Pieces Of Eight

Chapter 40

"Where is One-Leg?" cried a voice.

"Here!" cried the three men hanging on to Long John.

They spoke in their own language, so Silver didn't understand. He only knew that he was wrenched up and out of the wallowing launch — which was nearly sunk with the weight of bodies aboard — and thrown face down into the water to gasp and splutter, and attempt to struggle upright, and which is so difficult a thing for a one-legged man to do that he'd have drowned if hands hadn't seized him and pulled him upright and dragged him to the shore, hopping and scraping his one foot and trying to keep up, and still coughing up so much salt water that he hadn't the strength to fight.

"John Silver!" said a voice in English. Silver wiped his streaming eyes, and swayed to keep upright, as the same voice said, "Find his staff. Give it to him!" And Silver steadied as his familiar crutch was shoved under his arm. When his eyes cleared, he saw a small, red-brown man with a stone-hard, cruel, face: tattooed, painted, and bald with a single topknot of hair that was stuck with a feather. Though he looked ill and shrivelled, he seemed totally in command. The other savages pressed round, half-naked, fiercely armed, and glaring at Silver, while two more hung on to his arms. But they kept a respectful distance from the little man, and treated him with profound respect.

"I'm Silver," said Long John, "I'm him!"

"I see that," said the Indian, as anyone would have. Silver was by far the biggest man present. "And I am Dreamer."

"Well then, Mr Dreamer," said Silver, "I knows what you're a-gonna do to me and the rest. But there's a woman among them there — " he jabbed his thumb at the boat "- and she ain't nothing to us." He shrugged his shoulders. "Why! She ain't even one of us. So just you leave her alone, d'you hear? Don't… don't…" Silver faltered. He stumbled over his words. He fell silent and looked at the ground. And when he looked up again and spoke… it wasn't very clever, and it wasn't very good, but it was all he could think of: "So don't you kill her. Don't waste such a fine woman. Take her for yourself!"

Dreamer looked at Silver, impassive and unreadable. To Silver, he was the embodiment of pitiless cruelty.

"I cannot take the woman," said Dreamer.

"And why not?"

"Because she is yours."

"What? No she ain't."

"Bring the woman!" said Dreamer, and Selena was pulled out of the boat and put beside Long John. He wanted to put an arm around her. His arm moved but he forced it down. That wouldn't fit the tale he was telling.

Dreamer looked at the two of them.

"You — woman! Selena, the black one who Sun-Face Flint desires." Selena looked at Long John. "Speak your mind!" said Dreamer.

"She ain't mine, she's Flint's!" cried Silver, desperately trying anything to keep Selena safe. He looked at Dreamer. "Flint's a friend to you, ain't he? She's Flint's!"

"No, I'm not," she said. "Dreamer knows that."

Dreamer nodded.

"But Flint wants you," he said. "Him and many others. And so does he — " Dreamer looked at Long John.

"I told you," said Long John, "she ain't nothing to me!"

"So," Dreamer looked at Selena, "are you John Silver's woman? Would you be his wife?"

Selena looked at Long John. She considered the question Dreamer had just asked, and — as with her feelings on finding Silver again — her response was swift and true.

"Yes!" she said, and threw her arms around his neck, and pulled down his head and kissed him.

"Ah!" said Dreamer. He nodded. He stepped forward. He took Selena's left hand and placed it in Silver's right. "Then it is done," he said, and smiled. "Marriage is made by the woman's consent. So be together and be true!" The smile vanished. He looked up at Silver. "There is much to do, One-Leg. I need you and your men!"

Lieutenant Gordon Heffer, aged twenty-three years, was intoxicated with his triumph over his enemies: Lieutenant Simon Clark, aged twenty-two, in command of Bounder, and Lieutenant Arnold Comstock, aged twenty, in command of Jumper, both being junior to himself and now under his orders.

To be precise, they were his rivals not his enemies, but Heffer couldn't help seeing them as that, for they — like himself — were junior, and inexperienced, officers in temporary command of their ships, while the true lords and masters were ashore with the commodore, digging up gold and diamonds, chasing pirates up trees and shoving bayonets up their arses. That meant that Heffer was actually in command of an actual squadron with orders to cruise the coast in search of any pirates that might be lurking thereabouts, and to inflict the most fearful possible violence upon them. Thus could Lieutenant Heffer expect to cover himself in glory and secure the promotion he craved — unless that glorious ambition was scuppered by one of his peers letting down the squadron with slackness or incompetence — or, worse, achieving some stroke of spectacular efficiency that would put Lieutenant Heffer's own efforts into the shade!

