Skull and Bones

Chapter 33

The sea was calm, the wind fair, and the warm sun rose out of the east from the depths of the sea, eating the darkness and lighting the limitless, rolling depths of the American continent, and the limitless, glittering expanse of the Atlantic, now in beauteous and peaceful mood. All the world was fresh and clean and it smiled to itself as it awoke. And with the beautiful sights came gentle sounds: ripples and breeze and birds; the quiet, morning voices of men, and the soft clunk and chatter of ship's gear.

It was such a moment as makes a seaman's heart tingle and his soul to soar unto Heaven; such a moment as can only be understood by those who have felt the pitiless cruelty of the same ocean when its wrath breaks lofty masts and mighty timbers as if they were twigs that an infant snaps with his tiny hands.

All aboard shared the moment, and stood quietly to their duties, proud of themselves and of their ship, and of their trade, and eager to swell their wealth with another such prize as Inez de Cordoba. Better still, they grinned with the happy knowledge that their captain now knew exactly where to find another prize, since he knew exactly what the Spanish were up to!

"Look!" said Warrington, standing over a chart on a barrelhead by the tiller, with Mr Joe, John Silver and Israel Hands beside him. "The whole coastline here is ragged with rivers and creeks, and with islands close offshore. This one is St Helena Island."

Mr Joe leaned over the chart.

"Is this the best we've got?" he asked. "This chart's old and it's French!"

"Perhaps," said Warrington, "but it is drawn fair and clear, and it has soundings and sandbanks, and all such perils as mariners must fear." He was defensive, for the chart was his own.

"Well enough," said Silver, and laid a hand on Warrington's shoulder. "And the Frogs is fine seamen, an' all. So! Where's them other islands what Ibanez told us about?"

Warrington drew his telescope and swept the seas ahead.

"There!" he said pointing. "And there! We are in mid- channel, having passed into the mouth of the sound, clearing the sands off St Helena, and having two miles of water on either beam. The islands we seek are about three miles ahead."

"Which one is El Tercero?" said Silver.

Warrington blinked. "The French gave them no names…" he said.

"Aye, but the Dons did," said Silver. "See! Working in from the coast… down the north side of the sound… El Primero, El Segundo, El Tercero and El Quarto: First, Second, Third and Fourth." He raised his own glass and looked ahead. "And them supply ships, they anchors between Tercero and Quarto, and waits for the squadron. That's their orders."

"And there's three ships in the squadron?" said Israel Hands.

"Aye," said Silver. "Two ships of thirty guns and one of sixty."

"We don't want to be meetin' them!" said Mr Joe.

"No danger of that!" said Silver. "They ain't due for a week, and Captain Ibanez said they're usually late. Meanwhile, they's out charting this here coast of the Carolinas — this arky-pel-argo of islands — and seeing where big ships can anchor… for to land troops and guns."

"So there is going to be a war?" said Israel Hands. "With Spain?"

"Every bugger says so!" said Silver, and he straightened up, and raised his voice: "Allllll hands!" he roared.

"Aye-aye!" they cried.

"Can you hear me in the tops?"

"Aye-aye!"

"Can you hear me forrard an' aft an' all?"

"Aye-aye!"

"Then listen well!" he said. "Lookouts keep sharp! Guns run out and matches burning! Stand by, boarders! And a double share for him as first sights a prize!" They cheered. Silver grinned. "Quiet, I said!"

"Aye-aye!"

Slowly, carefully, Walrus ran up the sound, picking out El Primero, then El Segundo, and then things got difficult. The shoreline on the starboard bow was idyllically beautiful: first dunes and salt marshes alive with water-fowl, then sandy beaches with dark green forest behind them. That, and so many river mouths that it was hard to tell which was an island and which was not, and the old French map didn't quite show what was really there.

But no man complained. Not when a prize might be waiting just around the next corner. Walrus was king of all the world. There wasn't another ship in this glorious expanse of shimmering water, and no sight nor sound of any other man. This was pure, primeval wilderness, holding no power greater than Walrus's guns and Walrus's men.

"Ahoy, foretop!" cried Silver.

"Aye-aye!" cried the lookout.

"Don't look for topmasts! They'll be…"

He was about to warn that the supply ships would strike all above the lower masts, and hide themselves with leafy branches cut from the shore. That's what Captain Ibanez had said. But the lookout wasn't listening. Not now.

"Fair on the starboard bow!" he cried. "That's my double share!"

