Flint and Silver: A Prequel to Treasure Island

Chapter 27

With no lights burning below decks, and all hatchways secured, Long John was in total darkness in the narrow space below the quarterdeck hatch. He sat himself beside the ladder and felt around so his hands could tell him what was around him, since his eyes certainly could not. He found one of his pistols, fallen out of his belt, and stuck it back. He decided he'd better crawl than try to walk, for up above there was a howling of wind and the bellowing of Flint and Billy Bones as the storm struck and the ship began to plunge and buck.

The nearest light would be in Flint's cabin, so Long John pulled himself astern as the ship moaned and creaked and chattered to itself. The timbers of a wooden ship are always working to be free of one another, especially in a storm. The joints, lovingly mated and bolted by the shipwrights, will strain and groan. The great oaken knees will wrench against the deckhead and the hull, and the planks of the deck will do their best to gape open and spit out their caulking. To this increasingly loud accompaniment of ship's music, Long John crawled aft. He well knew that this was only the overture, or rather the tuning up of musicians' instruments before the real playing begins.

He found the stern cabin, and shoved open the hatch. Light flooded out: dim light, no more than stars and moon, but it was like sunshine after the blackness outside.

"Who's there?" cried a voice.

"Selena?" said Long John. He'd actually forgotten her. She had the run of Flint's cabin.

"Long John?" she said. "What are you doing here?"

"Sent below, ma'am, to keep a guard on the pork and beef, and the ship's rats!" He peered around the cabin. Flint's table and chairs were secured to the deck, and everything else was lashed down. There was no movement that Long John could see. "Where are you, girl?"

"Here," she said, "by the window." Silver looked harder and thought he saw her outline. But even the stars and the moon were going out now, and it was hard to see.

He dragged himself across the dark cabin, towards the row of lights at the stern: lozenge-shaped panes of crude glass, leaded into the wooden frames. Flint had had a padded seat built across the width of the cabin: about ten feet long and three deep. He slept on it sometimes. Now Selena was crouched on the seat, with her back against the side of the hull and her knees drawn up under her chin. Silver hauled himself up beside her, unshipped his crutch, laid it aside, and dusted himself off. Lightning flickered far away and a distant thunderclap sounded. As the storm grew louder, up on deck Billy Bones was bellowing himself hoarse. Selena jumped at the thunder, but she eyed Silver steadily.

"What are you doing here?" she asked again, and for want of anything better to say, Silver told the simple truth.

"Ain't no use for a one-legged man up topsides."

"Oh," she said, and looked away, then jumped as a fizzing bolt of lightning lit the sky, and another thunderclap rumbled, this time much closer. Selena shivered. She had never liked thunder, even ashore, let alone on the heaving ocean. A squall of rain thrashed down upon the ship and the wind began to blow in earnest. Every time Walrus's plunging gave a view of the waves outside, they seemed higher and blacker and angrier. A third thunderclap came simultaneously with the brilliant blue-white flash, and so hideously loud that even Long John twitched in fright, and Selena threw herself at him and clutched her arms tight around him, with eyes screwed shut.

"Aye, my lass," he said, "we're in for a blow, and no mistake." He stroked her hair and patted her back, and searched his memory for words of comfort and tenderness. But he'd lived a hard life and the ludicrous best he could do was borrowing from Joe Flint.

"There, my chicken," he said. And, straining his powers of imagination to the limit, "My chick, my little chicky…" And with these attempts at tenderness, there flowered within Long John Silver something that had been waiting to grow ever since that day in Charley Neal's storeroom.

Meanwhile the wind roared, the seas thundered, the ship's timbers shrieked and crackled and howled, and the entire narrow, dark world of Flint's cabin tossed and bounced like a pannier on a galloping horse. Selena was outright terrified. She clung to Silver like a child to a mother. But let no man or woman think the less of her for doing so; not unless they too have been on board a two hundred ton wooden ship in a tropical hurricane, and managed to bear themselves better than she did — and that the first time they've experienced it, besides.

For his part, Long John had near twenty years of seafaring behind him and had seen worse storms in worse ships. He knew that Walrus was well found and Flint a masterly seaman. So he wasn't afraid. He wasn't afraid, but he was powerfully confused, because he'd got the very thing clutched to his chest that he'd been hungering after for months. He had an armful of smooth, luscious, youthful flesh. He could feel the plump breasts and the warmth and scent of her body.

It is unshakable truth that none of these foregoing facts were such things as should cause a jolly sailorman to worry. Under normal circumstances, Long John would have known exactly what to do, and delighted in the doing of it. What's more, he knew by happy experience what a splendid trick it was to get a woman frightened of ghosts and hobgoblins in the night, in order to get her braced for a galloping. His heart thumped as he imagined himself hauling the shirt and breeches off her, and rolling her on to her back.

He even got as far as undoing a button or two of her shirt, and getting a hand inside her clothes for a grasp of her bouncers. Jesus Christ, they were juicy! Firm as roundshot and the nipples standing up like marines on parade. He wandered his hand further, sliding down the smooth belly. He shifted the weight of her to spread her legs a little and got his hand right down into the silky-smooth inside of her thigh. The whole of his body prickled, and a ship's bowsprit — hard and fierce — stood up before him. Any doubts he might have had concerning manhood were left drowning in the ship's wake. He searched further…

Selena groaned and her eyes flicked open.

"No," she gasped. Silver withdrew his hand and sighed.

"Not if you say so, my chick." And he held her gently in his arms.

"I'm frightened, John," she said.

"Aye, lass."

"Are we going to die?"

"No. The old Walrus'll weather this one. Flint'll see her through."

"He's no good, that Flint."

"No, lass, he ain't. But nor ain't none o' the rest of us, neither!"

"You are."

"What?"

"Yes."

"Well, shiver me timbers!" Silver was genuinely amazed.

"That time, in Savannah…" she said.

"Aye?" said Silver, deeply ashamed.

"You didn't know, did you?"

"No," he said. "It ain't no excuse, but I took you for one of Charley's girls."

"Well, I'm not. I'm not a whore!"

"No, my girl. Not whilst I draw breath…" Long John paused, uneasy with feelings he'd never had before. He struggled to put words to them. His lips worked until the pressures within forced out the strange and unpractised words.

"I love you, my lass."

Selena smiled and opened her shirt, and took his hand, and placed it over her breast. She turned her face and curled an arm around his neck and kissed him.

"I've never done this before," she said.

"No?"

"No."

Silver and Selena were consumed with happiness. Each found the other so very beautiful, even in the dark, even by silky touch alone, relishing the slippery smoothness of cool naked flesh. And what if John Silver was missing a leg? Experiment soon showed that it was wonderful what a one- legged man could achieve when duty called. Selena was amazed and Silver delighted, and between them they managed the task so many times that the forty-eight hours which followed were some of the best in their entire lives, and often in later years when either was troubled or in pain, they would go back in memory to Flint's cabin, on board the good ship Walrus, riding out a hurricane in more ways than one.

But eventually, the storm blew itself out, and Flint ordered the hatches broken open. He went down to his cabin to find Long John Silver there with Selena. The noise of freeing the hatch covers had given plenty of warning, but Silver was sat with an arm around Selena, and a hand casually resting on one of his silver-mounted pistols. He stared Flint in the eye, bold as brass.

"Found your island, Cap'n Flint?" he said. Flint's face darkened and the Devil stoked his temper till it rose like the molten rock from a volcano.