by John Drake
"Franky?" said Cameron.
"What?"
"What was we s'posed to be guarding up here?"
"Dunno. Flint said guard the hill. That's all."
"What if he comes back?"
"Oh, bugger me! What if he wants the goods for himself?"
"Oh, shag me ragged!"
"Come on, shipmate, up anchor! He'll do for the pair of us if we don't."
Thus Cameron and Skillit began their descent of Spy-glass Hill. They scraped and dragged and crawled. They set their teeth against the pain. They helped one another like jolly companions, each encouraging his shipmate when the other seemed likely to fail. They even did what they could for their wounds: Skillit hauling the knife out of Cameron's back, and Cameron using it to cut one leg off Skillit's slops to make a bandage for the bullet hole.
Sadly, the removal of the knife only made Cameron's wound bleed all the faster, and Skillit's bandage was promptly dragged off by his slithering over the ground.
Nonetheless, since it was downhill all the way and along a goat track, they made steady progress, covering nearly a hundred yards, until finally, just before it got properly dark, they heard - faintly in the distance - a cheerful voice singing, and the steady beat of a man's footsteps coming up the track towards them.
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest!
"Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
It was amazing how this put life into Cameron and Skillit. There was no more lizard-like dragging themselves over the ground. Not for them! Somehow - heroically - they struggled up on to their legs. Then, leaning heavily on one another, and clutching their wounds, they stepped out at double their previous pace, even though it was now uphill all the way.
They got a remarkably long way before the cheerful singer caught them.
* * *
Chapter 44
7th September 1752
Night
Spy-glass Hill
The island
Flint was puzzled. The parrot wouldn't come back. It fluttered in the darkness like an owl, except that owls didn't cackle and groan.
Flint was used to the parrot flying off on certain occasions. He was far too sharp not to have noticed that. He'd put it down to the little peculiarities that all creatures have, parrots as well as men. But this was different. Usually the bird would settle in the rigging, or here on the island it would find the branch of a tree. He peered into the warm, smooth darkness and looked up at the enormous pines. Crickets chirped, the surf rolled, the stars glittered… and there came the bird again… a screeching fury like those in the Greek legends.
"Ah!" said Flint, as a claw scratched his face, dangerously close to his eyes, almost as if the bird were attacking him, almost as if it disapproved.
It came back again and again. It came out of the dark, howling and squawking. And all he'd been doing was settling Skillit and Cameron. Just a bit of fun, tickling them up with an inch of the cutlass point to make them run: just a jab here, and a stab there. And then a bit of sobbing and pleading from the pair of them, and one of them calling for his mother - Flint couldn't remember which - while the other fell to screaming and raving and damning Flint's eyes. And then Cameron managed to pop off all by himself, while Flint laughingly explained to Skillit that he'd taken such a liking to that gentleman's ears that they must come off for keepsakes before their owner was sent upon his way.
That was the source of the problem. Once Skillit and Cameron were quiet, the parrot had come back to Flint's shoulder. It was then that he'd attempted - in all innocence and meaning no harm - to feed it one of the ears. And that, unaccountably, seemed to have turned the bird's mind.
Screeching manically, it came again, and this time caught Flint an outright blow on the brow. It was attacking and no mistake. Flint was unnerved. He could have drawn steel and cut the bird out of the air. He could have used his pistols. But the bird was his companion and he wanted it back. He didn't want it dead.
Another strike, and that was it. Flint ran. He held his hands over his head and sped down the goat track to the forest with its undergrowth and intertwined branches where the bird could take no advantage of him.
And there he found darkness: utter, smothering darkness. So dark that nothing could be seen and nothing could be done. Not even the stars shone here. Not here in the foetid, stinking mould of rotting plants and wriggling insects: centipedes, millipedes, slugs and spiders, every one far bigger than a decent man would have wished, and proceeding in company with whatever else there might be that slithered through the night-time jungle. It was neither a cosy nor an inviting place. For once, Joe Flint had found a billet as slimy as the entrails of his own mind.
But billet it was. Flint was here for the night. He couldn't go forward through the invisible jungle, and he couldn't go back - not in the dark with an airborne demon trying to take his eyes out. So, with utmost reluctance, Flint sat down, his back to a tree, put his cutlass and pistols across his lap, and resigned himself to sleep. He told himself that he was bound to be safe, for the island had no leopards or panthers - not so far as he knew - and he had no fear of snakes, not in the daytime at least.
Just as he was falling asleep, he heard a fluttering high up above his head. He recognised this as the parrot, settling in for the night. His last thought was that at least he had a friend nearby.
* * *
Chapter 45
8th September 1752
One bell of the afternoon watch (c. 12.30 p.m. shore time)
Aboard Walrus
The southern anchorage
Parson Smith kept his mind off rape for nearly a day and a half.
He managed this because he had become a very considerable seaman and officer - at least in his own eyes. For one thing, after his triumph over Silver, the hands were treating him with a reasonable approximation of respect, rather than merely stifling their contempt through fear of Flint. For another, he truly enjoyed the pleasures of mathematics, and was full of self-satisfaction with his constant polishing of his calculations of latitude and longitude.
