Pieces Of Eight

Chapter 13

"Detail!" said Silver. "Detail is everything!"

"Aye," said the dozen men who would man Fort Silver, the biggest of the planned fortifications, the one most nearly complete, and the one which overlooked the southern anchorage. It was a forty-foot-square earthwork revetted with ships timbers and cut with emplacements for two four- pounders in each wall.

"Come close, lads," said Silver, beckoning the hands to the guns that covered the beach. "See them tubs? You gun-captains pay heed! Once 'general quarters' is sounded, I want glowing matches in every tub, so's every piece is always ready to fire."

"Aye, Cap'n."

"Good — see that it's done." He picked out a man: "You there: Crooky Cruickshank — "

"Aye-aye, sir!"

"— what've I said about 'falling back', Crooky?"

The man gulped, uneasy at being singled out.

"You said men's more important than forts."

"And what might that mean?"

"It means we's to abandon ship and fall back if ordered."

"An' where should you fall back to?"

"To Fort Hands, inland."

"And what then should you do with your guns?"

"Spike 'em, Cap'n."

"How?"

"With this, Cap'n!"

Nicholson reached down among the gun tackles and produced a long iron nail and a fist-sized rock.

"I knock the sod into the touch-hole and keep on pounding till it's squashed to buggery and can't be pulled out!"

"Aye," said Silver. The rock was Israel Hands's idea. There were nails for every gun, but not enough hammers. "You — Dick Douglas," he said, choosing another man, "when d'you fire round-shot, and when canister?"

The questioning went on until Silver was entirely sure that each member of the team knew not only his own duties but those of his mates.

"Well enough," he declared finally, and looked at the sun. "Time to go," he said, and led the way.

Israel Hands came out from Camp Silver to meet him. He drew Silver aside for a word.

"It's getting worse, John," said Israel Hands. He looked at the men walking ahead. "It's all right when you've got 'em, but as for the rest of us… we're losing discipline. Most of 'em wants to be looking for Flint's gold — "

"Flint's gold be buggered!" said Silver. "It's our blasted gold!"

"I know, I know, Cap'n — but that's what they's calling it, and they wants to be a-searching for it and a-digging it up! Ben Gunn run off this morning after Billy-boy kicked his arse. And if he's run, then others might follow."

Silver sighed, and wiped the sweat from his face with a grubby handkerchief.

"Ben Gunn's a poor, broken soul," he said.

"Aye. But it ain't just him. Nor ain't it just the gold neither.

Some of 'em don't want to fight Flint when he comes, they wants to join him — anything to get aboard a ship again — and none of 'em likes digging trenches. They thinks they's gentlemen of fortune, not farmers. And they's splitting into gangs, Cap'n, and we can't do nothing if they won't pull together."

"It's this blasted island," said Silver, "there's something in the air! I'll talk to 'em, Israel. Has Black Dog done what I said?"

"Aye, Cap'n," said Israel Hands.

"Then we shall have to brace up, and hope I'm steering a true course."

He set off again, crutch thumping on the ground, parrot clenched to his shoulder, making for the camp, where all hands were mustered by the great heaps of timbers, spars and gear that were all that remained of their ship. The men looked surly and they were grumbling while the surf boomed dolefully in the background.

Silver found Billy Bones.

"What's this about Benn Gun?" said Silver.

"Never laid a hand on the bugger!"

"That ain't what I heard."

"Well… might have made him jump a bit."

"Oh, Billy! Didn't I say to treat the hands gentle?"

"Hats off!" cried Sarney Sawyer, and blew a long call on his pipe. The men stood to a poor version of attention. Silver, Billy Bones and Israel Hands stood together, facing the men, and raised their own hats in salute.

"Stand easy, lads," said Silver, "and gather round." He hopped nimbly forward, stopping by a long spar laid out in front of all the rest, drilled with a line of holes and a pile of rods laid next to it. Alongside the spar, a six-foot pyramid of timbers stood covered with a tarpaulin.

Silver looked at the men, and was shocked to see how they clustered in groups, glaring at one another. He looked from man to man. Some he could rely on to the last, like Israel Hands. Others, like Billy Bones, would go over to Flint so soon as he beckoned. Most would trim their sails to the prevailing wind. All that he could understand. But beyond that, there was a festering, suspicious anger that had no good cause, that came from Devil-knows-where, and that had to be lanced like an abscess.

