Skull and Bones

Chapter 12

It would be pointless to describe Walrus as being in a bugger's muddle, since — in her present state — that was a condition to which she could only aspire.

Her foremast was out, much of her rigging was gone, her crew was ashore and her decks were spattered with pitch and wood chips, timber and tools, and stank of bilge water and tar, sawdust and beer, and steak-and-onions frying over charcoal braziers. Caulkers sat on their boxes battering merrily, while women hawkers yelled their wares of bread, fish and fruit. Bosuns' pipes shrieked as teams of men hove powder and shot aboard, small boys dashed everywhere on errands, and the crowded voices of a dozen trades bellowed and yelled and squabbled.

Long John stamped through this pandemonium with Israel Hands in tow, haggard exhaustion etched on his face. He'd not slept for two days, nor slept soundly since Dr Cowdray had told him where Selena was gone.

"Ah!" said Silver. "There he is!" And he shoved through the press, clambering over an empty gun-carriage, a spar, two pitch buckets and a caulker's mallet, to get at a grey-wigged gentleman in a long coat who was standing by the quarterdeck rail with a couple of shirt-sleeved, waistcoated minions in attendance.

"Mr Pollock!" cried Silver, coming alongside of this gentleman and forcing himself to touch his hat.

"Ah, Captain Silver!" said Pollock, touching his own hat. "I suppose it is the usual question?" He smirked and his followers sniggered.

Silver ground his teeth.

"It is, Mr Pollock," he said. "So, when might my ship be floated out?" Silver resented the careful politeness required to get these blood-sucking bastards of dockyard clerks to do their duty. Even normal, decent bribes weren't much good: not when there was an endless queue of ships waiting, and a huge sum already gone into Sir Wyndham's pocket just to get Walrus into the dockyard at all.

"When, sir? When?" Pollock pursed his lips. "Oooooo," he smiled, winking at his sycophants. "Why, sir, she will be floated out, sir… the instant she is ready, sir!" And he laughed, and his men laughed, and none of them knew how close they came to butchering bloody slaughter on the spot.

"John!" said Hands, seizing Silver's arm. "Come away! Leave 'em to it!"

Silver was white with anger, but he let himself be led off for he knew that one more spark of wit from Mr Pollock would see his hands around that gentleman's neck like a Spanish garrotte.

So Israel Hands and Silver went aft.

"See here, Cap'n," said Israel Hands, looking over the ship, "we ain't done so bad as all that. We could've been here months! She was heavily hit and she was thick with weed." He took in the busy activity on board. "She looks a mess, but I'd say the job's nearly done and she'll be afloat in a couple of days."

"D'you think so?"

"I do."

"But they may be in England now… her and that cow."

"John, there ain't nothing more we can do."

"Ain't there, by thunder? 'Cos by Jesus and Mary I'll find a way if there is one! Any damned way. I'll piss on God and kiss the Devil's arse, if that's what it takes to save that girl!"

Silver's face contorted as horrible images burst into his mind: images of men slobbering over the woman he loved, while she smiled and opened her legs and let them do it.

"Hellfire!" he said. "Bloody hellfire!"

"I know, John."

Fortunately Israel Hands was right. Walrus floated out of the dry dock two days later, and with some furious work by a sheer hulk's crew to re-step the foremast, and all hands to set up rigging, she was under way and outbound from Upper Barbados on the morning tide of 17th April, in all respects fit for sea, and a dozen extra hands aboard: each one carefully chosen.

In addition, the two reluctant navigating officers were gone, and in their place stood Mr Warrington, rated as first mate: a vital necessity in case Mr Norton might not be willing to take up duties again. Warrington was a stout, greying man, who came with his own charts, instruments and tables. But unlike the foremast hands, he'd not been carefully chosen.

"Dirty bugger, ain't he?" said Israel Hands to Long John, as Mr Warrington came up on deck for his noon observation, doffing his hat towards his captain. His coat was soiled, his fingernails were filthy and a broken feather drooped from his hat.

"Aye," said Silver, as Warrington went to the rail with his quadrant for a view of the sun. "But he's all we could get! There's a shortage of first mates in Upper Barbados… or at least there is for our trade!"

"He stinks, too," said Israel Hands. "Let's hope Mr Joe ain't made the wrong choice." Silver grinned and looked at

Mr Joe. He'd started out as gunner's mate under Israel Hands, who'd taught the lad his letters and his numbers, only to find that he liked them so much that he wanted to be a navigator and not a gunner! This left Israel Hands jealous but Silver delighted that so intelligent a member of his crew was showing interest in one skill that he himself could never master.

Now Mr Joe was standing beside Warrington, receiving instruction in the use of the quadrant — and an odd pair they made: the slim, serious young black with his handsome face and his eye-patch, and the sweating, greasy Warrington with his loud voice and his coarse, leering jokes.

Later, it grew worse. Warrington got roaring drunk at dinner time, and bellowed verses at the top of his voice until a bucket of water was thrown over him. Then he staggered on deck, still grinning and sniggering, and played the dirty- minded trick of creeping up behind another man and grabbing his arse with a middle finger upraised between the cheeks: not the wisest of tricks to play upon a gentleman o' fortune. Warrington got badly beaten, suffering broken ribs, a dislocated thumb, severe bruising about the face, and a split forehead for Dr Cowdray to sew up.

"How is he?" said Silver, peering in through the door of the first mate's cabin as Warrington was heaved into his cot by Cowdray and his mate, Jobo. Seeing the bandages and Warrington's closed eyes, Silver knew the answer before Cowdray spoke.

