Skull and Bones

“What’s this?” said Silver. Allardyce looked behind him for support.

“Go on!” they growled.

“Cap’n!” said Allardyce. “We must take Himself safe aboard Walrus!”

“Oh? And is it yourself giving orders now, Mr Allardyce?”

“Tell him!” said the rest.

“We must save him,” cried Allardyce, “for he’s the McLonarch!”

“Oh, stow it!” said Silver. “D’you think I’m not taking him anyway?”

“Oh…” they said.

“Aye!” said Silver. “Now get about your blasted duties!”

“Oh,” they said, and, “Aye-aye, Capn’.” And with that they trooped out, looking sheepish.

Alone once more, Silver sighed. What he hadn’t told them was that McLonarch was too big a prize to let go. Maybe King George would make an offer for him? Even if he did, Silver knew that he was pressed into a corner and he’d need to be very careful of the Jacobites among his own crew from hereon. Wearily he went up on deck, and found Israel Hands by the mizzenmast, gleefully making notes of the prize’s cargo.

“Where’s that swab that had hold of McLonarch?” said Silver.

“Norton?” said Hands. “He’s forrard, with the rest.”

“Bring him here!”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n!”

Norton came at the double, with two men behind him bearing cutlasses. Silver watched his approach, noting the way he darted nimbly across the crowded deck, leaping up the ladder from the waist to the quarterdeck, as if it were second nature to him. And when he was brought up before Silver, who stood looming over him, parrot on shoulder, Norton never flinched. He was a hard case, all right.

“You sent for me, Cap’n,” he said, and touched his hat like a seaman.

Cheeky bugger, thought Silver, looking him over. He wore a smart suit of clothes in biscuit-coloured calico and a straw tricorne. By the sound of his voice, he was almost a gentleman, but not quite.

“Just what are you, mister?” said Silver, and saw him blink and think before making a very bold admission.

“I’m a Bow Street man,” he said, “a runner. Sent out to arrest Lord McLonarch on a royal warrant.”

Silver whistled. “A thief taker? A gallows-feeder?”

“Some call me that.”

“And there’s gentlemen o’ fortune as would hang you for it!”

Norton blinked again, this time in fright.

“Oh, stow it,” said Silver, waving away the threat. “Just look at him there!” He pointed down the length of the ship to where McLonarch stood head and shoulders above all the prisoners. “Tell me what that man is, and why you was sent to get him.”

“He’s the ‘45 all over again.”

“How’s that?”

“What d’you know about Jacobites?”

“Plenty!” said Silver.

“And there’s plenty of ‘em left. Even in the colonies.”

“Is there?”

“Yes. They raised the dollars.”

“Why’d he want the money? For himself?”

“No! He already had the men, but not the funds.”

“And now he’s got the money he needs…?”

“He’s well on the way to getting it. And have you spoken to him? Listened to him?”

“Aye! Never heard the like!”

Norton nodded. “And he knows all the old families, and the colonels of all the regiments.”

“Are you saying he could do it? Raise rebellion?”

“We don’t know. But we fear that he might.”

“Who’s we?”

“The Lord Chancellor, the cabinet, and me.”

“Bugger me!” said Silver. “Precious high company you keep.” Then a thought struck him: “Hold hard, my jolly boy…” He frowned. “If McLonarch is so bleedin’ dangerous, why was just yourself sent out to nab him?”

“A naval expedition couldn’t be sent for fear of someone warning McLonarch.”

“Jacobites in the navy?”

“Perhaps. So I was sent quietly, with five good men.”

“Only five?”

“Them…and papers for me to command local forces.”

“So where are they? Your men?”

Norton sighed. “Dead or wounded, as are several dozen colonial militiamen.”

“And what about the Jacobites? How many of them are dead?”

“I lost count.”

Silver laughed. He liked Norton. But there was more. Silver put his head on one side and looked at the tough, self-assured man who stood so sure on a rolling deck.

“Are you a seaman, Mr Norton?” he said.

Norton shrugged. “I can hand, reef and steer.”

“Aye! But I’ll warrant you ain’t no foremast hand.”

“Not I!” said Norton with pride. “I was first mate aboard a Bristol slaver.”

“Ah!” said Silver. “The blackbird trade? That breeds good seamen!”

