John Drake - Flint and Silver

"Thank God!" said Cowdray. "Me damn bladder's bursting. Can't stand here another second. Here – take this. She'll probably be safe now, but you never know." And he thrust the blunderbuss into Smith's hands and darted off, thinking of the pewter chamber pot in his own cabin. "Well done, Parson!" he said. "Heard every word of it." And he was gone.

And Parson Smith was alone in the dark narrow space in front of Flint's cabin. He reached out and tried the door. It was locked.

"Who's there?" she said from inside, and Parson licked his lips.

"It is I, my dear," he said.

"Go away!" she said.

He smiled and produced a key: Flint's spare key to the cabin. Flint had given it to him as a token of things to come. He put it into the lock. He turned the key, and he was in, and locking the door behind him.

"Ah!" he said. It was even hotter down here than up on deck. She was wearing just a shirt. It was open at the neck and left her legs exposed from the knees down. Every hair on Smith's body prickled with delicious excitement.

"Dear me, dear me!" he said, and took off his hat and coat.

"What do you want?" she said.

The look on his face gave the answer. There followed a brief series of manoeuvres – he trying to get at her, and she keeping the big table between them.

Smith laughed. "Too hot for such games!" he said, and pulled out a chair and sat on it. He peered at her. "Do you know your catechism, my dear?" he asked, and slapped his leg at the joke. That was how he'd always begun! He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt, and licked his lips. He stood up again. He darted one way and she jumped to avoid him. He darted the other way: she jumped again.

He sniggered: a dirty, wet snort at the back of his nose. He wasn't trying to catch her; not yet. He was happy with things as they were. He was in the shadows while she was in front of the stern windows, wearing one of Flint's fine, lawn shirts – such that he could see every curve of her naked body as well as if the shirt had been transparent. So he was quite happy for the moment, just licking his lips at the sight of her breasts bouncing as she moved.

He laughed. He sat down again. He cleared his throat. He became serious and turned to business.

"And now, my dear, I must tell you that Captain Flint and I have discussed your future."

"What?" she said. "First I've heard of it!"

"Doubtless," he said with the invincible self-assurance of a man who knows what is best for others. "But you will be pleased to know that your time of dissatisfaction is at an end! Your vital needs shall no longer go unmet." He licked his lips again, very slowly. "You shall not be denied those services so indispensable to a woman of your race."

"Just what the Hell do you think you are talking about?"

He told her, and received – thrown as hard as her arm could deliver – a savage shower of every object on her side of the cabin that was not fixed, clamped or nailed down.

"Bitch! Slut! Trull!" he cried, springing out of his chair and racing round the table, roaring threats of horse-whipping, and she was running and running… and tripping over a tumbled chair… and down she went and down he leapt, grabbing and reaching… and caught the hem of her shirt, and enjoyed a second's wonderful viewing of the luscious flesh beneath the linen, before one of the gleaming limbs pounded, hard and heel-down, into the middle of his face, leaving him blinded with pain and dizzy with shock.

"Damn you, you nigger slut!"

"Damn you too!"

Smith hauled himself up, and wiped his nose on the tail of his shirt, which had come out of his britches and was dangling round his knees. He was hot and tired, and out of breath. For the moment, lust was driven from the field, leaving only hypocrisy standing fast. Parson cleared his throat loudly and drew himself up once more into innocence abused.

"So much for my attempts as a Christian," he said, "to minister unto the needs of others."

"What a heap o' shit! I'll tell Flint when he gets back. Know what he'll do to you?"

That gave Smith a fright.

"Oh," he said, "I really cannot imagine any reason why the captain should be involved in this small disturbance."

"Can't you, though?"

"Err… no."

She sneered. He frowned. He looked down, locked in fearful dilemma. He'd known in the first place that it was madness to lay a hand on her before Flint gave the word, but he couldn't keep away. He couldn't keep his hands off anything female – girl, woman or child – once she was in his power. He moaned to himself.

"Parson?" cried a voice outside.

A fist beat the door.

"Parson? A boat's pulling over from Lion. Silver's coming!"

6th September 1752 Seven bells of the forenoon watch (c. 11.30 a.m. shore time) Aboard Walrus The southern anchorage

If Silver had been standing level with Parson Smith, he would have won. But he was sitting on the thwart of a miserable jolly-boat with Walrus's crew looking down on him, while Parson strutted the quarterdeck and boomed and roared in majesty.

As Billy Bones had done before, Parson marvelled at Flint's prescience. Flint had warned him that Silver might try to turn Walrus's people, and Flint had ordered that under no circumstances was Silver to be allowed aboard Walrus.

"If you do that, Mr Smith," he'd said, "then you are lost. In the eyes of the crew he is the greater man. He stands head and shoulders above you all, both figuratively and in reality."

So when Silver came across from Lion with six men pulling and himself at the tiller, and called for a parlay, Smith sternly refused, and wouldn't let him come aboard. He protested that this would break the promise that all hands had made not to interfere with the burial of the goods.

"No, sir!" cried Smith. "We have taken an oath, sir!"

"Which ain't nothing to do with me coming aboard Walrus."

"It is, sir, for what else would you speak of?"

"That bugger Flint! That's what!"

"There!" cried Parson. "Condemned from his own lips!"

"Bladderwash!" cried Silver. He gave up with Parson Smith, and turned to the men. "Who knows me?" he said. "Come on, shipmates – who knows me? Who knows me, and who knows Flint?"

There was a stirring among the men packed along Walrus's rail. There wasn't one man of them that didn't know Long John Silver. They knew him and they knew all that he stood for. He stood for jolly companions, fair shares for all and none left out, and no comrade ever abandoned – not even Blind Pew. Others might speak of these things, but Long John Silver believed in them and lived by them. Oh yes indeed! They knew Silver and they knew Flint, and Parson Smith blinked in fright.

"Don't listen to him!" he cried.

"Bollocks!" cried someone.

"Shut your trap, Parson!"

"Go on, Long John!"

"Go on, Cap'n!"

Captain! They were calling him captain! Parson Smith trembled.

"When did I ever tell you lies?" said Silver. "When did I ever twist or turn? Let any man of you stand forth who's ever heard me called a liar!"

"Not you, Long John!"

"Never!"

He nearly did it. Even sitting in the boat. Even under the disadvantage that Flint had contrived. He nearly had them, and a few more words would have had them out of Flint's grasp. But success – or near success – betrayed him. Greatly encouraged, Silver attempted to stand in the boat. He attempted to stand, to make the better figure of himself… and the boat swayed, and one-legged he stumbled and crashed headlong into his own oarsmen.

The fickle audience laughed. They laughed and Parson darted forward and picked up a shot from the rack beside a gun. He hurled it over the side towards Silver's boat.

"See him off!" he cried. "'Ware boarders!"