by John Drake
"All hands, Mr Bones," said Flint, "strike everything aloft. Rig hand-lines and extra lashings on the guns, and batten down hatches."
"Aye-aye, Cap'n," said Bones. "All hands!" he roared. "All hands!" Billy Bones never had to ask twice, and both watches poured up on deck and set to. The rigging filled with scrambling figures and the topmen raced to pass down every stick that could be struck and secured below, to give the storm the least possible meat to sink its teeth into.
"Ah, John," said Flint, coming astern to Silver in his accustomed place at the taffrail, "I assume you'll be going below with the surgeon and the womenfolk? Precious little you can do on deck." He smiled nastily. "And we wouldn't want you swept away… by accident… would we, now?" The two men stood and looked at each other, standing motionless among a furiously busy crew.
"Aye-aye, Cap'n," said Silver. He smiled too, but Flint could see the fury held back like water behind a dam. Flint chuckled to himself. He'd told Billy Bones and his other favourites to lose no opportunity of reminding Silver of his mutilated condition, and it was obvious that a good sore had been rubbed into Silver's hide.
"I'll be going below directly, Cap'n," said Silver. He sniffed the oven-breath air and looked at the sky. "It so happens that you're right, Joe, for two legs is better than one, when Father Neptune gets angry." Silver smiled all the harder and took Flint's eye. "Don't look like we're ever going to find this island o' yourn now, do it, Joe?" he said. "What with us being becalmed and now this." He feigned anxiety, as if a sudden thought had struck him. "Couldn't be as you've lost the bugger, could it, Joe? What with peering through your instruments and ruling little lines across your charts"
"Never fear, John," said Flint. "I know what I'm doing, and I know where I'm going." He leaned forward confidentially. "You must let me show you how the thing is done. The calculations are simple enough. A child could do it - should he have the aptitude. And it is, of course, the thing of all things that marks out a gentleman from a lower-deck hand." He grinned and Silver frowned, beaten at his own game. "Why look," said Flint, "here's Mr Bones coming, who hasn't the brains of a bullock munching grass. But even he can plot a course."
"Bastard!" said Silver.
"Mr Bones," said Flint, "help Mr Silver below decks. At the double now!"
Silver took the hint. With Israel Hands and the rest of Long John's men busy about the ship, the last thing he wanted was Billy Bones's assistance in making his way down ladders into the darkness of the ship's interior. Without another word, Long John lunged forward, past the helmsman, past Flint, around and between the scurrying hands, and plunged down the nearest hatchway. He'd become agile again. The crutch was slung from a loop of line passed over his shoulder, and he could get along fast by hopping on his one leg. It was faster than walking until he lost balance. But even that was getting better, and the falls were less frequent.
The hatchway ladder was a fearful challenge though, and only the threat of Billy Bones's attentions made him take it at speed. With the crutch dangling, he fell forward and caught the coaming with his two hands, and tried to swing his leg down the ladder. Thump-scrape! His shoe-leather slipped off the rungs and he half fell, half slipped and entirely bumped his way the six feet down to the deck, cracking his head, bruising his knee, and nearly dislocating his shoulder as the crutch jammed into the deck, driving the shock of the impact straight into his armpit.
Rumble-Boom! The hatch ground home over his head, cutting out the light, and a steady hammering told him that the carpenter and his mates were nailing it down tight against the storm. Long John groaned and sat upright. He was battered and bruised, but at least he was alive. Billy Bones would have killed him, given the chance: pitched head-first down the hatchway, and then Billy-my-chicken's foot on his windpipe till he was nice and quiet. Billy would do it if he could. He'd do it for Flint and he'd do it for himself, for the time he'd felt the weight of Long John's fists.
Long John groaned and beat the deck in shame and frustration. There would have to be a reckoning with Billy Bones, for it wasn't just Bones himself that had to be considered. Where Billy-boy led, others were following, and the very men who'd cheered when Long John first came up on deck were now sniggering behind his back at Billy Bones's mockery of the one-legged cripple. So if there wasn't a reckoning soon, then Long John's own followers would fall behind Billy Bones, leaving Long John entirely at Flint's mercy.
