Skull and Bones (7 page)

    Then the captured crew were made to haul up the boxes, one at a time, for opening on the quarterdeck at Silver's feet, to thundering cheers, the fiddler playing, hornpipes being danced, and joy unbounded as rivers of Spanish coin poured out all over the decks, such that it was a tribute to Long John's leadership that all hands did not get roaring drunk and lose the ship.

    The only thing that puzzled Silver in that merry moment was why McLonarch had given up his treasure so easily. Silver pondered on that. Of course, the gelt was lost to McLonarch as soon as his ship was taken… but why speak up
quite
so helpful: saying how much there
was,
and who'd got the
keys,
an' all? It wasn't right. No man behaved like that. So what was going on?

    He got his answer later, when Tom Allardyce brought McLonarch down to the stern cabin, where Silver was sitting at Captain Fitch's desk, going through the ship's papers for anything that might be useful.

    "Cap'n!" said Allardyce. Silver looked up. Allardyce stood with his hat in his hands, bent double in respect for the man beside him, and whom he kept glancing at, in awestruck respect. McLonarch, free of chains and even more imposing than he'd been before, stood beside Allardyce with his nose in the air, and gazing down upon Silver as if he were a lackey with a chamber pot. Silver frowned.

    "Who took his irons off, Mr Bosun?"

    "Er… me, Cap'n."

    "On whose orders?"

    "Seemed the right thing, Cap'n," said Allardyce, torn between two loyalties.

"'The right thing,
you say? Now see here, my lad, I'll not -"

    "Captain Silver!" said McLonarch. "That is your name, is it not?"

    Silver stared at McLonarch, whom he did not like - not one little bit - having taken against him on sight, for McLonarch was a man who expected doors to open in front of him and close behind him, and who sat down without looking… such was his confidence that a minion would be ready with a chair! Silver forgave him that, for it was the way of all aristocrats. What made him uneasy was McLonarch's belief that he was the right hand of Almighty God, and his uncanny gift of convincing others of it: which gift now bore down upon John Silver.

    "Aye, milord! Silver's my name," said Long John. "Cap'n Silver, at your service."

    Silver couldn't believe he'd just said that. He disowned the words on the instant. But he'd said them all right, and worse still, he felt an overpowering urge to stand up and take off his hat! A lesser man would have been up like a shot, and even Silver was half out of his seat before he realised what was happening and slumped back, scowling fiercely. But McLonarch nodded in satisfaction, and waved a gracious hand.

    "Captain," he said, "I welcome you into my service. There is much work for you to do, and you will begin by locking His Majesty's monies into their strongboxes once again and replacing the boxes in the hold."

Chapter 6

One bell of the afternoon watch

18th March 1753

Aboard Oraclaesus

The Atlantic

    Flint's leg-irons were secured by the curled-over end of an iron bar. Billy Bones got the bar nicely on to the small anvil he'd brought below for purposes of liberation, took up the four-pound hammer, frowned mightily for precision… and struck a great blow.

    Clang! said the irons.

    "Another," said Flint.

    "Aye-aye, Cap'n!"

    Clang!

    "Ahhh!" said Flint, and pulled the straightened bar through the holes in the loops that had encircled his ankles before hurling the irons with passionate hatred into the dark depths of the hold, where they rattled and clattered and terrified the ship's rats as they went about their honest business.

    "Dear me," said Flint, not unkindly, "I do apologise, Lieutenant!" For the hurtling iron had knocked off the hat, and nearly smashed in the brow, of the goggle-eyed young officer of marines - he looked to be about seventeen - who knelt holding a lantern beside Billy Bones.

    "You
do
give your parole?" said the lieutenant. "Your parole not to escape?"

    "Of course," said Flint, ignoring the nonsensical implication that there might be some place to escape
to,
aboard a ship at sea. He sighed, and stood, and stretched his limbs, then turned to the lad as if puzzled: "But has not Mr Bones already made clear," he said, "that Captain Baggot was about to order my release?"

