Skull and Bones
John Drake

For my dear sister LGFF

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

The Beginning

Afterword

Acknowledgements

By the same author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Three bells of the first dog watch

20th July 1735 (Old Style)

Aboard Isabelle Bligh

The Atlantic

The six-pound shot came aboard with a scream and a hiss, smashing one of the mainmast deadeyes, punching holes through the longboat secured over the waist, taking off the arm and shoulder of a seaman, as neat as a surgeon’s knife…and throwing the limb shivering at his feet, as if still alive. The man screamed, and sat down flat with his back to the windward bulwark.

In the horror of the moment, Olivia Rose, sixteen years old and at sea for the first time in her life, turned from her father and clung to the heavy bulk of the lad who’d been doing his best to stand between her and the flying shot.

“Get below!” cried Josiah Burstein, her father. “And get away from him!” He snatched her away, blinking nervously at the boy, for Burstein was a small man while the boy, also only sixteen, was broad and heavy with thick limbs, big fists and a dark, ugly face. But the boy stood back, nodding.

“Get below, Livvy,” he said. “Your pa’s right.”

Seizing the moment, Burstein hustled his daughter down a hatchway, out of the way of shot. He cursed the day he’d set out from Philadelphia to make his fortune in London with his skills as a mathematical instrument maker, for nothing good had come thus far: only Livvy Rose keeping company with that lumpish oaf of a ship’s boy.

Boom! A distant gun fired, and on deck, the crew ducked as another shot came howling down and smashed into the hull. The boy looked astern as his captain yelled from the quarterdeck.

“There, sir!” cried Captain Nehemia Higgs, seizing hold of the man beside him, the ship’s owner Mr Samuel Banbury, and shaking him angrily. “Now where’s your peaceful way?”

Banbury said nothing, but pulled free and, wrenching off his coat and shirt, ran forward to jam the crumpled linen deep into the fallen seaman’s hideous injury in an effort to stem the flow of blood.

“Aaaaaaaah!” screeched the wounded man.

“And may I now – in God’s name – turn to my guns?” yelled Captain Higgs.

“Aye!” roared the crew, nearly two dozen of them, angrily waiting for the order. Their captain might be a Quaker, but at least he was one of the right sort – unlike Mr Banbury, who was clearly one of the wrong sort. The crew, on the other hand, weren’t no sort of Quakers at all – not them, by God and the Devil! And they weren’t about to give up their wages at the mere sight of a black flag!

Ignoring them, Banbury tugged off his belt and managed to strap it round the wounded seaman’s chest to hold the dripping red bundle in place. Looking around him for help, he spotted the boy.

“You!” cried Banbury. “Give me your shirt!”

So two shirts were clapped on the wound, with the boy close enough to be sprayed by the victim’s spittle and drenched in his blood. But he could see it weren’t no use. Soon the screaming stopped and the man’s eyes closed. Tommy Trimstone was his name; from Ilfracombe in Devon, and now dead.

The boy stood up from the corpse, wiping his hands on his breeches. He’d never seen death and didn’t know what to make of it. He looked to his captain again, cussing and blinding as no Quaker should, and then finally raising a telescope to check on their pursuers, before calling to the boy.

“Come here, you young sod!” he cried. “Take this bastard glass and get into the bastard top, and keep watch on that bugger –” he pointed to the oncoming ship – “and be quick about it, or I’ll skin the bleeding arse off you!” With all hands on deck, standing by to man his guns, Higgs needed a lookout.

The boy went up the shrouds at the run, and got himself nice and tight into the maintop. He levelled the glass…

“What d’you see?” yelled Captain Higgs.

The boy saw a sharp-keeled, rake-masted brig of some two hundred tons: deeply sparred, and with ports for twenty guns. The wind was weak so she was under all sail, and coming on only slowly, but her decks were black with armed men, which was not surprising for a vessel that flew the skull and bones.

Boom! Up went another cloud of white from the enemy’s bow, followed swiftly by the deadly howl of shot heading their way. It shrieked high over the masts as the boy called down to the quarterdeck, telling what he’d seen.

“You heard that,” said Higgs to Banbury. “We must defend ourselves!”

“Can we not outrun them?” said Banbury. “You have three masts to their two!”

Higgs sneered from the depth of his seaman’s soul at this ludicrous dollop of landlubber’s shite. Isabelle Bligh was a Bristol-built West Indiaman: well found, and fit in all respects for sea. But she was designed for cargo, not swiftness. In her favour, however, was the fact that she bore sixteen guns and was heavily timbered, so if it came to cannonading, she might well drive off a lighter vessel that was built purely for speed. Higgs yelled this thought at Banbury, but dared not act without his word.

Up in the top, the boy looked down, puzzled. Banbury and Higgs were Quakers that weren’t supposed to fight. But the ship had guns, like other Quaker ships, so why not use them? The boy shook his head. He didn’t know. He only knew that Banbury was a very special Quaker, come out from England to staunch the slave trade among the Pennsylvania Quakers, and now going home. Clearly Cap’n Higgs was afraid of Banbury. Perhaps it was like the Catholics with their pope?

Boom! Another shot from the pirate’s bow-chaser. They were close enough now that the boy could see the men working the gun. Again the shot went wide, and he watched them haul in, sponge out and re-load. And then he had a nasty thought. For the first time it occurred to him – in his youth and innocence – that the pirates…might actually capture the ship! He groaned in fear of what they would do to Olivia Rose.

Plump and luscious with shining skin and titian hair, Livvy was the only female aboard. He blushed for the things the hands said about her, behind her back. What chance would she stand if such men as them – but worse – got hold of her?

Then another flag went up on the pirate brig: a plain, red flag. The boy didn’t know what it meant, but his mates did, down below.

“Bugger me,” said one, “it’s the Jolly Roger!”

“Gawd ’elp us,” said another.

“Higgs,” demanded Banbury, “what’s that red flag?”

“The Jolie Rouge,” said Higgs. “The ‘Pretty Red One’ of the French Buccaneers.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means no quarter to those that fight,” he said. “It’s death to all aboard.”

“But only if we fight?”

“Aye.” Higgs scowled, for he knew this gave the game to Banbury.

Banbury heaved a sigh of relief as if a tremendous burden had just fallen away, relieving him of the agonising balancing act between principle and expediency. For he was a merchant as well as a Quaker, and wasn’t quite so firm against fighting as he’d said. The truth was that he had his reputation to consider, having risen high within the Society of Friends, for he was clerk to The Meeting for Sufferings of the London Quakers, which was as near to a governing body as their prayerful egalitarianism permitted, and thus his actions would be closely examined upon his return by rivals ever-eager to take his place.

“Strike your colours, Captain,” he said, “and pray for deliverance!”

The boy saw everything. Isabelle Bligh lowered her ensign and backed her topsail in surrender. The pirates cheered and came alongside in a squealing of blocks and a rumble of canvas, taking in sail and heaving grapnels over the side to bind the ships together. Then they were swarming aboard, fifty strong and heavily armed, as the two vessels rolled under the rumble of boots on timber.

The boy didn’t understand their speech, which seemed to be French. But they yelled merrily and a man with a feathered hat and a bandolier of many pistols embraced Captain Higgs and kissed him on both cheeks for a good fellow, while his men herded the crew for’ard. Then the boy gulped as Sam Collis, biggest man aboard, took exception and started shouting…and they shot him dead! It was ruthless, merciless and hideous. Bang! Bang! Two puffs of smoke, and a decent seaman went down and was kicked aside like a piece of rubbish.

Isabelle Bligh’s people groaned in horror, but they were pushed to the fo’c’sle with the pirate captain – he of the feathered hat – yelling at them in English: “Your lives are yours, messieurs! Be good and make no fight, and you shall have your ship when we are done with her!”

“Aye!” cried Mr ‘Meeting for Sufferings’ Banbury. “It is loot they seek, not blood!” And he joined in, shoving Captain Higgs and the rest for’ard as if he were one of the pirate’s own band, and agreeing with every word the villain spoke. The boy frowned heavily.

“Bleedin’ traitor!” he muttered.

And then the pirates got down to the serious business of smashing open everything that was locked, and breaking into the cargo, and up-ending every bottle in the ship with the most tremendous noise, but all in good temper. Most of them vanished below for this vital work, leaving a dozen men, well armed with firelocks, to guard the crew.

And none of them took the trouble to look up into the maintop where the boy was hiding. And since nobody saw him, he watched as the smashing and cheering went on and on, and men staggered about the decks in the captain’s best clothes and Mr Banbury’s hat, gorging on pork and pickles and wine and brandy.

Later still, the boy shuddered in horror as a girl’s shriek came from below, and men emerged through the quarterdeck hatchway, grinning and leering, with Olivia Rose and her father dragged behind them. The father was bloodied and staggering, and was kicked into a semi-conscious heap by the mizzenmast. But there was a roar from the pirates on sight of the girl, and greedy hands reached out to paw and grab and grope. Her long hair was loose, her gown was ripped, pale flesh gleamed and she screamed and screamed.

But the pirate leader – he of the feathered hat – kicked his way through the press, seized Olivia Rose by the arm, and merrily fired a pistol in the air for attention.

“Après moi, mes enfants!” he cried, grinning at his men. “Je serai le premier!” And they cheered and laughed, and fired off a thundering fusillade in salute.

Up in the maintop the boy shook with rage.

Rage doesn’t just conquer fear. Rage annihilates it. Rage brings boiling fury such that no grain of self-preservation remains, nor any consideration of danger, nor threat of weapons. Hence the Viking berserker transported into blood-spattering frenzy…and the ship’s boy that leapt bare-chested into open air from the maintop to slide down one of the backstays and launch himself – twenty feet from the deck – as a human projectile, landing feet first on the feathered head of the pirate captain – who went down with his neck snapped on a jutting boot, and his face burst open like rotten fruit as the impetus of the boy’s fall drove him smashing into the pine of the quarterdeck planking.

Then…uproar and confusion. The pirates bellowed and roared, surprised for an instant, shocked and disbelieving, then snapping pistols at the boy, forgetting they were empty. Taking their example, he snatched the pistols from the dead pirate’s bandolier – there were seven of them, ready loaded – and let fly, left and right. Men shrieked and fell as the bullets struck, and the rest hung back while the pistols lasted, then charged, and the boy was blocking slashing blades with the heavy barrel of a hot, smoking pistol, which soon got lost. Bodies heaved and bundled and swayed, and more men piled in, and the fight rolled and staggered, with the boy in the middle, armed only with his own two fists and his unhinged, manic fury. And then he got hold of a cutlass, which he couldn’t swing in the dense press, so he used it two-handed as a spear, shoving it into an open mouth and out the back of a head, then wrenching it free and punching out another man’s teeth with the iron hand-guard, and on and on…

But with nearly twenty pirates on the quarterdeck and more coming up from below, there could be only one end to the fight…except that the pirates were remarkably clumsy and got in each other’s way, and they’d fired off their pistols and muskets…and on the fo’c’sle, seeing their guards with backs turned, gaping at the fight on the quarterdeck, Captain Higgs had his own moment of rage.

“Sod you, you bugger!” he said to the hand-wringing Banbury. “Come on, lads!” he cried, pulling a belaying pin from the pinrail, swinging it down with a crunch on to the blue-kerchiefed head of a mulatto pirate and snatching up the carbine that he dropped. The guards hadn’t fired off their arms, so Higgs blasted lead and flame at three-feet range into the chest of another pirate even as he turned back to face the sudden danger.

After that, it was hellfire and damnation aboard the good ship Isabelle Bligh and Quakerism went over the side with the dead. For Isabelle Bligh’s crew were seething that they’d not manned their guns in the first place, and were out for vengeance for their murdered shipmate. So even though they were outnumbered more than two-to-one, they recaptured their ship, fighting at first with belaying pins and sailor’s knives, and then taking up the weapons of their foes…and with the considerable advantage that many of the pirates were blind staggering drunk.

When Captain Higgs finally called an end to the slaughter, less than a quarter of those who’d come aboard as bold dogs and roaring boys were left alive to be clapped like slaves under hatches, and the pirate ship was sailing under a prize crew, behind the triumphant Isabelle Bligh, such that even Samuel Banbury’s conscience was eased by the money he’d make in selling her.

As for the boy who’d saved the day: he was ship’s hero! Without his plunge from the maintop there would have been no fight, and no triumph. So there were glorious weeks of a merry voyage when even Olivia Rose’s father did not try to keep her and the boy apart, and the two fell as deeply in love as ever it is possible for a pair of sixteen-year-olds to do: he loving her for her beauty and sweet kindness, and she loving him for those things that she saw that others did not, especially his limitless capacity to love. She saw that he would never be happy without a cause to follow and a loved one to serve. In her eyes this transformed Caliban the ugly into Ariel the shining one.

It was a wonderful, golden, glorious romance that approached…reached…and transcended Heaven on Earth, for the two young lovers.

“You are my beau chevalier sans peur et sans reproche,” she said to him once.

“What’s that?” he said.

“It means…my fair knight, fearless and pure.”

He blushed.

And so they sat together, and talked together, she telling him stories and playing that ancient game with seashells – at which she was adept – whereby swift movement of the shells deceives the onlooker who cannot tell which hides the pea. He loved the game, and the curious West Indian shells she played it with, and of which she had a collection. And he loved the country love songs that she sang to him of an evening, with the crew sitting quietly and joining in the chorus.

But voyages end. This one ended in London, and there the two were parted by duty: hers to her father, and his to his trade. There were bitter tears and mighty promises of faithfulness when finally, in the Thames below London Bridge, she was about to go into the boat that would take her and her father ashore to their new life. In that tragic moment, he gave her the traditional seaman’s love-token of a staybusk that he’d carved from whalebone with his own hand. In return, she gave him a lock of her hair, and half a dozen of the West Indian shells that he loved.

“I’ll be back for you, Livvy Rose,” he said, “when I’ve made me pile!”

“Be a good boy,” she said. “And remember me.”

And indeed he did. He remembered her to the dying second of his dying day, and he really did try to come back to claim her. But he never quite made his pile, and day by day other duties intervened, until finally it was too late, because – in the meanwhile – he had become something very other than a good boy.

For he was led astray. He was led bad astray was Billy Bones.

Chapter 2

Dinner time, 12th March 1753

Aboard HMS Oraclaesus

Anchored in the southern anchorage

Flint’s Island

Chk-chk-chk! Groggy the monkey chattered and reached his little hands for the horn mug. At first, when they saw his love for strong drink, the crew had called him “Old Grog”. But they turned this into a pet name when the monkey became ship’s favourite and ran from mess to mess at dinner time, and they fed him drink till he staggered and lost his nimble footing and couldn’t even lie on the deck without hanging on, and they laughed and laughed at his merry antics.

But they didn’t laugh today. Not with most of them too sick for their dinners and busting with headache besides. That made for a quiet dinner time in the close wooden cave of the lower deck, even with twenty mess-tables and near two hundred men trying – and mostly failing – to shovel down their dinners. They managed the drink though, except what they gave to Groggy.

“Here y’are, matey,” said one of the tars, holding out his mug for Groggy to take a sip and marvelling at the near-human way the monkey took it. The tar stroked the furry head and smiled, for Groggy was a handsome creature: big for a monkey, almost an ape, with thick brown fur, a creamy-white face and chest, bright, intelligent eyes and a long tail that served as an extra hand when he went aloft and leapt through the rigging as if in his jungle home.

He was the pet of all the squadron, for his reputation had spread and he’d been aboard the sloops Bounder and Jumper to be shown off, and all hands had crowded round to see him. But it was the flagship that owned him, for rank has its privileges as all the world knows.

“Take a drop o’ mine,” said another tar, offering his mug, but:

“No!” cried a voice from the quarterdeck, and Groggy flinched and looked up, as they all did.

Captain Baggot, commander of the squadron, was bellowing loud enough to be heard from keelson to main-truck. “No!” he cried. “I will not be deterred!” Then the voice sank to an incoherent rumbling, and the men at the mess-tables looked at one another in silence. As in most ships, there were no secrets aboard Oraclaesus, whatever delusions her officers might have in the matter, and the entire crew knew what was under discussion by their masters. They knew it, and it made them uneasy.

