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Four bells of the afternoon watch

18th March 1753

Aboard Walrus

Off Upper Barbados

With Walrus’s keel sprouting too much weed for swift sailing, she was brought alongside of Venture’s Fortune only by cunning: Walrus having hoisted British colours upside-down – a sign of distress – and left her sails hanging in a slovenly manner as if some disaster had befallen her people.

“Steady, boys,” said John Silver to the armed men hiding behind the bulwarks, and anywhere else where they couldn’t be seen from the approaching ship.

“Steady boys,” croaked the parrot on his shoulder and the hands laughed.

“Stow that!” hissed Silver, and clappEd a hand on the bird’s beak.

It would be a tragic waste to spoil things now. The sun was high in the blue heavens, the sea was calm with a fresh wind, and there were even gulls above, ventured out from the land just under the horizon, while a fine, fat three-masted ship came offering itself up, all bright and spanking new, with fresh white sails and bright-coloured flags that hadn’t seen a drop of weathering, and jolly tars aboard who couldn’t imagine what a mistake they were making in coming to give aid.

“John,” said Selena, standing next to him by the tiller, “I give you one last chance not to do this. It’s shameful deceit. How can you do this to others who use the sea?”

“Belay that!” he said. “We can’t take a prize no other way – we’re too slow. It’s this or nothing! D’you think I’d not rather bear down with colours flying?” He cursed and beat the deck with his crutch, and he looked at her and sneered: “An’ if you’re so moral and mighty, what’re you doing on deck in your gown so they sees a woman and ain’t afraid?”

“Huh!” she said. “You know why! If they’re taken by surprise there’ll be less fighting, that’s why!” But she blinked and looked away, for that wasn’t entirely the truth. She wasn’t so sure of anything now, having considered what Dr Cowdray had said…and…and…a soft word now, from John Silver, a friendly smiling word, might have closed the gulf between them. But Silver was too angry. Too many harsh words had been spoken.

“Well, there you are then!” he said with extreme bad grace. “So stand fast, and clap a hitch on your jawing tackle – or go below with them two swabs of navigators as I’ve locked in my cabin to save their precious innocence!” And there followed even more temper and more shouting, which ended in her being ordered below – at which she screamed defiance – and then being dragged below…causing consternation aboard Venture’s Fortune, the big West Indiaman, coming on under close-reefed topsails, for her quarterdeck people were studying the wallowing, helpless Walrus through telescopes.

“There, sir!” cried Mr Philip Norton, a big, young, muscular man, well dressed and handsome, with the confidence that comes with power. “Did I not say it was madness to approach her? Look at the number of gun-ports! And now there’s fighting aboard her.”

“Bollocks!” cried Captain Fitch, a veteran seaman and a master of his craft, but cursed with the short stature which turns a man to bloody-mindedness when the tall look down on him and tell him what to do. And that went double when the tall one represented something that all decent men despise: the government. He glared defiance at Norton. “I shall render assistance to a mariner in distress, according to the ancient traditions of the sea,” he said. “And as for the risk that terrifies you, Mr Norton, you well know that I have a Protection in case of that!” And clapping his eye to his glass again, Fitch told himself there was nothing to worry about in the sight of two men manhandling a shrieking woman down a hatchway while a one-legged man with a green bird on his shoulder looked on, shouting and pointing, and apart from which there wasn’t another soul visible on deck other than the helmsman…

“Jesus wept!” said Norton. “D’you think a piece of paper will save you from pirates? Do you not understand what I have under hatches?” And then, as Fitch steadily ignored him, Norton suddenly displayed a remarkable degree of seamanship: “Mr Mate,” he cried to the first officer, “shake out the topsails! Put up the helm and bring this ship about!” He pointed at Walrus: “And steer me clear o’ that ‘un!”

His voice rang with command. It was the dominant bark of a man used to being obeyed, and the mate instinctively touched his hat in salute and started to bellow at the hands. But Fitch spat fire.

“Avast!” he cried, and stamped a foot at Norton and glared up into his eyes. “Slam your trap, you bloody bugger! I don’t care what you was before, but don’t you by-God-and-all-his-bloody-angels give commands aboard my ship, for I’m cap’n here, and there ain’t none other!”

