Silver

by Andrew Motion

  “I do,” said Scotland.

  “So will you tell us?”

  “I will.” Scotland paused, which was only to create an amusing sort of suspense—but not even the captain could resist hurrying to the next question.

  “And that is?”

  Scotland slowly put down the piece of bread he was eating, and looked the captain in the eye. “Where it is safe.”

  I could tell by the way the captain’s hands tightened in his lap that he thought this answer was insubordinate—but would not respond to it as such. “And where might that be?” he asked. “Pray tell us.”

  These last two words had a trace of iron in them but Scotland did not seem to notice—or to care. He tore another piece off the loaf Mr. Allan had given him, and chewed it thoroughly. After a full minute he swallowed, and then replied with a longer speech than any of us expected.

  “Mr. Captain,” he said. “If I give you the silver you will have no further use for me. You will take it, and sail away, and leave me to my fate. And you have seen what that fate will be—or your friends have.” Here he looked at me and Mr. Lawson and the bo’sun. When his eyes turned to Natty, and locked with her own, I thought she would come to his defense. Her lips opened and I saw her teeth. But as Scotland raised his head a fraction, and jutted out his chin, she changed her mind and stayed silent.

  Instead it was the captain who spoke next. He felt thwarted by Scotland’s stand, yet his voice held nothing but sympathy and understanding. “Very well,” he said. “Perhaps we might agree this: you will remain as our guest, while we decide how we can help you and your friends. And when that is done you will help us find our treasure.”

  “The treasure,” Scotland replied.

  “The treasure,” said the captain, which was the only time I ever heard him at a disadvantage. “I meant the treasure. Everyone will have a share. There will be plenty.”

  As the captain leaned back against the wall of the roundhouse, Bo’sun Kirkby and Mr. Lawson murmured that they agreed with his plan, and so did Natty. Perhaps some of us reckoned we had no choice. For my own part, it seemed inevitable as well as necessary.

  Now that he had been corrected, the captain seemed anxious to prove his mistake had not been deliberate. He moved quickly away from the subject of the silver and asked Scotland to tell his story. Some of what followed was a complement to everything we had been told during our march back to the Nightingale; it proved that Scotland’s life on the island—and the life of all the prisoners—had been lived under the spell of the wilderness. He confirmed that Smirke was the chief man among the maroons, and described him as a monster who lived in a state of cynical disregard for his fellows. The administration of his justice, which took place in the structure he had named the Fo’c’sle Court, was especially terrifying, and especially feared. I would have liked to think it was such a long period of isolation that had made him so heartless, but from my father’s evidence (and the fact the Squire Trelawney had not thought him worth saving on the Hispaniola), it was clear the origins of his bestiality were deeply rooted, and buried in circumstances of which I knew nothing.

  That said, Scotland believed Smirke would not have been capable of creating such horror as existed at the stockade without the influence of his deputy—Stone. This was the executioner we had seen at work, whose face was so ashen it seemed all humanity had been bled out of him. When I mentioned this, Scotland told us something remarkable: some time before, there had been a rebellion in the camp and an attempt was made to overwhelm the guards. Stone had been captured during this episode and his throat had been cut—but he had survived, and now had the scar that ran under his chin like a strap. Scotland briefly covered his eyes with one hand as he remembered this, and said it gave Stone the appearance of a dead man. From this I felt sure he was the evil spirit of the whole island; it made me more convinced than ever that we should think differently about our reasons for being there.

  Scotland told us the third maroon (the man who now called himself Jinks) seemed to be the least definite character—although, as the captain noticed, this was no reason to think he was harmless, since weak people have a dangerous need to prove their strength. We nodded at this, having seen Jinks in his role as inquisitor at the trial. I understood that if ever I were to encounter him alone, I would have a decent chance of saving my life; if ever I found him in the company of his fellows, I should expect him to be willing to do whatever they asked of him.

  Scotland finished his account by telling the captain what the rest of us already knew: that he had been stolen from Africa when still a child, slaved in Jamaica, then blown to Treasure Island. This led him to the opinion that if Smirke and his men had not been as they were, the place would have been a paradise. When the captain pressed him about this, he gave some more instances of the cruelty that blighted everything—but also, and more surprisingly, said that for all the beauty and strangeness of the animals, it was also like the Garden of Eden in having a snake. Or rather many dozens of snakes, which lived in a particular region near the northern cliffs. The captain was very interested in this, for reasons I did not understand at the time; Scotland told him they were dull gray in color, and no more than a foot long, but extremely poisonous. He knew this because one of his fellow prisoners (whom he called his “friends”) had been bitten and immediately died.

  As Scotland came to the end of this description, the energy left him and his chin sank forward onto his chest. This happened so suddenly, I wondered whether he might have fallen into a daze. Events that followed later in the evening proved me wrong. Far from sleeping, Scotland was thinking—but keeping his thoughts private. Although he took no part in the rest of our conversation, he weighed in silence everything we said.