"Unfit for duty, Captain. He's half-conscious and he can't see."

"Bugger!" said Silver.

"Uhhh…" said Warrington, and stirred. "Now is the winter of our discontent…"

"What?" said Silver, as Warrington mumbled on.

"Made glorious summer by this son of York…"

"What's he blathering about?"

"And all the clouds that lowered on our house…"

"It's Shakespeare," said Cowdray. "Richard III."

"Then shut his bloody trap! Give him some rum."

"He's had quite enough of that!" said Cowdray.

"No! No!" growled Warrington, in his slurred voice. "Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"

Silver cursed and damned and got himself up on deck, and sent for Norton, who was duly escorted up into the light, blinking and sniffing the fresh air. After a brief time on the quarterdeck, making sure Walrus found Upper Barbados, he'd spent the last few weeks below decks, as had McLonarch, and he was not best pleased. That displeasure was evident now, as he stood in the waist, facing Silver and his officers at the quarterdeck rail while the hands looked on.

"Now then, mister," said Silver, "how'd you like to be first mate again? Or shall you go back to the hold as live lumber?"

"Depends," said Norton truculently. "What's your course? What's your trade? And what else will I have to do?"

"You'll have to swim back to Williamstown if you ain't careful, my cocker!"

"Aye!" said the crew.

"Cap'n!" said Allardyce, glaring angrily at Norton, the principal enemy of his beloved McLonarch. "We got to hold council according to articles." He looked to the crew: "These good lads have sailed on trust, ain't you, lads?"

"Aye!" they cried.

"We've slung our hook, and we've come out on the tide… trusting Long John to take us on a cruise…" He paused. "But no bugger's said where we's going, nor why."

"Aye!" they said.

"We held no council ashore," said Allardyce. "But now's the time." Emboldened by the sight of the crew nodding agreement, he concluded: "So… Long John… I akses you to bring up the McLonarch, God save him! Bring him up that his voice might be heard alongside of this sod of a Bow Street Runner!"

"Aye!" cried Long John. "Let there be a full council! I'd have said it myself if nobody else had." Then he added: "And bring up Mister McLonarch an' all."

There was cheering and furious activity as men vanished below to put on their best clothes and collect their arms, and to bring up a chair and table, and to spread the table with the black flag, and to lay open the Book of Articles upon the flag, with pen and ink, and a sand-caster. Soon, only the lookouts and the helmsmen were at their duties, and all hands paraded in silks and plumes, jewellery and buckles, and bearing whatever combination of firelock, sword, knife and hatchet that each man desired in this ultimate, armed democracy where every man was every other's equal. Even Sammy Hayden, ship's boy, had a pair of sea-service pistols stuck in his belt, primed and loaded with ball.

Among the crowd, McLonarch stood out by his height and by the total confidence of his bearing. Norton was constantly glancing his way, wondering and calculating, while McLonarch looked at his enemy just once… and smiled… and looked away as if from some small matter of no importance.

McLonarch watched quietly as these barbarians went through their ceremony, seating Captain Silver at the single chair, raised up on a platform like a throne, and then all hats were doffed but his. McLonarch sneered in contempt… which turned to incredulity at the equality of the proceedings, such that each man was given the chance to speak and be listened to, or to be howled down in derision, if that's what the company desired. And some who were strange and ugly, like Blind Pew the sailmaker, were listened to with rapt attention for their skill as speakers.

The debate concerned the vital matter of where the ship should be heading and to what purpose. McLonarch was amazed that there were no secrets among these people. His offer of a pardon was common knowledge, and the ship's surgeon was asked by Silver to explain his plan — shared by Silver, for his own reasons — to sail to London and there decide what to do with himself and Norton. At this, Norton pushed forward, bellicose and muscular.

"The law must have him!" he cried, pointing at McLonarch. "He's bloody murder! He's anarchy and civil war!" He appealed to their patriotism: "You may be outlaws, but you're still Englishmen! Surely you care for your own land? Surely you don't want — "

But they howled him down. They hated him for what he was, and besides they weren't all Englishmen, and he had no gift of speech.

McLonarch saw that his time was come. He caught Tom Allardyce's eye and nodded. Allardyce nodded back, and began to yell and shout that McLonarch should be heard. Allardyce was consumed with passion for the cause that pulsed in his blood, and his fervent, near-religious conviction was the drum roll and fanfare for what was to come. Thus McLonarch stepped forward, tall and ascetic. Though he faced the mass of heavily armed men alone and unarmed, he remained serene in his dignity and charisma.

His eyes swept over them in such a way that every man present felt that he personally was being addressed. He raised his hands above his shoulders, and a silence fell that was so complete every creak of the ship could be heard, and every chuckle of water under her bow. He stood tall, he took a breath…

He hadn't spoken a word and already they were gaping.

His voice, when it came, was majestic.

It rang with beauty and resonance.

It was poetic and solemn.

It was magnificent.

If he'd read them a cockle boat's bill of lading they'd have been entranced. But he offered infinitely more than that. He spoke of riches in this life, and salvation in the next. He made them laugh, he made them cry, he led them dancing down the flowery path towards…

THE TRUTH OF THE HOLY STUART CAUSE.

Even the Protestants were welcome. Even they might be saved, if only they followed him. By the time he'd finished they were hoisting a noose to the yard-arm for Norton, screaming defiance in Long John's face… and threatening to hang him too.