    "Was he?" said the lieutenant, weighed down by responsibility and peering at Billy Bones as they got to their feet. Billy, for his part, was bathed in the warm smile of a man entirely free of responsibility, since all future decisions were now in the hands of his master.

    In fact, Billy Bones was so happy that he was quite taken by surprise: "About to release Cap'n Flint?" he said doubtfully. But a glimpse of Flint frowning nastily was sufficient to restore his memory.
"Ah!"
said Billy Bones. "'
Course
he was, Mr Lennox!" And recalling his manners, he jabbed a thumb at the red-coated officer. "This here's Mr Lennox, Cap'n, sir… the senior officer surviving."

    "Senior officer…
surviving?"
said Flint, relishing the concept, before correcting Billy Bones. "You will address Mr Lennox as
'sir',
for he bears His Majesty's commission."

    "Oh!" said Bones, peering at the skinny youngster. Flint was right: he was out-ranked! Billy had never risen higher than master's mate, a rank far below a marine lieutenant. This lapse of protocol embarrassed him, for contrary forces were now at work within Billy Bones. He was still Flint's man, but - being aboard a king's ship once more - he was starting to think in the old ways: the
navy
ways he'd followed before Flint.

    "Beg pardon, sir, I do declare," he said, saluting Lieutenant Lennox.

    "Granted, Mr Bones," said Lennox.

    "Aye-aye, sir," said Billy Bones, and attempting reparation in words, added: "At least you're one o' them what's immune!"

    "Am I?" said Lennox, and looked at Flint, sweating in anxiety.

    "Oh, yes," said Flint, placing a comforting hand on Lennox's shoulder. "If you have not yet succumbed, then you are safe." He nodded gravely. "For reasons known only to God, some ten men in every hundred are safe."

    Lennox closed his eyes and trembled in relief. "What about the rest?" he asked. "Will they die?"

    "Yes," said Flint, "most of them. I am very sorry."

    Lennox bowed his head and shed tears for his comrades. But so wonderful was the prospect of escaping the hangman that Flint had to pinch himself to affect solemnity and crush the urge to laugh! Merriment would not do: not now. It would undoubtedly upset Mr Lennox, who must be kept sweet until such time as Flint's freedom was assured - and that time was some way off as yet.

    "Come, Mr Lennox," said Flint, with every appearance of kindness, "let us go on deck. I must know the worst, if I am to be of any help."

    Soon, Flint did know the worst, and it was a very dreadful worst. It was so bad that even he was shaken.

    The ship stank worse than a slaver, and it echoed with a dreadful, communal moan, like a long discord of bass violins, which was the constant, unceasing groan of the dying: one voice starting up as another paused to draw breath, and dozens more in the background, over and over in a hideous choir of grief and pain.

    The lower deck was a fetid dormitory of helpless men, swinging side by side, in massed, packed hammocks slung fore-and-aft from the deckhead beams, some with just eighteen inches of width per man. Such closeness was normally prevented at sea by the traditional watch system, which had half the hands on deck while the others slept, giving a comfortable thirty-six inches per man. But now, with most of the crew too sick to move or even to go to the heads, the lower deck was crammed - stinking, roiling, foul - with slimy hammocks that dripped a vile liquid mixture of urine, vomit and excrement.

    That was bad enough, but the mutilating horror of the disease itself, on the faces and arms of the victims shivering in their blankets - cold in the steaming heat of the lower deck - was atrocious to behold. Some were in the full-flowering pustular rash of the disease, others were shedding skin in sheets, leaving raw, bleeding wounds. Still others were already - and very obviously - dead, with the tropical climate working upon them and rendering their bodies swollen and black.

    Flint, Lennox and Bones, having come up from the hold, stood by the main hatchway plumb in the middle of the swaying hammocks and festering bodies. They crouched under the low deckhead and flinched from contact with the horrors around them and their stomachs heaved, for the stench was hideous beyond belief.

