John Drake - Flint and Silver

"That's you done for, you swab," said Skillit. "An' I thought I'd missed, an' all!" He darted forward and kicked Cameron across the face with his bare foot. "That's for you, you no- seaman!" He stepped forward and stood close to Cameron. "Not so bold now, are you?"

Cameron lurched as if reaching for Skillit's foot. Skillit laughed and danced out of the way. Cameron groped his hand forward again. Skillit laughed louder. Cameron groped again… and…

"Bugger me tight!" cried Skillit as he realised that Cameron wasn't reaching for his foot. He was reaching for a pistol, half hidden in the dust and stones.

"Here's for you, shipmate!" said Cameron, and cocked the lock and raised a wobbling hand and tried to bring the weapon to bear on target.

Skillit skipped back, arms outstretched for balance, and he darted from side to side. He sneered at his half-dead opponent.

"Go on then," he cried. "You couldn't hit the fucking mainsail, not if you was wrapped in it!"

"Oh!" said Cameron, and lowered his arm. "I'm bad, shipmate."

"You'll be even badder soon, Jimmie boy!"

"Help me, mate. I think I'm going."

"Serve you right, too!"

"Come here, Franky, old messmate, for the light's a-goin'."

Franky did come here, lured in close by Jimmie Cameron's little act. It was an act, because Cameron wasn't quite gone.

His pistol jerked up quick-sharp and fired three feet from Skillit's belly.

"Ha!" said Cameron. "Now who's feeling bad?"

Skillit staggered back under the impact of the ball. His ears were ringing, his slops were smouldering, and there was a scorched black hole below his navel. He got a finger right inside of it when he felt for it, and he howled in anguish, and fell over backwards, and sat himself up again, and howled some more, and wept and moaned and called on the mother who'd sold him to a Pudding Lane brush-maker fifteen years ago when he was five, and spent the money on gin.

Cameron sneered and flung the empty pistol away. He looked for its mate with the thought of finishing the job. He saw it, but it was no good. He couldn't drag himself that far. He looked at Skillit, sitting twenty feet off, nursing his wound.

"That's you done for, you sod!" he said. "That'll see you off!"

"And you too, you sod!" said Skillit.

"Bastard!" said Cameron.

"And you're another!" said Skillit.

There they sat for some time, weeping and whimpering, and getting slowly weaker. Soon, their anger faded and self- pity grew.

"Couldn't I just take a swig right now!" said Cameron.

"Me an' all," said Skillit.

"There's a canteen o' water up top o' the hill," said Cameron.

"Can't walk," said Skillit.

"Me neither," said Cameron.

That was all their conversation for a while. Then, as the sun was sinking and night approaching, Cameron spoke again.

"Here, Franky – why'd you do that, anyhow?"

"What?"

"Stick a fucking knife in me!"

"Cap'n told me to."

"Why?"

"'Cos you're Silver's man."

"So what?"

"'Cos you'll thieve the goods and leave us Walruses marooned!"

"Bollocks! We're loyal-hearts-and-true, aboard Lion."

"Says who?"

"Says I! And so says all aboard of us. And Long John too!"

"Oh," said Skillit, severely puzzled. "But the cap'n said…"

"Sod the cap'n! I told you thems was screams we heard yesterday."

"It wasn't!"

"It was. When we was a-raising the spar… It was Fraser!"

"Wasn't!"

"It was! It was that bugger Flint, a-doing for him!"

"Was it?"

"Who else could it sodding be? It wasn't any of us, was it?"

"P'raps it was them… creatures…"

"Horse-shit! D'you know what Fraser said to me?"

"No?"

"He said them noises was Flint playing games in the dark."

Both men fell silent again. They were thinking over all that they'd heard about Flint – none of which was very nice. They were doing this with rudderless, fog-bound minds, while weak and wounded, and laid out helpless in the open, and in agony… and with darkness approaching when daytime certainties about the non-existence of creatures would not be so certain any more.

"Franky?" said Cameron.

"What?"

"What was we s'posed to be guarding up here?"

"Dunno. Flint said guard the hill. That's all."

"What if he comes back?"

"Oh, bugger me! What if he wants the goods for himself?"

"Oh, shag me ragged!"

"Come on, shipmate, up anchor! He'll do for the pair of us if we don't."

Thus Cameron and Skillit began their descent of Spy-glass Hill. They scraped and dragged and crawled. They set their teeth against the pain. They helped one another like jolly companions, each encouraging his shipmate when the other seemed likely to fail. They even did what they could for their wounds: Skillit hauling the knife out of Cameron's back, and Cameron using it to cut one leg off Skillit's slops to make a bandage for the bullet hole.

Sadly, the removal of the knife only made Cameron's wound bleed all the faster, and Skillit's bandage was promptly dragged off by his slithering over the ground.

Nonetheless, since it was downhill all the way and along a goat track, they made steady progress, covering nearly a hundred yards, until finally, just before it got properly dark, they heard – faintly in the distance – a cheerful voice singing, and the steady beat of a man's footsteps coming up the track towards them.

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest!

"Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

It was amazing how this put life into Cameron and Skillit. There was no more lizard-like dragging themselves over the ground. Not for them! Somehow – heroically – they struggled up on to their legs. Then, leaning heavily on one another, and clutching their wounds, they stepped out at double their previous pace, even though it was now uphill all the way.

They got a remarkably long way before the cheerful singer caught them.

7th September 1752 Night Spy-glass Hill The island

Flint was puzzled. The parrot wouldn't come back. It fluttered in the darkness like an owl, except that owls didn't cackle and groan.

Flint was used to the parrot flying off on certain occasions. He was far too sharp not to have noticed that. He'd put it down to the little peculiarities that all creatures have, parrots as well as men. But this was different. Usually the bird would settle in the rigging, or here on the island it would find the branch of a tree. He peered into the warm, smooth darkness and looked up at the enormous pines. Crickets chirped, the surf rolled, the stars glittered… and there came the bird again… a screeching fury like those in the Greek legends.

"Ah!" said Flint, as a claw scratched his face, dangerously close to his eyes, almost as if the bird were attacking him, almost as if it disapproved.

It came back again and again. It came out of the dark, howling and squawking. And all he'd been doing was settling Skillit and Cameron. Just a bit of fun, tickling them up with an inch of the cutlass point to make them run: just a jab here, and a stab there. And then a bit of sobbing and pleading from the pair of them, and one of them calling for his mother – Flint couldn't remember which – while the other fell to screaming and raving and damning Flint's eyes. And then Cameron managed to pop off all by himself, while Flint laughingly explained to Skillit that he'd taken such a liking to that gentleman's ears that they must come off for keepsakes before their owner was sent upon his way.

That was the source of the problem. Once Skillit and Cameron were quiet, the parrot had come back to Flint's shoulder. It was then that he'd attempted – in all innocence and meaning no harm – to feed it one of the ears. And that, unaccountably, seemed to have turned the bird's mind.