Flint and Silver

by John Drake

  He pulled the door shut and put his back to it. He cuddled the short, heavy firearm and wondered if it were loaded. Then he wondered why he was doing this at all. The men would never listen to him. He was no fighting man. He'd not hold them off for one second, should they come in force. The best he could offer would be a few moments of bravado… perhaps waving the gun at them… It might stop them… though probably not… and then he'd have to drop it and let them pass, just to save his own life. And in that case a locked door wouldn't stop them either, and God help the black girl.

  In fact, everything now depended on Parson Smith, a creature who - in Mr Cowdray's judgement - was a slobbering libertine, and a figure of fun to the foremast hands. Cowdray wondered what in the Devil's name had persuaded Flint to raise such a creature into a position of authority. The bloody parrot would have been a better choice.

  * * *

  Chapter 38

  6th September 1752

  Late afternoon

  The island

  "Here it is!" said Flint, and knelt to pick up the shirt, which moved slightly, all by itself. It was rolled into a bundle, tied up by the sleeves. He held it up. It moved again. Something was inside: something alive.

  "There's our dinner!" he said cheerfully, and laid it aside in the shade.

  Iain Fraser blinked uneasily. He'd noticed Flint wore no shirt. Flint was bare-chested under his coat and had been since he'd gone off alone while the burial party set up their marker. He'd gone off "to find a site for a bearing". When he came back, his shirt was gone. Fraser had noticed that, but never mentioned it. Maybe some of the others had noticed it too. But nobody said anything. With Flint it was unwise to mention things that might be unwelcome.

  "And now, here we are… Farter," said Flint. "Halfway up Spy-glass Hill, and the very spot I marked earlier when I made my reconnaissance." Flint indicated a rock the size of a house: flat, smooth and sunk in the earth to form a platform about ten feet long by twenty feet wide, and a foot above the ground. "This will do nicely… Farter."

  "Aye-aye, Cap'n!" said Iain Fraser, so used to his ugly nickname that he answered to none other. At least he did when he was with his mates, who'd almost forgotten why they called him it. But a suspicion itched in his mind that Flint used the nickname more often and with more relish than others did.

  "Well then, Farter," said Flint, "isn't this just the spot? Don't we have a fine view from here?"

  Fraser looked around. The air was fresh and clean. The festering swamps of the southern anchorage and the tropical jungles that surrounded it were nearly four miles away and a thousand feet below. Here was pleasingly open ground: stony underfoot with flowering broom and other shrubs, and with little thickets of nutmeg trees contrasted by a few pines of tremendous size.

  Flint breathed the sweet air, he stretched his arms, he tickled the parrot and smiled upon Farter Fraser - the only man of the burial party who would need any special attention. Flint caught Fraser staring steadily at him - and then instantly dropping his gaze. Oh yes! Farter Fraser was by far the most intelligent of them, and would long since have been rated a petty officer but for his hopeless weakness for rum. That and the stink.

  "Well," said Flint, "go to it with a will, Farter! There's our shipmates down below, working like plantation niggers, and ourselves idling away the hours."

  "Aye-aye, Cap'n!" said Fraser, and he glanced at the four men, little dot-figures in the distance, alongside the spar that they'd raised as a marker. Then, catching the merest hint of a fading in Flint's smile, Fraser swiftly laid down his bundle, opened it and set Flint's compass on the rock, together with his notebook and other tackles. The compass was a heavy, boxed instrument, normally used in Walrus's longboat, and almost the size of those in a ship's binnacle.

  "There, Farter," said Flint, tapping the compass. "Lesser men than ourselves would build cairns, or blaze marks upon trees and expect to find them on their return. But we shall take bearings from the immovable and the unsinkable!" Flint stamped his heel on the mighty rock and knelt down to take a bearing of the burial site where the gold had been buried.

  And then Flint frowned. He laid aside the pencil and notebook that he was using to record the bearing. He stood up. He tipped back his hat. He scratched his head and peered thoughtfully at the burial site so far away and yet in plain sight. And then he shaded his eyes and looked southwards, and miles further, out to the anchorage where Walrus and Lion lay. There wasn't much that could not be seen from here and Flint managed a mighty sigh.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Fraser had caught the change of mood and was watching intently. Well and good. Let him watch. Flint scowled and bit his lip and took a few paces up and down the rock. He turned as if to speak to Fraser. He blinked and shut his mouth. He paced the rock again. He stopped and stared at the burial party.

