Flint and Silver: A Prequel to Treasure Island

Chapter 21

Smoke and flame filled the waist as Walrus received John Donald's fire. Laid flat on his face, Long John Silver was kicked sideways by a terrific blow as men and wreckage fell all around him. He couldn't see the length of his own arm for the smoke, and for the moment he was deaf from the massive concussion of five cannon less than a dozen yards from his head. But he could still smell: and a hot stench of burned meat and hair filled his nostrils.

He tried to sit up, shoving at the weight pressing him down. The weight — and the smell — was Mad Pew the Welshman, who lay across Long John, mouthing in his mother tongue, and scorched from brow to breast by muzzle-flash. The face was black, the hair was gone, the eyes were white and blank. Mad Pew was now blind Pew.

Long John heaved Pew clear and tried to leap to his feet. He couldn't. Something was wrong. Then the smoke cleared and Long John gaped in dismay. His left leg was hideously mangled between hip and knee. The great bone of the thigh gleamed in the depths of the wound, blood sprayed outward, and the remnant of the leg hung by ragged straps of skin and meat.

Flint's face appeared, peering and prying.

"Why, John," he said, "they've limbed you!" He grinned wickedly. "So who's the better man, now, I wonder?" Long John still couldn't hear properly, but he read Flint's lips and he saw that Flint was smooth and unharmed. Not a hair nor fingernail disturbed.

"Bastard!" said Long John, and reached for the long pistol in his belt. But the ship rolled, the mainsail boom swung viciously across the waist, wreckage groaned, and Blind Pew shrieked and fell over Long John's arm.

"Later, John," promised Flint, as Billy Bones came up and hauled Flint to his feet.

"Fucking ship's in fucking irons, Cap'n," said Bones. "And the fucking crew is run below like a fucking shoal o' fucking washerwomen!"

"Billy-my-chicken!" said Flint. "Ah, Billy, my Billy! What poets are Pope and Milton compared with thee?"

"Fuck that, Cap'n — beggin'-yer-pardon!" said Bones. "But look at the fucking state of her. Look at the men — "

"Bah!" said Flint. "They'll not fight again this day. We'll be lucky to keep them off the rum." He lurched forward. "Follow me, Billy-boy, and we'll go below."

The two vanished down a hatchway, and soon there came the distant sound of pistol shots and clashing steel as Captain Flint and Mr Bones explained to the men that spirits were not to be issued until the ship was put to rights.

Meanwhile, on deck, the wounded threw back their heads and howled to the world for help. The world ignored them, but someone else did not. Selena came up from below and picked her way through the wreckage, eyes bulging at the awful things that slopped and slithered about her feet. She went from man to man, peering into their faces.

"Long John? Long John?" she said.

"Here!" cried a voice from a heap of dead flesh jammed between two guns. "Selena!"

She darted forward, pulled him clear, and gasped as he screamed in agony.

"Oh my Lord!" said Selena, looking at his wound. "We've got to get you below. The surgeon's got everything rigged and ready."

"No," said Long John. "Not that!" And he clung to her legs, grey-faced in terror. "You won't let that blasted sawbones take my leg, now, will you? Not you. Not that."

"Huh!" she said. "Never seen you afraid of nothing before."

But Long John was in terror to the bottom of his soul, and as best he could he cursed, shrieked and fought every inch of the way, while Selena single-handedly dragged and hauled his deadweight down below to the surgeon.

"You'll die, if I don't," was all she said.

"Ah, Mr Silver," said Mr Thomas Cowdray in his bloodstained leather apron and rolled-up sleeves. "I'd thought better of you: aut vincere, aut mori: either conquer or die." He shook his head. "I see that you have done neither!"

Mr Cowdray had once been an educated gentleman, and still was an excellent surgeon: quick, adept and intelligent, and nothing like the rum-sozzlers usually to be found afloat. He'd once practised at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, and there his brother surgeons had mocked him for his insistence on cleanliness, and on boiling his surgical instruments in a cauldron of water before use. Cowdray had claimed this to be a sovereign remedy against post-operative rotting of wounds, but when it was discovered that he'd learned it from a gypsy sow-gelder, he was laughed out of the hospital. His learned colleagues might have forgiven him the ludicrous source of his methods, but they could never — never — forgive him the superior results that he achieved with them.

His subsequent career — via gin, gambling, and relieving ladies caught pregnant without husbands — had taken Mr Cowdray away from England and to the West Indies, and so by easy stages to privateering, piracy, and finally to his current post as surgeon to Captain Flint.

Cowdray frowned as he saw the extent of Long John's injuries. He looked at the other wounded, made a judgement, and turned to his assistant, a mulatto named Jobo, chosen for strength, who also served as cook's mate.

"Silver next," said the surgeon, and a wild roar came from Long John, who did his best to climb out of the hold unaided. "Some of you lay hands on him and bring him here," said Cowdray.

Selena, Jobo and one or two of the other less-badly wounded, grappled with Long John and got him on to Cowdray's table. They cut off his breeches at Cowdray's command, and Jobo slipped on a tourniquet and twisted till the bleeding stopped.

"You!" said Cowdray to Selena. "Take the broken leg and hold it out straight." She hesitated. "Go on, girl!" barked Cowdray. "Pick it up! It won't bite!" And he turned to the rest: " You — get up behind him on the table and wrap your arms round his chest. You — hold his good leg. And, you — hold his arms."

