John Drake - Flint and Silver

Well, thought Parson, the pistol won't do a lot of harm without that!

He stood up and dusted himself off as Selena fumbled with the rammer, then dropped that too, and grabbed another cartridge, and bit that open and showered gritty black powder down the barrel and all over the wood and steel of the pistol. Another cartridge followed the first two. She was like a cook, dusting flour over a pie.

Parson was right. Selena had no idea how to load a gun. And why should she? Plantation slaves weren't trained in the use of arms, and the only time she'd ever seen a pistol fired had been in Charley Neal's liquor store when Flint shot Atty

Bolger. Neither had she any interest in guns, so she'd never asked how to load one. Whenever Walrus had gone in to action, she'd been sent below, and had never even seen a gun loaded.

She just knew it was something to do with gunpowder and steel and flint, and she did the best she could.

"Selena, my dear," said Parson, creeping towards her, "I was so disappointed in you when you called on Silver to save you, for he is a ruined man."

"He's ten times the man you'll ever be!"

"And even if you had jumped, the current would have swept you away."

"Shut your mouth!"

Selena looked at him. She was done loading. She thrust the pistol into Parson's face.

"I'll shoot!" she said.

"You won't. You didn't load the ball. You didn't prime the pan."

"I'll kill you!"

Parson smiled grimly. Making ready for action, he took off his spectacles; the white showed round his eyes as he turned nasty.

"Now listen to me, my saucy doxy. You will not kill anybody. You will behave yourself, and you will be quiet too, unless you want more than me to deal with. And then, my girl," he licked his pretty lips, "you will take a damn good thrashing and a damn good shafting."

She pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

"You didn't cock it," sneered Parson. "You have to pull this back -" he reached out and touched the flint. She hauled it back with a fat click.

"And you have to pull this back too," said Parson, tapping the steel. In terror, Selena snapped down the steel.

"Fire at will!" said Parson, and touched his nose to the muzzle.

Click! The flint showered sparks as it scraped the steel. But the pistol didn't fire.

"I told you," said Parson, and in bravado he took the muzzle of the pistol and popped it into his mouth, while reaching out a podgy hand for a good fondle of Selena's left breast. Ahhh! The feel of it pumped fire, and up stood Parson's best friend like a soldier at attention.

Click! Selena tried again. Click! Click! Click! Again and again, hauling back the mechanism and pulling the trigger.

Parson sniggered. He gripped the muzzle with his teeth and smiled happily. He reached out the other hand and got a grip on the vacant breast. It was just like old times, those times so long ago and so fondly remembered.

Click! Click! Click! And silence.

A firelock needs a good pinch of powder in the pan to feel the sparks from the steel, and so to explode, sending a flash through the touch-hole and into the barrel to explode the main charge and drive the ball thundering on its way. In her ignorance, Selena hadn't put in that pinch of powder, nor loaded the ball.

But she had poured most of three cartridge-loads of powder into the bottom of the barrel, where it accumulated in a pile, of which just a very few grains – what with Parson Smith's shoulders heaving with laughter and shaking the barrel – just a few adventurous grains decided to make their way out through the touch-hole, and into the pan, where they lay waiting for the next time that Selena pulled the trigger.

"Click!" said the lock.

"Scrape!" said the flint.

"Fizz!" said the sparks.

"Whoof!" said the grains.

And…

"BOOM/" said the powder in the barrel. There was plenty of it, and there wasn't the least need for a ball.

Parson's face tore wide open, jagged and bloodied and raw.

His tongue and cheeks spattered in fragments round the cabin, while white-hot flame blasted down his throat, bursting lungs and windpipe, stomach and gullet, pallet and eardrums. Smoke poured from his nose and ears and from the hideous, blackened cavity that had been his mouth. Roast flesh sizzled and crackled and split.

But he didn't fall. He staggered and swayed and lived. He raised hooked fingers to the monstrosity that was his face. His eyes stared. His ruined lungs drew agonising breath, and spat out a hissing stream of blood and mucus in the attempt to force a scream from the incinerated apparatus that had once delivered Smith's voice. And then he was crashing on to his back, kicking and twitching and frothing and bubbling. He'd only stood a few seconds, but it was a miracle he'd stood at all.

Selena's stomach heaved up its contents at the sight of him. She retched and groaned and crawled into a corner as Smith drummed the deck with his heels and elbows. He was a long time dying: a long, hard time. He made enough noise that someone came to see what was happening.

"Parson?" said a voice. "That you? What you doing? Was that a shot?" The door rattled and shook. "Selena?" said the voice. "You got Parson in there?"

"Get a crowbar," said another voice. "She's done for him, or he's done for her. Get this bloody hatchway open!"

As the door shivered and splintered, Selena did what she wished she'd done when Long John called her to his boat. She jumped from the stern windows and swam.

8th September 1752 Mid afternoon Haulbowline Head The island

"Fox's Book of Martyrs," said Flint. "It was the constant companion of my youth." He sighed and shook his head. "Given to me by my father on my thirteenth birthday – which birthday, by Mosaic Law, made me a man, and which book, my father said, was 'the bastion of our Protestant religion against the Anti-Christ Bishop of Rome'!" He turned to his audience. "Those were his very words, lads. What do you think of that?"

"Mm," they said.

"He was a man of powerful views," said Flint, which was true. The Reverend Mordecai Flint, Presbyter-General of the Revelationary Evangelist Church, had held opinions that were rooted like mountains. Flint smiled. "And yet, he was hated by all who knew him. Hated… but feared!"

"Mm."

Flint dug into the rich, black soil of memory, and turned up a thing that smelt bad, even to him. He paused. He gathered himself. He spoke.

"Do you know, lads, he… my father… he had a particular disgust for the physical act of procreation. D'you know that? And he never ceased to punish me for my own conception." Flint raised a warning hand. "Not that he beat me! No. He never touched me. Not once, not ever. Indeed, he never touched anyone. But he had the most wonderful ability to inspire guilt."

"Mm."

"And so I took refuge in that beloved old book. It was the London edition of 1701, in two folio volumes with hundreds of wood-cut illustrations, most lavishly and beautifully worked. What do you think of that?"

"Mm."

"We had two other books in the house: the Bible, of course, and Pilgrim's Progress." He frowned. "But I could never take to them. It was always Fox's for me, and many's the happy hour I spent in study of it." He chuckled confidentially. "Well, lads," he admitted, "if the truth be known, it wasn't so much the text I studied, for I mainly looked at the pictures."

"Mm."

Flint shook his head.

"You wouldn't believe the things I saw, and the lessons I learned. You wouldn't believe the ingenious cruelties inflicted by one man upon another in the name of faith, and the agonies suffered by the blessed martyrs. And you wouldn't believe the artistic skill – and the precision of detail – with which those horrors were depicted: the rack and strappado, the stake and the thumbscrew; decapitation, immuration, ex-sanguination, and the winding-out of the gut…" He mused a while, savouring the memory. "Have you ever seen that, lads? The winding-out of the gut… with a windlass"