  "No!" he murmured. "Not them. Not Henry and James and Franky. Not little Rob!"

  "Cap'n?" said Fraser. Drury Lane had lost a mighty actor in Joe Flint, and his audience was too captivated not to respond.

  Flint jumped as if pricked.

  "Fraser," he said, "Iain, lad… forgive me, shipmate, it's just that…"

  "What, Cap'n?" said Fraser, now seriously alarmed, for Flint's face was grey and there were tears in his eyes.

  "Iain," said Flint, "I'd hoped to spare you this. I'd hoped it would keep until we were back afloat with our comrades around us…" He frowned. "Those we can trust, that is!"

  "Trust, Cap'n?" said Fraser. "Trust who?"

  "It's a plot, Iain!" said Flint, as if sunk in tragedy.

  "A plot?"

  "Aye, lad! Did you think poor Peter Evans died naturally?"

  "No, Cap'n…" said Fraser. He said it very carefully indeed, and avoided Flint's eye, for he'd thought a bit since sunrise and he'd come up with some very plausible explanations for creeping night-time horrors and howls in the dark, not to mention who it might have been that had strangled Peter Evans.

  "Ah!" said Flint. "I always knew you were a sharp 'un, Iain, and I am resolved to take you into my confidence, for I'm putting together a new crew - a crew that I can trust… even if it must be a greatly smaller crew."

  "Oh?" said Fraser, instantly appreciating that even so large a sum as eight hundred thousand pounds would be all the more for being shared by less. This beautiful thought cleansed his mind of any suspicion of his noble captain. It cleansed it, purged it, scrubbed it and purified it of any such wicked thoughts.

  "Aye, lad," said Flint and, reaching into his pocket, he came out with a bottle. He pulled out the cork and took a gulp. Fraser smelt rum and licked his lips. The day was improving, minute by minute.

  "Here, shipmate!" said Flint. "Sit alongside of me on this old rock, and take a drop, and I'll tell you the length and breadth of it."

  So Captain Joe Flint and Iain Farter Fraser shared a pleasant half-hour, and a full half-bottle - most of it going to Fraser as Flint explained the burdens of command and the awful iniquities of treacherous shipmates, such that no man could tell whom to trust, nor from which direction a fatal stab might come. The sad conclusion of this tale was that all aboard Lion and most aboard Walrus - were back-stabbing, no-seamanly lubbers who were out to steal other men's shares, and so should be denied their own… such that the goods would be shared not between one hundred and forty-seven men but twenty-five!

  Farter Fraser beamed happily as he got up to go and piss, which eventually he had to do. He lurched off on wobbling legs, with the rum warm and cosy in his belly.

  "God bless you, Cap'n!" he said. "And a clap o' the pox on them others!"

  "Thank you, lad," said Flint, pointing. "And just you go over that way, shipmate, and you can bring back that old shirt of mine, and we'll have that rabbit out for our dinner. A bit of fresh meat, shipmate!"

  "Aye, shipmate!" said Fraser, greatly daring. He undid his britches, relieved himself, buttoned up, and staggered over to Flint's shirt, which lay squirming in the shade of a broom bush.

&n
bsp; "A rabbit?" he said. "Bugger of a funny shape for a rabbit!"

  "Open it, lad," said Flint. "You'll see. The rabbits hereabouts ain't like ours in England."

  Fraser fumbled with the shirt. Drunk as he was, he couldn't manage to untie the sleeves. So he picked it up to bring it back to Flint. But he dropped it. He laughed. Flint laughed. The shirt wriggled and gave out a peculiar pattering, scratching sound.

  "Whassat?" said Fraser, and Flint's parrot spread its wings and flew away. Flint hardly noticed it go. He was at his sport, as the parrot was well aware.

  "It's the rabbit, lad," said Flint. "Never mind untying the knots, Iain lad, just out with your knife and cut the damn thing open!"

  "But it's your shirt, Cap'n," said Fraser.

  "God bless you, lad, don't mind that," said Flint. "We're men who soon shall own half of England! What's a shirt to us?"