Above, Baggot stood with his hands clasped behind his back in the brilliant tropical sunshine and stamped his foot in rage, for he was confronted on his own quarterdeck by the only man in the entire squadron whom he could not dismiss, disrate or discipline: Dr Robert Stanley, the ship’s chaplain.

Fizzing with anger, Baggot turned his back on Stanley, and tried to ignore the fact that he was under the gaze of numerous spectators: lieutenants, master’s mates and midshipmen, together with all those of the ship’s lesser people who were on duty and not at their victuals down below. Baggot avoided their eyes and stared fixedly ahead, past mainmast, foremast, bowsprit and rigging, over the deep blue waters of the anchorage, to stare at Flint’s blasted island with its blasted jungles and its blasted sandy beaches and its blasted hills, not ten minutes by ship’s boat from where he was standing…and which island – God knows blasted where but somewhere – hid a most colossal fortune in gold, silver and stones: a treasure estimated at the incredible amount of eight hundred thousand blasted pounds, which he – Captain John Baggot – was determined to find, dig up, bring aboard, and take home in triumph to England where a fat slice of the treasure would be his, as prize money, and with it a promotion and, in all probability, a seat in the House of Lords!

But…staring into the back of his head, even this blasted instant, and wearing his blasted clerical wig, was Dr Robert Stanley, who in the first place was appointed by the Chaplain General and not by the Royal Navy, and who in the second place had a brain like a whetted razor, and in the third place – which place out-ranked all other places – had tremendous and powerful patrons.

“Captain,” said Dr Stanley, “a moment’s reflection will show you that I speak for the good of the squadron and all those embarked aboard.” He spoke quietly and politely, but Baggot only shook his head.

“Be damned if I’ll be told by you, sir!” he said. “Be damned if I will!” And he stamped his foot like a petulant child sent on an errand who refuses to go but knows he must obey in the end.

“Ah!” said Dr Stanley, for he saw that he was winning, then he nodded briefly at two young officers standing on the downwind side of the quarterdeck with the rest. These were Lieutenant Hastings and Mr Midshipman Povey: old enemies of the pirate Flint. They’d suffered in the blood-drenched mutiny he’d engineered on this very island, and had then been set adrift by him with the few loyal hands, saving the lives of all by their seamanship. And now they were most important young gentlemen – especially Lieutenant Hastings, since his mother was the society beauty Lady Constance Hastings, sister-in-law to Mr Pelham the Prime Minister. Lady Constance – outraged at Flint’s mutinous ill-treatment of her son – had badgered Pelham into equipping and sending out the crack squadron – comprised of Oraclaesus and her consorts – that had caught Flint…and now had him in irons down below!

Thus the Prime Minister himself stood behind the expedition and he had taken an active interest in many of the posts within it…including that of Dr Stanley, who now turned to another of the spectators, Mr Lemming the ship’s surgeon. Lemming had been summoned to the deck by Stanley in readiness for this moment, and was now wrenching his hat into rags in trepidation at the role he must play.

“Captain,” said Dr Stanley, “Mr Lemming will vouch for the truth of what I say…” He turned to Lemming.

“Um…er…” said Lemming, in terror of his captain’s wrath.

“Come, sir!” said Stanley to Lemming. “A good three-quarters of this ship’s people and those of Bounder and Jumper are struck down with fever and headache, are they not?”

“Yes, sir,” said Lemming, for it was unchallengeable fact.

“And it is the invariable characteristic of West India fevers,” said Stanley, “that they strike worst upon ships anchored close inshore, and especially those in enclosed anchorages such as this –” He waved a hand at the great crescent sweep of the shore, over three miles from end to end, that curved in foetid embrace around the anchorage, with festering swamps and steaming, livid-green jungles crowding down upon the white sands of the beach. It was a bad enough fevertrap by itself, made worse by the small island that lay close off it, preventing the sea breeze from sweeping away the miasma.

“Yes,” said Lemming, finding courage in truth. “Damn place stinks of fever. I said so as we came in.” Which latter statement was only partly true, for he’d said it to himself and hadn’t had the courage to voice it aloud, not when all hands were wild eager for a treasure hunt.

“There, sir!” said Stanley, to Captain Baggot’s back. “There you have it from our surgeon. If we stay anchored here – for whatever reason – we shall see this fever grow among the crew, perhaps taking the lives of all aboard.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” said Lemming, at last. “The yellow jack and the ague can kill seven in ten of those that ain’t seasoned. And we don’t even know what this fever is, for I’ve never seen the like before.”

But Captain Baggot wasn’t quite ready to give in. Not yet. Not even when he was unwell himself, having brought up his last meal like a seasick landman, with the pain throbbing behind his eyes and getting worse with each passing hour.

“Flint!” he spat. “It’s all down to blasted Flint. He knows this blasted island and all its blasted tricks. Damn me if I’ll not go below and question him again.” He turned to face Stanley. “And you, Mr Chaplain, shall come with me!”

“Gentlemen,” said Flint, smooth face glowing in the lantern light, “I really do not know how I can be of service to you.” Graceful and elegant, he was an intensely handsome and charismatic man, with Mediterranean, olive skin, fine teeth, and a steady gaze that made lesser men nervous – most men being lesser in that respect.

“But I must protest again,” said Flint, “against the monstrous injustice that has been done to Mr Bones, here, who is a loyal heart and true.”

“Aye!” said Billy Bones. “And ready to do my duty now, as ever I was before!”

Bones was the perfect opposite of Flint: a huge, broken-nosed, lumpish clod with massive fists, broad shoulders and a strong whiff of the lower deck about him – for all that he’d been a master’s mate in the king’s service, accustomed to walk the quarterdeck and take his noon observation.

Flint and Billy Bones had spent the last week secured down below, deep in the damp, evil-smelling, hold where it was always dark and the rats cavorted and played. Both men wore irons on their legs and a chain passed between them, secured to a massive ringbolt driven into the thickness of the hull.

“You’re a bloody rogue and a pirate, Flint,” said Baggot. “The only reason I don’t hang you now is that I’m ordered to take you home for the Court of Admiralty to string up at Wapping!”

Stanley sighed. The interview was going the way of several others that had preceded it. Baggot could not control his lust for gold and his hatred of a mutineer, and the sight of the urbane Flint, smiling and smiling and talking of innocence, provoked him beyond endurance. But where others were concerned, Flint was devilish persuasive. Stanley looked at the two marines who’d accompanied them, bearing muskets and ball cartridge as a precaution. They were hanging on every word Flint uttered, and Stanley knew that rumours were circulating on the lower deck that Flint wasn’t a pirate and mutineer at all, just a victim of circumstance, while Mr Bones was innocent of all charges whatsoever. That was Flint’s work, day by day talking to the hands sent down to deliver food and water and take away the slops.

“Mr Flint,” said Stanley, “cannot we set these matters aside? We are faced with an unknown fever, and we seek your advice. So I beseech you to behave…” Stanley paused for effect “…to behave as a man should…who must soon face divine judgement.” The chaplain peered closely at Flint, trying to gauge the impact of his words. “So, what is this pestilence, sir? Speak if you know, for your mortal soul is at risk.”

Flint contemplated Dr Stanley.

Clever, he thought. Very clever. Then he turned to Baggot, a man for whom he had nothing but contempt. If he, Joe Flint, had been granted power over a man with hidden treasure, that man would have been put to merciless torture until he revealed its whereabouts. So he sneered at Baggot; for any man who denied himself these obvious means deserved to stay poor! Stanley, however, was clearly a different proposition; subtle means would be required with him.

“Dr Stanley,” said Flint, and lowered his eyes, “it is true that I myself am beyond hope…” He raised a weary hand, as if against life’s iniquitous burdens. “Evidence is contrived against me and, corrupt and mendacious as it is, nevertheless it proves too strong for truth to prevail!”

“Oh, shut up, you posturing hypocrite!” said Baggot. “Lying toad that you are!”

“Sir!” protested Stanley. “I beg that you allow me to conduct this interview.”

“Damned if I will!” said Baggot and turned to go.

“Gentlemen!” cried Flint. “I beg that you listen. I am a lost man, so take these words as dying declaration, and accord them the special credence that is their due…”

There was silence. Such was the power of Flint’s address that no man moved or spoke, not even Captain Baggot, while the two marines were goggling and even Dr Stanley was impressed.

“I offer truth for truth!” said Flint. “I shall tell you the source of this island fever. I shall give it to you freely. But in exchange I ask that you accept this blameless man –” he looked at Billy Bones – “as the innocent that he is.”

Stanley looked at Baggot. Baggot looked at Stanley. The two marines looked on. Baggot frowned.

“What about the treasure?” he said.

“Sir,” said Flint, “I swear on my soul, and in the name of that Almighty Being before whose throne I must soon present myself…that I know nothing of any treasure.”

“Oh bugger,” said Baggot, but quietly.

“And the pestilence?” said Stanley.

“It is caused by the island’s monkeys, sir,” said Flint.

“WHAT?” Baggot, Stanley and the marines spoke as one.

“The monkeys. Because of them, you dare not land on the island.”

“But we’ve got one aboard!” said Baggot. “Little Groggy.”

“Then kill him!” cried Flint. “And get to sea. You are in peril of your lives!”

“Oh Christ!” said Baggot.

“Sir!” protested Stanley.

“Sorry, Mr Chaplain…but, oh Christ!”

There was a pounding of feet as four men raced for the ladders and companionways that led to the light. Then there was a great shouting, and drums beating, and calling up of all hands, and the rattling, clattering, rumbling, squeaking of a great ship getting ready for sea, with capstans clanking, blocks humming, yards hauling aloft and the anchor cables coming aboard, dripping wet and shaking off their weed, to the stamping and chanting of the crew.

Down below, forgotten for the moment, Joe Flint and Billy Bones sat with one dim lantern between them, listening to the sounds that had defined their lives as long as they could remember.

“Why did you tell ‘em about the monkey?” said Billy Bones. “You brought him aboard on purpose, for to spread the fever!”

Flint smiled. “Indeed, Mr Bones. But now his work is done. He’s been aboard all three ships.”

“How d’you know that?”

Flint sighed. “Don’t you ever listen, Billy, to the men who come to feed us?”

“Oh.” Bones frowned. “But you didn’t tell ‘em it was smallpox the monkeys bring. And a special smallpox besides, that’s fearful worse than usual.”

“No. They’ll find that out soon enough…when it kills nine out of ten of them.”

“But some’ll be unharmed?”

“Yes. Those who’ve had it before and survived.”

“And you and me, Cap’n.”

“Yes. For you’ve had it, and I’m protected.”

“And will I be freed, now, for what you told that Parson?”

“I think so. The learned doctor believed me.”

“And then what’ll I do?”

Flint told him: in detail. Billy Bones pondered, asked a few more questions to be sure, and then the two sat quiet as the massive wooden hull began to move.

“Cap’n,” said Billy Bones, finally.

“What?”

“The goods, Cap’n. The gold…”

“Well?”

“They took all your papers and such, didn’t they?”

Flint smiled. “Did they?”

“So how’ll we…how’ll you…find the goods again, without charts and notes?”

“Billy, my Billy! Billy-my-little-chicken! You really must leave all such matters to me. Do you understand?”

Billy Bones gulped. The tone of Flint’s voice had barely changed but Billy Bones knew that this subject must not be raised again. He was immune to smallpox, but not to fear of Flint.

“You just do as you’ve been bid, Mr Bones. When the time comes.”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” said Billy Bones, for Livvy Rose had measured him with the precision of her father’s mathematical instruments, recognising that the faithful Billy was born to follow. And now he would follow Flint – even stripped of rank and bound in chains – and keep on following him to the ends of the earth. For Flint was Billy Bones’s chosen master.

Chapter 3

Dinner time, 12th March 1753

Aboard Walrus

The Atlantic

All aboard who weren’t on watch gobbled down their dinners with knives, fingers and spoons, lounging among the guns on the maindeck in the sunshine, while Walrus bowled along under all plain sail. They cheered and raised their mugs, spluttering grog and food in all directions as they bawled out their song, to the tune of a fiddler and a piper.

Here’s to Bonnie Prince Charlie,

That does our king remain,

And save him from his exile,

To bring him home again!

Two men looked on in silence. They were not gobbling their dinners because they were on watch, and they weren’t singing because they weren’t Jacobites. They were Long John Silver, elected captain of the ship, and his master gunner, Israel Hands. Both wore the long coats and tricorne hats that proclaimed their rank, and they stood by the helmsman at the ten-foot tiller on the quarterdeck, braced against the ship’s canted deck with practised ease, even Long John with his timber limb.

Israel Hands smiled to see Long John recovering at last, after wounds that had struck him down in the fight with the navy over Flint’s Island, which Walrus barely escaped, leaving Flint in the navy’s hands, and his Treasure still hidden ashore.

Now Tom Allardyce the bosun was on his feet and giving the second verse. He was a tall, yellow-haired Scot who’d fought at Culloden seven years earlier, when the English army’s modern musketry butchered a medieval mob of Highland swordsmen: the Protestant House of Hanover defeating the Catholic House of Stuart.

Here’s to the devil to take fat George,

And fetch him down to Hell,

To trim his Hanoverian ears,

And roast his arse full well!

Allardyce was a Jacobite to the soul and hated King George with a passion. As he sang, he went among the crew slapping shoulders while they cheered him on. Some cheered because they supported his cause, while others had no loyalty to a king who was chasing them with a noose.

“Merry buggers, ain’t they?” said Israel Hands, looking at the crew. Then he glanced anxiously up at Long John’s big, square face.

“Will they do, John? And have you chosen your course?”

Silver reached up to pet the big green parrot that sat with its claws clamped into the material of his coat.

“What do you think, Cap’n Flint?” he said, tickling the bird’s chest. She squawked and shifted her feet and nuzzled his ear.

“Merry Buggers!” she said, for she had a perfect gift of mimicry, and used words to purpose, and with meaning.

Long John sighed, for he had much on his mind.

“Well, the ship won’t do,” he said, looking Walrus over. She was a New England schooner: two hundred tons burden, a hundred feet from bow to stern, sharp-hulled and with a broad spread of canvas on two raked masts. She mounted fourteen six-pounder guns and had once been a swift, handy ship, but she’d suffered a battering in recent actions, and hadn’t been careened for months, which meant – in these tropical waters – that the underwater hull must be a seething tangle of weeds and growth.

“A Thames barge would out-sail her as she is!” said Silver.

“Does that mean we’ll be chasing one?” said Israel Hands.

“We’ve just thirty-two hands,” said Silver, ignoring the remark.

“Gentlemen o’ fortune every one!” said Israel Hands.

“Mostly…but them two ain’t! Useless bloody lubbers!”

Silver nodded at a pair of men who were sitting miserably apart from the crew. They wore long coats and were the ship’s navigating officers – such as they were – for neither Silver nor anyone else aboard had that skill. The pair of them had been taken out of the merchant service under Silver’s promise to be freed at Upper Barbados – Walrus’s destination – for they were honest men. Honest, but found wanting. They might be able to feel their way up a coastline, but they were at a loss on the deep waters, and growing more nervous each day.

“Them swabs has only got this far by dead reckoning and fair weather!” said Silver. “One good blow, and we’ll be off their charts. Then God help us all!”

“Never mind them,” said Israel Hands. “We’ll hire afresh and take on others, too.” He looked sideways at Long John and decided to broach the great question: “What worries me, John, is that thirty-three hands is plenty for a merchantman, but not for such business as ours.”

Silver, however, wouldn’t be drawn. He shook his head and fell deep into his own thoughts. He’d never wanted to be a pirate – a “gentleman o’ fortune” – but had become one because it was that or certain death. And thus by easy stages to robbery and murder, and putting a pistol ball into a child – which, of all the things he’d done, came back most often to flog him with guilt, though he’d done it of necessity, to stop the spread of island smallpox. Even now he could feel the jump of his pistol firing and see the open-mouthed disbelief on the face of Ratty Richards, ship’s boy, as he dropped down dead; slaughtered by the captain he worshipped.

