Silver

by Andrew Motion

  Such questions, not always spoken aloud, passed between us as the day waned, and the afternoon downpour thickened into the customary evening storm, and candles were set on the table in the roundhouse that allowed us to look one another in the eye (or to avoid this sort of directness if we preferred). In several instances, and especially in the matter of how to divide the silver supposing we obtained it, there was a great reluctance to reach firm conclusions; all our conversations ended in “We’ll see what happens,” and “It may not come to that,” and “God will decide.”

  As night fell and I continued listening to my shipmates, I realized my own opinions about how our story would end were equally vague. When I gazed into the darkness I could see myself walking through the pine woods toward the stockade, see us approaching the outer wall, see Smirke rolling toward me—but after that, nothing. Not the dead men who lay around me, nor whether I might be among them. The question were we liberators? would be answered by our enemies and not by ourselves. The future depended on their reactions to us, not on the actions we took against them.

  It was an uncomfortable truth, which I could not avoid remembering when the wind rose at last, and the rain eased, and the captain dismissed us with the opinion that we needed our beauty sleep, because we would be rising in just a few hours. He wished each of us to go directly to our cabin, but I pretended I had not understood and remained on deck for a while longer. I suppose our night watchman was at his usual place above me, gazing across the shining undergrowth—but as far as I was concerned, I was alone with my questions.

  A few hours before, I had looked Death in the eye. A few hours hence—who could know? For the second time in the same day, my mind proved to be too small for the thoughts it contained, and I turned to look at the world instead: the river thrumming along our hull; the pine trees leaning away from the wind; and the moon buffeting the clouds, which seemed made of saffron and ebony.

  All these things kept themselves to themselves, and had nothing to say to me. Nothing until, with no warning and no noise, a large bird broke out of the vegetation opposite, and floated directly over my head, turning down its face (which was like the face of a kitten) to examine me before veering downriver toward the open sea. I thought it must be a species of owl, since the shape of the body and head resembled a barn owl, which I had often seen ghosting over the marshes at home. But this bird was larger, and shone bright silver, and seemed not in the least shy. In fact it turned to look at me again before it disappeared, like a person peering over their shoulder, and seemed to expect that I would immediately sprout wings myself and follow.

  27

  We Reach Our Destination

  I WAS WOKEN by the captain’s bell clanking two o’clock through every part of the ship, and clambered on deck still wiping my eyes. However poorly I had slept did not matter now; I was ready. The rain had drifted away, the clouds were thin, and the moon sat high in the west—all perfect for our plan.

  “Fit as you look, Master Jim?” This was the captain, who did not wait for an answer but led me to the roundhouse, where the rest of our party had already gathered: Bo’sun Kirkby, Mr. Tickle, Mr. Stevenson (who for the time being had bequeathed his crow’s nest to Mr. Lawson), and also another sailor I hardly knew—a little, quick, dark-haired man like an eel, by the name of Mr. Creed.

  “This is for you,” the captain said, as he gave each of the men a cutlass he had broken out from his cupboard; he kept a doughty old pistol for himself, which he tucked into his belt. When it was my turn, he handed over a dagger—which I thought slightly insulting. Seeing my disappointment, he clapped me on the shoulder and said, “That will do you very well, my lad; it will be everything you need”—then ran his thumb approvingly along the edge of the blade and recommended I do the same.

  While he did this, I took the chance to wonder whether we would also be taking our “baskets” with us—and gave him a significant look. He seemed surprised, as if I had challenged his judgment or misunderstood his intention. “We shall leave them on board,” he told me quietly.

  “But if—”

  I had wanted to suggest the pirates might not be so reasonable as he was himself, and might attack us without warning. But I was not allowed to complete my sentence. “I have told you already,” the captain said. “They are security, nothing more. They may not prevent an attack, but at least they are a weapon of a kind. A last ditch.” This was enough to show I could no longer expect him to show me the same fatherly warmth as yesterday; I was his soldier now; I must obey orders.