  And the gist of this talk? It was led by the captain, who was not concerned to rush into action against the stockade, but to reflect and talk again in the morning. His suggestion, which was delivered in the kindly tone a parent might use, had the effect of making me feel as drowsy as I thought Scotland must be. I was somewhat embarrassed by this, since it seemed to prove my lack of experience compared to Natty, who was still bright-eyed and attentive. At the same time, the exertions of my day, and the sight of the moon climbing through the clouds outside, allowed me to feel that it would be reasonable to make my excuses.

  I pushed back my bench from the table. Because the captain was so preoccupied with our difficulties he saw nothing unusual in this, although he did recommend I find some food in the galley before going to my bed, which I thought was also like a parent. As I closed the roundhouse door behind me, I tried to catch Natty’s attention—but she was concentrating on Scotland, rearranging the shirt around his shoulders to cover the scar of his branding, and did not notice.

  When I reached my cabin I looked around me very carefully, with a strangely exaggerated sense of being alone. The few books on their shelf beside our two bunks; the grain in the woodwork by my pillow, which resembled lines on the palm of a hand; the smell of wet leaves and mud creeping through the ship: all these were things I recognized, yet made me feel less like myself than a beetle who had crawled inside a log. This was consolation of a kind: it meant I could still exist in secret. Yet I knew I would never be innocent again. I had seen the wickedness of men with my own eyes, and heard it with my own ears. It was an impenetrable darkness.

  It was at this point my father appeared to me. He was not holding forth in the taproom of the Hispaniola, where I knew he was likely to be at such a time of the evening, but sitting on the edge of the bed where I had seen him last. His head was in his hands, so I could not tell his expression. But I knew he was grieving, and understood the cause of his grief was the great wrong I had done him. My proof was the sight of Billy Bones’s sea chest, which gaped open at the foot of the bed. My father had searched it for the map of Treasure Island, found it stolen, and guessed at the reason for my absence.

  If I had believed at this stage in my adventure that I would return home safely and soon with a po
rtion of the silver, it is possible that his reproaches might not have weighed on me so heavily. As it was, I thought we would arrive in London empty-handed—if we arrived at all. This entirely transformed my reasons for setting out in the first place. I was nothing like a redeemer. I was a traitor.

  I sat down with my own head in my hands, as I imagined my father was doing. The same fitful moonlight gleamed through my porthole as shone through his window above the Thames; the same atmosphere of the world pressed against the walls protecting us both. This was no comfort when weariness overwhelmed me at last, and I toppled backward onto my blanket and fell asleep.

  Part IV

  NATTY’S STORY

  19

  A Walk at Night

  I MUST NOW describe things I did not see with my own eyes, but have been told by Natty. When I suggested the account would be more truthful if she wrote it herself, she told me I have enough words in my head for the two of us, and might as well use them. I said I was willing to do so, on condition that she allowed me some freedom to interpret, as well as merely to report. She bridled a little, then accepted—saying the difference between our views would never be very great. I could not disagree.

  When I had retired to my cabin, after failing to catch Natty’s attention as I have just mentioned, the captain and Bo’sun Kirkby and Mr. Lawson soon followed my example. Natty and Scotland were left alone together—and they decided, because the rain had so far held off, they would go on deck and see something of the moon and stars, which Scotland said would be pleasant for him after his long incarceration. Although our night watchman (who on this occasion was Mr. Stevenson) was still in the crow’s nest, he did not notice their arrival because he was asleep—which they discovered by calling his name and hearing no answer.

  I say the rain had delayed, but Natty could still dimly make out the large mass of turbulence on the horizon beyond the estuary. These clouds, which were now a sinister ivory color, had been fluffed up by the wind into an enormous size, then hollowed out to give the appearance of a cave. In the center of this cave, the storm was waiting to arrive, occasionally firing off impatient bolts of lightning.

  Although it seemed this storm might now begin at any moment, Natty and Scotland decided they preferred to walk on deck rather than take cover again, and so began a slow perambulation of the ship. Natty maintains that despite their lack of an audience, they knew they made a peculiar couple—she with her hat still pulled down around her ears; Scotland wearing the captain’s shirt and the threadbare rags in which we had found him. Neither of them felt any embarrassment. Indeed, I understand they talked quite freely—which at that time Natty had not often felt able to do with me, who knew her much better.

  When I have asked the reasons for this candor, Natty has never given a clear answer. My own conjecture is: whatever feelings Scotland provoked in her were somehow akin to those she felt for her father. Ever since helping to rescue Scotland from his trap, she had shown an exceptional absorption in him—almost a fascination. This is because she was excited by proof of what I will call experience in the world, even when it could not always be condoned (as with her father), or when it was impossible to enjoy (as with Scotland). I knew my own place in her affections must be curtailed, because I had not yet lived variously enough. This was difficult for me, and stimulated feelings I do not like to name, but I dare say will become manifest in what follows if they are not already.

  Their main topic of conversation seems to have been how the captain should proceed—and this soon led them into a greater danger than any we had faced, as I shall show. In Natty’s opinion, the captain was so offended by everything he had heard about the stockade, he was bound to launch an assault as soon as possible. How he would manage this with so few men and such paltry firepower she did not explain—but made do with imagining we would break into the pirates’ log house and then overthrow its tyrants like the populace entering the Bastille.