  "Aye!" said Fraser, shaking his head at his own stupidity for not thinking of that. He fumbled at his belt and pulled out a dirk half the length of his arm. It had a keen edge and a decent point, but in his fuddled state it took a while for Fraser to get it properly into the shirt and rip open a hole.

  He peered into the dark recesses of the shirt where it lay writhing on the ground.

  "Bugger of a funny rabbit," he said.

  "Just stick a hand in and pull it out," said Flint, and stood up and moved closer for a better view.

  "Aye-aye, Cap'n, God bless you!" said Fraser, still full of wonderful thoughts of riches. After a brief groping, he added, "Aaaaaaaaagh!"

  "Why stap my vitals!" said Flint. "Do you know, Farter, I think you may be right. I really don't think that is a rabbit after all."

  "Aaaaaaaaagh!"

  "Do you know, what I think that is, Farter?"

  "Aaaaaaaaagh!"

  "I think that may be a snake."

  "Aaaaaaaaagh!"

  "A rattlesnake."

  But Iain Fraser paid no attention to Flint. He ran aimlessly in all directions, issuing thunderous farts, while three and a half feet of serpent hung writhing and lashing to his right hand, which was firmly clamped in its jaws, while its blunt tail-tip issued the dry rattling clatter for which its family is named.

  "Dear me," said Flint, as Fraser stormed past on a southern run. "Could I suggest you retrieve your knife and cut off its head?"

  Flint even exerted himself so far as to pick up Fraser's dirk and to hold it out, butt-first, for Fraser to grab on the return leg. Fraser took the blade, but hadn't the dexterity to achieve very much, left-handed. All he did was anger the snake by scratching its scaly hide with superficial cuts which persuaded it to dig in all the harder.

  Eventually, when his breath failed, Fraser sat down, heaving and sobbing, on the big grey rock with the snake still firmly attached to his hand.

  "Help!" he pleaded. "Help, Cap'n."

  "Don't rightly know how, shipmate," said Flint. "Though I do believe that they generally let go of their own accord, once they've bitten enough."

  Eventually that's exactly what the snake did do. But by then Fraser was on his back with a fat, blue hand, eyes closed and breath rasping in his throat.

  The snake would have made off, but Flint knelt down and played with it, tempting it to strike at one hand, and catching it behind the head with the other as the coils of muscle launched it at glittering speed. The snake was fast, but nowhere near as fast as Joe Flint. It wasn't mad like him, either, and it didn't laugh.

  The parrot watched from a branch in a pine tree. It squawked as Flint led the snake, strike by strike, on to the rock, and there stamped on its head and killed it.

  Then Flint went over to the recumbent Farter Fraser to make sure of him too. As he wielded the victim's own knife, the parrot squawked and rocked from side to side and shuffled its feet on the branch, and finally it uttered a deep groan. It groaned as clear, and as sad, and as pitiful as any human being.

  * * *

  Chapter 39

  6th September 1752

  Four bells of the forenoon watch (c. 10 a.m. shore time)

  Aboard Walrus

  The southern anchorage

  Mr Smith, acting-first mate, had already been sweating, tropical hot in his long blue coat, and now he sweated more.

  He cursed in affronted jealousy as Selena followed Cowdray down below, like a lamb. He ground his teeth in rage as the insolent scum of the lower deck dared to sneer and shuffle towards him in mutinous display where he stood at the break of the quarterdeck, by the binnacle and the tiller - the very temple and altar of authority in the ship.

  He looked for support and found none. He frowned mightily. There were others aboard - men rated petty officers - who should have stood by him: the quartermasters, the master-at-arms, and especially Mr Allardyce, the boatswain. All these should have done their duty… but see! They were scowling with all the rest. Scowling and jeering, and now they were brazenly calling him "Parson" again. They all wanted a go at the black girl, and were damning his eyes if he stood in their way.

  It was insufferable! Unsupportable! Outrageous!

  It was also throat-slittingly dangerous. But Parson Smith didn't see that. He was so thickly armoured in his own self- esteem that he never stopped to wonder what the crew would do with him once they got their hands on him.

  After all, why should he fear this collection of rogues and imbeciles when he was under the personal protection of Captain Flint? He who had been singled out and chosen by the captain and offered great rewards…

  "Now see here, Mr Smith," Flint had said on the voyage down to the island, "I have sent for you because I know you are a man of learning." He'd smiled and invited Mr Smith to walk the deck with him, and engaged so openly in conversation that Smith had duly been dazzled.