    "God save us!" said Flint. "Can nothing be done with the stink?"

    "No, sir," said Lennox. "The fit hands won't go below to clean and swab."

    "Won't they, though?" said Flint. "We'll see about that!" He affected grim resolve, but bells of joy rang inside his mind. Lennox - senior officer surviving - had just called him
sir!
Unlike Billy Bones, Flint had been a sea-service lieutenant, outranking the marine equivalent. Perhaps Lennox knew that? More likely he was desperate for someone to take over. It didn't matter. Not so long as he said
sir.

    "Come!" said Flint. "We must go on deck."

    The three climbed the ladder up to the maindeck, with its lines of broadside guns, which was open to the skies at the waist, apart from the ship's boats lashed to the skidbeams that spanned the gap. So the air was fresher, but conditions were as bad as the lower deck, with a dozen or more dying men wallowing in their own filth. One was sitting with his back against the mainmast, moaning and cursing in the ghastly act of peeling the skin from his hands so that it came off whole, like a pair of gloves.

    Flint heaved at the sight: sudden, violent and helpless. He threw up over his shoes and shirt and coat-front, and staggered to one of the guns and sat on the fat barrel and glared at Billy Bones.

    "Water!" he said. "Get water!" Lennox stood dithering while Billy Bones dashed off, and Flint stared up and down the ship. All the precision and cleanliness of a man-o'-war was gone. The deck was in vile disorder, with tackles and gear left muddled and un-secured. And the awful stench of the lower deck rolled up from below. Flint blinked. He who was so fastidious was be-smeared with his own vomit. He was ashamed. Ashamed he'd disgraced himself and… possibly… just possibly… he was ashamed of what he'd done in bringing the smallpox aboard.

    But then Billy Bones was back, labouring with a full bucket of fresh water, and Flint was kneeling over it and ducking his head in it, and scrubbing himself clean.

    "Ohhhh!" said Flint and shuddered, and shivered and shook. But then he mastered himself. He buttoned up his coat. He made himself as tidy as he could. He put on his hat. "Quarterdeck!" he said. "Come on!" And briskly he led the way up a ladder to the larboard gangway, and then aft past the barricade, to the quarterdeck, the capstan, the binnacle and the ship's wheel, where a group of men were huddled with gaunt, frightened faces. They were mostly lower-deck hands, barefoot and pigtailed.

    By sheer, ingrained habit of discipline, the appearance of Lennox in his officer's coat and gorget had the hands saluting and standing to attention, each making an effort to hold up his head. They looked mainly to Lennox, but glanced at Flint and ignored Billy Bones completely.

Careful now,
thought Flint, for he needed these men. "Who's officer of the watch?" he said to Lennox.

    "Me, sir!" said an elderly man with a long coat and a tricorne hat.

    "Who's he?" said Flint to Lennox.

    "Baxter, sir. Ship's carpenter, sir," said Lennox.

    "The carpenter? Are there no navigating officers?"

    "All sick, sir. He's the best we've got."

    "What of the captain and the lieutenants?"

    "Bad sick, sir."

    "Sick but
alive}"

    "Yes, sir, thank God, sir."

    "Hmm… then how many fit men do we have aboard?"

    "Don't know, sir," said Lennox, but Baxter stepped forward and saluted politely.

    "Us here, sir. Us, an' them there," he said, and pointed.

    Flint looked and saw a man in the foretop, and five hands standing by to trim the rigging if need be, although the ship was snugged right down under minimum possible sail: just close-reefed fore and main topsails.

    "What course are you steering?" said Flint, and so it went on. The more questions Flint asked, the more Lennox deferred to him, and the more the hands took note, and spoke direct to Flint, and he to them, and Lennox gratefully stood back. Thus - cautiously at first - Flint took over. He straightened his back, he clasped his hands behind him… and… after a break of some four years devoted to other pursuits… he resumed his career as a British naval officer:
pretended
to, at any rate.