God forbid! thought Heffer.

"Make to the squadron!" he bawled to the signal midshipman.

"Aye-aye, sir!" cried the mid, and Heffer's chest swelled magnificently.

"Keep proper station!"

The flags were bent to the halliard. Willing hands heaved. Whizz-whirr, went the blocks. And up went the totally unnecessary signal, to stream totally unnecessarily in the wind. Bounder and Jumper were already in excellent formation, in line abeam of the flagship, extended such that Leaper — sailing just offshore — got the best sight of anything anchored there, while Bounder and Jumper kept watch on whatever might be in the offing, with Bounder the furthest out.

"Pah!" said Lieutenant Clark, aboard Bounder. "Silly bugger!"

"Pah!" said Lieutenant Comstock, aboard Jumper. "Stupid sod!"

But they muttered these observations under their breath, and then set about blasting their crews as idle, no-seaman lubbers who couldn't keep proper station on the flagship, nor probably a proper watch neither! For all aboard the three ships were young men wound up with excitement. Maybe it would be them that found Flint? Maybe they'd be the ones, the lucky ones, God bless them one and all!

So they bowled along, with the miserable island to starboard, the merry breeze a-blowing, and their slick, copper-plated hulls gleaming and plunging, and their bowsprits dipping, and their banners flying. And they poked into every inlet, and they looked at every cove, and they searched every beach, and in all three ships there were men in the tops and men along the rails with telescopes and peering eyes, never neglecting to keep a watch on the larboard beam besides, for you never knew, did you? And wouldn't it be a tragedy on the face of the waters for a ship to slip past on the seaward side and get away full of wicked miscreants and treasure?

By mid morning they'd passed the shoals that lay off the northern coast, where a great hill rose up, the second biggest of the three that lay in a line, north to south of the island, and round they came, navigating the northernmost, out-jutting peninsula at the top of the island, and were working southward towards a great mile-wide inlet that opened up some four or five miles ahead. Heffer stared and a prickling excitement arose. Ah! That was better. That was a real anchorage. Best they'd seen yet. That's where they'd be if they were anywhere! Then from Bounder's bow a gun threw white smoke and a flat boom, warning of an urgent signal.

"Damn!" said Heffer, as Bounder's flags went up. He put his glass on them. "Bugger!"

The flags spelled "Enemy in sight. Larboard bow."

"Bugger, bugger, bugger!" said Heffer, knowing he'd have to report that Bounder spotted them first. Let's hope it's a mistake, he thought, searching with his glass. But one of his mids was quicker.

"It's a boat, sir. A launch. Heading north out of the eastward side of the island. It can't be Flint, sir. Not in a boat, sir… it's all right, sir!"

"Good lad!" said Heffer. The boy had his heart in the right place.

He trained his glass where the mid indicated and caught the boat in the bobbing, spherical field. There it was… a big launch under sail… three… no, four… no, six men aboard.

Enemy in sight indeed! Rubbish! That weren't no pirate ship, now, was it? And there couldn't be no treasure aboard neither. Not the amount Flint was s'posed to have, anyway! Just six men… and something under a tarpaulin… hmm… Heffer wavered… perhaps…

"Make to Bounder,'" cried Heffer.

"Aye-aye, sir!"

"Pursue the enemy."

"Ah-ha!" cried Lieutenant Simon Clark, and snapped his fingers and danced for joy as he read the flags. He was independent! Detached from the squadron! Oh joy! Oh bloody rapture! Please God Almighty that the launch should fly like the wind, and have to be chased over the horizon, 'cos then Bounder would be out of sight of the commodore and Gordon bloody Heffer! Them and all the rest of the squadron, and he wouldn't have to share a penny piece with any of them! And Simon Clark, acting captain, would surely get his full two- eighths, as laid down in the Cruizers and Convoys Act of 1708, God bless it, God bless it, God bless it! It and the splendid men who'd shoved it through Parliament for the benefit of honest sailormen. Lieutenant Clark was fairly licking his lips at the thought of all the wealth that was going to be his…

Assuming, of course, that the launch had anything of value aboard. Oh…

Clark calmed himself. He cleared his throat. He stopped jumping and grinning. He adopted the gravitas of a sea-service officer.

"Helmsman!" he cried. "Put me alongside of that launch. Mr Bosun, make all possible sail!"

So Bounder parted company with Leaper and Jumper… or would have done, had not the three sloops — now crossing the mouth of the northern inlet — realised at that moment what was coming out to join them.