  While Natty was still warming to this theme, Scotland interrupted her. Was she dreaming? Had she not seen the stockade was well geared to resist an attack? What was needed, he said, was not directness but guile. Surprise and guile. The former he proposed leaving to the captain—perhaps by launching his assault very early in the morning, when the maroons were still groggy with their pleasures of the previous night. The surprise, he said, he would manage himself. It would come in the form of encouraging his friends to rise against their oppressors in the same instant that the captain began his assault. And how would he guarantee this? By the expedient of returning voluntarily to the stockade, where he would become his friends’ commander-in-secret.

  It is easy to give Natty’s reaction to this idea, in so far as it mixed respect for courage with dismay at risk. What is more difficult to describe is the clash of these things in her mind—and how her reply to Scotland fought to do justice to the greater good. That is, the good of the greatest number. If ever she strayed from this principle while they continued talking, Scotland held up his hand, or shook his head, and brought her around. And when she had almost agreed with him, he led her into complete accord by reminding her of his wife, whom he said he particularly wanted to protect from dangers she would otherwise have to meet without him.

  In this way they decided—with the appearance of perfect good sense—a plan that seemed entirely unreasonable to the rest of us, when we eventually discovered it. And having achieved this feat, Natty then compounded it: she volunteered to accompany Scotland on his walk back to the stockade, and at some convenient point to part with him, before returning to the Nightingale, where she would tell the captain everything that was afoot. I can only assume she meant it as kindness, and an expression of the sympathy between them, and that Scotland took it in the same spirit. I have told her since that what she thought of as charity was in fact foolishness.

  When they had reached their decision, the two conspirators quickly acted upon it. Not so much as a note was left behind—only the captain’s shirt, which Scotland folded on a bench in the roundhouse. Once this was done, they slipped over the side of our ship, waded ashore (which they could do because the tide was low), and vanished into the foliage. If Mr. Lawson had been awake at his place in the crow’s nest, he would have heard nothing but the slap of another wave against the mud.

  The route that Natty and Scotland took across the island was the same we had followed with Bo’sun Kirkby a short time before—but darkness made it seem strangely unlike, albeit still very difficult. The very dense vegetation in the valley, which had previously appeared exciting and abundant, was now sinister and chilling. The leaves of plants appeared to rub themselves quite deliberately over their faces. Roots seemed too sticky, or too cold, or too mobile, whenever their hands touched them. The noises of animals, as they quacked, or snorted, or grunted, or growled in protest at being disturbed, were not merely curiosities but reasons to feel alarmed. It was here, Natty admits, so near the beginning of her journey, that she realized how long she had been without sleep, and how exhausted she would soon become.

  This weariness ebbed when they reached the pine woods and found the walking easier. On the other hand, the wind now began to blow more strongly, and when they looked out to sea they found the ivory sky cave had broken up, and a succession of more compact clouds was rolling over the horizon, which sometimes let through shafts of moonlight. Although these gleams were only intermittent, they were very bright (the moon being close to full), and showed the waves beneath had been churned into an overall creamy whiteness. These gave Natty a strong impression that certain things in the world had worked loose from their usual ties—and that she herself might also be hurrying toward a conclusion she did not want, but could not avoid.

  The idea of catastrophe increased as the wind rose. Up to now, the two travelers had been talking to one another very easily—about such matters as how Scotland would lie low until one of the slaving parties went into the fields, when he might join them unnoticed. Now they fell silent except to warn one another of hazard
s—striding through the thickened air, often with one hand before their faces to deflect the dust and pine needles blown up from the forest floor.

  Natty says that if the weather had not been so bad, she would have kept a better lookout for patrols sent from the stockade. As things were, she did not think the maroons would be bothered to stir from their sleep, but would rely for their protection on the traps and other defenses they had laid around the camp. This was reassurance of a sort but also a warning, because it reminded her she would very soon have to leave Scotland and make her way back to the Nightingale alone.

  To prepare for this separation she took shelter behind a large boulder, and pulled Scotland in beside her; they had reached the edge of the pine forest, with the bare black slopes of the Spyglass opening ahead, looking dull as charcoal when the moon was hidden, but like a frozen torrent when it entered a patch of clear sky. No sooner had they found this bit of quiet than Natty realized she could not give the message of hope she wanted. Less than two hours before, she had sat in the roundhouse and felt equal to any emergency. Now she was like a creature pushed back through history into a more primitive existence.

  Whether or not Scotland noticed this, he confirmed that he must now leave her—and seemed to crouch down so that she thought he might actually be about to break into a run.

  She could only nod.

  “Remember,” he said, “you must tell the captain to catch them off guard. If you are successful, you will hardly need the rest of us to help.”

  “And if we are not?” said Natty.

  Scotland looked at her gently. “If you are not successful, we will do what we can.”

  Natty nodded again.

  “You have not asked me about the silver,” Scotland said, in the same quiet voice.