Thus Fitch and Norton were still arguing when Walrus came within spitting distance and her crew leapt up at Long John’s command, gave a cheer, and commenced hurling grapnels to bind the two ships together. Led by Long John himself, they came roaring over the side, taking command of Venture’s Fortune in a matter of seconds.

It was incredibly easy. Not a blow was struck or a grain of powder burned other than that which went into the air to terrify the West Indiaman’s crew, of which there were only twenty foremast hands, who’d not been stood to arms and were thus empty-handed in the face of John Silver’s thirty-two, who between them bore enough pistols, cutlasses, muskets and pikes to equip a small army, and who moved with practised speed: some to guard the prisoners while others – led by Allardyce and Israel Hands – went below to search the ship.

It was a sweet, clean capture, and the only injury to any man on either side – to the hilarity of Silver’s men – was a broken leg suffered by one Dusty Miller, a notoriously clumsy seaman who’d fallen badly as he swung aboard the prize on a line from the mainyard.

“Who’s cap’n?” cried Silver, stumping across the quarterdeck to where his men had herded the ship’s officers. He reached up to his shoulder to pet the big parrot that had fluttered back with wide-beating wings, after flying aloft as she always did when there was fighting. Silver was grinning in triumph, which turned to instant amazement as a small, thick-bodied man among the prisoners started yelling and waving his hands in fury.

“I, sir!” he cried, trying to push aside the firelocks aimed at him by Silver’s men.

“Huh!” said Silver. “Let the bugger through” and Captain Fitch stamped forward to stand looking up at Long John Silver, who towered over most men let alone one only five feet tall. The sight was greeted with laughter from the crew, which was deeply unfair to Fitch, who despite being unarmed, and facing death for all he knew, was fearlessly brave, and told Silver off something ferocious.

“I’m Fitch,” he cried. “Cap’n of Venture’s Fortune with cargo and supercargo bound for London. And I may not be touched, God damn-your-eyes, sir! You may not lay a finger on me! For I sail with protection, sir! Protection from Sir Wyndham Godfrey, Governor of Upper Barbados, and which Protection…”

“Clap a hitch, you bloody dwarf!” cried Long John, but Fitch persisted, stabbing a finger up at him and shouting until finally Silver drew a pistol, cocked it, and shoved it into Fitch’s belly.

“See here, mister,” he said, “either you pipe down or I give fire. I don’t mind which, so please your soddin’ self!”

“Bah!” said Fitch, but he shut up.

“Good,” said Silver. “Now what’s this about blasted protection? What’re you talking about?”

“A Certificate of Protection of Free Passage from Sir Wyndham Godfrey!” said Fitch. Then he lowered his voice: “Protection from gentlemen such as yourself, sir!”

“What gentlemen?” said Silver.

“Gentlemen o’ fortune, sir.”

“Oh?” Silver’s eyebrows raised.

Fitch nodded knowingly. “Aye, sir! For isn’t Upper Barbados the only port where you may safely call?”

Silver frowned. The old days were gone when there were a dozen safe havens for pirates on the Spanish Main. There was still Savannah, of course, and maybe one or two others, but none that boasted a dockyard like those of Williamstown, Upper Barbados, where gold talked all languages and the law looked the other way. Fitch read Silver’s face.

“So,” he said, “spurn Sir Wyndham’s Protection, and he’ll turn the guns of his fort on you.”

“Where is it? This ‘Protection’?”

“Below, in my cabin. I’ll show you…”

“Back your topsail,” said Long John. “Time for that later.” And he looked around.

For the moment, all was well. The weather was fine, the prize taken, the prisoners under guard. And that included five passengers – now trembling in each other’s arms on the maindeck, wealth written all over them – who had cabins for the passage to England. These were Fitch’s “supercargo”. Two were women: one middle-aged but handsome, and clearly a lady of fashion, wearing a Leghorn straw hat to save her complexion from the sun and a fine linen gown, cut practical for the ocean journey but underpinned with a full rig of hooped panniers. The other was her elderly maid. No blushing virgin, either of ‘em, but they’d need watching for fear the hands – bless their hearts – forgot what they’d signed under articles, concerning the punishment for rape.