“Them as it don’t kill!” said Norton and saw the respect in Silver’s eyes. But then he wished he’d kept his trap shut.

“Right then, my cocker,” said Silver, grinning. “Whatever else I take out of this ship…” he looked the prize up and down “…I’m having you!”

“What?”

“Aye! ‘Cos I’ve two cock-fumbling bodgers for navigators what can’t find their own arseholes with a quadrant, and I want at least one bugger aboard what can!”

On Walrus’s quarterdeck, Selena smiled at Mr Joe, the young black who’d once been a plantation slave and was now gunner’s mate. He was a slim, handsome man, with a rakish patch covering a lost eye, and was further distinguished by the heavy Jamaican cane-cutlass that he wore in his belt instead of the customary sea-service weapon.

“Thank you, Mr Joe,” she said.

“That ain’t no matter, ma’am,” said Joe. “I’ll have your box brought up, an’ if you wants to leave the ship, ma’am, why so you shall!” And Mr Joe stepped forward to send a man for the box –

“Stand clear there!” cried Dr Cowdray, ship’s surgeon. “Stand clear!” Cowdray was hurrying aft from the waist, followed by four men bearing the broken-legged Dusty Miller on an improvised stretcher.

Miller was whining pitifully and shedding tears. “Ow! Ow!” he cried. “Rum, for the love o’ fucking Jesus!”

“Later, sir!” cried Cowdray. “You shall have rum to ease the reduction of your limb. Indeed: fiat haustus! Let the draught be prepared!”

“Ugh!” said Selena, catching sight of Miller’s injury.

“Oh mother!” said Mr Joe, for the leg was crooked into a right-angle between ankle and knee, and a bloodied end of bone stuck out through the flesh of the shin.

“Here!” cried Miller, seeing their reactions, and grabbing at Cowdray’s arm. “You ain’t gonna cut orf my fucking leg, now…are you?”

“Stultum est timere quod vitare non potes!” said Cowdray. “Do not fear that which you cannot prevent!”

“Ahhhhh!” screamed Miller. “You bastard! You ain’t cutting orf my sodding leg, you mother-fucking sawbones!”

“No, sir,” cried Cowdray, “you misunderstand. We shall save it!”

The surgeon was frowning as if in utmost concern, but inwardly he was rejoicing. As ever when Walrus went into action he was ready for the wounded in a fresh-boiled linen apron, sleeves rolled up, spectacles on his nose. And now, here was a wonderful case of compound fracture to test his skills, since – unlike most surgeons – he believed amputation to be unnecessary. With cleanliness and care, the limb could be saved – and he was itching to prove it.

“Let ‘em through,” said Mr Joe, and he stood back as Cowdray, still spouting Latin, manoeuvred his patient down a hatchway, addressing the filthy-tongued Miller with the same courteous politeness he’d used towards honest patients years ago.

When they’d gone, Selena looked to Venture’s Fortune, heaving up and down on the ocean swell alongside of Walrus, the lines that bound them together creaking and stretching under the strain. “She’s home-bound to England, isn’t she, Joe?”

“Aye, ma’am. Bound for Polmouth with rum and sugar under hatches.”

“And will Long John let her go?”

“Once we’ve plucked her. That’s Long John’s way.”

“Good. Then I’ll go aboard…and leave with her.”

“But –”

“Don’t!” she said. “I won’t live this life. I’ve told Long John.”

Mr Joe tried, nonetheless. He told her that she’d never even seen England, and had no friends there, and that – should she be recognised – the crimes she’d committed in the colonies would hang her just as dead in the mother country. And he reminded her of Silver: fine man that he was, and how the hands would follow him “down the cannon’s mouth” when it came to action: a bad choice of words in the circumstances, but the best Mr Joe could think of.

Wasted words, all of them. When he’d done, Selena – in her print gown and straw hat – attempted to clamber over two ships’ scraping, bumping rails that weren’t even hard alongside but divided by a gap of a yard or more that opened and closed like a crocodile’s jaws, with the white water frothing far below. Finally Mr Joe lifted her up and heaved her over bodily, into the arms of the men aboard Isabelle Bligh, who surged forward on sight of her, gaping and wondering, stretching their arms to catch her, and nervously glancing back at Long John, for every man aboard knew about their quarrels.

Then her sea chest came after her with a bump and a thump, with her few goods and the money she’d saved, and the men stood back, touched their brows and doubled to their duties again with Israel Hands and Tom Allardyce yelling at them.