Again and again, Long John cursed the loss of his leg, and he cursed Flint, whose fault it was through his greed and refusal to listen to a word of good advice. But even then, and even in the depths of his despair, Long John grudgingly gave credit - if credit were the word - to an unknown merchant skipper who'd fought like the captain of a ship of the line.
* * *
Chapter 27
23rd July 1752
Aboard Walrus
The Southwest Atlantic
With no lights burning below decks, and all hatchways secured, Long John was in total darkness in the narrow space below the quarterdeck hatch. He sat himself beside the ladder and felt around so his hands could tell him what was around him, since his eyes certainly could not. He found one of his pistols, fallen out of his belt, and stuck it back. He decided he'd better crawl than try to walk, for up above there was a howling of wind and the bellowing of Flint and Billy Bones as the storm struck and the ship began to plunge and buck.
The nearest light would be in Flint's cabin, so Long John pulled himself astern as the ship moaned and creaked and chattered to itself. The timbers of a wooden ship are always working to be free of one another, especially in a storm. The joints, lovingly mated and bolted by the shipwrights, will strain and groan. The great oaken knees will wrench against the deckhead and the hull, and the planks of the deck will do their best to gape open and spit out their caulking. To this increasingly loud accompaniment of ship's music, Long John crawled aft. He well knew that this was only the overture, or rather the tuning up of musicians' instruments before the real playing begins.
He found the stern cabin, and shoved open the hatch. Light flooded out: dim light, no more than stars and moon, but it was like sunshine after the blackness outside.
"Who's there?" cried a voice.
"Selena?" said Long John. He'd actually forgotten her. She had the run of Flint's cabin.
"Long John?" she said. "What are you doing here?"
"Sent below, ma'am, to keep a guard on the pork and beef, and the ship's rats!" He peered around the cabin. Flint's table and chairs were secured to the deck, and everything else was lashed down. There was no movement that Long John could see. "Where are you, girl?"
"Here," she said, "by the window." Silver looked harder and thought he saw her outline. But even the stars and the moon were going out now, and it was hard to see.
He dragged himself across the dark cabin, towards the row of lights at the stern: lozenge-shaped panes of crude glass, leaded into the wooden frames. Flint had had a padded seat built across the width of the cabin: about ten feet long and three deep. He slept on it sometimes. Now Selena was crouched on the seat, with her back against the side of the hull and her knees drawn up under her chin. Silver hauled himself up beside her, unshipped his crutch, laid it aside, and dusted himself off. Lightning flickered far away and a distant thunderclap sounded. As the storm grew louder, up on deck Billy Bones was bellowing himself hoarse. Selena jumped at the thunder, but she eyed Silver steadily.
"What are you doing here?" she asked again, and for want of anything better to say, Silver told the simple truth.
"Ain't no use for a one-legged man up topsides."
"Oh," she said, and looked away, then jumped as a fizzing bolt of lightning lit the sky, and another thunderclap rumbled, this time much closer. Selena shivered. She had never liked thunder, even ashore, let alone on the heaving ocean. A squall of rain thrashed down upon the ship and the wind began to blow in earnest. Every time Walrus's plunging gave a view of the waves outside, they seemed higher and blacker and angrier. A
third thunderclap came simultaneously with the brilliant blue-white flash, and so hideously loud that even Long John twitched in fright, and Selena threw herself at him and clutched her arms tight around him, with eyes screwed shut.
"Aye, my lass," he said, "we're in for a blow, and no mistake." He stroked her hair and patted her back, and searched his memory for words of comfort and tenderness. But he'd lived a hard life and the ludicrous best he could do was borrowing from Joe Flint.
"There, my chicken," he said. And, straining his powers of imagination to the limit, "My chick, my little chicky…" And with these attempts at tenderness, there flowered within Long John Silver something that had been waiting to grow ever since that day in Charley Neal's storeroom.