  “Now gentlemen,” the captain continued, addressing everyone with the same air of command he had just used with me. “Remember what we decided. We are for rescue and parley—we are not for murder. We shall make our country proud.”

  As the captain finished speaking, a murmur of approval rose from us all. Although we were very few, it made us brave to know we had a common purpose, and were led by an honorable man. When his broad face looked at each of us in turn, I felt the night had somehow been replaced by sunlight. My companions were brothers to me. And as they clambered over the side of the Nightingale, and into the jolly-boat that rowed us ashore, I knew they were brothers to one another.

  Our first task was to hack a way up from our valley. The captain passed me his satchel (filled with extra powder for his pistol) so that he was better able to lead us, then set off swinging his cutlass from side to side, with his shoulders heaving and his cocked hat pressed around his ears. The rest of us were grateful for his efforts and pleased to follow. Two, including Mr. Stevenson, had experience of this kind of work, since their earlier lives in His Majesty’s Navy had included spells on shore in India and elsewhere. But the rest were seamen through and through. Had it not been for the distant prospect of silver, which cast a gleam over everything, I am sure they would have preferred to return to the Nightingale and perform their duties on deck.

  Although I had tramped this part of the island already, and was beginning to feel familiar with its moods and geography, my midnight journey almost persuaded me I was seeing the place for the first time. Creatures that had previously spied on me were now asleep—and others I had not previously met came forward to introduce themselves, including dozens of bats that began plunging around our heads when we reached the edge of the pine woods. Mr. Stevenson in particular found this disgusting, and swiped at them with his sword now and again, without ever harming a single one. The rest of us found his antics more annoying than the creatures themselves, and were relieved when we came to the higher ground, where the bats were not so interested in following. Here, I am bound to say, I found something I enjoyed much less than their squeaks and peeps, which was the familiar sound of the surf beating on the rocks below. As we marched southwest it kept up a continuous barrage—a tragic sound, which reminded us the waves were patiently tearing away the earth and returning us to chaos.

  It has been said that time passes differently at night—often more slowly than during the day, then suddenly fast. So it was during our tramp toward Spyglass Hill. For a long while the horizon was nothing but pine trees and tumbling clouds, then in a blink we found ourselves on the open shale beneath the mountain. Moonlight made it seem nothing but a monstrous heap of ash, and therefore a part of the desolation we had come to overthrow. Here and there bands of mist drifted across its high fissures, like gasps escaping from a body. Sometimes shadows turned one of its faces into the profile of a savage, or a man in hiding, or a runaway horse. Otherwise it simply glowered, and darkened the night around it.

  The next part of our journey seemed infinitely long. Our least burden (a sword, a water bottle) was nearly intolerable. The smallest stone turned treacherously under my shoe. Thorny shrubs scratched at my clothes, or tore my hands. And gradually exhaustion began to creep over me—until the ache in my bones, the sweat in my eyes, and the knocking of my heart against my ribs made me think I might prove incapable in the fight to come. When I looked at my friends, I tried to convince myself that I saw no such we
akness in them—more to bolster my spirits than to establish the reality of things.

  At last the captain, with no warning except that he had recently been gazing more carefully at his compass, held up his right hand: we were close to our destination. This was the region where black rock had given way to rhododendron bushes with azalea and other shrubs spreading among them. Their flowers—red, and yellow, and purple—were very prolific, and the scent hung about us very heavily.

  These plants grew in a sprinkling where we first encountered them, but as we continued downhill they pressed closer until with every step we were stroked or prodded by branches—though never so much that we turned from our course. Moreover, the ground here was generally firm, with little winding paths between the bushes, and we were able to make good progress, always provided we did not fall into a trap. The captain took care to avoid such a possibility by slicing off a handy branch, stripping it, then using it as a kind of antenna to explore the ground in front of him.