Cowdray reached for a sickle-shaped amputation knife, razor-edged on the inside.

"Rum!" cried Long John. "Rum, for the love of God."

"Later," said Cowdray, and dropped to his knees, facing Long John. He slipped his arm under the injured leg, which Jobo raised to receive him. He bent his elbow back around the limb so the curved knife sat beneath the thigh, tickling the taut skin. He set his teeth and he pulled with all his strength.

Long John howled like a damned soul as the knife cut skin, fat, muscle, tendon, nerve and blood vessel in one almighty slicing cut, right down to the bone. Cowdray leapt up, laid aside the big knife and swiftly ran a lancet around the bone, severing any remaining shreds of tissue.

"Jobo," he said, "stump!" And Jobo slid a pair of leather straps into the wound, and hauled on them, squeezing the red flesh towards the hip to expose an inch more of the bone.

Cowdray pounced with a fine-toothed saw and went through the femur in six sharp strokes, leaving Selena holding a severed leg: limp, heavy and dead. The vivid reality of its final separation from the living man caused her to drop the horrid thing and stagger back with her head spinning sickly. She was at — and past — her limits. She hurried away, groping for ladders, in search of fresh air.

Barely noticing her absence, Jobo kicked the dead leg aside and let loose his straps so the flesh swelled forward, burying the cut end of bone so it couldn't stick out of the stump when it healed.

"Slacken off!" said Cowdray, and Jobo let the tightness out of his tourniquet till little jets of blood revealed where the arteries lay. Cowdray caught each one with a long-handled hook, pulled it out and tied it off, leaving long threads trailing after the knots. Then off came the tourniquet and the operation was complete. It had taken less than two minutes, and Silver was still bellowing lustily, while aside from Cowdray and Jobo, every creature present was yellow in the face and sweating heavily.

But Cowdray wasn't quite done. He dressed the wound carefully with lint and linen, and finally added a woollen cap — like a short, fat stocking — to finish the job.

"Next man!" said Cowdray, and Jobo lifted Long John off the table and laid him alongside the others that Mr Cowdray was done with.

"Give him a pull of the rum, Jobo," said Cowdray, glancing down.

But Long John had to wait, for down the ladders there came a second rush of wounded, bumping and howling and bleeding.

These were not victims of John Donald's artillery but of their own captain and first mate, who'd passed among the surly survivors and reasoned with them after Flint's style until Walrus's crew returned to their duties and the dead and the offal were heaved over the side, and repairs were made, and lines were spliced, and the decks were swabbed till no stains were left. Soon Walrus was sailing like a lamb, and all was jump-to-it discipline and jolly fellowship once more, since any man who chose not to be jolly was beaten senseless by Mr Billy Bones.

And all the while, Long John was left to bawl to his heart's content, and nobody paid him the least attention — not with a dozen more doing the same all around him, and a merry little company they made. All it needed was the Devil to join them, scraping his fiddle and beating time with his hoof, and all hands would have known themselves already transported to that very place which was their ultimate destination.

Hours later, delirious and hot, and with the raw stump swollen and hammering, Long John felt a bottle pressed into his hands. Exhausted as he was, he instantly tried to scream — for every touch was agony — but all that came was a harsh gasp. The rum helped a lot. It took away some of the pain, and what was left was blunted at the edges. Finally, after most of a pint had gone down, it brought unconsciousness.

After that, as far as Long John Silver was concerned, the river of time ran strange and dark: it fled the light, it went deep underground and it went round crooked ways. This was something to do with the rum and the laudanum that Mr Cowdray put in it, and it was something to do with a strong man's pride revolting at the thought of becoming a cripple. But mainly it was the natural consequence of a dreadful injury. At least the stump stayed clean and did not putrefy, otherwise Long John would have died for sure. The ignorant may have laughed at Mr Cowdray's boiling of his instruments, but it drove off the little demons that killed more men than hot lead or cold steel.

For a long and indeterminate time, there was only confusion and pain. Then there was simply confusion, and then there was the first small clearing of the fog, which was an awareness of being out of the stinking hold, in a hammock slung under the fo'c'sle. There were wind-sails rigged to bring fresh air from above decks, and there was the sound of voices. One voice was Selena's, the other was Cowdray's. Long John couldn't move or speak, but he could listen.

"Why not?" she said.

"The amputation is too high."

"So how can he walk?"

"With a crutch."

"What?" The voice was angry. "What? That's no good. No good at all! What sort of a doctor are you? A horse- doctor?"

"God damn you, girl! Look here…" And Long John felt them right beside him, laying hands on his bandages. He stirred, trying to let them know he was listening, but the movement was too slight.

"See?" said Cowdray. "The stump ends not twelve inches from the iliac crest. A peg-leg's no use on that. Perhaps in London or Paris something might be done: a false limb, sculpted, and jointed with springs at the knee and ankle, and secured with a harness. But not out here, beyond Christian civilisation. There are not the tools nor the craftsmen." Cowdray shrugged. "He'll have to go on a crutch."

"Huh!" said Selena. "Long John's no man for that. He'd rather die!" she sneered. "You no-account, useless butcher!"

"Hold your tongue, madam!" cried Cowdray, stung to anger. "He either goes on a crutch or on his belly. Long John Silver is become a one-legged man, and he must make the best of it."