And now he had a wife whom he loved fiercely, and who’d made clear that she’d not live with him unless he became an honest man. Or so she said…But did she mean it? She loved him; he knew that much. Or so he thought.

So…there was what the crew wanted, which was prizes, gold, tarts and rum. There was what she wanted, which was an honest life for Mr and Mrs Silver. And then there was what he wanted…which he didn’t know, and couldn’t decide because he couldn’t live without her and maybe couldn’t live with her. The bitter internal conflict was turning him sour and angry.

“John,” said Israel Hands and nudged him, “it’s her…”

Silver turned. She’d come up from below decks without him even seeing. Now she stood with her hands on her hips facing him. She was a small, slim, black girl, not yet eighteen years old, extremely lovely in face and figure, with a dainty elegance of movement, and of speech and manners too. She stood in a cotton gown and a straw hat, looking up at Silver and defying him.

“Well?” she said, but he avoided her eyes and said nothing. “Huh!” she said, investing the simple sound with eloquence.

All hands were watching. They shifted and muttered and a few got up for a better look. These arguments had gone on for days, and now Silver roused himself and tried to speak gentle. He tried to explain. So did she, for a while, but soon they were shouting and screeching, with fists clenched and words spat viciously, as tempers burst and fury rose in the passionate rage of a man and woman for whom no one else in the whole wide world mattered quite so much as the other.

As for the spectators, they shrugged their shoulders and scratched their armpits and turned away, no longer entertained by a piece of theatre that had been played out flat. They thought Silver should put the rod across her plump little arse till she saw reason. But that was his business and they’d chosen him as their leader, so there weren’t no more to be said in the matter. Selena was his wife and that was that.

But later, the ship’s surgeon, Mr Cowdray, was forced to join the quarrel. The only gentleman in the ship, he’d practised in London till learned rivals drove him out for his ludicrous insistence on boiling his instruments before surgery, which he said prevented sepsis, and which they couldn’t abide because it did. Selena liked Cowdray and valued his opinion, and thus she’d asked him to meet her on the forecastle after dark.

“What do you want, girl? Bringing me here?” he looked back down the dark length of the ship, past masts and bulging sails, and hung on to the rail against the ship’s motion, flinching as spray came over the plunging bow.

“It’s wide open here,” she said, “so nobody can say you’re meeting me in secret.”

“And why should I do that?” he said.

She shrugged. She’d seen how he looked at her. He might be a surgeon, but he was a man, even if he was middle-aged.

“You can always say you were going to use the heads,” she said.

“Huh!” said Cowdray, looking at the “seats of ease” on either side of the bowsprit: a pair of squat boxes with holes cut in them for seamen to relieve themselves. “So what is it?” he said.

“Why won’t he give up being a pirate?”

“He’s not a pirate, he’s a gentleman of fortune.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“No! We sign the Book of Articles and every man votes. It is the democracy of the Greeks.”

“Articles! He talks about them all the time, and he –”

“Selena, listen to me.”

“But he does.”

“Please, please, listen. I can’t be him. I can’t speak for him.”

“So who do you speak for?”

“For the crew! It’s a good life for them. Equal shares and light work. Merchant owners save money with small crews that must rupture themselves to work the ship, while we have many hands to ease the load. And we sail in soft waters: the Caribbean, the Gold Coast, the Indian Ocean…You should try the whale fisheries, my girl, up beyond Newfoundland! The ice hangs from the rigging and the lookouts are found frozen dead when the watch changes. And with us, there’s no flogging the last man up the mast nor the last to trice his hammock as the navy does, and there’s music and drink when you want it, and the chance to get rich –”

“By thieving and killing!”

“In which regard we’re no worse than the king’s ships, that kill men and take prizes!”

“But that’s war.”

“Dulce bellum inexpertis: war is sweet to those who don’t know it!”

“Bah!” she said, striding off and leaving him in the dark. Him and his annoying habit of spouting Latin.

So the matter was not resolved, and Silver and Selena lived apart in the ship and couldn’t meet without a quarrel. And Silver became bad tempered, and not the man he had been. And that was bad…but worse was to come.

Chapter 4

Half an hour before sunset

12th March 1753

Aboard Oraclaesus’s longboat

The southern anchorage

Flint’s Island

Boom! A signal gun blew white powder smoke from Oraclaesus’s quarterdeck, and echoed across the still waters. It was the signal for boats to give up for the day and return to their ships.

“Thank God!” said Mr Midshipman Povey to himself, and “Hold water!” he bellowed at the boat’s crew. At least he tried to bellow, but his throat was sore and his head ached, and he hadn’t the strength.

Twenty sweat-soaked men collapsed over their oars, shafts stabbing raggedly in all directions, crossing and clattering in a disgraceful fashion that should have earned a blistering rebuke from the coxswain. But he was preoccupied with scratching the blotches on his face and barely hanging on to the tiller, he was so dizzy.

“Bloody shambles,” mumbled Povey. He looked across the anchorage in the dimming light, taking in the idly swirling boats and ships, and the voices everywhere raised in bickering argument. There was no wind in the anchorage, so the squadron was kedging out: each ship launching its best boat, a light anchor slung beneath, waiting until the smaller vessel had pulled ahead and dropped anchor before manning the capstan to haul on the anchor cable, thereby laboriously drawing the ship forward. Then up anchor and do it again! Then again and again till the sails should feel the wind of the open sea.

The drill was simple. It was heavy work needing no unusual talent. The squadron should have been out of the anchorage and under way in a few hours. But they weren’t. Everything had gone wrong: cables fouled, oar stroke lost, tempers gone and men falling exhausted at their duties who couldn’t be roused, not even with a rope’s end.

It was the island fever. The enemy that they were trying to escape was already among them! Povey grinned stupidly, thick-headedly. It was just like those dreams where you were desperate to run but couldn’t because your legs were made of lead. The fever was doing its utmost to keep them on the island.

“Cast off hawser!” said Povey, and the hands made clumsy shift to loose the heavy rope by which the anchor was suspended beneath the boat. The boat wallowed heavily as the great load was shed, and the anchor went down to the bottom; they’d find it easily enough tomorrow by following the cable. “Back larboard, pull starboard!” said Povey, and the longboat turned in the water. “Give way!” he commanded, and they began pulling for their food and their grog, and a few hours’ sleep. That should have cheered them up, but it didn’t. Povey looked down the banks of oarsmen, most of whom were sweating heavily even though it was cool evening. Some – like the coxswain – were coming out in a rash.

Bounder and Jumper were likewise recovering their boats and dropping their main anchors to moor for the night, as was the flagship. Povey sighed at the thought of all the heavy labour of weighing that would have to be performed again in the morning. But by this time they were bumping against the high oaken side of Oraclaesus and he was ordering “Toss Oars!” – the hands making a dog’s breakfast of this simple command – and himself about to go first out of the boat and up the ship’s side…when the officer of the watch leaned over the rail and called down to him.

“Mr Povey!”

“Aye-aye, sir?”

“I’d be obliged if you’d take the longboat and bring aboard the person who is calling from the shore.”

“Sir? What person, sir?”

The officer of the watch frowned. He was feeling unwell and in no mood for explanations. “Obey your bloody orders and be damned, Mr Povey – and don’t answer back!”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

Povey sank down into the longboat, almost in tears. He’d not realised how tired he was and how much he wanted to be out of the boat and into his bed. The crew obviously felt the same. They were moaning and snivelling.

“Oh, bloody-well-bugger the lot of you,” said Povey. “And pull for the bloody shore.”

Once they came round the ship, which happened to be between the longboat and the beach, Povey could make out the dark little dot of a figure outlined against the white sands of the beach, and he could hear a wailing cry coming over the still water. He’d not noticed it before, not with so many others shouting and the sick nausea rising in his belly again.

“Uuurgh!” Povey retched over the side, bringing up nothing and wrenching the muscles of his stomach. He dipped a hand in the water and splashed it over his face. The crew stared as they swayed to their oars. Some of them felt as bad as Povey.

“What are you bloody sods looking at?” he snarled. “Bend your bloody backs!”

The forlorn figure on the beach grew and took shape in the twilight. It was a man kneeling right on the water’s edge, with hands raised over his head. He moaned and wept and offered up prayers as, finally, the big boat ground ashore and Povey jumped out – and was astonished to be recognised.

“Mr Povey, sir! God bless and save you, sir, for it is Mr Povey, ain’t it now?”

“Damn my blasted eyes,” said Povey. “It’s Ben Gunn!”

Memories flooded in. Bad memories of HMS Elizabeth – the vessel which had first brought Povey to this poisonous island – and Flint’s mutiny, which had resulted in the death of her captain and loyal officers.

“Ben Gunn,” said Povey in amazement, peering at the bedraggled figure with its straw-like hair, deep-lined, deep-tanned face, barefoot raggedness – and the wide, staring eyes of a madman. A madman who grovelled and pleaded before Povey, crouching to kiss his feet, and grasping for his hands to kiss them too. Povey pulled away, embarrassed.

“Back oars, you swab!” he said, and frowned heavily. “You were one of the mutineers, you blasted lubber! One of those that followed Flint! You were aboard the ship Betsy that Flint made on the island. You were aboard her, with Flint, when I was cast adrift!”

“No! No!” groaned Benn Gunn, shaking his matted head in an agony of self-pity, betraying himself comprehensively by protesting too much. “Not poor Ben Gunn,” he moaned, “what-never-was-a-mutineer-nor-followed-Flint-on-the-island-nor-later-aboard-Betsy-nor-later-yet-aboard-Walrus-and-always-was-a-loyal-heart-and-true-God-bless-King-George-and-God-bless-England-and-bless-the-navy-too…”

It rattled out non-stop, ending only when Ben Gunn ran out of breath.

“Says you, Ben Gunn!” said Povey. “But you must come aboard and go before Captain Baggot to be examined.”

“Yes! Yes!” said Ben Gunn. “Aboard ship and not marooned. Not left lonely with only the goats for company. For there’s only them now…what with the others being gone.”

“What others?” said Povey.

But a cunning look came over Ben Gunn, and he fell silent, as if realising he’d said too much.

Within a sand-glass fifteen minutes, Ben Gunn found himself standing in the bright lights of Captain Baggot’s cabin with the blue coats and gold lace of officers seated in front of him, and red marines behind him, and Ben Gunn goggling at the astonishing fact that among the officers, though not in the king’s uniform, was Mr Billy Bones – Flint’s most loyal follower. Ben Gunn pondered over that, and perhaps he wasn’t so looney as he seemed, for he spotted two other things. First, most of those around the table looked like seasick landmen on their first cruise: pale and sweating heavily. And second, Ben Gunn could see that Mr Povey was as astonished as himself to find Billy Bones among the company. Alongside Bones was a clerical-looking gentleman who proved to be Dr Stanley, the chaplain, and he was treating Mr Bones with favour, almost apologetically.

Povey caught Lieutenant Hastings’s eye where he sat with the other officers, and looked questioningly at Billy Bones. Hastings nodded at Dr Stanley. He risked mouthing the words:

“It’s his doing!”

For his part, Billy Bones stared fixedly at Ben Gunn, who had not featured in the instructions he’d received from Flint. Thus Billy Bones was forced to extemporise, which he did to such creditable effect as would have amazed the master down below, who believed him incapable of initiative. Though perhaps Billy Bones shone more lustrously by comparison with Captain Baggot, who was not himself, being now quite ill.

Baggot did little more than extract a repetition of Ben Gunn’s whining innocence, attempting only half-heartedly to examine such interesting matters as just what the Hell had been happening on the island while Flint was there? Especially to the north where John Silver had escaped aboard Walrus? All such matters Ben Gunn refused to discuss, fearing self-incrimination. Finally, bleary-eyed, swaying in his chair, and with red blotches now livid on his face, Baggot turned to Billy Bones.

“Will you have a word with him, Mr Bones? Were you not shipmates once?”

“Aye, Cap’n. Aboard Elizabeth, at the beginning of all these troubles.”

“What troubles, Mr Bones?”

“Cap’n Flint’s troubles, sir…and the wicked conspiracy against him.”

“Rubbish!” said Povey, who knew exactly what had gone on aboard Elizabeth.

“Poppycock!” said Lieutenant Hastings who’d served alongside him.

“Be silent, there!” cried Baggot irritably. “Do not interrupt your betters!”

“Indeed not!” said Dr Stanley, and the other officers nodded.

Hastings and Povey gaped. They couldn’t believe that they weren’t believed, for all England knew they’d been Flint’s shipmates. Had they been fit and well, they’d have fought for truth. But, like most others present, they were not fit and well. They were sick with headache and a nausea that was getting steadily worse as the day ended and the night came on. They hadn’t the strength for so fearful a task as opposing their superiors.

Billy Bones, however, being immune to the peril that was bearing down on his shipmates, pressed on clear-headed and determined.

“Now then, Mr Gunn!” he said, sending Ben Gunn quivering in fright.

“I don’t know nothing,” came the response.

“Yes, you do. For you was helmsman aboard of Elizabeth, wasn’t you?”

“Aye, but it weren’t my fault she run aground.”

“So whose fault was it?”

“Cap’n Springer’s!”

“That’s Springer as was cap’n of Elizabeth,” said Billy Bones for the benefit of his audience, before turning back to Ben Gunn. “So it were Springer as done it, not Flint?”

“Not him!” said Ben Gunn. “It were that swab Springer, damn him!”

“And who flogged you for it, Mr Gunn – you that was helmsman?”

“Springer! He flogged me, though I was steering to his own orders.”

“That he did, Mr Gunn. You that was innocent, as all hands knew!”

“Aye!”

“And when we was run aground, who was it as couldn’t get us off?”

“Springer!”

“And who was it got drunk day after day?”

“Springer!”

“But who was it built the Betsy out of Elizabeth’s timbers, to escape the island?”

“Flint!”

“So I akses you, Mr Gunn…who was the true seaman – Springer or Flint?”

“Cap’n Flint, God-bless-him-and-keep-him!”

And there Billy Bones stopped, being enormously wise to do so, for it was all truth thus far. It was plain truth, every word of it, and cast a most radiant light upon Joseph Flint, lately a lieutenant in His Majesty’s sea service, and now accused of mutiny and piracy. Billy Bones was doing wonderfully well.

“The rest is lies and spite,” he said, inspired with the genius of simplicity.

“Well?” said Baggot to Ben Gunn.

“Couldn’t say, Cap’n. For I weren’t there, and took no part.”

“Mr Hastings? Mr Povey?” said Baggot, turning at last to these vital witnesses.

But by this time Mr Povey’s bowels were squirting hot fluid down the leg of his breeches, and he was staggering, grey-faced, out of the cabin, trying not to foul the neat-patterned oilcloth floor, while Mr Hastings was slumped glassy-eyed in his chair, under the impression that the ship was rolling in a hurricane. Neither was in a position to contribute much to the discussion of Flint’s guilt or innocence.

Billy Bones smiled. He’d been lucky. He’d won a flying start to his campaign. One more heave and the irons would be struck off Flint’s legs as surely as they’d been struck off his own. It only awaited the next developments, as forecast by Flint.

And looking round the cabin, Billy Bones could see those developments already going forward very nicely.

Chapter 5

Four bells of the afternoon watch

18th March 1753

Aboard Walrus

Off Upper Barbados

With Walrus’s keel sprouting too much weed for swift sailing, she was brought alongside of Venture’s Fortune only by cunning: Walrus having hoisted British colours upside-down – a sign of distress – and left her sails hanging in a slovenly manner as if some disaster had befallen her people.

“Steady, boys,” said John Silver to the armed men hiding behind the bulwarks, and anywhere else where they couldn’t be seen from the approaching ship.

“Steady boys,” croaked the parrot on his shoulder and the hands laughed.

“Stow that!” hissed Silver, and clappEd a hand on the bird’s beak.

It would be a tragic waste to spoil things now. The sun was high in the blue heavens, the sea was calm with a fresh wind, and there were even gulls above, ventured out from the land just under the horizon, while a fine, fat three-masted ship came offering itself up, all bright and spanking new, with fresh white sails and bright-coloured flags that hadn’t seen a drop of weathering, and jolly tars aboard who couldn’t imagine what a mistake they were making in coming to give aid.