  "You are our purser, are you not?"

  "Yes, sir," said Smith.

  "Aye-aye, sir!" corrected Flint with a kindly smile.

  "Aye-aye, sir!" said Smith.

  "Our purser, yet here's myself in need of a navigating officer."

  "Now that you have lost Mr Bones, sir?"

  Flint smiled a weary smile. "Quite so, Mr Smith."

  "Oh?" said Smith, scenting advantage.

  "Mr Smith, are you familiar with your Pythagoras?"

  "Oh yes, sir!"

  "And your Euclid?"

  "Oh yes, sir! And Newton's Fluxions besides!"

  "I knew it, Mr Smith! I saw the mathematician in you!"

  "Oh, sir!"

  So Mr Smith got his long coat, and his big hat, and Mr Bones's empty cabin. He was furthermore given the use of Captain Flint's spare quadrant, and was instructed personally by the captain, with the result that, while still some hundreds of miles from Flint's island, Mr Smith - from his own calculations - was well on course for an accurate landfall.

  "Well done, Mr Mate!" Flint had said, as Smith showed his latest position on the chart, some few days from the island. "Now, here's the sun over the yardarm, and the men about to go to their dinners. Will you join me, Mr Mate, for a glass in my cabin?"

  "With pleasure, Captain!" said Smith, and puffed up enormously as he sauntered in Flint's wake, with servants taking care of their instruments, and all the crew looking on as he went below to take wine with the captain.

  "Your health, sir!" said Flint, seated at his table. "You have the makings of a damn fine navigator."

  "Yours, Captain!" said Smith, and came near to blushing as Flint beamed at him.

  "So you could find this island of mine?" said Flint. "You could set out from Bristol and find it?"

  "Given a good ship and a crew, and charts, sir?" Smith nodded in pompous dignity. "Yes, sir, I believe that I could." He was justifiably proud of the fact and it showed.

  "Then your future is assured, Mr Smith," said Flint, showing wolfish teeth.

  And indeed Mr Smith's future was assured. Like any sensible mariner, Flint wanted a spare navigating officer. Unfortunately, that could not now be Billy Bones, for he was destined for other duties. That had been decided.
So, without Billy Bones, what if Flint were to fall ill or otherwise to become incapacitated while Walrus was home-bound with a certain cargo under hatches? What then, if there were no man to set a course? What would become of poor Joe Flint?

  Hence the time and effort to train up Mr Smith. But once in sight of England, that gentleman's future was assured beyond doubt. Meanwhile there was something else.

  "Mr Smith," said Flint, after a few glasses had gone down, and the acting-first mate's face was glowing nicely, "Mr Smith - or may I take the liberty of calling you by your baptismal name? Ewyn, is it not? And you must call me Joseph."

  "Oh, sir!" said Smith, enormously flattered, and he licked his lips with so wet a tongue, and peered so bloodshot-misty- eyed through his little round spectacles, that Flint's greatest weakness nearly let him down once more. But not quite, and Flint managed - though only just - to keep a hold on his solemnity.

  "Ewyn," said Flint, "I seek your advice on a most personal matter…" he paused, "… one so personal that I barely know how to begin."

  "Oh… Joseph?" said Smith, sitting up, and dragging a handkerchief across his sweating face - to clear for action, as it were - for he was an addicted nosy parker, and his greed for other people's troubles was unlimited.

  "This black girl of mine," said Flint.

  "Yes?" said Smith, and Flint shook his head, and dithered and muttered, and blushed and sighed, and took another glass and sighed again, and dropped his gaze to the polished table top.

  "Yes! Yes!" said Smith, and an erection rose between his thighs in sheer anticipation of what might follow.

  "The fact is… Ewyn," said Flint very softly, "she has certain appetites... doubtless innocent, and doubtless commonplace among her own folk, but which she wishes me to satisfy… and… and…"

  "And?" gulped Smith in a half-strangled voice.

  "I find that they are more than my strength can achieve," said Flint. He looked up and saw Smith's goggling eyes and drooling lips, and nearly lost control again. Out of sight beneath the table, he resorted to the technique of peeling back his left thumbnail with his right index finger, which delivered such pain that he was saved from laughter.