  When we had walked for several minutes in this careful way, breathing as quietly as possible and feeling grateful to the wind for buffeting the leaves (and so disguising any noise we did make), the captain held up his hand again. In the silence that followed, I heard a dim crackling sound, which I recognized as flames, and noticed occasional fiery gleams and slivers whizzing into the sky. These made us advance even more cautiously—creeping up beside the captain and peering through the leaves in a gap he made for us.

  The stockade stood a mere hundred yards below, giving the same confusing impression of cheerfulness and menace that we had first noticed from the Nightingale. In the central meeting ground, a huge staggering bonfire sent an everlasting stream of sparks into the heavens. Much smaller dabs of yellow candle flame glowed through the windows of the pirates’ log house; the prisoners’ cabin, being entirely windowless, was dark as a rock. I imagined Scotland and the others lying inside it as quietly as fossils.

  Late as it was, several pirates were still moving around the camp—though whether any of them were the original maroons, or guards they had recruited from the Achilles, I could not be sure. It was evidently still their time of pleasure. A few were stretched on the veranda outside their cabin, the tiny red eyes of their pipe bowls sometimes glowing in the darkness. These were obviously drunk or incapacitated in some other way.

  Occasionally the wind carried up coarse bursts of their laughter, or the smack of wood on flesh; at other times, and from parts of the stockade where shadows were too thick for us to see anything in particular, voices sometimes cried out in protest or distress, then others subdued them. The thought that one of these victims might be Natty was too horrible to contemplate. I needed to believe she was alive and elsewhere, in order to do everything expected of me.

  “They will be sleeping soon,” said the captain softly. “We shall watch them, and keep to our plan.” Although I saw the logic of this, I could not help asking how long he thought our wait would last. He held up the fingers of one hand to show he reckoned we had two hours until dawn—then whispered that I should use the time to make up some of the sleep I had lost. I would rather have kept watch, but understood this was an order—and began to look for a patch of ground where I could stretch out.

  While doing this, I glanced out to sea and realized that instead of resting I was going to have to look sharp: a whole army of new clouds was even now arriving over the horizon, and a wind that buffeted the water until it turned a creamy white. The pirates evidently saw this too, to judge by the way their shadows darted around the compound then suddenly vanished, leaving the bonfire spitting like a devil as the rain arrived.

  We had no choice except to make do—retreating to what we reckoned was a safe distance, chopping branches from the bushes round about, then arranging them into a kind of tent with a ragged opening in the front. This gave us shelter, and also a fine view of the storm. The clouds’ first assault proved to be the opening gambit in a campaign that lasted for the next half-hour or so. A storm now began that produced an even more torrential kind of rain; lightning flashed and thunder rolls shook, that might as well have been the start of a second Great Flood: the hillside itself was soon complaining, groaning as it struggled to shrug off or swallow the great weight of water that was thrown onto it.

  When this downpour was over, a third kind of battery began, with the sound of an enormous wind bursting through the gates of heaven and letting them slam shut behind. This bang shook raindrops from the oak leaves all around us, and seemed to dry their tops in an instant. Very soon, however, the same wind erupted out of heaven again and returned to earth in a fury: a few of the trees that had previously bobbed and curtsied now actually collapsed, making very dismal groans.

  Nature could not endure such an attack for long—and when it stopped, it did so with such suddenness I thought a higher authority might actually have taken pity and intervened. The clouds lifted. The wind switched from the east to the southeast and became mild as a lamb. The moon appeared—and shed a soft glow that would not have looked out of place on an English summer night. This allowed me to see that one of the uprooted trees lay directly below us—and its fall had opened a clear view to the stockade.

  The captain also noticed this and immediately screwed his telescope to his eye, frowning with concentration. After satisfying whatever questions were in his mind, he passed the instrument to me and pointed where I should look.