Selena’s heart was beating, she had no idea what to do, she hadn’t even thought about how she might be received aboard this ship. Long John (who had his back to her) was deep in conversation with a hard-faced man in a calico suit. He didn’t see her, or hear, so she was left to look at the ship, which was well found, spanking new, and bursting with activity as Walrus’s men hoisted up a series of heavy chests from the waist and swung them back aboard their own ship.

She looked forrard and saw the men, and some women, crammed into the fo’c’sle under guard. Instinctively she made her way down the ship towards them, Walrus’s men stepping aside to let her past, all of them giving the same uneasy glance towards Long John, who was still engrossed with the hard-faced man.

“What’s this, ma’am? What’re you a-doing of?” said Israel Hands, looking up from the notebook where he’d been making a record of the cargo. He frowned and, as the others had done, glanced in Long John’s direction, then seemed about to speak, but up above a chest slid out of its lashings, and fell, and men jumped aside as it smashed open and showered silver dollars on the deck.

“You slovenly buggers!” cried Hands. “You idle swabs! You…”

Selena walked on, squeezing past the toiling seamen, stumbling now and again at the ship’s sickening, rolling motion, and made her way to the fo’c’sle and past the guards and blinked at the prisoners. There was a crowd of seamen, a few officers, and some landmen – presumably passengers – and two women. They stared at Selena, not knowing what to make of her, though the men looked her over as all men did at first sight.

“Ah-hem!” said a little man: squat, short, and heavy, in a big hat and a long shiny-buttoned coat. He touched his hat and smiled, and was about to speak, when one of the two women pushed past him and threw out her arms to Selena.

“My dear!” she cried. “My poor creature! I see that, like ourselves, you were made prisoner by these wicked pirates!”

“Oh!” said the short man. “Ahhh!”

“Ahhhh!” said the rest, nodding wisely to one another.

“Yes!” said Selena, seizing upon this excellent explanation, which was so obvious that it was amazing she’d not thought of it herself.

The woman advancing upon Selena was in her mid-fifties with twinkling eyes, a tiny nose and delicate bones in a neatlittle, sweet-little, dear-little face. She was expensively dressed, and had the speech and manners of a noblewoman, with artfully contrived gestures. She smiled radiantly at the world, and she simpered and flirted at men. She did it so well that it had never failed to control them, not once in forty years. Nonetheless, she was utter contrast to Selena, for while the lady – despite her years – was quite glitteringly pretty, she was not beautiful. She did not have that spiritual quality that Selena had, which takes the breath away and makes mortals stare, and stare, and worship. She was merely pretty, like a china fairy.

“My dear!” said the lady, “I am Mrs Katherine Cooper: Mrs Cooper of Drury Lane.” She laughed, a sound like a tinkling bell, and added: “I have some reputation as a thespian.”

“Aye!” said the rest, nodding among themselves, for Mrs Cooper’s reputation had been spread assiduously by Mrs Cooper, and they were very well aware of it.

“Thespian?” said Selena, for this was not a word in everyday use aboard ship.

“Actress, my dear,” said Mrs Cooper, embracing Selena. “But you must call me Katty, for it is my pet name among my friends.”

“Ahhhh!” sighed the audience as Selena closed her eyes and rested her head on Katty Cooper’s shoulder, inexpressibly relieved to be amongst perfumed femininity and not rumsoaked, sweat-soaked, sailormen.

But her moment of contentment was brief. Behind her she heard the distinctive thump, thump, thump…of John Silver’s timber leg advancing up the deck.

Chapter 8

Two bells of the middle watch

27th March 1753

Aboard Oraclaesus

The Atlantic

The storm was not a great one, but it nearly did for Oraclaesus. It came roaring out of the night, with streaks of black cloud chasing the moon and the white spray steaming off the wave-tops.

Soaked from stem to stern, the big frigate heeled far over under the steady blow, the splendid curves of her hull enabling her to ride the glossy rollers, but she dipped at every downward plunge, and heaved up again with green water pouring from her head rails and figurehead.

