Silver

by Andrew Motion

  “But you told me the captain had selected all the crew,” I protested.

  “And so he has,” Natty replied. “All excepting Jordan.”

  “He must know who I am,” I continued. “He will tell the others.”

  “That cannot be his plan,” Natty said. “If it was, he would have done so already. You are making a fuss, Jim; there is no reason to worry. The captain is content.”

  This was said with a rather haughty air, as if I were foolish to think there might be anything untoward. But I could not help my surprise turning into something like anger. “How can you say he bears me no ill will?” I said. “By the look of him, I’d say he wants me dead in my boots.”

  Natty folded her arms and turned her back to the wind; her face glowed faintly in the light of the lanterns. “He is melancholy,” she said, “that is all. He gives the same greeting to everyone.”

  “Which is no greeting whatsoever,” I replied. “My father has spoken of Israel Hands more than any of the crew who went before us, apart from your father himself. He was a murderer, that is all.”

  “Israel was a companion to my father,” said Natty. “But he did not …” She paused, and bit the inside of her lip. “He did not adapt like my father.”

  “He did not adapt?” I said quickly. “He could not adapt because he was lying on the seabed. Because my father killed him.”

  I expected Natty would at least show some sympathy at this, preferably for my father and what he had done to save his life. But none was forthcoming. She merely shook her head, as if to show that everything I had said was an exaggeration she could not take seriously.

  I shook my own head in return. I felt I had been tricked, and made to accept a danger where none needed to exist. But there was nothing I could do to lessen it, except be vigilant. Be vigilant and, if I did not want to sour everything between myself and Natty, let the matter drop, which I immediately did. At the same time, I reckoned it cavalier of her, and surprising of the captain, to assume they would have my agreement on so delicate a matter. It told me how much they were both in thrall to Mr. Silver. The old man’s force of personality was evidently still extraordinary, although his body had almost ceased to be.

  When I turned my attention back to the rest of my shipmates, I found they had almost exhausted the subject of treasure, except to remind one another that the bar silver had been left by Captain Flint at the same time as he deposited the larger hoard—the one my father had already taken. The hushed tone in which they spoke of what they hoped to discover was quite unlike the rapaciousness my father had found on his own voyage. Instead, it seemed to bestow a magical quality, even a luminosity, on everything they said; I think they felt the words glowing in their mouths as they talked, in the same way they imagined the ingots themselves, shining in their hiding place beneath the sand.

  This kind of dreaminess ended when Mr. Tickle (whom I had noticed before on account of his yellow pipe and fuzzy beard), brought up the matter of the maroons—the three pirates left behind by the Hispaniola. Mr. Tickle wondered aloud what had become of them.

  “Turned into skeletons,” said Bo’sun Kirkby very abruptly—which I thought showed that he did not like to think of their suffering.

  “Turned into gardeners,” said another by the name of Mr. Stevenson—a Scotsman and a wisp of a fellow, whose place was generally in the crow’s nest, where he acted as our lookout.

  “Eating each other,” said Mr. Allan, which—judging by their laughter—the others thought was a cook’s prerogative. But when this merriment had died away, another voice added his thoughts, and this belonged to Jordan Hands; it was the first time I had heard him speak.

  “More likely they’ll have prospered,” he said. His voice was very quiet but at the same time definite, as though his remarks were based on knowledge and not conjecture (which was of course impossible). “They were left a good stock of powder and shot, along with a few medicines, and some other necessaries such as tools, clothing, a spare sail and a fathom or two of rope. Also, I believe, a handsome present of tobacco.” He broke off to swallow with a dry click. “And the bulk of the salted goat, which they could eat before they set about the animals that are native to the island, and the berries, and the oysters. Oh, they’ll have prospered, no doubt on that score. Prospered very nicely, I expect.”

  This verdict cast a chill over everyone, and although daylight had now entirely drained from the sky, I was still able to see disappointment hollowing their faces, as they absorbed the idea that the island might not after all be theirs and theirs alone.

  Mr. Allan tried to rally them by repeating “goat and berries and oysters” twice more, in an admiring murmur as any cook might. But his good cheer was now in vain, and the conversation was done. Within a moment, the men had found an excuse of work to finish, and the whole long deck was empty except for the captain at the wheel, and Natty at my side. Then Natty said she was going to our cabin, and yawned to show me why, before saying good night to Spot at his place in the roundhouse (by draping his orange cloth over the cage) and vanishing toward the companionway.

  The suddenness of these departures was surprising. But the novelty of the situation, and my pleasure in having myself to myself, persuaded me I should feel grateful and seize the chance to take stock. Accordingly, I moved forward to the prow of the Nightingale, beyond the reach of the lanterns, where I could look over the glimmering water that stretched ahead of us.