“John,” said Selena, standing next to him by the tiller, “I give you one last chance not to do this. It’s shameful deceit. How can you do this to others who use the sea?”

“Belay that!” he said. “We can’t take a prize no other way – we’re too slow. It’s this or nothing! D’you think I’d not rather bear down with colours flying?” He cursed and beat the deck with his crutch, and he looked at her and sneered: “An’ if you’re so moral and mighty, what’re you doing on deck in your gown so they sees a woman and ain’t afraid?”

“Huh!” she said. “You know why! If they’re taken by surprise there’ll be less fighting, that’s why!” But she blinked and looked away, for that wasn’t entirely the truth. She wasn’t so sure of anything now, having considered what Dr Cowdray had said…and…and…a soft word now, from John Silver, a friendly smiling word, might have closed the gulf between them. But Silver was too angry. Too many harsh words had been spoken.

“Well, there you are then!” he said with extreme bad grace. “So stand fast, and clap a hitch on your jawing tackle – or go below with them two swabs of navigators as I’ve locked in my cabin to save their precious innocence!” And there followed even more temper and more shouting, which ended in her being ordered below – at which she screamed defiance – and then being dragged below…causing consternation aboard Venture’s Fortune, the big West Indiaman, coming on under close-reefed topsails, for her quarterdeck people were studying the wallowing, helpless Walrus through telescopes.

“There, sir!” cried Mr Philip Norton, a big, young, muscular man, well dressed and handsome, with the confidence that comes with power. “Did I not say it was madness to approach her? Look at the number of gun-ports! And now there’s fighting aboard her.”

“Bollocks!” cried Captain Fitch, a veteran seaman and a master of his craft, but cursed with the short stature which turns a man to bloody-mindedness when the tall look down on him and tell him what to do. And that went double when the tall one represented something that all decent men despise: the government. He glared defiance at Norton. “I shall render assistance to a mariner in distress, according to the ancient traditions of the sea,” he said. “And as for the risk that terrifies you, Mr Norton, you well know that I have a Protection in case of that!” And clapping his eye to his glass again, Fitch told himself there was nothing to worry about in the sight of two men manhandling a shrieking woman down a hatchway while a one-legged man with a green bird on his shoulder looked on, shouting and pointing, and apart from which there wasn’t another soul visible on deck other than the helmsman…

“Jesus wept!” said Norton. “D’you think a piece of paper will save you from pirates? Do you not understand what I have under hatches?” And then, as Fitch steadily ignored him, Norton suddenly displayed a remarkable degree of seamanship: “Mr Mate,” he cried to the first officer, “shake out the topsails! Put up the helm and bring this ship about!” He pointed at Walrus: “And steer me clear o’ that ‘un!”

His voice rang with command. It was the dominant bark of a man used to being obeyed, and the mate instinctively touched his hat in salute and started to bellow at the hands. But Fitch spat fire.

“Avast!” he cried, and stamped a foot at Norton and glared up into his eyes. “Slam your trap, you bloody bugger! I don’t care what you was before, but don’t you by-God-and-all-his-bloody-angels give commands aboard my ship, for I’m cap’n here, and there ain’t none other!”

Thus Fitch and Norton were still arguing when Walrus came within spitting distance and her crew leapt up at Long John’s command, gave a cheer, and commenced hurling grapnels to bind the two ships together. Led by Long John himself, they came roaring over the side, taking command of Venture’s Fortune in a matter of seconds.

It was incredibly easy. Not a blow was struck or a grain of powder burned other than that which went into the air to terrify the West Indiaman’s crew, of which there were only twenty foremast hands, who’d not been stood to arms and were thus empty-handed in the face of John Silver’s thirty-two, who between them bore enough pistols, cutlasses, muskets and pikes to equip a small army, and who moved with practised speed: some to guard the prisoners while others – led by Allardyce and Israel Hands – went below to search the ship.

It was a sweet, clean capture, and the only injury to any man on either side – to the hilarity of Silver’s men – was a broken leg suffered by one Dusty Miller, a notoriously clumsy seaman who’d fallen badly as he swung aboard the prize on a line from the mainyard.

“Who’s cap’n?” cried Silver, stumping across the quarterdeck to where his men had herded the ship’s officers. He reached up to his shoulder to pet the big parrot that had fluttered back with wide-beating wings, after flying aloft as she always did when there was fighting. Silver was grinning in triumph, which turned to instant amazement as a small, thick-bodied man among the prisoners started yelling and waving his hands in fury.

“I, sir!” he cried, trying to push aside the firelocks aimed at him by Silver’s men.

“Huh!” said Silver. “Let the bugger through” and Captain Fitch stamped forward to stand looking up at Long John Silver, who towered over most men let alone one only five feet tall. The sight was greeted with laughter from the crew, which was deeply unfair to Fitch, who despite being unarmed, and facing death for all he knew, was fearlessly brave, and told Silver off something ferocious.

“I’m Fitch,” he cried. “Cap’n of Venture’s Fortune with cargo and supercargo bound for London. And I may not be touched, God damn-your-eyes, sir! You may not lay a finger on me! For I sail with protection, sir! Protection from Sir Wyndham Godfrey, Governor of Upper Barbados, and which Protection…”

“Clap a hitch, you bloody dwarf!” cried Long John, but Fitch persisted, stabbing a finger up at him and shouting until finally Silver drew a pistol, cocked it, and shoved it into Fitch’s belly.

“See here, mister,” he said, “either you pipe down or I give fire. I don’t mind which, so please your soddin’ self!”

“Bah!” said Fitch, but he shut up.

“Good,” said Silver. “Now what’s this about blasted protection? What’re you talking about?”

“A Certificate of Protection of Free Passage from Sir Wyndham Godfrey!” said Fitch. Then he lowered his voice: “Protection from gentlemen such as yourself, sir!”

“What gentlemen?” said Silver.

“Gentlemen o’ fortune, sir.”

“Oh?” Silver’s eyebrows raised.

Fitch nodded knowingly. “Aye, sir! For isn’t Upper Barbados the only port where you may safely call?”

Silver frowned. The old days were gone when there were a dozen safe havens for pirates on the Spanish Main. There was still Savannah, of course, and maybe one or two others, but none that boasted a dockyard like those of Williamstown, Upper Barbados, where gold talked all languages and the law looked the other way. Fitch read Silver’s face.

“So,” he said, “spurn Sir Wyndham’s Protection, and he’ll turn the guns of his fort on you.”

“Where is it? This ‘Protection’?”

“Below, in my cabin. I’ll show you…”

“Back your topsail,” said Long John. “Time for that later.” And he looked around.

For the moment, all was well. The weather was fine, the prize taken, the prisoners under guard. And that included five passengers – now trembling in each other’s arms on the maindeck, wealth written all over them – who had cabins for the passage to England. These were Fitch’s “supercargo”. Two were women: one middle-aged but handsome, and clearly a lady of fashion, wearing a Leghorn straw hat to save her complexion from the sun and a fine linen gown, cut practical for the ocean journey but underpinned with a full rig of hooped panniers. The other was her elderly maid. No blushing virgin, either of ‘em, but they’d need watching for fear the hands – bless their hearts – forgot what they’d signed under articles, concerning the punishment for rape.

But greater matters presented themselves…

“Long John! Long John!” cried Allardyce, coming up from the maindeck hatchway and leading a tall man with chains dangling from his wrists and ankles. “Look!” said Allardyce, with reverence. “It’s Himself! It’s the McLonarch! Him that led the charge of Clan McLonarch, between Clan Chester and Clan Atholl, and me behind him – my mother being a McLonarch – right to the British bayonets where he killed five with his own hand!”

“What’s this, Tom Allardyce?” said Silver, stepping forward. He looked at the creature Allardyce was referring to and detected the authentic look of a holy lunatic. The man was as tall as Silver, round-eyed, gaunt and woolly-haired, with a straggling beard, a great beak of a nose and high, slender cheekbones. His clothes were unkempt but clean, for though he was in chains, he’d not been ill-treated and there was no stink of the dungeon about him. He had decent shoes and stockings besides, and silver buckles, so he’d not been pillaged neither.

“Who are you, my lad?” said Silver.

“My lord!” corrected Allardyce. “He is the McLonarch of McLonarch!”

“Very likely,” said Silver. “But I’ll hear it from him, not you!”

The tall man stirred, fastened his eyes on Silver, drew himself upright and spoke with the soft, Irish-sounding accent of the Scottish Highlands.

“I am Andrew Charles Louis Laurent McLonarch-Flaubert – ninth Earl of McLonarch, and First Minister of His Most Catholic Majesty King Charles III, who is known to men as Bonnie Prince Charlie.” He was bedraggled and in chains, and spouting utter nonsense. But nobody laughed. Nobody laughed at the McLonarch.

“Are you now?” said Silver. “And what does King George say to that?”

“George of Hanover is a pretender and a heretic,” said McLonarch calmly. “He faces the block in this world and damnation in the next.”

“I see,” said Silver. “So what’re you doing in chains? What with you being prime minister, an’ all?”

McLonarch looked around until he spotted the group huddled against the lee rail, menaced by pistols. He pointed at Norton.

“Ask him,” said McLonarch, and nodded grimly. “He is one whom I have marked for future attention, for he is deep in the service of the Hanoverians.”

Everyone looked at Norton, who shrugged his shoulders.

“I serve my king!” he said, afraid to say more.

“And what might that mean?” said Long John.

Norton thought before he spoke. He was a brave man but he was nervous, and with good reason. He couldn’t guess whose side these pirates might take, and he knew McLonarch’s power with words.

“McLonarch is a leader of Jacobites,” he said. “He would raise rebellion – civil war – to soak England in blood. He is under arrest by the Lord Chancellor’s warrant, and I am charged with escorting him home for trial.” Norton looked round to see how this was received.

“Bah!” sneered McLonarch. “The man is a catchpole, a thief-taker, an agent sent to return me to England for judicial murder. He used bribery and deceit to capture me, and to steal the treasure lawfully gathered by my master the king.”

“Treasure?” said Silver, just when the politics was getting dull.

“Treasure?” said a dozen voices.

“A war chest of three thousand pounds in Spanish gold, which –”

“THREE THOUSAND POUNDS?” they cried.

“Which I was delivering to my master’s loyal followers in London.”

“Where is it?” said Silver.

“WHERE IS IT?” roared his crew.

“In the hold, in strong boxes,” said McLonarch, and pointed again at Norton: “He has the keys. He stole them from me.”

There followed half an hour of the most delightful and congenial work. Having been told exactly what would happen to him if he didn’t co-operate, Norton swiftly produced a heavy ring of keys from his cabin. Meanwhile the main hatchway was broken open, a heavy block rigged to the mainstay, with lifting tackles, and the crew of Venture’s Fortune set to the heavy labour of burrowing through the cargo – rum, sugar and molasses – to get to the heavy strongboxes which were on the ground tier down below.

Then the captured crew were made to haul up the boxes, one at a time, for opening on the quarterdeck at Silver’s feet, to thundering cheers, the fiddler playing, hornpipes being danced, and joy unbounded as rivers of Spanish coin poured out all over the decks, such that it was a tribute to Long John’s leadership that all hands did not get roaring drunk and lose the ship.

The only thing that puzzled Silver in that merry moment was why McLonarch had given up his treasure so easily. Silver pondered on that. Of course, the gelt was lost to McLonarch as soon as his ship was taken…but why speak up quite so helpful: saying how much there was, and who’d got the keys, an’ all? It wasn’t right. No man behaved like that. So what was going on?

He got his answer later, when Tom Allardyce brought McLonarch down to the stern cabin, where Silver was sitting at Captain Fitch’s desk, going through the ship’s papers for anything that might be useful.

“Cap’n!” said Allardyce. Silver looked up. Allardyce stood with his hat in his hands, bent double in respect for the man beside him, and whom he kept glancing at, in awestruck respect. McLonarch, free of chains and even more imposing than he’d been before, stood beside Allardyce with his nose in the air, and gazing down upon Silver as if he were a lackey with a chamber pot. Silver frowned.

“Who took his irons off, Mr Bosun?”

“Er…me, Cap’n.”

“On whose orders?”

“Seemed the right thing, Cap’n,” said Allardyce, torn between two loyalties.

“The right thing, you say? Now see here, my lad, I’ll not –”

“Captain Silver!” said McLonarch. “That is your name, is it not?”

Silver stared at McLonarch, whom he did not like – not one little bit – having taken against him on sight, for McLonarch was a man who expected doors to open in front of him and close behind him, and who sat down without looking…such was his confidence that a minion would be ready with a chair! Silver forgave him that, for it was the way of all aristocrats. What made him uneasy was McLonarch’s belief that he was the right hand of Almighty God, and his uncanny gift of convincing others of it: which gift now bore down upon John Silver.

“Aye, milord! Silver’s my name,” said Long John. “Cap’n Silver, at your service.”

Silver couldn’t believe he’d just said that. He disowned the words on the instant. But he’d said them all right, and worse still, he felt an overpowering urge to stand up and take off his hat! A lesser man would have been up like a shot, and even Silver was half out of his seat before he realised what was happening and slumped back, scowling fiercely. But McLonarch nodded in satisfaction, and waved a gracious hand.

“Captain,” he said, “I welcome you into my service. There is much work for you to do, and you will begin by locking His Majesty’s monies into their strongboxes once again and replacing the boxes in the hold.”

Chapter 6

One bell of the afternoon watch

18th March 1753

Aboard Oraclaesus

The Atlantic

Flint’s leg-irons were secured by the curled-over end of an iron bar. Billy Bones got the bar nicely on to the small anvil he’d brought below for purposes of liberation, took up the four-pound hammer, frowned mightily for precision…and struck a great blow.

Clang! said the irons.

“Another,” said Flint.

“Aye-aye, Cap’n!”

Clang!

“Ahhh!” said Flint, and pulled the straightened bar through the holes in the loops that had encircled his ankles before hurling the irons with passionate hatred into the dark depths of the hold, where they rattled and clattered and terrified the ship’s rats as they went about their honest business.

“Dear me,” said Flint, not unkindly, “I do apologise, Lieutenant!” For the hurtling iron had knocked off the hat, and nearly smashed in the brow, of the goggle-eyed young officer of marines – he looked to be about seventeen – who knelt holding a lantern beside Billy Bones.

“You do give your parole?” said the lieutenant. “Your parole not to escape?”

“Of course,” said Flint, ignoring the nonsensical implication that there might be some place to escape to, aboard a ship at sea. He sighed, and stood, and stretched his limbs, then turned to the lad as if puzzled: “But has not Mr Bones already made clear,” he said, “that Captain Baggot was about to order my release?”

“Was he?” said the lieutenant, weighed down by responsibility and peering at Billy Bones as they got to their feet. Billy, for his part, was bathed in the warm smile of a man entirely free of responsibility, since all future decisions were now in the hands of his master.

In fact, Billy Bones was so happy that he was quite taken by surprise: “About to release Cap’n Flint?” he said doubtfully. But a glimpse of Flint frowning nastily was sufficient to restore his memory. “Ah!” said Billy Bones. “‘Course he was, Mr Lennox!” And recalling his manners, he jabbed a thumb at the red-coated officer. “This here’s Mr Lennox, Cap’n, sir…the senior officer surviving.”

“Senior officer…surviving?” said Flint, relishing the concept, before correcting Billy Bones. “You will address Mr Lennox as ‘sir’, for he bears His Majesty’s commission.”

“Oh!” said Bones, peering at the skinny youngster. Flint was right: he was out-ranked! Billy had never risen higher than master’s mate, a rank far below a marine lieutenant. This lapse of protocol embarrassed him, for contrary forces were now at work within Billy Bones. He was still Flint’s man, but – being aboard a king’s ship once more – he was starting to think in the old ways: the navy ways he’d followed before Flint.

“Beg pardon, sir, I do declare,” he said, saluting Lieutenant Lennox.