So, Mr Smith strutted around thinking himself a man of action and a gentleman of fortune, and he fantasised that, on his return to civilisation, with the enormous wealth that would be his - why - he might well continue in some honest and profitable seafaring venture, a venture such as would make him the master and owner of a huge East Indiaman: a man recognised as a prince of commerce, a nabob and a millionaire!
It was by that very route that he fell - inevitably - into sin. For the East Indies conjured up visions of sybaritic pleasures and harems full of perfumed women… and so, in the end, he couldn't keep his grubby little mind off the succulent flesh locked in Flint's cabin, where that bastard Cowdray - who was probably after her for himself - was taking her food so she need never come out.
Now, even fear of Flint was suppressed by his lust. So he waited until the hands were paralysed by the noon heat. He waited till all but the lookouts were in the shade, dozing… and then he crept below.
He took off his shoes for silence. He took off his hat and coat as well. Then, in an ecstasy of anticipation, he glided to the door of Flint's big cabin. He made no sound. He turned the key… slowly… slowly… slowly… clunk! He pushed the door with utmost gentleness. He slid inside… he locked the door… he looked around. Oh! A moment of doubt - where was she? All he could see was the furnishings - the big table and the chairs. He took a step forward and caught sight of her at last, and the load inside his britches strained to spilling point.
She was asleep, naked! She was stark-shining-luscious- delectable-beautiful naked, stretched out in the boiling heat on the padded seat that ran under the windows. The table and chairs had been in the way, that was all. Parson ground his teeth. He struggled tremendously. He exerted Herculean efforts. He was throbbing with lust and agonising to contain himself. He tried and tried and tried… but…
"Agh!" groaned Parson in wasted ecstasy.
"Get out! Get out of here!" she said, up and awak
e at the sound. Her legs swung forward, she ducked down for something Parson couldn't see.
"Bah!" said Parson, and slumped into a chair, wiping the slobber off his lips with his shirt. When he looked up a very nasty surprise was waiting for him. He was staring down the barrels of two heavy pistols. The sight so gripped him that, for the moment, he didn't even look at the naked figure behind them.
"Oh!" he thought, and blinked at the realisation of his own stupidity. Flint's cabin was hung with arms. It was festooned and decorated with them. He should have thought of that. He sat for a while, wondering what to do next. She backed against a bulkhead, arms outstretched, shaking with the weight of the pistols.
"Get out of here," she said, "or I'll shoot you dead!" Parson sneered and shook his head.
"No," he said, "I don't think you will, my dear. Because, if you do that, you'll bring the crew down here on the instant. And who will defend you then?" He laughed.
The first shock had worn off, and Parson had taken a closer look at the pistols. One of them wasn't cocked at all. The steel was thrown forward and the powder-pan open. The other looked as if it was on half-cock, though it was in the shadows and hard to see. He smiled. Stupid moll! She obviously knew nothing of firearms. He was safe. All he had to do was sit quietly till his own armament reloaded, and then he'd do her on his lap - just for old times' sake - and after that in as many different ways as he fancied. He was a man of powerful appetites, and could usually manage three or four courses at a sitting. His confidence came back. He smirked.
"You must ask yourself, my dear," he said, "would you not prefer my own gentle attentions to those of seventy violent men? I really would recommend that you make no noise at all, let alone fire off a pair of pistols!"
But this caused quite the wrong result.
"Bastard" she said, and hauled on the triggers with all her might. As Parson had noticed, one couldn't possibly fire, and didn't. But the other - which was fully cocked, snapped in a shower of sparks that shocked Smith's bladder into passing a brief spurt of water into his drawers. What a mess was now accumulating down below aboard the good ship Parson!
"Bitch!" he cried, and threw himself across the broad table to grab the pistols and pull them from her hands. But she hung on, and she had a better grip on the butts than he did on the ends of the barrels, and his arms were fully extended and his feet off the ground and, after a brief tug- o'-war, she wrenched the weapons free and flung one at Parson's head.
"Ow!" he cried and retreated, clutching a bloodied brow and wincing in anticipation of the arrival of the second pistol. He crouched behind a chair, and spat venom. "I'll skin the arse off you, madam! I'll flog you to within an inch of your life!" By God he would too, and what pleasure it would be to do it. There was a novel thought! One that opened up fresh horizons, and he looked around the cabin for something to serve as a whip. But she wasn't listening. She was standing in her silky nakedness, with her tits quivering and the second pistol up-ended, trying to load it with a cartridge snatched out of a locker.
Parson looked, and giggled. She hadn't the least idea how to go about it. She was missing out the ball! It was tied up in its own little recess at one end of the paper cylinder, and she didn't even know it was there! She just threw it aside with the empty cartridge paper.
Well, thought Parson, the pistol won't do a lot of harm without that!
He stood up and dusted himself off as Selena fumbled with the rammer, then dropped that too, and grabbed another cartridge, and bit that open and showered gritty black powder down the barrel and all over the wood and steel of the pistol. Another cartridge followed the first two. She was like a cook, dusting flour over a pie.
