John Drake - Flint and Silver

Screeching manically, it came again, and this time caught Flint an outright blow on the brow. It was attacking and no mistake. Flint was unnerved. He could have drawn steel and cut the bird out of the air. He could have used his pistols. But the bird was his companion and he wanted it back. He didn't want it dead.

Another strike, and that was it. Flint ran. He held his hands over his head and sped down the goat track to the forest with its undergrowth and intertwined branches where the bird could take no advantage of him.

And there he found darkness: utter, smothering darkness. So dark that nothing could be seen and nothing could be done. Not even the stars shone here. Not here in the foetid, stinking mould of rotting plants and wriggling insects: centipedes, millipedes, slugs and spiders, every one far bigger than a decent man would have wished, and proceeding in company with whatever else there might be that slithered through the night-time jungle. It was neither a cosy nor an inviting place. For once, Joe Flint had found a billet as slimy as the entrails of his own mind.

But billet it was. Flint was here for the night. He couldn't go forward through the invisible jungle, and he couldn't go back – not in the dark with an airborne demon trying to take his eyes out. So, with utmost reluctance, Flint sat down, his back to a tree, put his cutlass and pistols across his lap, and resigned himself to sleep. He told himself that he was bound to be safe, for the island had no leopards or panthers – not so far as he knew – and he had no fear of snakes, not in the daytime at least.

Just as he was falling asleep, he heard a fluttering high up above his head. He recognised this as the parrot, settling in for the night. His last thought was that at least he had a friend nearby.

8th September 1752 One bell of the afternoon watch (c. 12.30 p.m. shore time) Aboard Walrus The southern anchorage

Parson Smith kept his mind off rape for nearly a day and a half.

He managed this because he had become a very considerable seaman and officer – at least in his own eyes. For one thing, after his triumph over Silver, the hands were treating him with a reasonable approximation of respect, rather than merely stifling their contempt through fear of Flint. For another, he truly enjoyed the pleasures of mathematics, and was full of self-satisfaction with his constant polishing of his calculations of latitude and longitude.

So, Mr Smith strutted around thinking himself a man of action and a gentleman of fortune, and he fantasised that, on his return to civilisation, with the enormous wealth that would be his – why – he might well continue in some honest and profitable seafaring venture, a venture such as would make him the master and owner of a huge East Indiaman: a man recognised as a prince of commerce, a nabob and a millionaire!

It was by that very route that he fell – inevitably – into sin. For the East Indies conjured up visions of sybaritic pleasures and harems full of perfumed women… and so, in the end, he couldn't keep his grubby little mind off the succulent flesh locked in Flint's cabin, where that bastard Cowdray – who was probably after her for himself – was taking her food so she need never come out.

Now, even fear of Flint was suppressed by his lust. So he waited until the hands were paralysed by the noon heat. He waited till all but the lookouts were in the shade, dozing… and then he crept below.

He took off his shoes for silence. He took off his hat and coat as well. Then, in an ecstasy of anticipation, he glided to the door of Flint's big cabin. He made no sound. He turned the key… slowly… slowly… slowly… clunk! He pushed the door with utmost gentleness. He slid inside… he locked the door… he looked around. Oh! A moment of doubt – where was she? All he could see was the furnishings – the big table and the chairs. He took a step forward and caught sight of her at last, and the load inside his britches strained to spilling point.

She was asleep, naked! She was stark-shining-luscious- delectable-beautiful naked, stretched out in the boiling heat on the padded seat that ran under the windows. The table and chairs had been in the way, that was all. Parson ground his teeth. He struggled tremendously. He exerted Herculean efforts. He was throbbing with lust and agonising to contain himself. He tried and tried and tried… but…

"Agh!" groaned Parson in wasted ecstasy.

"Get out! Get out of here!" she said, up and awake at the sound. Her legs swung forward, she ducked down for something Parson couldn't see.

"Bah!" said Parson, and slumped into a chair, wiping the slobber off his lips with his shirt. When he looked up a very nasty surprise was waiting for him. He was staring down the barrels of two heavy pistols. The sight so gripped him that, for the moment, he didn't even look at the naked figure behind them.

"Oh!" he thought, and blinked at the realisation of his own stupidity. Flint's cabin was hung with arms. It was festooned and decorated with them. He should have thought of that. He sat for a while, wondering what to do next. She backed against a bulkhead, arms outstretched, shaking with the weight of the pistols.

"Get out of here," she said, "or I'll shoot you dead!" Parson sneered and shook his head.

"No," he said, "I don't think you will, my dear. Because, if you do that, you'll bring the crew down here on the instant. And who will defend you then?" He laughed.

The first shock had worn off, and Parson had taken a closer look at the pistols. One of them wasn't cocked at all. The steel was thrown forward and the powder-pan open. The other looked as if it was on half-cock, though it was in the shadows and hard to see. He smiled. Stupid moll! She obviously knew nothing of firearms. He was safe. All he had to do was sit quietly till his own armament reloaded, and then he'd do her on his lap – just for old times' sake – and after that in as many different ways as he fancied. He was a man of powerful appetites, and could usually manage three or four courses at a sitting. His confidence came back. He smirked.

"You must ask yourself, my dear," he said, "would you not prefer my own gentle attentions to those of seventy violent men? I really would recommend that you make no noise at all, let alone fire off a pair of pistols!"

But this caused quite the wrong result.

"Bastard" she said, and hauled on the triggers with all her might. As Parson had noticed, one couldn't possibly fire, and didn't. But the other – which was fully cocked, snapped in a shower of sparks that shocked Smith's bladder into passing a brief spurt of water into his drawers. What a mess was now accumulating down below aboard the good ship Parson!

"Bitch!" he cried, and threw himself across the broad table to grab the pistols and pull them from her hands. But she hung on, and she had a better grip on the butts than he did on the ends of the barrels, and his arms were fully extended and his feet off the ground and, after a brief tug- o'-war, she wrenched the weapons free and flung one at Parson's head.

"Ow!" he cried and retreated, clutching a bloodied brow and wincing in anticipation of the arrival of the second pistol. He crouched behind a chair, and spat venom. "I'll skin the arse off you, madam! I'll flog you to within an inch of your life!" By God he would too, and what pleasure it would be to do it. There was a novel thought! One that opened up fresh horizons, and he looked around the cabin for something to serve as a whip. But she wasn't listening. She was standing in her silky nakedness, with her tits quivering and the second pistol up-ended, trying to load it with a cartridge snatched out of a locker.

Parson looked, and giggled. She hadn't the least idea how to go about it. She was missing out the ball! It was tied up in its own little recess at one end of the paper cylinder, and she didn't even know it was there! She just threw it aside with the empty cartridge paper.