Meanwhile the wind roared, the seas thundered, the ship's timbers shrieked and crackled and howled, and the entire narrow, dark world of Flint's cabin tossed and bounced like a pannier on a galloping horse. Selena was outright terrified. She clung to Silver like a child to a mother. But let no man or woman think the less of her for doing so; not unless they too have been on board a two hundred ton wooden ship in a tropical hurricane, and managed to bear themselves better than she did - and that the first time they've experienced it, besides.
For his part, Long John had near twenty years of seafaring behind him and had seen worse storms in worse ships. He knew that Walrus was well found and Flint a masterly seaman. So he wasn't afraid. He wasn't afraid, but he was powerfully confused, because he'd got the very thing clutched to his chest that he'd been hungering after for months. He had an armful of smooth, luscious, youthful flesh. He could feel the plump breasts and the warmth and scent of her body.
It is unshakable truth that none of these foregoing facts were such things as should cause a jolly sailorman to worry. Under normal circumstances, Long John would have known exactly what to do, and delighted in the doing of it. What's more, he knew by happy experience what a splendid trick it was to get a woman frightened of ghosts and hobgoblins in the night, in order to get her braced for a galloping. His heart thumped as he imagined himself hauling the shirt and breeches off her, and rolling her on to her back.
He even got as far as undoing a button or two of her shirt, and getting a hand inside her clothes for a grasp of her bouncers. Jesus Christ, they were juicy! Firm as roundshot and the nipples standing up like marines on parade. He wandered his hand further, sliding down the smooth belly. He shifted the weight of her to spread her legs a little and got his hand right down into the silky-smooth inside of her thigh. The whole of his body prickled, and a ship's bowsprit - hard and fierce - stood up before him. Any doubts he might have had concerning manhood were left drowning in the ship's wake. He searched further…
Selena groaned and her eyes flicked open.
"No," she gasped. Silver withdrew his hand and sighed.
"Not if you say so, my chick." And he held her gently in his arms.
"I'm frightened, John," she said.
"Aye, lass."
"Are we going to die?"
"No. The old Walrus'll weather this one. Flint'll see her through."
"He's no good, that Flint."
"No, lass, he ain't. But nor ain't none o' the rest of us, neither!"
"You are."
"What?"
"Yes."
"Well, shiver me timbers!" Silver was genuinely amazed.
"That time, in Savannah…" she said.
"Aye?" said Silver, deeply ashamed.
"You didn't know, did you?"
"No," he said. "It ain't no excuse, but I took you for one of Charley's girls."
"Well, I'm not. I'm not a whore!"
"No, my girl. Not whilst I draw breath…" Long John paused, uneasy with feelings he'd never had before. He struggled to put words to them. His lips worked until the pressures within forced out the strange and unpractised words.
"I love you, my lass."
Selena smiled and opened her shirt, and took his hand, and placed it over her breast. She turned her face and curled an arm around his neck and kissed him.
"I've never done this before," she said.
"No?"
"No."
Silver and Selena were consumed with happiness. Each found the other so very beautiful, even in the dark, even by silky touch alone, relishing the slippery smoothness of cool naked flesh. And what if John Silver was missing a leg? Experiment soon showed that it was wonderful what a one- legged man could achieve when duty called. Selena was amazed and Silver delighted, and between them they managed the task so many times that the forty-eight hours which followed were some of the best in their entire lives, and often in later years when either was troubled or in pain, they would go back in memory to Flint's cabin, on board the good ship Walrus, riding out a hurricane in more ways than one.
But eventually, the storm blew itself out, and Flint ordered the hatches broken open. He went down to his cabin to find Long John Silver there with Selena. The noise of freeing the hatch covers had given plenty of warning, but Silver was sat with an arm around Selena, and a hand casually resting on one of his silver-mounted pistols. He stared Flint in the eye, bold as brass.
"Found your island, Cap'n Flint?" he said. Flint's face darkened and the Devil stoked his temper till it rose like the molten rock from a volcano.