Parson was right. Selena had no idea how to load a gun. And why should she? Plantation slaves weren't trained in the use of arms, and the only time she'd ever seen a pistol fired had been in Charley Neal's liquor store when Flint shot Atty
Bolger. Neither had she any interest in guns, so she'd never asked how to load one. Whenever Walrus had gone in to action, she'd been sent below, and had never even seen a gun loaded.
She just knew it was something to do with gunpowder and steel and flint, and she did the best she could.
"Selena, my dear," said Parson, creeping towards her, "I was so disappointed in you when you called on Silver to save you, for he is a ruined man."
"He's ten times the man you'll ever be!"
"And even if you had jumped, the current would have swept you away."
"Shut your mouth!"
Selena looked at him. She was done loading. She thrust the pistol into Parson's face.
"I'll shoot!" she said.
"You won't. You didn't load the ball. You didn't prime the pan."
"I'll kill you!"
Parson smiled grimly. Making ready for action, he took off his spectacles; the white showed round his eyes as he turned nasty.
"Now listen to me, my saucy doxy. You will not kill anybody. You will behave yourself, and you will be quiet too, unless you want more than me to deal with. And then, my girl," he licked his pretty lips, "you will take a damn good thrashing and a damn good shafting."
She pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
"You didn't cock it," sneered Parson. "You have to pull this back -" he reached out and touched the flint. She hauled it back with a fat click.
"And you have to pull this back too," said Parson, tapping the steel. In terror, Selena snapped down the steel.
"Fire at will!" said Parson, and touched his nose to the muzzle.
Click! The flint showered sparks as it scraped the steel. But the pistol didn't fire.
"I told you," said Parson, and in bravado he took the muzzle of the pistol and popped it into his mouth, while reaching out a podgy hand for a good fondle of Selena's left breast. Ahhh! The feel of it pumped fire, and up stood Parson's best friend like a soldier at attention.
Click! Selena tried again. Click! Click! Click! Again and again, hauling back the mechanism and pulling the trigger.
Parson sniggered. He gripped the muzzle with his teeth and smiled happily. He reached out the other hand and got a grip on the vacant breast. It was just like old times, those times so long ago and so fondly remembered.
Click! Click! Click! And silence.
A firelock needs a good pinch of powder in the pan to feel the sparks from the steel, and so to explode, sending a flash through the touch-hole and into the barrel to explode the main charge and drive the ball thundering on its way. In her ignorance, Selena hadn't put in that pinch of powder, nor loaded the ball.
But she had poured most of three cartridge-loads of powder into the bottom of the barrel, where it accumulated in a pile, of which just a very few grains - what with Parson Smith's shoulders heaving with laughter and shaking the barrel - just a few adventurous grains decided to make their way out through the touch-hole, and into the pan, where they lay waiting for the next time that Selena pulled the trigger.
"Click!" said the lock.
"Scrape!" said the flint.
"Fizz!" said the sparks.
"Whoof!" said the grains.
And…
"BOOM/" said the powder in the barrel. There was plenty of it, and there wasn't the least need for a ball.
Parson's face tore wide open, jagged and bloodied and raw.
His tongue and cheeks spattered in fragments round the cabin, while white-hot flame blasted down his throat, bursting lungs and windpipe, stomach and gullet, pallet and eardrums. Smoke poured from his nose and ears and from the hideous, blackened cavity that had been his mouth. Roast flesh sizzled and crackled and split.
But he didn't fall. He staggered and swayed and lived. He raised hooked fingers to the monstrosity that was his face. His eyes stared. His ruined lungs drew agonising breath, and spat out a hissing stream of blood and mucus in the attempt to force a scream from the incinerated apparatus that had once delivered Smith's voice. And then he was crashing on to his back, kicking and twitching and frothing and bubbling. He'd
only stood a few seconds, but it was a miracle he'd stood at all.
Selena's stomach heaved up its contents at the sight of him. She retched and groaned and crawled into a corner as Smith drummed the deck with his heels and elbows. He was a long time dying: a long, hard time. He made enough noise that someone came to see what was happening.
"Parson?" said a voice. "That you? What you doing? Was that a shot?" The door rattled and shook. "Selena?" said the voice. "You got Parson in there?"
"Get a crowbar," said another voice. "She's done for him, or he's done for her. Get this bloody hatchway open!"
As the door shivered and splintered, Selena did what she wished she'd done when Long John called her to his boat. She jumped from the stern windows and swam.
* * *
Chapter 46
8th September 1752
Mid afternoon
Haulbowline Head
The island
"Fox's Book of Martyrs," said Flint. "It was the constant companion of my youth." He sighed and shook his head. "Given to me by my father on my thirteenth birthday - which birthday, by Mosaic Law, made me a man, and which book, my father said, was 'the bastion of our Protestant religion against the Anti-Christ Bishop of Rome'!" He turned to his audience. "Those were his very words, lads. What do you think of that?"
"Mm," they said.
"He was a man of powerful views," said Flint, which was true. The Reverend Mordecai Flint, Presbyter-General of the Revelationary Evangelist Church, had held opinions that were rooted like mountains. Flint smiled. "And yet, he was hated by all who knew him. Hated… but feared!"
"Mm."
