John Drake - Flint and Silver

"Belay that, you swabs!" cried Silver. "Get about your duties!" Silver frowned. The trouble was, lying five days at anchor waiting for Flint to finish with his burying, most of them didn't have any duties and the ship was full of idlers. Worse still, the whole crew had seen Silver make a considerable fool of himself and now thought less of him. Silver sighed as painful thoughts filled his mind, and he tried to fix on the business in hand.

"Well then, Mr Bones," he said when they were alone. "I'm sorry to see you nailed like this, I take my affy davy on it! You'd not have been brought below like dunnage for stowage if you'd listened to myself instead of Flint. You know you can't trust the bugger, so what's holding you to him? What's he offered you?"

"Ax mine arse!" said Billy Bones, loyal beyond reason to his absent master.

"Is that the way of it, then?" said Silver. "And there's me thinking we'd sailed a few leagues as shipmates. Can we not make and mend? We're both aground on the same shoal."

"Kiss mine arse!" said Billy Bones.

"Billy," said Silver, "I asks you once more – you as knows Flint better than any of us – what's he doing? What's his plan?"

"Don't know," said Billy Bones. "An' I won't tell!"

"Huh!" said Silver. "You ain't the sharpest, are you, Billyboy?"

"That's all you know!" said Billy.

"Billy," said Silver, "what if I let Israel and some of the others ask you?"

To Silver's amazement, Billy Bones grinned.

"You daresn't," he said.

"Don't I though? You sure o' that?"

"Aye!"

And that was all Billy Bones would say. Silver got not another word out of him, and made his way slowly up on deck again. He was now very nimble, but climbing would always be hard for a man with one leg. Two bells sounded as he pulled himself through a companionway in the waist. Two bells of the second dog watch – seven p.m. shore time – and it was dark. He glanced ashore and saw a fire burning and heard the faint sound of singing: the lucky six and Captain Flint.

He looked across the anchorage to where Walrus lay, visible only by her lights. Selena was somewhere aboard. At the thought of her, the despair sat down upon him. When the grand council ended and Lion's crew went back to their ship, she'd gone with Flint, who'd promptly insisted that Silver should have Billy Bones again… in compensation! Selena he'd not seen since, but Billy Bones had stuck like shit to a blanket… apart from the half-day he spent aboard Walrus looking for his lucky gold piece.

So what did it mean? What had Flint said to Billy? Why should Flint want Billy Bones aboard Lion? What was Flint doing ashore, with six men and eight hundred thousand pounds? Silver sighed. He ignored Israel Hands and the others, who were waiting for him to see what he'd learned from Billy Bones, and he went down to the stern cabin and found a bottle of rum.

It was a bad time for Long John Silver. Perhaps the worst time in his life, because he was facing failure – utter failure – at a time when he was still grieving for his lost leg and trying to face life as a cripple. He counted the score in his mind: Item one, he'd found a woman that he loved, and had insulted her and lost her because he couldn't trust her. Item two, losing her was a pain like Surgeon Cowdray's knife. Item three, he'd failed to show the light to Billy Bones. Item four, he'd failed to talk the hands out of Flint's burying of the goods. And item five – if the mutterings and saucy behaviour among the crew was anything to go by – then he'd failed as Cap'n Silver.

He took to the bottle and was well into draining it when, some hours later, a hand tapped at the cabin door.

"Cap'n?" said Israel Hands's voice.

"Go away!" said Silver. But the door opened, and three men entered: Israel Hands, Blind Pew and Sarney Sawyer. Hands and Sawyer had their hats in their hands, and Pew was clutching his eyeshade. They were bobbing and nodding like Flint's parrot. All three touched their brows and stamped the deck in salute, and they stood in a row with their heads bowed. Lion's small stern cabin was too low for men to stand in comfortably, but they'd probably have stood like that had they been in a cathedral. They were nervous.

They were nervous and something else. They were shocked at the spectacle of Long John Silver far gone in drunkenness, stretched unkempt and slovenly in a chair, with his one leg perched on a table and his favourite pair of pistols in front of him. He looked all the worse by comparison with the neat cabin, all white-painted and picked out in gold leaf, and brightly lit by beeswax candles in glazed lamps. The three of them would have been even more shocked had they known what Silver – in his despair – had been thinking of doing with his pistols.

"What's this?" said Silver, peering with red eyes. "A deputation?"

"Cap'n," said Israel Hands, "what did Billy say, beggin' your pardon?"

"Nothing," said Silver.

"Let me ask him, Cap'n," said Israel Hands, "with a belaying pin."

"Aye," said Blind Pew, "or a little fire under his toes."

"No!" said Silver. "You've signed articles."

"But we's split," said Israel Hands. "An' the articles is broke."

Silver sighed, hauled himself upright, shoved his pistols out of reach and tried to act the part of a ship's master.

"Mr Hands," he said, "bend an ear, for here's the way of it. If this happy company be split – which p'raps it may be – then we needs Billy Bones more than ever, for I reminds you that only he, aboard this ship, could bring us safe home to Savannah. So, even if there was no articles, we can't break his bones nor burn his toes nor anything other than guard him like a mother's child."

"Oh!" said the three, all together. They'd not thought of that.

"Aye," said Silver. "And somebody has explained the matter to Billy, who'd never have worked that out for himself – not for all his 'rithmatic and calculations. Now, who d'you think that might have been?"

"Flint," said Blind Pew.

"Aye," said Silver. And there was a silence while Silver emptied another glass and the three men stood looking at one another. Then Pew nudged Israel Hands.

"Cap'n," said Hands, "you was right. We are a deppytation."

"Are you now?"

"Aye, Cap'n."

Silver knew what was coming. They'd had enough of him. It was the black spot.

"Out with it then, curse you!"

"Cap'n, this crew has been talking…"

"And?"

"Cap'n, you must know…"

Ba-bang! Ba-ba-bang! A volley of shots came from the shore, sounding clearly through the open stern lights.

5th September 1752 Dusk The island

Flint was deeply happy. The goods were buried and only he knew where.

Well, the lucky six had an approximate knowledge of the burial sites – he looked at their ugly faces as they sat patiently in the sand, awaiting his orders. They were illiterate clods. Even if he'd given them his notebook with its careful bearings and measurements, they couldn't have used it. Nonetheless, they'd remember trees and rocks and other landmarks, bless their hearts. But that didn't matter. Not at all. Not as far as Joe Flint was concerned, because here on the island he was unchained from any limitations on his ability to deal with these unfortunates.

More precisely – did he but know it – here on the island he'd been joined by his old friend Temptation, who'd returned chuckling and merry, and just bursting with new ideas. Always previously Flint had been constrained by higher powers: King George's law, John Silver's articles, even the stolid conservatism of Billy Bones. But not here! Here he was alone with the lucky six, and boundless opportunity.

He fondled the shifting, muttering parrot that swayed and fidgeted and rubbed itself against his head, and he looked towards Lion and Walrus, moored out in the smooth waters of the southern anchorage. They were both still visible in the tropical dusk, though a tired red sun was touching the horizon in the west.