Oraclaesus was doing her utmost best, and was a credit to the men of Woolwich naval dockyard who built her. Nonetheless, she was riding out the storm only because of the seamanship and foresight of her new commander, Joe Flint. For Captain Baggot had long since been heaved over the side, sewn up in a hammock with a roundshot at his feet: him and all his sea-service officers, together with Mr Lemming, the surgeon, who never did recognise the disease that killed him. These great ones were gone, together with over a hundred of the ship’s lesser people, who received ever-more perfunctory funeral rites as Flint grew tired of reading the service and the surviving hands, exhausted and over-worked, despaired of the whole dreadful process.

So the ship was surviving – and only just – because, with too few men to work her in a blow, and foul weather only to be expected in these latitudes at this time of year, Flint had long since sent down t’gallant masts and yards, taken in the fore and main courses, and set only close-reefed topsails and storm staysails: a task the hands could manage in easy weather. This left the ship with bare steerage way, but saved her when the storm struck, for otherwise she’d have lost her masts, rolled on her beam ends, and drowned every soul aboard of her.

Now Flint and Billy Bones stood braced on the soaking, sloping planks, hanging on by the aid of the storm-lines rigged across the deck, and draped in the tarred blouses and breeches they’d taken from dead men’s stores. They huddled together to yell into each other’s ears against the howling wind and the dense salt spray that came up over the bow at every plunge of the ship, drenching as far back as the quarterdeck. But however hard they shouted, the wind blew away the sound such that no other could hear: not even ten feet away at the ship’s wheel where the helmsmen were fighting to hold the ship on course.

“It’s no good,” said Flint.

“It ain’t neither, Cap’n!” said Billy Bones.

“We must have more men. We’ll not survive another like this!”

“And we ain’t steering no course. Just running afore the wind.”

“When this blows over, I shall signal Bounder and Jumper to come alongside.”

“What about Mr Povey? He’s aboard Bounder and he’ll blab to all hands!”

“Yes, but –”

Flint was about to argue that, without more men, they’d die anyway. But the storm spoke more persuasively, with a roar and a crackling from above, like the volley of a thousand muskets, as the wind got its claws fairly into the fore topsail and ripped it from its reefs and flogged it and shredded it and blew it out into streaming rags that stretched ahead of the ship and threw off bits of themselves to vanish instantly into the howling night.

“Bugger me!” said Billy Bones.

“Helmsman!” cried Flint, stepping close to the wheel.

“Aye-aye, sir!” said the senior man.

“Can you hold her?”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n!”

Flint came back to Billy Bones, hauling himself hand over hand by a storm-line, and leaning his head close to Bones’s.

“She’ll run like a stallion in this. She’d run under bare poles –” he looked at the men at the wheel “– so long as they don’t tire.”

“Shall I send up fresh hands?”

“No! Can’t risk it. They’d take time to get the feel of the helm, and we could be broached-to and rolled over while they do.”

Billy Bones nodded. The wheel was a double, with spokes radiating out from either end of the drum round which the steering tackles were rove. That meant two big wheels, one ahead of the other, such that four men – one to each side of each wheel – could steer as a team in heavy weather. It was a task best left to those who’d got the knack of it, working with these particular shipmates, under these particular conditions.

“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” said Billy Bones.

“So,” said Flint, “there’s something else we can do in the meanwhile, for we’re no help to these excellent men at the helm.”

Billy Bones couldn’t actually see the leer on Flint’s face. It was too dark for that, but he knew it would be there, and he trembled in a fright that had nothing to do with the storm.

For a storm was nothing to Billy Bones. Standing on a wet wooden slope with the wind shrieking in his ears was nothing to him. Likewise, the cold seawater that got under his collar and ran down his neck. And neither did he fear the tremendous power of the elements that could take a ship, and break it and sink it and drown him. All that was meat and drink to Billy Bones. He’d faced it all his life, and if ever he pondered on so philosophical a matter as his own death – why, Billy Bones would naturally expect it to come at sea, in a storm, and a fitting seaman’s death it would be an’ all! So he wasn’t afraid of the weather…only Joe Flint, the infinitely charismatic Flint, whom he feared and worshipped all at once, as if by evil enchantment.

Meanwhile Flint was speaking:

“Stand to your duty!” he yelled to the helmsmen.

“Aye-aye, sir!”

“Mr Bones and I am going below.”

“Aye-aye!”

“We shall soon return.”

“Aye-aye!”

