Flint and Silver: A Prequel to Treasure Island

Chapter 40

Israel Hands's Spanish gun was in all respects ready for action. It needed only to be run out and a linstock's match applied to the touch-hole.

"Well done, Mr Gunner!" said Silver. "And well done, Mr Boatswain!"

"Aye-aye, Cap'n!" they said.

"Aye," said Silver, and nodded in satisfaction as he looked up and down Lion's ninety-by-twenty-foot main deck, which was buzzing and clattering with pointless activity.

Lines were being spliced and un-spliced. Hatch coamings were being levered off with crowbars — to the screeek of nails — and then promptly hammered back again with thundering blows. The carpenter's men were sawing old timbers inch by inch into sawdust, with mighty saws. The topsails were being bent and un-bent and bent again to their yards. A squad of musketeers was drilling by the stern rail, going through the postures of loading — though with empty air — and levelling astern and crying Bang! as they pulled their triggers.

There wasn't a busier crew this side of the Bedlam madhouse.

"That's the way, by thunder!" said Silver. "I defy King Solomon himself to pick the raisins out o' that! Even him what told the wax flowers from the real by the aid of bees!" And he bumped and thumped to the rail, and put his glass to his eye for a look at Walrus.

"Them buggers has given up looking, I reckon," said the boatswain, and nudged Israel Hands cheerfully in the ribs. Hands nodded and nudged him back.

"That they have, Mr Sawyer," said Silver. "I don't think there's a soul aboard that even cares. Not now." He looked at the endless nonsensical labours merrily under way aboard the ship. "So now, my lads, you can show me over the real works, them as Walrus don't need to know about."

Silver's natural excellence in command extended to giving orders then leaving his subordinates to carry them out while he kept out of the way. This he'd learned partly from observing how England and Mason went about their work, but mainly it was his own intuitive good sense in appreciating that no man works better for having his superior beside him. The trick was to pick the right men in the first place, and Silver knew that Sarney Sawyer was as good a boatswain as Israel Hands was a gunner.

And as for Israel's little mistake with the Spanish gun — the mistake he was keeping so quiet about — why, that could be the saving of the ship… if it did come to fighting, that was. John Silver had been thinking it over very carefully. But first he had to check everything had been done to rights.

"You first, Mr Boatswain!" said Silver.

"Aye-aye, Cap'n!"

Led by Sawyer, John Silver and Israel Hands picked their way across the busy deck, men saluting and making way with utmost goodwill — a most cheery thing indeed for their captain to see when faced with the near certainty of imminent action against a superior ship.

Sawyer took them right into the bow, where two anchor cables ran out through the hawse-holes, the big, three-strand, hemp lines stretching each in its own direction — one to larboard, one to starboard. Each was sixty fathoms long and bent to the ring of an iron anchor fast in the bottom, giving Lion a mooring against the powerful tides of the southern anchorage. With a single anchor she'd have swung like a pendulum, scraping her cable on the bottom, and wearing it out worse and worse with every tide.

"See, Cap'n," said Sawyer, leaning out over a cathead and pointing down at the cables. "We led a hawser out through the foremost gunport on the larboard beam, and brought the hawser inboard and ran it to the capstan." He pointed aft to the squat wooden cylinder. "Then we did the same with a second hawser on the starboard beam, and so — whatever the wind and tide may venture — we can haul on the one or the other of the hawsers, and turn the old ship to face whichever way danger may threaten."

"Well and good, Mr Boatswain," said Silver. These were the most basic matters of seamanship, but Sawyer was still new to his rating and needed to know that his captain had an eye on him. "And has Parson Smith followed your lead, Mr Boatswain? Has he rigged springs?"

"Not him, Cap'n!" said Sawyer, glancing across at Walrus. "From what I seen through my glass, old Parson, he's too busy yelling at the hands. Anyhow, that land-lubber couldn't find his arse with a hand-mirror!"

"Nor couldn't he, neither!" said Silver. "So, Mr Hands, you've shown me how you've mounted your gun. Now tell me why you've mounted her there." Silver pointed at the second gun-port on the starboard side — the mid-point of the deck — where the Spanish nine stood out from the rest of Lion's battery, like a mastiff among spaniels. Or at least, it would have done if it hadn't been run inboard and covered with a tarpaulin, so it couldn't be seen.

