John Drake - Skull and Bones

"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!"