“Granted, Mr Bones,” said Lennox.

“Aye-aye, sir,” said Billy Bones, and attempting reparation in words, added: “At least you’re one o’ them what’s immune!”

“Am I?” said Lennox, and looked at Flint, sweating in anxiety.

“Oh, yes,” said Flint, placing a comforting hand on Lennox’s shoulder. “If you have not yet succumbed, then you are safe.” He nodded gravely. “For reasons known only to God, some ten men in every hundred are safe.”

Lennox closed his eyes and trembled in relief. “What about the rest?” he asked. “Will they die?”

“Yes,” said Flint, “most of them. I am very sorry.”

Lennox bowed his head and shed tears for his comrades. But so wonderful was the prospect of escaping the hangman that Flint had to pinch himself to affect solemnity and crush the urge to laugh! Merriment would not do: not now. It would undoubtedly upset Mr Lennox, who must be kept sweet until such time as Flint’s freedom was assured – and that time was some way off as yet.

“Come, Mr Lennox,” said Flint, with every appearance of kindness, “let us go on deck. I must know the worst, if I am to be of any help.”

Soon, Flint did know the worst, and it was a very dreadful worst. It was so bad that even he was shaken.

The ship stank worse than a slaver, and it echoed with a dreadful, communal moan, like a long discord of bass violins, which was the constant, unceasing groan of the dying: one voice starting up as another paused to draw breath, and dozens more in the background, over and over in a hideous choir of grief and pain.

The lower deck was a fetid dormitory of helpless men, swinging side by side, in massed, packed hammocks slung fore-and-aft from the deckhead beams, some with just eighteen inches of width per man. Such closeness was normally prevented at sea by the traditional watch system, which had half the hands on deck while the others slept, giving a comfortable thirty-six inches per man. But now, with most of the crew too sick to move or even to go to the heads, the lower deck was crammed – stinking, roiling, foul – with slimy hammocks that dripped a vile liquid mixture of urine, vomit and excrement.

That was bad enough, but the mutilating horror of the disease itself, on the faces and arms of the victims shivering in their blankets – cold in the steaming heat of the lower deck – was atrocious to behold. Some were in the full-flowering pustular rash of the disease, others were shedding skin in sheets, leaving raw, bleeding wounds. Still others were already – and very obviously – dead, with the tropical climate working upon them and rendering their bodies swollen and black.

Flint, Lennox and Bones, having come up from the hold, stood by the main hatchway plumb in the middle of the swaying hammocks and festering bodies. They crouched under the low deckhead and flinched from contact with the horrors around them and their stomachs heaved, for the stench was hideous beyond belief.

“God save us!” said Flint. “Can nothing be done with the stink?”

“No, sir,” said Lennox. “The fit hands won’t go below to clean and swab.”

“Won’t they, though?” said Flint. “We’ll see about that!” He affected grim resolve, but bells of joy rang inside his mind. Lennox – senior officer surviving – had just called him sir! Unlike Billy Bones, Flint had been a sea-service lieutenant, outranking the marine equivalent. Perhaps Lennox knew that? More likely he was desperate for someone to take over. It didn’t matter. Not so long as he said sir.

“Come!” said Flint. “We must go on deck.”

The three climbed the ladder up to the maindeck, with its lines of broadside guns, which was open to the skies at the waist, apart from the ship’s boats lashed to the skidbeams that spanned the gap. So the air was fresher, but conditions were as bad as the lower deck, with a dozen or more dying men wallowing in their own filth. One was sitting with his back against the mainmast, moaning and cursing in the ghastly act of peeling the skin from his hands so that it came off whole, like a pair of gloves.

Flint heaved at the sight: sudden, violent and helpless. He threw up over his shoes and shirt and coat-front, and staggered to one of the guns and sat on the fat barrel and glared at Billy Bones.

“Water!” he said. “Get water!” Lennox stood dithering while Billy Bones dashed off, and Flint stared up and down the ship. All the precision and cleanliness of a man-o’-war was gone. The deck was in vile disorder, with tackles and gear left muddled and un-secured. And the awful stench of the lower deck rolled up from below. Flint blinked. He who was so fastidious was be-smeared with his own vomit. He was ashamed. Ashamed he’d disgraced himself and…possibly…just possibly…he was ashamed of what he’d done in bringing the smallpox aboard.

But then Billy Bones was back, labouring with a full bucket of fresh water, and Flint was kneeling over it and ducking his head in it, and scrubbing himself clean.

“Ohhhh!” said Flint and shuddered, and shivered and shook. But then he mastered himself. He buttoned up his coat. He made himself as tidy as he could. He put on his hat. “Quarterdeck!” he said. “Come on!” And briskly he led the way up a ladder to the larboard gangway, and then aft past the barricade, to the quarterdeck, the capstan, the binnacle and the ship’s wheel, where a group of men were huddled with gaunt, frightened faces. They were mostly lower-deck hands, barefoot and pigtailed.

By sheer, ingrained habit of discipline, the appearance of Lennox in his officer’s coat and gorget had the hands saluting and standing to attention, each making an effort to hold up his head. They looked mainly to Lennox, but glanced at Flint and ignored Billy Bones completely.

Careful now, thought Flint, for he needed these men. “Who’s officer of the watch?” he said to Lennox.

“Me, sir!” said an elderly man with a long coat and a tricorne hat.

“Who’s he?” said Flint to Lennox.

“Baxter, sir. Ship’s carpenter, sir,” said Lennox.

“The carpenter? Are there no navigating officers?”

“All sick, sir. He’s the best we’ve got.”

“What of the captain and the lieutenants?”

“Bad sick, sir.”

“Sick but alive?”

“Yes, sir, thank God, sir.”

“Hmm…then how many fit men do we have aboard?”

“Don’t know, sir,” said Lennox, but Baxter stepped forward and saluted politely.

“Us here, sir. Us, an’ them there,” he said, and pointed.

Flint looked and saw a man in the foretop, and five hands standing by to trim the rigging if need be, although the ship was snugged right down under minimum possible sail: just close-reefed fore and main topsails.

“What course are you steering?” said Flint, and so it went on. The more questions Flint asked, the more Lennox deferred to him, and the more the hands took note, and spoke direct to Flint, and he to them, and Lennox gratefully stood back. Thus – cautiously at first – Flint took over. He straightened his back, he clasped his hands behind him…and…after a break of some four years devoted to other pursuits…he resumed his career as a British naval officer: pretended to, at any rate.

“So!” he said. “I have seen the disgraceful condition of this ship and am resolved to put it right in the name of King George, God-bless-him!”

“God bless him,” murmured the hands miserably.

“God bless him!” roared Flint. “And damn him as don’t!”

“God bless him!” they cried, for Flint had them in his eye now, and so did Billy Bones, who instinctively stood beside Flint, with scowling brow and fists clenched in the old way that had never failed him…and Mr Lennox looked on, like a three-legged horse at a steeplechase.

“I’m Flint,” said Flint. “You don’t know me yet, but soon you shall, and I’ll start by sending a team below with mops and buckets to clean away the filth. For I tell you two things: first, that you’re all safe from the pestilence, and second, that no man ever born shall suffer as any of you shall suffer who disobeys my orders!”

Lennox gaped, for there wasn’t even a token resistance from the men. But he looked at Flint and Bones again and understood. They were the very incarnation of the officer caste that the lower deck was bred up to obey. Meanwhile, Flint was still speaking…

“Mr Lennox himself shall lead you to your duties!” he said.

“Aye-aye, sir!” they said.

“Oh?” said Lennox, and “Aye-aye, sir!”

Soon, the bucket brigade was below, while the carpenter and two hands kept the ship on course, enabling Flint to have a private word with Billy Bones, aft at the taffrail.

“Where’s Ben Gunn, Mr Bones? You said he came aboard! He survived the smallpox as a child, so he should be among the living.”

“Oh, him!” said Bones contemptuously.

“What of him?”

“Went over the side, Cap’n, when we was putting to sea.”

“Did he now?”

“Aye, Cap’n: the minute he heard you was aboard.”

Flint laughed. “The old rogue! Did he drown?”

“No, Cap’n! Last seen swimming for shore. Going strong.”

“Pity. His was a mouth to be closed. Still –” Flint shrugged and turned to other matters “we have begun well, Mr Bones,” he said, “but the problem is hands!”

“Hands to work her, sir?”

“Aye, Mr Bones.” Flint looked at the ship with her towering masts and broad yards. She was the biggest vessel he’d been aboard for years, and a seaman’s delight. Over eight hundred tons burden, and mounting twenty-eight twelve-pounders, she was a superb modern frigate: lavishly equipped and even boasting copper plating on her hull – a recent innovation which gave greater speed than a normal hull and complete freedom from the ship-worm, that menace of tropical seas that burrowed into timber hulls and ruined them.

“Oraclaesus,” said Flint, savouring the name. “She came to the island with two hundred and fifty-one men aboard, including a commodore, a captain, three sea-service lieutenants, a sailing master, a lieutenant of marines – our Mr Lennox – and six midshipmen…” He smiled. “After misfortunes ashore, she came away with one hundred and eighty-five men, having lost her commodore, a lieutenant, three mids and a miscellany of foremast hands and marines.”

Billy Bones shook his head in wonderment.

“How d’you know all that, Cap’n?”

Flint sighed. “Have I not told you, Mr Bones, that I listened to those who came to feed us during our captivity?”

“Oh!” said Billy Bones. “I see.”

“Good. And do you also see that, once the smallpox has done its good work…” But here Flint swallowed and faltered, having seen the awful reality of the death he’d inflicted upon this splendid ship.

He looked away.

He hadn’t always been a villain.

There had been a time when he was proud to serve his king.

He felt the pull of being a king’s officer once more.

Even though it was supposed to be a pretence and a sham.

For he’d served aboard ships like this one, had Joe Flint. And aboard this particular ship the crew were England’s finest: mostly lads in their teens and twenties. They were hand-picked volunteers, to a man.

And Joe Flint trembled on the brink of remorse.

He trembled a long, hard moment… then:

“Urrrrgh!” he growled like an animal. Ordinary men wrestled with conscience, but Flint – who was neither ordinary, nor normal, nor even entirely sane – turned upon his in selfish fury. Why should he feel sorry? He who’d been robbed of a vast treasure? He who’d been brutally rejected by the only woman he’d ever loved? No! He spat upon conscience, he spurned it and reviled it, he seized it by the throat…and strangled it.

“Huh!” he said, and grinned, and pulled Billy Bones’s nose.

“Ow!” said Bones.

“So,” said Flint, “our situation is this: the smallpox should have killed nine out of ten, but we were lucky – I counted nineteen men on deck, plus the lieutenant. But that is still dangerously few for so great a ship as this.”

“Aye!” said Billy Bones. “I’d want fifty at least, just to sail her, and a hundred or more to man the guns.”

“Indeed, Mr Bones.” Flint looked out to sea. “Ah!” he said. “See those ships?”

“Aye, sir. Thems are Bounder and Jumper, the sloops in company with us.”

“Each having some fit men still aboard.”

“The which we can employ, Cap’n?”

“Yes. But we must avoid gentlemen with long coats.”

“Officers, Cap’n?”

“Indeed, for they might think it their duty to remind the hands of what I am.”

“What about them below? Cap’n Baggot and the rest?”

Flint smiled. “Those unfortunate officers who are ‘bad sick but still alive’?”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

“Why, Mr Bones, you and I shall visit them…to ease their suffering.”

Billy Bones bit his lip and looked at his boots.

“Especially,” said Flint, “we must visit Lieutenant Hastings and Mr Midshipman Povey, those old shipmates of ours who were witnesses to our past actions, and thereby have the power to put a rope around my neck.” He nodded: “And yours, too, Mr Bones. We must see to Hastings and Povey first of all, for our lives depend upon it!” He smiled. “What a blessing it is that we have them safe aboard this ship, laid in their hammocks and awaiting our visit!” He even laughed.

“Oh!” said Billy Bones, suddenly remembering something.

“What?” Flint frowned. Billy Bones radiated guilt.

“Well, Cap’n…I meant to say…”

“Say what?”

“Well, Cap’n, it were a great struggle, a-gettin’ of the squadron to sea…”

“Yes?”

“What with so many sick aboard all three ships…”

“So?”

“So Bounder, there –” Billy Bones looked at the distant sloop “– well, she had no navigating officer, and what with Mr Povey being so clever a young gentleman, and all others laid on their backs…”

“So?”

“So Mr Povey was given command of Bounder and is aboard her now.”

Chapter 7

Afternoon (there being no watches kept nor bells struck)

18th March 1753

Aboard Venture’s Fortune

In the latitude of Upper Barbados

Silver glared at McLonarch and reached up to pet his squawking bird.

“See here, mister,” he said, “I’m in my own bloody service. Mine and these hands aboard, and no other man’s, be he lord, king or pretender!”

“But, Cap’n,” said Allardyce, “all’s changed. There’s a new way! All we have to do –”

“Stow it, you lubber!” said Silver. “Did you not hear what he said?” He jabbed a finger at McLonarch: “‘Put the dollars back in the hold’ – Huh!” he sneered, “Shave mine arse with a rusty razor!”

“Captain Silver,” said McLonarch, “may I sit?” And with that he placed himself in one of Captain Fitch’s cabin chairs, and drew it up to face Silver.

Fast losing his temper, Silver slammed a broad hand on the desk in front of him and yelled at Allardyce: “Get up on deck and send down some good lads to drag this bugger –” he pointed at McLonarch – “out of my sight. And stick the irons back on him, too, for I’ve had enough of his long, ugly face!”

But Allardyce turned nasty. “No!” he cried, scowling at his captain. “Not a step will I take, till you hear what he’s offering!”

“Hear what? He ain’t got bloody nothing that I want, and that’s gospel!”

“Not even a pardon,” said McLonarch, “and the chance to be an honest man?”

Silver stopped dead. He looked at McLonarch, who sat calmly in his chair in the well-furnished stern cabin that even had carpets, pictures in frames, and candlesticks. It had books too, and musical instruments: all fixed to the bulkheads in shelves with wire-mesh doors so the ship’s motion shouldn’t unseat them, for Captain Fitch lived in style. So it was a fine, heavy chair with carved arms that McLonarch had chosen, and which he occupied like a throne, while gazing down his nose at John Silver.

“Pah!” said Silver.

But McLonarch, the consummate politician, having pumped Allardyce beforehand for knowledge of Silver, smiled at him.

“Captain,” he said, “I hear that you were a decent man before you were forced into piracy.”

“Maybe,” said Silver, frowning.

“And even now,” continued McLonarch, “you are renowned as a man of honour, and a beloved leader whom men trust. And one who permits no cruelty to prisoners…” He paused and had the satisfaction of seeing Silver blush. Nodding in emphasis, he continued: “Thus you are still – even now – a decent man.”

“Huh!” said Silver, but such was the power of McLonarch’s personality, and the aura of aristocracy that hung about him, that Silver had the feeling that he’d just heard the definitive, official pronouncement upon himself, as if a judge in court had spoken.

“Captain Silver,” said McLonarch, “what I offer you is my master’s royal pardon, together with such pension as shall enable you to become again the honest mariner that you once were, washed clean of all past offences, of whatsoever kind or description.”

There was silence. The words were magical, mystical. They were a dream. Silver thought of Selena. He thought of the normal life she wanted, and he was drawn into McLonarch’s web, and dared to believe. But then he frowned.

“What about my lads?” he said. “Them what chose me, under articles.”

McLonarch beamed.

“God bless you, John Silver!” he said. “Had I entertained the least doubt, it would now be gone. Only such a man as I believed you to be would think first of the men he leads, and it is my pleasure to assure you that the same free pardon shall extend to them.”

“See, Cap’n?” said Allardyce. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“There could even be more…” said McLonarch.

“Oh?” said Silver.

“Are you a Catholic?”

Silver shrugged. “I was raised that way, my father being a Portugee.”

McLonarch nodded.

“Then know that I am empowered by the Holy Father to reward those who assist my sacred mission.” He paused as one does who makes a mighty offer. “I am empowered to grant the rank and dignity of the Order of the Golden Spur!”