"Lads…" he said, and began to speak, drawing on all his natural powers of oratory, but telling them the truth. He told the truth because he couldn't abide to lie, not even when the truth was grim.

For the truth was that all their hard work digging ramparts and mounting guns couldn't make them rich, nor even get them off the island. It was only to save their lives, since Flint would return with overwhelming force, and could drive the defenders into their forts, raise the treasure, and sail away leaving them marooned. And as for Silver's men finding the treasure for themselves… what a fine thing that would be. It could be used to bargain with Flint for a ship, except there wasn't the time nor the manpower to dig up the whole blasted island to find what only Flint knew the bearings of!

"So," said Silver, "is there any man as knows a better way, or as chooses to step forward with a question?"

There was silence. Men shuffled and sniffed and looked at one another and scratched their heads. The surf boomed, the gulls called… and no man moved. Silver had drained the abscess. By telling the full, plain truth he'd left no room for suspicion. They were sombre and miserable now, but they weren't looking to knife one another.

Ah, thought Silver, got you my buckos. Wormed, parcelled and stayed!

Having brought them down, now he must lift them up.

"But before all else, lads," he said, "we must be a crew. We must be jolly companions together."

"Uh?" they said.

"So here's two things to help. First, our calendar — " he rapped the tip of his crutch against the spar. "Mr Carpenter!"

Black Dog stepped forward and began putting a rod into each hole. There were a hundred of them in one long line, each rod two feet high.

"This here's the clock that shall tell us when to expect Flint," said Silver. "Mr Bones and me reckon the fastest he can be back — in round figures — is a hundred days. So we shall take a peg out each day, for all hands to see how close we are to action stations."

"Hm," they said. It was plain, clear and simple, and focused their minds still further on the threat that faced them all, and on the need to face it united.

"Now this — " said Silver, coming to the tarpaulin cover and the pyramid. "Lads," he said, "the old ship is gone. Lion is burned, beached and buggered…" he paused as powerful emotions worked in the men. A seaman's ship was everything. Without her they weren't bold rovers nor gentlemen of fortune. They were maroons, they were landlubbers, they were miserable, abandoned wretches. The men groaned.

Billy Bones and Israel Hands looked on in alarm. They'd never have dared remind the men of such things.

"But we saved something out of the wreck," said Silver, and nodded at Black Dog, who swept off the tarpaulin to reveal a finely crafted tripod of spars on a timber base, with Lion's brass bell hung burnished and gleaming in splendour. "Lads, the bell is the heart and soul of a ship, as all true seamen know," he said. "And this here's the heart and soul of our ship, the which stands for all that she ever was, and all that she still is. From this day forward, it shall sound eight bells every day at noon." He reached down, and took the lanyard. "Give a cheer, lads — a cheer for Lion. The old ship may be gone, but she lives on in us. For we are her people! We are her Lions! Lions, one and all — Lions for ever!"

Clang-Clang! Clang-Clang! Clang-Clang! Clang-Clang!

Peering between the trees, with his monkey cuddled to his chest, Ben Gunn saw the cheering and tears and the pride, and the jolly companionship re-made, and he near as damnit ran back to join in. But he saw Billy Bones and remembered how Billy Bones had cuffed him and threatened him with a flogging… and poor Benn Gun fell to sobbing and weeping, for he couldn't stand another dose of that.

Chk-chk-chk! The monkey, sensing his distress, clung to him with all its might. Ben Gunn hugged it and turned and fled: swiftly, silently, barely disturbing the leaves and bushes as he passed. At least he had a shirt now, and a hat… and a spade. He had a long-hafted spade, for he'd been working on the entrenchments and had kept hold of it.

He ran deep into the forest till he could hear nothing of Silver and his men, only the surf and the birds and the insects. When he was tired, he rested, and the monkey found fruit to eat, and later they found a stream for water… and time passed sweet and easy for Ben Gunn. Nights and days followed. He wandered. He found the monkey tribe again, and his own pet was welcomed back among chattering kindred that picked over its fur and climbed aboard Ben Gunn, and frolicked and skylarked and played.

