunting and heaving, and had hauled up his breeches and buckled his belt. Then he turned and affected to take note.

“You there!” said he. “Damn your blasted eyes! Shovel away there with a will, like the blasted surgeon says, or I’ll flay the living skin off your blasted back!”

Pew jumped in terror and filled in half the trench in the excess of his desire to please Mr Bones.

“Now, back to camp at the double,” said Billy Bones. “And I’ll walk beside you so you don’t drown yourself falling into the blasted ocean.”

The marine went limp with relief as the big figure rolled away, puffing and cursing beside the thin, nervous, dark-eyed matelot who’d become the target of his attentions.

“Serve the bugger right!” thought the marine. “Bleeding mad bastard that one is an’ all, that bastard Pew.”

But the aforesaid Mad Pew was the objective of Mr Bones’s walk out to the latrine trench. As ever, Billy Bones marvelled at the acuteness of Flint’s observation, and his penetrating knowledge of the characters of the men.

Flint knew that Pew went to shit well after lights out, because at that time there was nobody there, and he wouldn’t be jostled and hurried. Some men are like that, and Flint’s knowledge of Pew’s habits enabled Billy Bones to get him alone for a few minutes’ conversation in the dark, with no possibility of being overheard. It thereby enabled Billy Bones to put certain proposals to Pew, and to ask certain questions of him, without risk of a hanging for the pair of them. And of course – did Mr Bones but know it – the fact that Lieutenant Flint was no part of the conversation meant that there was absolutely no risk to Flint himself. Indeed, Flint would have been the first to denounce Billy Bones as a traitorous mutineer, should the need arise.

So Billy Bones sounded out Pew and explained that Captain Springer was going to abandon him to his fate, but that there was a way out which was very much to Pew’s advantage. Pew nearly dropped in his tracks with amazement once or twice, to hear such things from Billy Bones. But he saw reason.

Over the next few weeks, Billy Bones had similar conversations with a number of others, all carefully chosen by Flint, and always in circumstances where Flint was saved harmless from any consequences, and always where nobody could see or hear what passed between Billy Bones and the other. Each man chosen was a skilled seaman, and together they formed the nucleus of a crew: Ben Gunn the helmsman, Israel Hands the gunner’s mate, Peter Black (better known as Black Dog) the carpenter, and Darby M’Graw the master-at-arms. These, together with Mad Pew the sailmaker, were the principal figures in Flint’s plan, but there were others too: foremast hands to haul on lines and work a ship.

Thus all this dangerous, careful work was planned by Flint, while all the actual risks were taken by Billy Bones. In this secret division of labour, Joe Flint wasn’t quite the perfect judge of men that he thought he was, for Flint believed it was no end of a joke that Billy Bones should stand between himself and danger, and what a fool Bones would think himself should he ever find out. But the truth of the matter was different. So great was Billy Bones’s devotion to Flint that he’d gladly have volunteered for the duty, if ever it had occurred to Flint to be honest with him. But such a thing would never have occurred to Joe Flint.

All the while, up at the North Inlet, close alongside the hull of the dead Elizabeth, the building of her daughter Betsy came forward in promising style. The carpenter’s crew laid her keel, raised up her ribs and planked her hull. They set her beam ends in place and fashioned old spars into new masts, and fitted her out with pumps and capstans, gratings and ladders, and all the complex gear that must be crammed into a sea-going vessel.

As these vital works proceeded, Mr Flint kept himself mightily busy – and clear away from Billy Bones – in building an impressive fortification at the other end of the island. For this major work he took nearly half the able-bodied men, with a month’s supply of food, and all the tools the carpenter could spare. They tramped across the island, and Flint took some more detailed observations of its geography as they went. Finally he chose a site on a thickly wooded hill, with a spring of clear water welling up near the summit.

“You will fell all the trees within musket-shot of this point,” he told the two midshipmen he’d brought with him as his subordinates.

He reached up and scratched the poll of his green parrot. This had become a habit of his when wrapped in thought. The midshipmen looked at one another and at the size of the pines on the hill, and they were glad that they wouldn’t personally be doing the physical labour.

“You will trim and shape the trunks, and they will be used to build a blockhouse according to this plan,” said Flint. He produced a rolled-up paper and looked around the hot, thick, pine-smelling forest with its buzzing insects and soaring trunks. There was not a rock or a bush or a bank of earth; only columns of living wood and the sandy soil beneath. There was nothing to rest the paper on.