  The instant I had my range, I gasped and winced away—then focused again. I was looking exactly at Smirke, who seemed so close I might almost have reached out and touched him. The villain seemed hardly to have noticed the storm that had nearly torn the island in two, and was crossing the veranda of his log house with a swaggering bowlegged gait. I followed him onto the meeting ground, where he stopped to caress the back wall of his court before strolling on toward the prisoners’ hut. Here he stopped in front of a figure I had not noticed until this moment, but now saw was Jinks, who had exchanged the role of prosecutor for that of guard, which he performed by lolling in a chair with a tankard at his side. As Smirke began speaking, which was of course inaudible to me, Jinks convulsed and scrambled upright, as if he had been reprimanded. Smirke then turned away and pounded a few times on the prisoners’ door—for no better reason, I guessed, than to frighten those inside, and to disturb their sleep. The sound of his blows reached me only faintly, but nevertheless felt like a fist against my heart.

  Was Natty one of those he had just terrorized? When it came to imagining, I would only allow myself to see Scotland. He lay on the floor of his cabin with his eyes wide open, as if the darkness might split apart at any moment and dazzle him with some new and atrocious violence. I heard the planks creak as he shifted his weight. I felt the splintery wood chafing his shoulders. I sensed the heat like cloth across his face. I did all these things—and it made me ashamed to know that I had been jealous when I had thought of him with Natty.

  I returned to myself in time to watch Smirke amble back to his own cabin and disappear inside—where I suppose he must have fallen asleep. At any rate: a torpid silence settled across the camp. Even the doo-dahs were quiet, all standing in their pen among the other creatures, with their backs turned to the breeze so their tail feathers were blown about like broken fans.

  When I handed the telescope back to the captain he said nothing, but gave me a narrow smile. It was a small act of kindness, but did my heart as much good as if he had shaken my hand—and woke in me a mood that was close to contentment. When I looked around at the others, I knew they felt it too, thanks to the spirit of brotherhood that existed between us.

  Although daylight was now so close, the captain again ordered us to rest—to sleep, if possible. I therefore lay down at the edge of our shelter, where its leaves were almost touching my face. Here I swam into a strange in-between state that was neither fully conscious nor quite unconscious, but a cousin of both. And when I did manage to doze a little, my dreams were mostly of losing my way. In one I blundered through a fo
rest of grotesque shapes and sudden noises, until I discovered Natty lying on a bed of moss like a princess in a story. In another I came across a scene of pirates around a fire, gnawing on something hideous and steaming. In a third I found my father on his bed in the Hispaniola, as I had seen him on my last night in my old home. He had the look of death in his face, and the shock of this was enough to wake me—whereupon the cycle of staring and snoozing began once more.

  It was during this spinning time, when I was sometimes in my right mind and sometimes not, that I came closer than ever before to thinking what it would be like to vanish entirely from the earth. All through my childhood, and especially when left to my own devices on the marsh and other solitary places, I had made myself familiar with the facts of our mortality. In particular, I found that as I studied the lives of creatures while they preyed on one another, I was always led to thinking about my mother—whose own life, or rather whose end of life, was the foundation of everything I knew about the world.

  Since leaving home I had seen the face of Death and studied its expressions more closely—in the tragedy of Jordan Hands and his victim, Mr. Sinker; in the work of Smirke and his crew. None of these had actually made me fear for my own life, not even when I had taken my swim, and the sea had shown me the way to heaven. Either I had been too surprised by my peril to assess it properly, or I had expected a miracle to save me, which indeed is what seemed to have happened. Capture, I feared. Pain, I feared. Cowardice—I feared that too. But in my youth and conceit I had thought I was immune to injury. In all my imaginary scenes of disaster, I was always the survivor.

  Now, with rain drips squeezing inside my clothes, and the wet foliage knocking against my cheek, my belief in myself wavered. Because I was my mother’s son, I was Adam’s son. I was bound to die—perhaps this morning, when Smirke might snuff me out like a mosquito. I would never find England again, or hear the river beneath my window. I would never be reunited with my father, or walk on the marshes under the wide sky. I would never see Natty, or know what had become of her.