“A papal knighthood?” said Silver, and twisted under deep emotions. But he looked McLonarch in the eye. “See here,” he said, “Bonnie Prince Charlie’s shut up in Italy. He had his chance at Culloden, and got beat!” He shook his head. “Give up, milord. Your cause is lost!”

“Lost?” said McLonarch. “Give up? Did Charles II give up when exiled to Holland with the world saying Cromwell had won? No! He kept faith for eleven years in exile…yet returned in triumph, with the cathedral bells pealing, the great guns sounding, and the people rejoicing in the streets!”

It was true. Silver was impressed. But he was cautious too, because maybe this wasn’t the only bargain in the market?

“Pretty words, milord,” he said. “But just for the moment I’m sending you back among the others. I’ll spare you the irons, but I’m done talking.”

“Well enough, Captain,” said McLonarch, satisfied for the moment.

The prisoner went off with Allardyce bowing and scraping behind him, leaving Silver alone with his thoughts, but it wasn’t long before Allardyce came clumping back with men behind him. They burst in without knocking. They were looking for trouble.

“What’s this?” said Silver. Allardyce looked behind him for support.

“Go on!” they growled.

“Cap’n!” said Allardyce. “We must take Himself safe aboard Walrus!”

“Oh? And is it yourself giving orders now, Mr Allardyce?”

“Tell him!” said the rest.

“We must save him,” cried Allardyce, “for he’s the McLonarch!”

“Oh, stow it!” said Silver. “D’you think I’m not taking him anyway?”

“Oh…” they said.

“Aye!” said Silver. “Now get about your blasted duties!”

“Oh,” they said, and, “Aye-aye, Capn’.” And with that they trooped out, looking sheepish.

Alone once more, Silver sighed. What he hadn’t told them was that McLonarch was too big a prize to let go. Maybe King George would make an offer for him? Even if he did, Silver knew that he was pressed into a corner and he’d need to be very careful of the Jacobites among his own crew from hereon. Wearily he went up on deck, and found Israel Hands by the mizzenmast, gleefully making notes of the prize’s cargo.

“Where’s that swab that had hold of McLonarch?” said Silver.

“Norton?” said Hands. “He’s forrard, with the rest.”

“Bring him here!”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n!”

Norton came at the double, with two men behind him bearing cutlasses. Silver watched his approach, noting the way he darted nimbly across the crowded deck, leaping up the ladder from the waist to the quarterdeck, as if it were second nature to him. And when he was brought up before Silver, who stood looming over him, parrot on shoulder, Norton never flinched. He was a hard case, all right.

“You sent for me, Cap’n,” he said, and touched his hat like a seaman.

Cheeky bugger, thought Silver, looking him over. He wore a smart suit of clothes in biscuit-coloured calico and a straw tricorne. By the sound of his voice, he was almost a gentleman, but not quite.

“Just what are you, mister?” said Silver, and saw him blink and think before making a very bold admission.

“I’m a Bow Street man,” he said, “a runner. Sent out to arrest Lord McLonarch on a royal warrant.”

Silver whistled. “A thief taker? A gallows-feeder?”

“Some call me that.”

“And there’s gentlemen o’ fortune as would hang you for it!”

Norton blinked again, this time in fright.

“Oh, stow it,” said Silver, waving away the threat. “Just look at him there!” He pointed down the length of the ship to where McLonarch stood head and shoulders above all the prisoners. “Tell me what that man is, and why you was sent to get him.”

“He’s the ‘45 all over again.”

“How’s that?”

“What d’you know about Jacobites?”

“Plenty!” said Silver.

“And there’s plenty of ‘em left. Even in the colonies.”

“Is there?”

“Yes. They raised the dollars.”

“Why’d he want the money? For himself?”

“No! He already had the men, but not the funds.”

“And now he’s got the money he needs…?”

“He’s well on the way to getting it. And have you spoken to him? Listened to him?”

“Aye! Never heard the like!”

Norton nodded. “And he knows all the old families, and the colonels of all the regiments.”

“Are you saying he could do it? Raise rebellion?”

“We don’t know. But we fear that he might.”

“Who’s we?”

“The Lord Chancellor, the cabinet, and me.”

“Bugger me!” said Silver. “Precious high company you keep.” Then a thought struck him: “Hold hard, my jolly boy…” He frowned. “If McLonarch is so bleedin’ dangerous, why was just yourself sent out to nab him?”

“A naval expedition couldn’t be sent for fear of someone warning McLonarch.”

“Jacobites in the navy?”

“Perhaps. So I was sent quietly, with five good men.”

“Only five?”

“Them…and papers for me to command local forces.”

“So where are they? Your men?”

Norton sighed. “Dead or wounded, as are several dozen colonial militiamen.”

“And what about the Jacobites? How many of them are dead?”

“I lost count.”

Silver laughed. He liked Norton. But there was more. Silver put his head on one side and looked at the tough, self-assured man who stood so sure on a rolling deck.

“Are you a seaman, Mr Norton?” he said.

Norton shrugged. “I can hand, reef and steer.”

“Aye! But I’ll warrant you ain’t no foremast hand.”

“Not I!” said Norton with pride. “I was first mate aboard a Bristol slaver.”

“Ah!” said Silver. “The blackbird trade? That breeds good seamen!”

“Them as it don’t kill!” said Norton and saw the respect in Silver’s eyes. But then he wished he’d kept his trap shut.

“Right then, my cocker,” said Silver, grinning. “Whatever else I take out of this ship…” he looked the prize up and down “…I’m having you!”

“What?”

“Aye! ‘Cos I’ve two cock-fumbling bodgers for navigators what can’t find their own arseholes with a quadrant, and I want at least one bugger aboard what can!”

On Walrus’s quarterdeck, Selena smiled at Mr Joe, the young black who’d once been a plantation slave and was now gunner’s mate. He was a slim, handsome man, with a rakish patch covering a lost eye, and was further distinguished by the heavy Jamaican cane-cutlass that he wore in his belt instead of the customary sea-service weapon.

“Thank you, Mr Joe,” she said.

“That ain’t no matter, ma’am,” said Joe. “I’ll have your box brought up, an’ if you wants to leave the ship, ma’am, why so you shall!” And Mr Joe stepped forward to send a man for the box –

“Stand clear there!” cried Dr Cowdray, ship’s surgeon. “Stand clear!” Cowdray was hurrying aft from the waist, followed by four men bearing the broken-legged Dusty Miller on an improvised stretcher.

Miller was whining pitifully and shedding tears. “Ow! Ow!” he cried. “Rum, for the love o’ fucking Jesus!”

“Later, sir!” cried Cowdray. “You shall have rum to ease the reduction of your limb. Indeed: fiat haustus! Let the draught be prepared!”

“Ugh!” said Selena, catching sight of Miller’s injury.

“Oh mother!” said Mr Joe, for the leg was crooked into a right-angle between ankle and knee, and a bloodied end of bone stuck out through the flesh of the shin.

“Here!” cried Miller, seeing their reactions, and grabbing at Cowdray’s arm. “You ain’t gonna cut orf my fucking leg, now…are you?”

“Stultum est timere quod vitare non potes!” said Cowdray. “Do not fear that which you cannot prevent!”

“Ahhhhh!” screamed Miller. “You bastard! You ain’t cutting orf my sodding leg, you mother-fucking sawbones!”

“No, sir,” cried Cowdray, “you misunderstand. We shall save it!”

The surgeon was frowning as if in utmost concern, but inwardly he was rejoicing. As ever when Walrus went into action he was ready for the wounded in a fresh-boiled linen apron, sleeves rolled up, spectacles on his nose. And now, here was a wonderful case of compound fracture to test his skills, since – unlike most surgeons – he believed amputation to be unnecessary. With cleanliness and care, the limb could be saved – and he was itching to prove it.

“Let ‘em through,” said Mr Joe, and he stood back as Cowdray, still spouting Latin, manoeuvred his patient down a hatchway, addressing the filthy-tongued Miller with the same courteous politeness he’d used towards honest patients years ago.

When they’d gone, Selena looked to Venture’s Fortune, heaving up and down on the ocean swell alongside of Walrus, the lines that bound them together creaking and stretching under the strain. “She’s home-bound to England, isn’t she, Joe?”

“Aye, ma’am. Bound for Polmouth with rum and sugar under hatches.”

“And will Long John let her go?”

“Once we’ve plucked her. That’s Long John’s way.”

“Good. Then I’ll go aboard…and leave with her.”

“But –”

“Don’t!” she said. “I won’t live this life. I’ve told Long John.”

Mr Joe tried, nonetheless. He told her that she’d never even seen England, and had no friends there, and that – should she be recognised – the crimes she’d committed in the colonies would hang her just as dead in the mother country. And he reminded her of Silver: fine man that he was, and how the hands would follow him “down the cannon’s mouth” when it came to action: a bad choice of words in the circumstances, but the best Mr Joe could think of.

Wasted words, all of them. When he’d done, Selena – in her print gown and straw hat – attempted to clamber over two ships’ scraping, bumping rails that weren’t even hard alongside but divided by a gap of a yard or more that opened and closed like a crocodile’s jaws, with the white water frothing far below. Finally Mr Joe lifted her up and heaved her over bodily, into the arms of the men aboard Isabelle Bligh, who surged forward on sight of her, gaping and wondering, stretching their arms to catch her, and nervously glancing back at Long John, for every man aboard knew about their quarrels.

Then her sea chest came after her with a bump and a thump, with her few goods and the money she’d saved, and the men stood back, touched their brows and doubled to their duties again with Israel Hands and Tom Allardyce yelling at them.

Selena’s heart was beating, she had no idea what to do, she hadn’t even thought about how she might be received aboard this ship. Long John (who had his back to her) was deep in conversation with a hard-faced man in a calico suit. He didn’t see her, or hear, so she was left to look at the ship, which was well found, spanking new, and bursting with activity as Walrus’s men hoisted up a series of heavy chests from the waist and swung them back aboard their own ship.

She looked forrard and saw the men, and some women, crammed into the fo’c’sle under guard. Instinctively she made her way down the ship towards them, Walrus’s men stepping aside to let her past, all of them giving the same uneasy glance towards Long John, who was still engrossed with the hard-faced man.

“What’s this, ma’am? What’re you a-doing of?” said Israel Hands, looking up from the notebook where he’d been making a record of the cargo. He frowned and, as the others had done, glanced in Long John’s direction, then seemed about to speak, but up above a chest slid out of its lashings, and fell, and men jumped aside as it smashed open and showered silver dollars on the deck.

“You slovenly buggers!” cried Hands. “You idle swabs! You…”

Selena walked on, squeezing past the toiling seamen, stumbling now and again at the ship’s sickening, rolling motion, and made her way to the fo’c’sle and past the guards and blinked at the prisoners. There was a crowd of seamen, a few officers, and some landmen – presumably passengers – and two women. They stared at Selena, not knowing what to make of her, though the men looked her over as all men did at first sight.

“Ah-hem!” said a little man: squat, short, and heavy, in a big hat and a long shiny-buttoned coat. He touched his hat and smiled, and was about to speak, when one of the two women pushed past him and threw out her arms to Selena.

“My dear!” she cried. “My poor creature! I see that, like ourselves, you were made prisoner by these wicked pirates!”

“Oh!” said the short man. “Ahhh!”

“Ahhhh!” said the rest, nodding wisely to one another.

“Yes!” said Selena, seizing upon this excellent explanation, which was so obvious that it was amazing she’d not thought of it herself.

The woman advancing upon Selena was in her mid-fifties with twinkling eyes, a tiny nose and delicate bones in a neatlittle, sweet-little, dear-little face. She was expensively dressed, and had the speech and manners of a noblewoman, with artfully contrived gestures. She smiled radiantly at the world, and she simpered and flirted at men. She did it so well that it had never failed to control them, not once in forty years. Nonetheless, she was utter contrast to Selena, for while the lady – despite her years – was quite glitteringly pretty, she was not beautiful. She did not have that spiritual quality that Selena had, which takes the breath away and makes mortals stare, and stare, and worship. She was merely pretty, like a china fairy.

“My dear!” said the lady, “I am Mrs Katherine Cooper: Mrs Cooper of Drury Lane.” She laughed, a sound like a tinkling bell, and added: “I have some reputation as a thespian.”

“Aye!” said the rest, nodding among themselves, for Mrs Cooper’s reputation had been spread assiduously by Mrs Cooper, and they were very well aware of it.

“Thespian?” said Selena, for this was not a word in everyday use aboard ship.

“Actress, my dear,” said Mrs Cooper, embracing Selena. “But you must call me Katty, for it is my pet name among my friends.”

“Ahhhh!” sighed the audience as Selena closed her eyes and rested her head on Katty Cooper’s shoulder, inexpressibly relieved to be amongst perfumed femininity and not rumsoaked, sweat-soaked, sailormen.

But her moment of contentment was brief. Behind her she heard the distinctive thump, thump, thump…of John Silver’s timber leg advancing up the deck.

Chapter 8

Two bells of the middle watch

27th March 1753

Aboard Oraclaesus

The Atlantic

The storm was not a great one, but it nearly did for Oraclaesus. It came roaring out of the night, with streaks of black cloud chasing the moon and the white spray steaming off the wave-tops.

Soaked from stem to stern, the big frigate heeled far over under the steady blow, the splendid curves of her hull enabling her to ride the glossy rollers, but she dipped at every downward plunge, and heaved up again with green water pouring from her head rails and figurehead.

Oraclaesus was doing her utmost best, and was a credit to the men of Woolwich naval dockyard who built her. Nonetheless, she was riding out the storm only because of the seamanship and foresight of her new commander, Joe Flint. For Captain Baggot had long since been heaved over the side, sewn up in a hammock with a roundshot at his feet: him and all his sea-service officers, together with Mr Lemming, the surgeon, who never did recognise the disease that killed him. These great ones were gone, together with over a hundred of the ship’s lesser people, who received ever-more perfunctory funeral rites as Flint grew tired of reading the service and the surviving hands, exhausted and over-worked, despaired of the whole dreadful process.

So the ship was surviving – and only just – because, with too few men to work her in a blow, and foul weather only to be expected in these latitudes at this time of year, Flint had long since sent down t’gallant masts and yards, taken in the fore and main courses, and set only close-reefed topsails and storm staysails: a task the hands could manage in easy weather. This left the ship with bare steerage way, but saved her when the storm struck, for otherwise she’d have lost her masts, rolled on her beam ends, and drowned every soul aboard of her.

Now Flint and Billy Bones stood braced on the soaking, sloping planks, hanging on by the aid of the storm-lines rigged across the deck, and draped in the tarred blouses and breeches they’d taken from dead men’s stores. They huddled together to yell into each other’s ears against the howling wind and the dense salt spray that came up over the bow at every plunge of the ship, drenching as far back as the quarterdeck. But however hard they shouted, the wind blew away the sound such that no other could hear: not even ten feet away at the ship’s wheel where the helmsmen were fighting to hold the ship on course.

“It’s no good,” said Flint.

“It ain’t neither, Cap’n!” said Billy Bones.

“We must have more men. We’ll not survive another like this!”

“And we ain’t steering no course. Just running afore the wind.”

“When this blows over, I shall signal Bounder and Jumper to come alongside.”

“What about Mr Povey? He’s aboard Bounder and he’ll blab to all hands!”

“Yes, but –”

Flint was about to argue that, without more men, they’d die anyway. But the storm spoke more persuasively, with a roar and a crackling from above, like the volley of a thousand muskets, as the wind got its claws fairly into the fore topsail and ripped it from its reefs and flogged it and shredded it and blew it out into streaming rags that stretched ahead of the ship and threw off bits of themselves to vanish instantly into the howling night.

“Bugger me!” said Billy Bones.

“Helmsman!” cried Flint, stepping close to the wheel.

“Aye-aye, sir!” said the senior man.

“Can you hold her?”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n!”

Flint came back to Billy Bones, hauling himself hand over hand by a storm-line, and leaning his head close to Bones’s.