Beckoning Billy Bones to follow, Flint made his way through the dark night and the screeching wind, with the rain and spray lashing his face so hard he could barely breathe, and the ship heaving up and down, twenty feet at a time, beneath his feet. Sight was nearly useless and he went by feel, storm-lines, and seaman’s instinct.

There was no hatchway on the quarterdeck, so he descended the larboard gangway ladder to the maindeck, and groped his way aft beneath the quarterdeck, where there was shelter at least from the wind and wet. Around them the great guns strained and heaved in their lashings, ever seeking the opportunity to snap a rotten tackle and break loose for a playful plunge about the deck, grinding and smashing and killing…Except that there was nobody to kill, only Flint and Billy Bones; the few others aboard were either up above or down below. The main deck, the gun deck which was the raison d’être of a man o’ war was unnaturally empty of men.

In the darkness, Flint went just aft of the capstan and forrard of the bulkhead that divided off the captain’s quarters and slipped carefully down the ladderway to the lower deck. And there he paused, with his back against a cabin door, until Billy Bones came rumbling after him.

There was no weather at all down here, and the mighty voice of the wind was shut out by solid oak that admitted only a dull, demonic wailing. But all the wooden music of ship’s noises was playing: the creaks, squeaks and grumblings of eight hundred tons of carpentry, fighting to stay together while the wind and the sea tried to pull it apart.

Flint tingled with sudden excitement. He blinked in the black darkness, relieved only by a few feeble lanterns. Pulling off his tarred frock, he dumped it under one of the lanterns so it could easily be found; tarred clothes rustled and made a noise, and were awkward. Billy Bones did likewise. Flint sniffed. It still smelled vile down here, but better than it had done. There were only a few sufferers still alive in their hammocks, and the hands had got ahead with their swabbing. Flint peered in the darkness and made out the shape of a few hammocks up forrard. He grinned. They were of no concern. His interests lay aft.

Just astern was the bulkhead, and the door that led to the gun-room: province of the ship’s gentlemen, where Lieutenant Hastings and the Reverend Doctor Stanley were laid in their cots, deciding whether to live or to die of the smallpox.

Flint sniggered. This hadn’t been possible before. Even with only twenty men in the ship, there had always been someone to see and to notice, some servile clown bringing food or drink for the poor gentlemen. Flint laughed. Billy Bones jumped. Flint pulled his nose.

“Nobody here but you and me, Mr Bones,” he said. “It will be so easy!” And he crept aft, opened the door to the gun-room and passed inside…soundless, purposeful and malevolent as a vampire. Clump! Clump! Billy Bones followed, and Flint frowned at the spoiling of the moment.

“Shhh!” he said.

“Sorry, Cap’n.”

Flint looked round. There was one lantern only. The gun-room had no natural light. It was mainly occupied by a great table running fore and aft, with a little passageway on either beam and rows of doors leading into the tiny cabins that lined up against the ship’s sides. The place was crowded with the traps and tackles of the ship’s officers: quadrants, swords, books, old newspapers, gun-cases and silver mugs hanging on hooks. It smelled of snuff and claret – not surprising, considering the quantities of these stimulants that had been consumed in this small space.

“Cap’n,” said Billy Bones, “I wants to say summat.”

“Shhh!” said Flint.

“But, Cap’n –”

“Shut up!” Flint was listening…for breathing…coughing…anything.

“I wants to say –”

“Ah!” Flint darted forward and pulled open a door. It was canvas stretched on a wooden frame. The cabins themselves were made only of thin pine boards. “Fetch the lantern, Billy-my-chicken,” said Flint, entering the dark space. Just seven feet long by six feet wide, it was barely enough to hold a few sticks of furniture and a bed where a man lay stretched out, his mouth open, the sweat glistening on his face. He was unconscious but alive, and sleeping soundly.

“Cap’n, you’re a fine seaman, as all hands agree, and –”

“Oh, shut up, Billy! D’you know – I do believe this one would survive!”

“– and you know as how I’d follow you wherever you lead –”

“Bring the lantern. See! The skin’s not peeling off any more.”

Billy Bones brought the light and he and Flint looked down on Dr Stanley. The chaplain didn’t look the same without his clerical wig, but it was him all right, and he was definitely not dying.

“Cap’n!” said Billy Bones. “I akses you…not to.”

Flint frowned. “Not to what, Mr Bones?”

“Not to do it, Cap’n.”