* * *
Chapter 28
25th July 1752
Aboard Walrus
The Southwest Atlantic
Flint stood at the door of his cabin and saw Silver sitting at ease with an arm around Selena's shoulders, and the girl nestled up against him with every sign of being well content. Emotions washed over Flint like the three tides over a hanged and gibbeted pirate at Execution Dock, Wapping. First there was disbelief that the girl could give herself to a cripple. Then there was fierce, wounding envy that the cripple had obviously done the thing that he was forever incapable of doing. And finally there was poisonous hatred.
Flint snarled, drew a knife, and stepped forward. Silver drew a pistol and levelled it at Flint.
"What?" said Flint. "Will you murder me? Me with my priming soaked?" He gestured at his own pistols, drenched by the storm, and the two men faced each other, neither moving, eyes locked and limbs shaking with rage. But neither made a move, while Selena, the seeming object of this final outright break between the two men, stared in amazement.
"Come on then!" said Flint.
"Whenever you choose, Cap'n," said Silver. But still they didn't move. Selena looked at the hard faces and tensed hands.
They were a split second from coming to blows, but something was stopping them.
They're afraid, she thought. Afraid of each other. That's why it's gone on so long. She'd spotted something nobody else had noticed. But even so, she'd only got part of the truth. Even she never realised that both men would, even now, have healed the breach if only they could, despite the fact that the whole world could see it was past healing. The most painful time of a broken friendship is the time when old friends are making ever more futile and extravagant attempts to compromise, and make allowances, and are steadfastly refusing to face the truth.
Then Billy Bones came thundering down from the quarterdeck and barged into the cabin crying out as he came.
"All secured, Cap'n," he said. "Permission to stand down the larboard watch, and issue…" He blinked at the blade and the pistol. He had nowhere near Selena's insight, and simply saw danger to the man he worshipped like a god.
"Uh!" he grunted and instantly stumped forward, unarmed as he was, to stand between Flint and the pistol. "Gimme the word, Cap'n," he said, spitting fire and fury at Silver. "Gimme the word and I'll have the bollocks off the sodding old ruin!"
"Billy-my-chicken," said Flint, and he barked with laughter. His quick, flickering mind could turn to humour in the instant, and he laughed at Bones's stupidity… his stupid bravery and his very great usefulness. "Will you split the marrow-bones, of him, my Billy? Will you pop out his eyes with your thumbs?"
"That I will, Cap'n!"
said Bones.
"Will you, though?" said Silver. "Will you, indeed!" And he hopped to his feet, hauling the long crutch under his arm, and shoving Selena out of harm's way. "Well then, you swab," he said, "I challenge you, man to man, and according to articles. I challenge you to face me with the weapons your mother gave you, on fair and level ground and with no man to intervene."
Billy Bones blinked a while, pondering the legality of this appeal to articles. He searched his memory for what he'd signed, nodded unconsciously as he recalled the article in question… and a fat, slow grin spread over his heavy face.
"Aye," he said, "on fair and level ground, with no man to intervene." He turned to Flint. "That's fair and proper, Cap'n. According to articles, and only your permission is awaited. I duly asks for that permission."
"As do I!" said Silver, and Flint nearly bust himself holding back the hysterical laughter. But it wouldn't do, at this vital moment, to piss into Mr Bones's font. Not when Mr Bones was about to oblige by battering Silver senseless with mighty fists, before kicking in Silver's skull with heavy boots.
And what a fine thing that would be, thought Flint. Once the decks were scrubbed and hosed down, he would make a speech, sorrowing over Silver's fall into decrepitude and praising his past triumphs, and so bringing his rival's remaining supporters over to his own side. And then, if anyone thought the worse of Billy Bones for killing a poor old cripple, well, so much the worse for Billy-boy. He could always be replaced.
But first there were formalities to be observed. The crew had to be mustered, the Book of Articles brought forth, the articles read, and the combatants searched for hidden weapons. Finally the hands were warned, on pain of death, that nobody must interfere.