Some days later — Ben Gunn kept no reckoning — he found yet another sign that men had been here before. He was on high ground, by the western shore of the island, where the trees grew sparse, and the sea glittered to the horizon. Here, he found a place with no trees at all, for they'd all been felled and the stumps dug up. There were lines of crosses: squat wooden crosses, hewn from ship's timbers. Most had fallen over, but a few stood more or less upright. At one end was the caved-in remains of a little house, also of heavy timber, but moss-covered and half- flattened with age.

"Cetemary," he said, mis-pronouncing the word, and he took off his hat. He looked around and felt at peace. To Ben Gunn, a cemetery was like a church. It was holy. It gave him the same pleasure as being in church with his mother — which he dimly remembered — but with the benefit of being out in the sunshine with the birds and the flowers.

He walked up and down the lines of graves, peering at the crosses, which seemed to have names carved into them. Ben Gunn couldn't read very well, not having attempted the feat for many years. But he wasn't illiterate either. It just took a lot of time for him to spell out the words and to understand them.

He pushed his way into the little house: just one room, ten foot by twenty, where the wind and the rain had penetrated for decades. There was a ruined bed with a body on it. A leathery skeleton under dust and leaves and filth, clad in rags, with some bits missing, and the rest twisted and broken… but on one narrow bone a bright green emerald twinkled in a golden ring — which was off that instant and on to Ben Gunn's finger, and Ben Gunn grinning and chuckling and merry.

He searched further. There was quite a lot more: a chest of writing materials — pens, ink-bottles, and a leather-bound notebook — together with what looked like a bible and a prayer book. He ignored these, as well as the remains of rosary beads, and a brass crucifix — he could tell it was brass by the taste — and there were some rusty tools. But there was a good dagger in a sheath, a few gold coins, and a pair of silver-mounted pistols, still un-rusted inside a tight- shut box that he prised open with his spade. They were of antique design with external mainsprings in the Spanish style. Useless as they were without powder or shot, Benn Gunn took these too.

That night he slept under the trees, but he came back next day, followed by some more of the monkeys, which joined in the fun of turning the ruined house inside out.

He found no more loot and was going away in disappointment when a thought occurred to him. Perhaps some of the dead had been buried with rings on their fingers?

It took little time to reach the first coffin, which was buried shallow, no more than three feet down. Ben Gunn scraped the earth clear with his spade and wondered how best to get inside… and then he wondered whether he really wanted to see what was inside… Hmmm… it couldn't be much worse than the dry bones in the house, could it? But the ground was dry here, and the wood of the coffin looked sound. There might be more meat inside the coffin than there'd been inside the house… Ben Gunn dithered.

Then the emerald spoke to him from his left hand, and he raised the spade and drove it into the middle of the coffin… which surrendered with a rotten crunch, letting in the spade, and letting out such a stench as sent Ben Gunn staggering back, heaving and snorting and pawing at his face to rid himself of the contamination.

The monkeys didn't seem to mind it so much. They perched on the shattered lid, sniffing and chattering and endlessly grooming one another's fur. But that was the end of Ben Gunn's career as a resurrectionist. He went off and found a stream and soaked himself in it to get rid of the smell.

He didn't go back, except once to the house to check he'd missed nothing, this time taking the old notebook for curiosity, and later spending hours trying to pick the meaning out of it. After some effort he concluded that it was a diary, written by someone called de Setubal, who wrote not in English but some other language: Spanish, perhaps? And he could easily read the year dates that appeared at each entry, and which started at 1689.

Days passed. For a while it was a pleasant time for Ben Gunn.

There was no Billy Bones to frighten him, and he had the monkeys for company… except that they weren't proper company, not being able to talk, and he began to get hungry too, through not having proper victuals. Worse still, the monkeys fell ill. They lay in their tree-nests trembling, and developed festering spots on the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet. Ben Gunn was dreadfully afraid then, in case they should die and leave him absolutely alone — for he hated being alone — but eventually they all got better, and resumed their playing, unharmed except for tiny grey scars where the spots had been.

Ben Gunn cuddled his favourite, caressed its little hand and noticed that the scars were just like those on his own cheeks… those left after his childhood survival from smallpox.