"Huzzah!" cried all hands, and they ran to the starboard rail in a thunder of boots and a roll of the ship. Even Selena was among them, and even she was smiling.

"Ah!" said Silver, and raised his telescope. It was just as Ibanez had said. Yards and topmasts struck, and the vessel green with boughs.

"Well done, John!" cried Israel Hands. "This is all your doing!" he beamed.

"Aye!" said Silver. "Ain't it just?"

Israel Hands came close. He spoke soft.

"How'd you do it?"

"What?"

"Get that Dago to talk. He wouldn't say nothing before."

But Silver merely peered down his nose at Israel Hands, and tickled the parrot's green feathers… and looked away.

"Ahoy, Selena!" he cried, and pointed at the carefully hidden ship. "There, my lass! All ours! All legal!" And so she smiled.

She smiled because she was young and the young don't stay miserable for ever. And the weather was glorious and the scenery magical. So — accepting she was where she was, and not where she might have wanted to be — she made use of her natural talent for making the best of things.

"Ah-ha!" she cried, and stamped her booted foot, slapped her thigh, and struck a heroic pose: legs apart, hands on hips, head back… just as she'd been taught by little Mr Abbey for pantomimes on the London stage, and the crew whooped and cheered every bit as loud as the audiences in Drury Lane. Like any artist, Selena responded to applause, and so she acted a little more. She mimed the act of drawing a telescope. She studied the bough-covered ship and turned to Silver with a mock-serious expression.

"How shall we take her, Cap'n?" she said, affecting a manly voice. "For it's a narrow creek! We'll not get the ship alongside of her!"

The crew roared with delight. Silver laughed, Israel Hands laughed, Mr Warrington cried, "Brava! Brava!" and clapped his hands.

"Quite the master mariner, madame!" said Silver. "But you're right. We'd not get the old ship up there without warping." He took a breath and lifted his voice and bellowed: "Boats away! Boarders away! Look lively!"

And so, the warm sun of the Carolinas shone, the little waters chuckled, the sky was blue and the gulls sang alongside the fowl of the salt marshes, and all was rum and plum duff… until suddenly it wasn't. Suddenly one lookout remembered his duty, and took a glance astern, which he'd not done for a while, being entirely concerned with looking for prizes. So he turned… and gaped… and gasped.

"Sail astern, Cap'n!" he cried. "Three of 'em!"

All hands looked astern. They let go the lines they were hauling to launch the boats. They left off checking the priming of pistols and the edges of blades. All who had telescopes raised them and looked at what was coming behind them.

Silver studied the three ships in the round eye of his telescope, which revealed their secrets for all that they were three miles away. They were in line abeam, and he didn't need the scarlet and gold of their banners to know their nationality, for they bore crosses on their topsails in the old way, proclaiming Christ, Salvation and Spain.

Two were frigates, and big ones, heavily built in the Spanish style. They'd have eighteen-pounders at least in their main batteries. They'd be spacious, comfortable ships, with room for men to live who might be at sea for years. They'd be strong ships to withstand the battering of an enemy's guns, and the violence of the seas. Oh yes! The Dons knew how to build, for their empire stretched not only across the Atlantic, but the vast Pacific too, and circumnavigation was nothing to them, nor rounding the Horn in a gale.

Silver focused on the middle ship, and sighed again, for it was old and massive, with a high stern, a spritsail under the bow, and a steep tumble-home that told of a powerful battery on the gun deck. It was almost a ship of the line, and might have been considered one in its day, with a complete row of guns below and more in the high stern and in the bow. It rolled slow and ponderous, proclaiming its weight and its power… Twenty-four-pounders on the maindeck, thought Silver.

In open water, he'd have snapped his fingers at the three of them, for no ship can serve all purposes and these weren't built for speed, which Walrus was. He'd have sailed them hull under in an hour. But these weren't open waters…

He slammed shut his glass, and saw every man aboard gazing at him and the boarders frozen in the act of hoisting out the boats.

"Huh!" he said. "You can belay that, my jolly boys, for we won't be taking no prizes today!" He turned to Warrington and his French map. "Is there any way out than that way?" He pointed at the oncoming ships. Warrington swallowed and gulped and peered pitifully over the chart, trying to find that which didn't exist.

"No, Captain," he said finally. "Only rivers that would take us inland."

"Well then," said Hands, "looks like that Spanish squadron found us after all. Looks like they've come early."

"Aye!" said Silver. "Either that, or that Dago captain sold me a pup!"

"What we going to do, Cap'n?" said Hands. Silver said nothing. He didn't know.