  A feeling of great solitude came over me—one that took no account of the captain at the wheel, or Mr. Stevenson above, where he had climbed to keep the first watch of the night, or the dozen other warm bodies below, including Natty. I told myself this was because I had a proper sense of the largeness of the world for the first time in my life, and also of its indifference. Our prow broke through the waves with a grace that was wonderful, but knew nothing of wonder. The moon, which was now beginning to climb between the clouds, timed our progress but knew nothing of time. The waves produced a most delicate mingling of cream and brown, and blue and black, but knew nothing of delicacy.

  All this might have been alarming, yet it filled me with a profound sense of quiet. I held my arms straight down at my sides and let the breeze rush over my face and chest, cleansing me of everything that had weighed on me during my previous life. As I did so I heard a tune strike up, which I turned to see the captain was squeezing from an accordion. It was a far cry from the “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest” and the “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum” they had sung on the Hispaniola. Drink and the devil had done for those endless old ballads. The captain’s song was “The Sailor’s Farewell,” a love-ditty that anyone might learn in their youth when they begin to follow the sea, and which he now played while leaning against the wheel:

  Good-bye, my sweet ladies of England and home,

  My thoughts will stay with you wherever I roam;

  In storms and in sunshine, in drought and in rain,

  My one hope is only to see you again.

  The loving you give me, the loving I take,

  Is done for your kindness and dear beauty’s sake;

  The thought of it lingers, ’twill always endure

  Until water and starlight and land are no more.

  The captain’s voice was very deep and true, and his song made me think of ancient things—the thoughts I had known, or rather felt, about my mother and father and the land where I was born. These lived very vividly in me for several minutes, but soon their beauty became too difficult to bear. I called good night to the captain and quickly went belowdecks, where the darkness felt more comfortable. When I looked at Natty on the pillow she appeared to be asleep, so I continued gazing in silence for a moment, admiring the dark beauty of her face, and especially of her closed eyes, which seemed to tremble beneath their lids as though they were conscious of my attention. This gave me a delicious feeling of conspiracy, but was at the same time disconcerting. A moment later, I had climbed up my little ladder, lain down on my bunk, an
d closed my own eyes tight shut.

  12

  The Death of Jordan Hands

  THE WEATHER TREATED us kindly, and within two days the Nightingale lay off Start Point on the coast of Devon, which was our last view of old England. The crew came on deck around sunset, and stood in silence as I had once or twice in my schooldays seen the audience do at a theater. Our entertainment was not in the foreground, which showed nothing more interesting than a few seagulls wheeling through the uncertain light, but rather in the background, where smoke rose from cottage chimneys, fishing boats returned to their harbor, and miniature figures melted from the quays. None of these things showed much evidence of particular lives, yet they suggested an idea of life that we were sorry to lose—however great our reward might soon be elsewhere. It was my first apprehension of a reliable truth: that every sea journey gives a presentiment of death, before allowing us to be born again. This discovery made me one of several who sat down very quietly to Mr. Allan’s food that evening, and went to bed early.

  I dare say my shipmates were not surprised to see me do this. Because my place on board was neither precisely crew nor guest, I had already set myself apart from the flow of things. It was the same for Natty, who of course was universally known as Nat. In the days that followed, when the rhythms of our journey were established, we were confined to a role that might at best be called skivvying (coiling ropes, scrubbing decks, painting bulwarks, et cetera), and at worst idling (sleeping, staring, daydreaming). Natty, I might add, was often chided in a harmless sort of way for being a very girlish sort of boy as she set about her tasks—no matter how she bulked herself up and used a gruff voice. She took this in good part as though entirely used to such banter, which proved an effective way of concealing the truth of her situation.

  It will be clear from everything I have said that Natty and I passed almost the whole of every day in one another’s company—and almost the whole of every night as well. Yet in our proximity there was a kind of reserve. We could not allow anything we said to encourage the maturing of our friendship. To have done otherwise would have threatened Natty’s disguise, if any of the crew had observed us. It would also (speaking for myself) have worked my heart into a condition I might then have found difficult to control. Besides, and despite the warm feelings that Natty provoked in me, it was rather in my disposition at that time of my life to withdraw than to come forward, for I was somewhat in fear of mockery by womankind. Reflecting on this after many years, I suspect I had found an exquisite recipe for frustration. At the time I only felt that my timorousness and self-discipline encouraged me to notice everything, and enjoy everything, while sparing myself some anxieties about what might happen next.

  Ten days after we lost sight of England, the wind that had propelled us from London suddenly failed, and we sank into a dead calm. I would rather be stupid, and numb, or better still unconscious, than endure again the lassitude of that time. How long did it last? I cannot tell. Perhaps a week. Perhaps two. Perhaps eternity. Long enough, at any rate, for me to feel a sailor’s life was the most desperate, the most tedious, and the most pointless, of any in Christendom. Our sails hung limp as grave cloths. A rook that had followed us from the West Country, and evidently meant to immigrate to America, glued itself to our prow and closed its eyes. The Atlantic Ocean, which I had imagined to be made entirely of roaring billows, settled into a shimmering stillness, and was so seldom disturbed by any sort of activity that the appearance of a log, or a tuft of weed, seemed like a great event. And the men? Although the captain endeavored to keep them occupied by setting them tasks such as mending sails and checking stores, they gradually subsided into a lethargy, and thence into something more sullen.