“She’ll run like a stallion in this. She’d run under bare poles –” he looked at the men at the wheel “– so long as they don’t tire.”

“Shall I send up fresh hands?”

“No! Can’t risk it. They’d take time to get the feel of the helm, and we could be broached-to and rolled over while they do.”

Billy Bones nodded. The wheel was a double, with spokes radiating out from either end of the drum round which the steering tackles were rove. That meant two big wheels, one ahead of the other, such that four men – one to each side of each wheel – could steer as a team in heavy weather. It was a task best left to those who’d got the knack of it, working with these particular shipmates, under these particular conditions.

“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” said Billy Bones.

“So,” said Flint, “there’s something else we can do in the meanwhile, for we’re no help to these excellent men at the helm.”

Billy Bones couldn’t actually see the leer on Flint’s face. It was too dark for that, but he knew it would be there, and he trembled in a fright that had nothing to do with the storm.

For a storm was nothing to Billy Bones. Standing on a wet wooden slope with the wind shrieking in his ears was nothing to him. Likewise, the cold seawater that got under his collar and ran down his neck. And neither did he fear the tremendous power of the elements that could take a ship, and break it and sink it and drown him. All that was meat and drink to Billy Bones. He’d faced it all his life, and if ever he pondered on so philosophical a matter as his own death – why, Billy Bones would naturally expect it to come at sea, in a storm, and a fitting seaman’s death it would be an’ all! So he wasn’t afraid of the weather…only Joe Flint, the infinitely charismatic Flint, whom he feared and worshipped all at once, as if by evil enchantment.

Meanwhile Flint was speaking:

“Stand to your duty!” he yelled to the helmsmen.

“Aye-aye, sir!”

“Mr Bones and I am going below.”

“Aye-aye!”

“We shall soon return.”

“Aye-aye!”

Beckoning Billy Bones to follow, Flint made his way through the dark night and the screeching wind, with the rain and spray lashing his face so hard he could barely breathe, and the ship heaving up and down, twenty feet at a time, beneath his feet. Sight was nearly useless and he went by feel, storm-lines, and seaman’s instinct.

There was no hatchway on the quarterdeck, so he descended the larboard gangway ladder to the maindeck, and groped his way aft beneath the quarterdeck, where there was shelter at least from the wind and wet. Around them the great guns strained and heaved in their lashings, ever seeking the opportunity to snap a rotten tackle and break loose for a playful plunge about the deck, grinding and smashing and killing…Except that there was nobody to kill, only Flint and Billy Bones; the few others aboard were either up above or down below. The main deck, the gun deck which was the raison d’être of a man o’ war was unnaturally empty of men.

In the darkness, Flint went just aft of the capstan and forrard of the bulkhead that divided off the captain’s quarters and slipped carefully down the ladderway to the lower deck. And there he paused, with his back against a cabin door, until Billy Bones came rumbling after him.

There was no weather at all down here, and the mighty voice of the wind was shut out by solid oak that admitted only a dull, demonic wailing. But all the wooden music of ship’s noises was playing: the creaks, squeaks and grumblings of eight hundred tons of carpentry, fighting to stay together while the wind and the sea tried to pull it apart.

Flint tingled with sudden excitement. He blinked in the black darkness, relieved only by a few feeble lanterns. Pulling off his tarred frock, he dumped it under one of the lanterns so it could easily be found; tarred clothes rustled and made a noise, and were awkward. Billy Bones did likewise. Flint sniffed. It still smelled vile down here, but better than it had done. There were only a few sufferers still alive in their hammocks, and the hands had got ahead with their swabbing. Flint peered in the darkness and made out the shape of a few hammocks up forrard. He grinned. They were of no concern. His interests lay aft.

Just astern was the bulkhead, and the door that led to the gun-room: province of the ship’s gentlemen, where Lieutenant Hastings and the Reverend Doctor Stanley were laid in their cots, deciding whether to live or to die of the smallpox.

Flint sniggered. This hadn’t been possible before. Even with only twenty men in the ship, there had always been someone to see and to notice, some servile clown bringing food or drink for the poor gentlemen. Flint laughed. Billy Bones jumped. Flint pulled his nose.

“Nobody here but you and me, Mr Bones,” he said. “It will be so easy!” And he crept aft, opened the door to the gun-room and passed inside…soundless, purposeful and malevolent as a vampire. Clump! Clump! Billy Bones followed, and Flint frowned at the spoiling of the moment.

“Shhh!” he said.

“Sorry, Cap’n.”

Flint looked round. There was one lantern only. The gun-room had no natural light. It was mainly occupied by a great table running fore and aft, with a little passageway on either beam and rows of doors leading into the tiny cabins that lined up against the ship’s sides. The place was crowded with the traps and tackles of the ship’s officers: quadrants, swords, books, old newspapers, gun-cases and silver mugs hanging on hooks. It smelled of snuff and claret – not surprising, considering the quantities of these stimulants that had been consumed in this small space.

“Cap’n,” said Billy Bones, “I wants to say summat.”

“Shhh!” said Flint.

“But, Cap’n –”

“Shut up!” Flint was listening…for breathing…coughing…anything.

“I wants to say –”

“Ah!” Flint darted forward and pulled open a door. It was canvas stretched on a wooden frame. The cabins themselves were made only of thin pine boards. “Fetch the lantern, Billy-my-chicken,” said Flint, entering the dark space. Just seven feet long by six feet wide, it was barely enough to hold a few sticks of furniture and a bed where a man lay stretched out, his mouth open, the sweat glistening on his face. He was unconscious but alive, and sleeping soundly.

“Cap’n, you’re a fine seaman, as all hands agree, and –”

“Oh, shut up, Billy! D’you know – I do believe this one would survive!”

“– and you know as how I’d follow you wherever you lead –”

“Bring the lantern. See! The skin’s not peeling off any more.”

Billy Bones brought the light and he and Flint looked down on Dr Stanley. The chaplain didn’t look the same without his clerical wig, but it was him all right, and he was definitely not dying.

“Cap’n!” said Billy Bones. “I akses you…not to.”

Flint frowned. “Not to what, Mr Bones?”

“Not to do it, Cap’n.”

“Shut up, Billy! Just you hold his arms.”

“Don’t, Cap’n. Please.”

Flint turned to look at Billy Bones as he stood with the lantern raised and his dark, ugly face gleaming in the amber light. Bones was shaking with fear, but he looked his master in the eye and begged:

“Don’t do it, Cap’n. Let’s be better men than that!”

“What’s wrong with you?” said Flint. “Brace up!”

Billy Bones shook his head. “No, Cap’n. I ain’t gonna do it.”

And there, alone in the heaving, groaning dark of the lower deck, Billy Bones faced the Devil coming out of Hell as Flint turned the full force of his personality upon him: the maniac personality, hidden by a handsome face, which was Flint’s fearful strength. It was his strength even above the fact that he moved so swift and deadly in a fight that he was terrifying in a merely physical sense. But it wasn’t that which frightened men who looked into Flint’s eyes. It was something else, something uncanny and deep, and which now burst forth in its fury: scourging and burning…and shrivelling Billy Bones’s honest little attempt at humanity into futile, smoking ashes.

Billy Bones could never recall what it was that Flint said to him – for it was all done with words, and never a finger raised – but those few minutes in Dr Stanley’s cabin became the evil dread of nightmares that woke Billy Bones, sweat-soaked and howling, from his sleep for the rest of his life.

After that – having been disciplined – he was made to hold Stanley’s arms while Flint smothered the good doctor with his own pillow for the crime of being too clever by half. Next, Flint found the cabin where Lieutenant Hastings lay: just eighteen years old and already dying. Billy Bones was made to hold his arms too. Billy wept as he did it, but could not resist.

“And now only Mr Povey is left…” said Flint, and smiled.

Chapter 9

Early morning, 23rd March 1753

Upper Barbados

The Caribbean

The four forts that guarded Williamstown bay mounted between them nigh-on fifty twenty-four-pounder guns, and they were excellently placed, high above the sea, with a clear field of fire into the channel whereby ships entered the bay.

They were capable of resisting anything less than a major battlefleet, and even one of those couldn’t be sure of forcing an entry: not with one pair of forts at the mouth of the bay, where it narrowed to less than a quarter of a mile’s width, and the second pair placed to sweep the approaches just north of Williamstown’s harbour. Thus, the last time the attempt had been made – British intruders vs Spanish defenders – the fleet was driven off trailing blood and wreckage, and the town was taken only by landing five thousand redcoats at Porta Colomba, ten miles to the south east, and marching them overland with a siege train.

“Huh!” said Israel Hands, as Walrus came through the jaws of the bay, right under the guns of the outermost forts. “Wouldn’t believe this was safe haven for the likes of us!”

Long John frowned, irritably.

“And why not?” he said. “Ain’t we flying British colours like them?” He pointed up at the forts. “And haven’t we just saluted King George with all our guns?”

“Aye,” said Israel Hands. And forcing a grin, he waved a hand at the smoke still hanging about the ship. “But you know what I mean, Cap’n. It’s all down to Sir Wyndham, God bless him!”

Sir Wyndham Godfrey, governor of Upper Barbados, was a figure of fun among sailormen. He’d been a scourge of piracy until the bribes grew too great to refuse, and now he closed his eyes and opened his hand, such that men chuckled at the thought of him, and Israel Hands was hoping to cheer up Long John by the mention of his name. But Silver merely sniffed and turned away, stroking the parrot and staring at nothing.

Hands sighed. He’d been like that, had Long John, ever since Selena went off aboard Venture’s Fortune to make her fortune in London. It weren’t right for a seaman to take it so hard when he lost his doxy. There was always more of them. You soon forgot. Especially when you dropped anchor in a new port.

“Bah!” he said, and stopped fretting over John Silver, and looked instead at all the busy activity aboard Walrus: anchors were off the bows and hung by ring-stoppers at the catheads, bent to the cables flaked out on deck ready for letting go. The ship was scrubbed clean from bow to stern and under easy sail as she came up the dredged channel.

All hands, with the exception of Long John, were delighted at the prospect of going ashore. This was especially true of the two redundant navigators, who stood grinning at approaching freedom. But the shore party would not include the McLonarch, who was locked up below, or Mr Norton, who had been allowed above decks to check the course to Upper Barbados, only to be locked up again as soon as it was sighted. He was now the most miserable creature aboard.

Putting his glass to his eye, Israel Hands focused on the town, less than a mile away, with its whitewashed buildings – tiers and layers of them, rising up the flanks of the bayside mountain still known by its Spanish name of Sangre de Cristo – blood of Christ – for the rosy colour it took in the sunset, as did the white houses themselves. He shifted the glass to the excellent dockyards, which included dry docks capable of receiving anything up to a ship of the line.

And he looked at the offshore anchorage, which was full of every imaginable kind of vessel, with countless masts and yards, and busy boats pulling to and fro. There was one ship ahead of Walrus in the channel, coming into the wind to anchor, while yet another was astern of her, coming through the jaws of the bay.

It was a wonderful sight. After so many weeks at sea, alone on the empty ocean, it made any man cheerful to see such life. Overhead the gulls wheeled and called, the sun shone bright and hot, the sky was blue, the wind was fresh…and Long John was eating his heart out in despair.

Bugger! thought Israel Hands.

Later, with Walrus moored, Israel Hands took his place in the launch with six oarsmen done out in their best rig, and Long John, Allardyce and Dr Cowdray in the stern. These chosen ones would make first contact with the shore authorities – just to be sure, just to be careful – for there was much to be done and arranged before any of the rest of the crew would be allowed to partake of the whoring and boozing and fighting that was any seaman’s honest amusement, fresh ashore…especially gentlemen o’ fortune.

“Give way!” cried Allardyce, and the boat began pulling for the harbour. All aboard looked back at the strange sight of the ship which had been their home, now seen in its entirety, bobbing at anchor among the innocent merchantmen…not that all of them were quite that innocent. Walrus wasn’t the only ship with a black flag in her locker. Not in Williamstown Bay.

“Look!” said Allardyce. “She’s down by the head. You’ll have to haul some guns astern, Israel.”

“Not I!” said Hands merrily. “Shift the sodding cargo aft!”

Allardyce grinned.

“What cargo?” he said. “Only cargo we’ve got is dollars!”

“Clap a hitch!” cried Silver nastily. “Who knows what bugger’s listening!”

They looked round the harbour. There wasn’t a human being within earshot. They made faces behind Silver’s back and fell silent.

Ashore, Silver, Allardyce and Israel Hands went to the harbour master’s office, while the six hands – chosen for their ability to stay sober – were let off the leash, bar one unfortunate who was left to guard the boat.

Dr Cowdray set off into town by himself in search of medical stores, and replacements for some of his worn-out instruments. Having found what he wanted, he then spent a pleasant couple of hours in the cool, shady streets, shaking off hawkers and beggars, enjoying the sight of women and children after so long in the company of men, and looking into the shops, especially bookshops. Then he searched for a tavern – a respectable one – for a drink and a meal, for the rendezvous was hours away yet.

He knew he had found just the place when he clapped eyes on the Copper Kettle. Situated on the shady side of King William Square, it looked bright and clean, with a long awning and tables in the fresh air. The clientele was entirely respectable, with waiters in long white aprons attending, while the vulgar populace was kept back by a fence of neat white posts with chains slung between. Cowdray stepped forward with purpose, but:

“Oh!” he said, and stopped with his bundle of books and his brown paper parcel of medical gear. He dithered and stuck his load under one arm so he could wipe the sweat from his brow with his handkerchief. In amongst the respectable patrons of the Copper Kettle, seated at a table, his parrot on his shoulder, was Long John Silver. In his current foul mood, the captain made the worst imaginable company.

Cowdray stood in the hot, scented air of a tropical spiceisland. It would soon be noon, and the sun was fierce. The streets were emptying as people headed indoors…and Cowdray was thirsty…then…Ah! Debate was irrelevant. Silver had seen him.

“Captain!” said Cowdray, advancing across the square, through the gate in the fence, to take the seat beside Silver. The latter nodded miserably. Cowdray unloaded his goods, and took off his hat in the welcome shade.

“Pffffff!” he said, and fanned himself with his hat.

“Salve, Medicus!” said the parrot, greeting Cowdray in Latin as she always did. At least the bird was pleased to see him.

“Salve, avis sapiens!” said Cowdray. “Hallo, clever bird!”

“Ain’t she, though?” said Silver, stroking the green feathers. “And you love Long John, don’t you?”

“Love Long John!” she said, and bobbed and nodded and rubbed her head against his with every sign of affection. Silver smiled, a real smile, and he turned to Cowdray to make apology.

“Sorry, Doctor,” he said, “I ain’t no use at present, not to man nor beast.”

“Not you, Captain!” said Cowdray stoutly. Another sigh was Silver’s only response.

Then a waiter came, and they ordered food and drink, and sat silent for a bit, and the victuals were served, and Silver went heavy on the drink, and at last the two fell into conversation. Perhaps it was the rum. Perhaps it was because Cowdray wasn’t properly a gentleman o’ fortune, and he certainly wasn’t a seaman, and he was a surgeon – the one who’d saved Long John’s life by taking off his shattered leg – but Long John’s misery and trouble began to tumble out bit by bit.

“What am I to do, Doctor?”

“In what respect?”

“Taking prizes? Winning dollars? Choosing allies?” Silver shook his head. “All of it, Doctor. Living my bleedin’ life! What soddin’ life? What am I? Who am I?”

“Oh!” said Cowdray. He was a surgeon, but like any medical man he knew that men can be wounded in the mind as badly as in the body, and that such wounds could be severe. He glanced at Silver. To Cowdray, Silver was still young: thirty-two? Thirty-three? Cowdray could almost have been his father; moreover he liked Silver and wanted to help. He thought of something to say, to get Silver talking…to explore the wound.

“You let the prize go,” he said, “Venture’s Fortune. Why did you do that?”

“Had to,” said Silver morosely, “or we’d not be refitting in that dockyard yonder.”

“Is that arranged?”

Silver nodded. “It was just a matter of money,” he said. “And plenty of it.”

“Why didn’t you keep the prize?”

