Pieces Of Eight

Chapter 47

It was Mr Povey who saw the launch come round the great eastern headland and into the anchorage.

Captain Baggot, who'd taken command on the commodore's death, had lookouts everywhere, for he was keen to demonstrate his own efficiency — and secretly delighted at the opportunity to do so. But the greatest incentive of all was his utter conviction that Flint's treasure could yet be found on the island.

With such a tremendous prize in his sights, Baggot had worked wonders. Leaper had been saved from the flames, but condemned and gutted, and her crew embarked aboard other ships. Bounder was salvaged and repaired, and got off her sandbank. The dead were buried, promotions made to fill dead men's shoes, and all made tight and shipshape. Even now, the wounded were busy either recovering or dying, as best pleased them, such that the tented hospital on the beach was emptying day by day.

Meanwhile, Baggot had two good longboats sounding and charting the fog-bound north of the island where Walrus had last been seen, and it was his personal guess that there was some safe passage to be found there, else why would Flint have gone so boldly in?

Above all, Baggot would not be downhearted. Total losses were less than a hundred men out of six hundred. Them and one sloop. Why, on his circumnavigation of '40 to '44 the famous Anson lost his whole damn fleet but one ship, and he'd still come home laden with gold and earned a peerage.

So men were on watch everywhere. This was Baggot's favourite ploy. He had small scouting parties out all over the island, and the two sloops were constantly on patrol off the coast. At least it was clear now that the savages, wherever they'd come from, were gone with Flint; they would be dealt with just so soon as the mysterious, foggy north was properly charted.

Thus it happened that Mr Midshipman Povey was in command of the beach when the launch came in under sail. It was pure chance that he was on duty at that hour, with his glass and his lookout station and his five marines and five seamen, when the launch came round the headland.

Who's this, then? he thought, focusing on the boat. But he couldn't see who was aboard. In fact, there didn't seem to be anybody aboard, except that it couldn't sail itself — obviously — so there must be someone in the stern, only… the sail was in the way. He was almost sure it wasn't one of the squadron's boats.

And then the sail shifted.

And Povey could see who was at the tiller.

And Povey was leaping and screaming and had men running in every direction at once, and drums beating and pipes calling and a great roar of voices rising over the beach, and officers running and Lieutenant Hastings sprinting across the sand, and every living creature converging on the launch, and fifty muskets at least levelled and dozens upon dozens of pistols… as Joseph Flint the pirate, with a thousand pounds on his head, grounded his launch, and got out and raised high his hands and walked towards the muskets and bayonets and swords and pistols and cutlasses!

It was almost funny. Flint couldn't tell which was rounder: the muzzles of the guns, or the eyes and the mouths of those who held them.

"Flint!" cried Povey.

"Mr Povey!" said Flint. "Stap me, if it ain't yourself!" And he drew his cutlass.

"AAAARGH!" they roared and cocked their locks in a furious clatter.

"Will you take my surrender, sir?" said Flint, and reversed the blade, presenting it hilt-first to Povey.

"Oh," said Povey, and took it.

After that the press was tremendous as men crowded round for a sight of the famous Flint. Even the officers came down to see him, once he was below decks aboard Oraclaesus, where they clapped him in irons. They all came.

And a few days later they came to see Billy Bones, a mutineer second in infamy only to Flint himself, who gave himself up as Flint had done, having nowhere to go and no food to eat, and believing hanging to be better than starving. There were others too, likewise in irons: the remnants of Flint's men, captured on the island or aboard his ships. But nobody paid attention to them, and they were kept apart from the prize exhibits: Captain Joe Flint and Mr Billy Bones.

When they first met, so blissful was the re-union of this master and slave — at least to the slave — and so grovelling was Billy Bone's behaviour down in the dim light below decks, sat chained to the floor, that Flint trusted Billy Bones with a little confidence.

When he was done, Billy Bones gulped and swallowed.

"Strong meat, Cap'n! Strong meat!"

"Yes, Mr Bones, but how else shall we avoid hanging?"

"Avoid hanging, Cap'n?"

"Yes, Mr Bones. It will be hard, but I think it can be done, for there will be but one in nine of them left."

"Them and us two, Cap'n?"

"Yes, Mr Bones."

And here Billy Bones grew puzzled. He felt his own pockmarked cheeks and looked at his immaculate master.

"But you ain't had it, Cap'n."

"No, Mr Bones, but never fear. I shall survive."

Flint remembered his father taking him to the Smallpox Hospital, where a visiting Turkish doctor made a tiny cut in his arm, inserted matter from the sick, and applied a bandage. A bandage which was seen by his mother, triggering a hideous quarrel and a kitchen knife brought out in rage, which his father struck from her hand… for the hysterical boy to thrust into his father's back, sinking him to the floor, where his mother took up the knife and butchered a man who was already dead.

Flint shuddered. Some memories were too much even for him.

But the Turk's technique was sound. Flint was immune to the smallpox.

Meanwhile, Billy Bones, who hadn't ceased his puzzling, came up against another stumper:

"But, Cap'n. All the monkeys is gone, ain't they?"

Now Flint smiled. For knowing British tars as he did, he guessed that they'd have searched the launch, and they'd have found the one that Dreamer didn't quite finish off. They'd have found it and made a pet of it, and healed it and cherished it, such that it would be scampering all over them…

Even now this very minute…

And he was right…

Chk-chk-chk!