  It was not difficult, even for someone as ignorant of the sea as myself, to realize this mood might easily spark into something troublesome. However much the crew respected their skipper, and notwithstanding they were generally good fellows and mindful of the rule of law, a certain insolence crept into their behavior. A man who slipped in the rigging, and had to be caught one-handed by another, was more roundly chastised than he deserved to be. Spot, whose regular warnings to “Keep away” and suchlike often rang out like banging metal, was threatened with the barbecue in voices that really made me fear for his survival. The games of dice and cards, which the men frequently played on deck in the shade of a sail they had arranged to make a tent, produced more vicious curses than seemed to fit the spirit of a game. Even when the captain entertained us by playing on his squeeze-box, only a few voices rose to join his own—and these were very reluctant. I remember on one occasion he sang the bawdy old fragment beginning “Don’t speak to me …,” in which he presented himself as a woman for our amusement—but no one was amused:

  Don’t speak to me of kindness, sugar-man,

  Don’t give me all your sweetness and your charm;

  I know you want to take the most you can,

  I know you talk of love but mean me harm.

  On another, he gave us the whole of the ballad called “Mistress Anne,” without a single other voice joining him:

  When my love was young and comely

  I led her through the fields,

  “Sweet maid,” I said, “lie down with me”—

  But no, she would not yield.

  I led her next to a wood of oak

  Astir with singing birds,

  “Sweet maid,” I said, “lie down with me”—

  But I think she never heard.

  I led her next to a winding stream

  All full of smooth white stones,

  “Sweet maid,” I said, “cross with me here”—

  But she sent me on alone.

  “Sweet maid,” I said, when I’d had my fill

  Of all these slights and “no”s,

  “Will any words untie your heart?

  Take pity. Tell me how.”

  Then “Sir,” she said, “the world itself

  Is all I need to love.

  Not feet of clay and hands of bone

  But God in Heaven above.”

  And this is why I sigh and moan

  And keep no company;

  I have but one true heart to give

  And that remains with me.

  As the captain sang this song, I found myself becoming thoughtful, as often happens when we hear sweet music. In particular, I began to reflect on a lesson that our becalming had taught me—namely, that every man has a natural tendency to decline. Another idea was equally alarming. I saw I was mistaken in supposing I had been born into a gentler age than my father. Governments and navies might have begun to root out the piracy he had lived among, and the crew of the Nightingale might have reckoned they represented a nobler sort of savage than Mr. Silver. But nothing had been done to alter a fundamental fact about our human nature—namely, the appetite for savagery passes unchanged from generation to generation, and will always emerge when a suitable occasion arises.

  The calm in which we languished was just such an occasion. That is to say, the crew’s treatment of one another was soon worse than irritable; it had become a variety of sickness—and eventually the day arrived when Jordan Hands became an outright agitator. Natty and I heard this because we were sitting at our usual place in the roundhouse, with the door open, when Bo’sun Kirkby reported to the captain that, by sowing insults and fanning rivalries, Hands had set shipmates against one another, while always slinking away himself and pretending innocence. Although Hands could not easily be accused of a particular crime, the captain immediately summoned him to explain himself.

  Hands went through his interview without so much as a glance at his accuser, and his whole attention fixed on Natty and myself—who must have seemed like jury members, sitting on our bench in the roundhouse. Although he said nothing of great significance, the repeated and unnecessary references to his uncle all struck me as definitely as if they had been a series of blows. “My uncle always hated a calm,” he said; “My uncle knew how to set a sail that would ca
tch the breath of a butterfly”; “My uncle”—he said this with a particular enthusiasm, looking directly into my eyes—“knew how to aim a cannon so it would blow the head off a match at a hundred yards.”

  When this interview had ended, the captain sent Hands away with a warning to keep a civil tongue in his head, and learn how to rub along with his fellows—at which the fellow merely smiled to himself before slouching belowdecks. The captain seemed to think this meant nothing beyond a touch of “sea fever,” and it was not my place to contradict him.

  I did, however, mention my concerns to Natty when the day ended and we were alone together in our cabin. I told her plainly that I thought Hands meant to do me some ill. She gave a snort of derision—then the advice that I should not consider myself so interesting that Hands would reckon me worth hurting. I felt I had no choice but to accept the criticism. At the same time, I was implicated in his story and knew that he resented me. The thought gave me considerable anxiety, and I lay awake that night, listening for steps on the stairs that led down from the deck, long after Natty herself had fallen asleep.

  The consequences followed with surprising speed, since rather than acting as a kind of balm, the captain’s advice to Hands in fact excited him still further. The next day I saw him early, swaggering around the foredeck in a most ostentatious fashion, stumbling into others when he might easily have avoided them, and whispering insults that he pretended were remarks addressed only to himself.