"Aye, Cap'n," said Israel Hands. "On the open sea, with Flint in command, he'd manoeuvre to rake us by the bow or the stern — the stern most of all."

"Aye," said Silver, for that was the weak point of all ships — the stern, where there were more glass windows than oak timbers. "So, would you have put the nine-pounder in the stern?"

"No, Cap'n, for even then it would be one gun against seven — my nine pounds of shot against their forty-two. No, begging your pardon, Cap'n, but I'd leave it to yourself to keep him off our stern — ours being the faster ship, and yourself well knowing that, once he's across our stern, we're buggered!"

"Right enough, Mr Hands. So why not put your gun in the bow, which is well-timbered, and would make the smaller target for his guns, and leave it to me to place the old Lion bow-on to the foe, where you can play your gun upon him?"

Israel Hands blinked, and sighed, and thought, and bit his hp.

"No, Cap'n… Can't be done. For there ain't no room in the bow, and that's the Gospel truth."

"No, Mr Hands, there ain't," said Silver. "And we'll say no more of it! So why've you mounted her on the beam?"

Israel Hands cheered up enormously.

"First off, Cap'n, we ain't on the open sea. Flint ain't in command, and there ain't no manoeuvring to be done by nobody — not even him — here in the anchorage. So it might come to distant fire with guns elevated, or it might come to boats and boarders. In either case, I'd want our four-pounders able to bear — with grape and cannister — as much as I'd want the long gun sending shot into the enemy's hull."

"Aye!" said a chorus of voices, for others were listening now. Duties or no duties, free companions were not King's navy seamen and each was an individual who took a keen interest in matters which could mean life or death to himself.

"Well and good, Mr Hands," said Silver. "And have you had your pick of the shot?"

"Aye, Cap'n," said Israel Hands. "See there — " He pointed to a chest brought up from the hold, and laid alongside the Spanish gun. "Them Dons is a sight better iron-founders than they's given the credit for. I've gone through that shot locker and I ain't had to heave out more than one in five of 'em. Round as a baby's bum and smooth as a milkmaid's tit!" He looked at Walrus, less than two cable-lengths off. "What I say is this: let it come to long bowls, and ourselves at anchor with the deck steady, and myself with a good crew, and I'll put shot into that bugger where she lays right now, and they can stick their six-pounders up their arses!"

"HUZZAH!" cried the crew, and surged forward to slap Israel Hands on the back.

Silver waited till they were quiet.

"Well done indeed, Mr Hands. And well done, Mr Sawyer…" Silver paused, looked round his crew, and spoke.

"But there's one more thing, lads," he said. "Is there any man here now as doubts that we was made fools of by Flint?" "NO!"

"So what about them over there?" said Silver, pointing to Walrus. "They ain't all swabs and lubbers. Don't you think some o' them won't have wondered? Flint's been ashore best part of four days now. Four days on a duty that should've taken two! And them aboard Walrus will have heard the same firing we heard, and the screaming in the night, and all they've got for a cap'n is Parson Smith!"

There was a roar of laughter.

"Cap'n," said Israel Hands, "what course are you steering? We can batter spars off 'em. We can sink 'em! We don't need to worry about 'em."

Silver shook his head.

"Listen, lads," he said, "once we was jolly companions, one and all. Once we fought side by side and was messmates — "

"Long John!" said Israel Hands, guessing what was coming, "Don't — "

"So there's one more thing to do before it comes to fighting, and that's to give 'em one more chance!" cried Silver. "We signed articles! We all signed, every man of us, and there ain't been no vote to dissolve them articles!"

The crew fell silent.

"John! John!" said Israel Hands.

"So I'm taking a boat," said Silver, "and I'm going across. And just before we all blind one another's eyes and blow one another's bollocks off… Why! I'm giving 'em that one more chance to be jolly companions again!"

"It's the black girl, ain't it, John?" said Israel Hands, hanging on to Long John's arm, and looking up into his face. He dropped his voice so no other should hear. "You're soft on her, ain't you? You don't want her hurt in a fight."

"Bugger that!" said Silver. "That's done and ended. It's articles I'm worried about, for if we ain't true to them, then what are we? We're just a set of thieving pirates!"