Silver shrugged. “We’d get away with that once or twice, but he’d find out in the end.”

“Sir Wyndham Godfrey?”

“Aye. He issues these Protections. I saw one in Cap’n Higgs’s desk.” Silver shook his head irritably. “You see,” he said, “if we…I…am to follow this life, we need a port.”

“Like this one?”

“This is the only bloody one, damn near! So we can’t upset him what owns it.”

“King George, you mean?”

Silver laughed and the parrot squawked loudly.

“And that’s another thing,” said Silver. “I’ve got to choose between them two under hatches aboard ship: Lord fancy-drawers-McBollock, and Mr Bow Street Norton, both of ‘em reckoning they’ve a king behind ‘em. So which do we favour?”

“You took Norton as a navigator…”

“Aye, but he might be useful as a go-between with the law.”

“I see,” said Cowdray. “And in the meantime you stole Bonnie Prince Charlie’s dollars…”

“And how long would I’ve been cap’n if I hadn’t?”

“Hmm,” said Cowdray. “Of course, Allardyce is for McLonarch.”

“Him and others! They worship the paper he wipes his arse on.”

“What do you think?” said Cowdray.

Silver sighed heavily. “See here, Doctor, there could be pardons in this for all hands. McLonarch has offered one, but only if Prince Charlie comes home…while maybe we could get one out of King George for handing McLonarch over – if Allardyce would let us.” Silver shook his head, and took another hefty pull from his tankard. “And there’s civil war brewing if McLonarch gets home, and no way of knowing which side might win…or even if we should try to stop it, for the bloodshed it would mean for all England.”

“I see,” said Cowdray. “But why need there be a decision now? We could take both men to England, ask questions when we get there, and decide then what to do with them.” He bowed his head in thought. “The great prize would be a pardon. That would be precious beyond riches.” He looked up, the evidence weighed, a decision reached: “We should go to England! Then, at worst, if the matter proves too complex, we could set Norton and McLonarch ashore in two different places – thus keeping Allardyce happy and ourselves still holding the dollars.”

“Bugger me blind!” said Silver, tipping back his hat and gazing at Cowdray in admiration. “Where have you been all these months, Doctor? You never speak at our councils and yet here you are, the sharpest man aboard!”

“I never thought the hands would listen to a sawbones,” said Cowdray.

“Well, I’m damned,” said Silver. “You almost persuaded me.”

“Oh? Will you not go to England?”

“I don’t know. The risk is so great. We might be found out. We might be taken…” He looked around King William Square. “This place might be up for bribes, but the Port of London won’t be. And the seas’d be thick with navy.”

“Well,” said Cowdray, looking sideways at Silver, “England is where your wife has gone…”

Silver groaned and rubbed his face with his hands, for that was the heart of his troubles, not the choice between McLonarch and Norton. It was the unspoken pain that not even Cowdray had dared mention until now.

“Did you hear what she said to me?” said Silver. “Aboard the prize?”

“No. I was down below, reducing Mr Miller’s fracture of the tibio-fibula.”

“Oh. How’s he doing?”

“Nicely, Captain. I am pleased to say that he will walk again on two legs!”

“Huh!” said Silver.

“Oh!” said Cowdray, mortified. “I do apologise. How thoughtless. I am so sorry.”

Silver sighed again.

“I tried to stop her,” he said. “Told her what I thought. Then she told me what she thought, which was ‘no more gentleman o’ fortune’…and so we fell to hammer and tongs again, and then that pretty-faced cow stepped up and took her part, and said she’d carry my girl off to England and make a great actress out of her. And she believed it, and so she went.”

“What pretty-faced cow?”

“The actress. She’s supposed to be famous in England.”

“Who told you that?”

“Cap’n Fitch and the rest, aboard Venture’s Fortune.”

“What was her name?”

“Cooper. Mrs Katherine Cooper of Drury Lane. Said my Selena was so beautiful – which she is – that she must succeed upon the stage.” He smiled sadly. “I hope she does.”

Cowdray shot bolt upright in his chair.

“Captain,” he said, “was this a small, very pretty woman in her fifties?”

“Aye. That’d be her.”

“And her name was Katherine Cooper?”

“Aye.”

“Katty Cooper?”

“I did hear that was her name…among friends.”

“Friends?” said Cowdray. “Friends be damned! Katty’s her professional name. She’s no actress! She’s Cat-House Cooper, the procuress! She ran the biggest brothel in the Caribbean, and made a speciality of importing fresh young black girls from the plantations. God help us…we’ve sent Selena to London to be made a whore!”

Chapter 10

An hour after dawn (there being no watches kept nor bells struck)

2nd April 1753

Aboard Oraclaesus

The Atlantic

Billy Bones ran from end to end of the lower deck. He’d already checked the hold.

“Ahoy!” he roared. “Shake out and show a leg!” And he beat a drum roll on the ship’s timbers with a belaying pin, brought down for the purpose. Finally he stopped to listen: there was silence except for the ship’s own creaking and sighing, almost as if she knew what was coming. “With me!” he said, and ran up to the main deck with two men in his wake, and roared out the same challenge.

He bellowed and yelled from end to end of the ship, past the silent guns, staggering under the sickening motion of the rolling, hove-to vessel that clattered its blocks and rattled its rigging and complained and moaned.

“Ahoy there! Show out, you lubbers!” cried Billy Bones. But nobody answered. The ship was empty except for him and his two men. Finally they checked the quarterdeck, the fo’c’sle and the tops…all of which they already knew to be empty. But Billy Bones checked them anyway. Only then did he give the order, and one of his men opened the lantern kept secured on the quarterdeck and took a light from the candle within, and lit the three torches: long timber treenails with greasy rags bound about their tips. Taking the torches, Billy and his accomplices doubled to the three carefully prepared fire points in the hold.

In each place a pile of inflammables had been assembled: crumpled paper, leading to scraps of small timber, leading to casks of paint, and linseed oil ready broached, and finally to stacked heaps of canvas and small spars: a vile mixture aboard a wooden ship, and one which made Billy Bones’s flesh crawl, for the time he’d done the same aboard Long John’s ship, Lion, for which action he was deeply ashamed. Old Nick would surely claim him for that deed when the time came.

But this was different. They were burning a plague ship under Captain Flint’s orders, to save poor mariners from certain death should any come upon her afloat and the miasma of the sickness still aboard – which, from the stink of her, it certainly was. Bones and his men had already set Jumper aflame for the same reason, and now it was the frigate’s turn.

Billy’s face glowed in the firelight as he waited a minute to see that the fire was really under way. Then, with the crackling flames eating hot upon his cheeks, he cried: “All hands to the boat!” And he leapt to his feet and got himself smartly up on deck. Not running, for that might unsettle the hands, but moving at a brisk pace to get away from the flames now roaring down below. And he was right not to run, for the two men were waiting on deck with round eyes and mouths open in superstitious dread of what they’d done.

Billy Bones took one last look – fore, aft, aloft – at the great and beauteous work of man that they were destroying: the soaring masts, the wide yards, the sweet-curving coppered hull and the mighty guns; the cables, anchors, boats and spars; the stores of beef, beer and biscuit, of oil, pitch and tar, of candles, tallow, rope and twine. God knows what she’d cost the king and the nation!

More than that, a ship was a community afloat, bearing the cooper’s adze, the tailor’s shears and the chaplain’s bible, together with all the small and beloved goods of her people: their books, letters and locks of true-love’s hair.

By Flint’s orders, all possible goods and stores had been taken off, including the squadron’s war chest of two thousand pounds in gold. All else had been left behind – including the personal wealth of her officers: their purses, pistols, jewels, watches and wines – for even when it came to such precious items as these, there was a limit to what could be crammed into a sloop one quarter the size of the big frigate. And in any case, so far as Billy Bones was concerned – now increasingly believing that he served the king once more – it was grave-robbing and an unclean deed to pillage the sea-chests of brother officers.

So all these wonders were put to the flames, including the contents of the ship’s two magazines: which – even leaving aside the ready-made, flannel cartridges – contained two hundred ninety-pound, copper-bound kegs holding a total of eight tons of powder.

“Go on!” said Billy, and the two hands were over the side at the main chains and scrambling down into the boat that was bumping and rolling alongside. It was a launch, chosen for speed, and six nervous men were waiting at the oars. Billy Bones’s two men made eight: enough to make the launch fly. He sighed, and followed at the dignified pace of the senior man. “Give way!” he cried at last, and the oarsmen threw their weight – heart, soul, mind and strength – upon the oars in their eagerness to escape the doomed ship and her brimfull magazines.

It was woven into Billy Bones’s nature to tell any crew of oarsmen to put their backs into it; to spur them on, just as a matter of principle…but even he could see that it wasn’t needed on this occasion. The hands were terrified and pulling like lunatics. For one thing, they could see what was happening astern. They could see the red flames pouring out of Leaper’s hatches, and the smoke curling up from Oraclaesus. But Billy Bones thought it beneath his dignity to look back, and he steered for the distant Bounder where Flint awaited with the new crew, and the new future.

They were nearly alongside of her when the first explosion came, and the oarsmen lost stroke as they gaped at the ghastly sight. Now even Billy Bones couldn’t resist looking, and he turned in time to see Oraclaesus break her back: stern and bow drooping, and midships blown clear out of the water by the enormous violence of an explosion that threw flame and smoke and fragments of smashed gear tumbling high into the air, including – hideous to see – the entire, massive, one-hundred-and-eighty-foot mainmast – topmast, t’gallant and all – hurled its own length and more, straight up, with the great yards snapping like cannon-fire and trailing a tangle of rigging and sailcloth…only to hang…and curve…and fall smashing and rumbling down into the blazing wreckage of the ship, throwing up sparks and flame and ash.

Billy Bones sobbed. He was a seaman born and bred, an embodiment of the sea life, and he couldn’t bear to see a ship – especially so fine a ship – come to such an end. As for the oarsmen, they’d served aboard Oraclaesus and she’d been their home and their pride: they threw their faces into their hands and wept…and the launch lost way and rolled horribly, with her oars to all points of the compass.

Soon after, Jumper exploded, the flames for some unfathomable reason taking that bit longer to find her powder. But there were no more tears, only dull misery, for Billy Bones had his men pulling again, and running alongside Bounder, where he went up the side and was received by tars saluting. Having lifted his hat to the quarterdeck, he made his way aft to report.

Flint – who didn’t share Mr Bones’s views on grave-robbing – was immaculate in a cocked hat and the gold-laced uniform coat of a lieutenant, with a fine sword at his side. He was standing at the windward side of the quarterdeck with his officers clustered in his lee as tradition demanded. These were Lieutenant Comstock, a lad of twenty, lately in command of Leaper and now rated first lieutenant; the red-coated Lieutenant Lennox, who was even younger; and finally Mr Baxter, ship’s carpenter, but rated a watch-keeping officer by Flint. There was also the equivocal Mr Braddock, who was no seaman at all. He’d been Captain Baggot’s band-master aboard Oraclaesus, and being in the captain’s personal service was excused fighting and flogging, and considered himself a gentleman.

Billy Bones looked at Braddock and sniffed. The lubber was full of himself and needed taking down. Then Billy glanced at the hands in the waist, and nodded in approval. Having combined the surviving crews of three ships, Flint now had a total of thirty-three men aboard Bounder, including twenty-five able seamen, one sergeant of marines, and two marine privates: a full and satisfactory number to work a two-hundred-ton, two-masted sloop and sail her anywhere in the wide world, especially as she was now provisioned to bursting point. Nonetheless, thirty-three was only a small complement should ever it be necessary to man her twelve six-pounders.

“I’m come aboard, Cap’n!” said Billy Bones formally, giving a smart salute.

“Well done, Mr Bones!” said Flint. “It is a sad task, that with which you were charged, but a needful one, and you have acquitted yourself well.”

Billy Bones bathed in the warmth of his master’s approval, and also in pride at his master’s splendour and all that he had recently achieved. Flint had saved all aboard Oraclaesus, and made the hard decision to abandon the frigate and concentrate all hands aboard Bounder, and to fire the other ships. He’d persuaded the men to follow him, and had acted in so fine and officer-like a manner as to prove that he was indeed the matchless leader that Billy Bones knew him to be…enabling Billy Bones – despite hideous and recent experience – to hope that his beloved master had changed for the better and become – once again – the man who’d won his undying allegiance all those years ago.

The dog-like expression on Billy Bones’s face was bad enough, but when Flint turned to his officers he nearly ruined his entire performance…for the two young lieutenants and the elderly carpenter stood to attention and touched their hats the instant his eye fell upon them. And as for the hands in the waist, standing with their hats in their hands, awaiting his orders: Flint didn’t dare look at them.

What dupes they all were! What credulous morons! He’d won them round in a few days, with a bit of seamanship, an absolute denial of guilt, and a firm protestation that all the tales against him were spite and lies – which phrase he’d lifted bodily from Billy Bones without bothering to say thank you: not for that nor for the superb job Billy Bones had done in extracting innocent praise for Captain Flint out of Ben Gunn, thus commencing Flint’s redemption.

So Flint fought hard not to give way, he really did, for here he was, in front of them all, posing as a loyal sea-service officer with two lieutenants calling him sir, and Billy Bones in raptures of joy, and the lower deck ready to eat out of his hand if he filled it with nuts. And so, and so…Flint frowned magnificently, and dug the nails of his right hand into the palm of his left, where they were clasped behind him, so that the pain should kill his sole and only admitted fault: the unfortunate reaction that his inferiors drew from him on moments like this: a desire to laugh hysterically in their faces.

But…hmmm, thought Flint, that fine gentleman Mr Braddock – that blower of horns, that performer upon the sackbut and dulcimer, and in all probability the Jew’s harp as well – he had a frown upon his face. Flint recalled that Mr Braddock had been the most reluctant of all to set aside Captain Flint’s past activities. Indeed, he’d been most decidedly insolent, and had made reference to a store of “wanted” posters – now thankfully incinerated aboard Oraclaesus – that the squadron had brought out to the Colonies to be pasted on every wall between New York and Savannah, denouncing former lieutenant Flint as a pirate and mutineer!

Yes, Flint nodded to himself, it would soon become necessary for Mr Braddock to suffer a tragic-and-ever-to-be-regretted accident such as – sadly – was all too common in the dangerous confines of a small ship upon the mighty ocean.

Meanwhile:

“Gentlemen!” said Flint.

“Aye-aye, sir!” they cried, and Flint suffered agonies in choking the mirth.

“Our course is to England, and Portsmouth!”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

“Mr Comstock!”

“Sir!”

“You are officer of the watch.”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n!”

That nearly did it. So nearly that Flint had to pretend to cough and to splutter before recovering himself. The fool had actually called him Captain.

“A-hem!” said Flint. “You have the watch, Mr Comstock, to be relieved by Mr Baxter and he by others according to the standing orders I have drawn up.”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

Then Flint drew upon his memories of another captain whom even Flint recognised to be a true leader of men: a man who had once been his dear friend and whom – in the dark depths of his mind – he still admired. Flint asked himself how John Silver would have behaved at that moment, and the answer came back bright and clear.

“Now then, my boys!” he cried, stepping towards the lower-deck hands. “We’ve come through bad times. We’ve come through fire and pestilence and we’ve seen good comrades die…” He paused to let the dreadful memories drag them down, then judged his moment and lifted them up: “But now,” he cried, “we’ve forged a new crew. We’ve a good ship beneath us, and home lies ahead! So here’s to new times and new luck aboard the good ship Bounder. For the ship, lads: for her and all aboard of her: hip-hip-hip –”

“Huzzah!” they roared, three times over.

“And three cheers for Cap’n Flint!” cried Billy Bones. “Hip-hip-hip –”

And they cheered, for there was indeed a damn fine officer inside of Joe Flint, along with all the rest, and Flint realised that as long as he had mastery of Bounder he must behave – of sheer necessity – as the very paragon of a naval officer, with no torment and exotic punishments, such as had been his way before. No! These pleasures must be set aside, and such true leadership displayed as John Silver would have done in his place, for Flint’s own precious life might depend on the account of himself given by Bounder

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