But greater matters presented themselves…

“Long John! Long John!” cried Allardyce, coming up from the maindeck hatchway and leading a tall man with chains dangling from his wrists and ankles. “Look!” said Allardyce, with reverence. “It’s Himself! It’s the McLonarch! Him that led the charge of Clan McLonarch, between Clan Chester and Clan Atholl, and me behind him – my mother being a McLonarch – right to the British bayonets where he killed five with his own hand!”

“What’s this, Tom Allardyce?” said Silver, stepping forward. He looked at the creature Allardyce was referring to and detected the authentic look of a holy lunatic. The man was as tall as Silver, round-eyed, gaunt and woolly-haired, with a straggling beard, a great beak of a nose and high, slender cheekbones. His clothes were unkempt but clean, for though he was in chains, he’d not been ill-treated and there was no stink of the dungeon about him. He had decent shoes and stockings besides, and silver buckles, so he’d not been pillaged neither.

“Who are you, my lad?” said Silver.

“My lord!” corrected Allardyce. “He is the McLonarch of McLonarch!”

“Very likely,” said Silver. “But I’ll hear it from him, not you!”

The tall man stirred, fastened his eyes on Silver, drew himself upright and spoke with the soft, Irish-sounding accent of the Scottish Highlands.

“I am Andrew Charles Louis Laurent McLonarch-Flaubert – ninth Earl of McLonarch, and First Minister of His Most Catholic Majesty King Charles III, who is known to men as Bonnie Prince Charlie.” He was bedraggled and in chains, and spouting utter nonsense. But nobody laughed. Nobody laughed at the McLonarch.

“Are you now?” said Silver. “And what does King George say to that?”

“George of Hanover is a pretender and a heretic,” said McLonarch calmly. “He faces the block in this world and damnation in the next.”

“I see,” said Silver. “So what’re you doing in chains? What with you being prime minister, an’ all?”

McLonarch looked around until he spotted the group huddled against the lee rail, menaced by pistols. He pointed at Norton.

“Ask him,” said McLonarch, and nodded grimly. “He is one whom I have marked for future attention, for he is deep in the service of the Hanoverians.”

Everyone looked at Norton, who shrugged his shoulders.

“I serve my king!” he said, afraid to say more.

“And what might that mean?” said Long John.

Norton thought before he spoke. He was a brave man but he was nervous, and with good reason. He couldn’t guess whose side these pirates might take, and he knew McLonarch’s power with words.

“McLonarch is a leader of Jacobites,” he said. “He would raise rebellion – civil war – to soak England in blood. He is under arrest by the Lord Chancellor’s warrant, and I am charged with escorting him home for trial.” Norton looked round to see how this was received.

“Bah!” sneered McLonarch. “The man is a catchpole, a thief-taker, an agent sent to return me to England for judicial murder. He used bribery and deceit to capture me, and to steal the treasure lawfully gathered by my master the king.”

“Treasure?” said Silver, just when the politics was getting dull.

“Treasure?” said a dozen voices.

“A war chest of three thousand pounds in Spanish gold, which –”

“THREE THOUSAND POUNDS?” they cried.

“Which I was delivering to my master’s loyal followers in London.”

“Where is it?” said Silver.

“WHERE IS IT?” roared his crew.

“In the hold, in strong boxes,” said McLonarch, and pointed again at Norton: “He has the keys. He stole them from me.”

There followed half an hour of the most delightful and congenial work. Having been told exactly what would happen to him if he didn’t co-operate, Norton swiftly produced a heavy ring of keys from his cabin. Meanwhile the main hatchway was broken open, a heavy block rigged to the mainstay, with lifting tackles, and the crew of Venture’s Fortune set to the heavy labour of burrowing through the cargo – rum, sugar and molasses – to get to the heavy strongboxes which were on the ground tier down below.

Then the captured crew were made to haul up the boxes, one at a time, for opening on the quarterdeck at Silver’s feet, to thundering cheers, the fiddler playing, hornpipes being danced, and joy unbounded as rivers of Spanish coin poured out all over the decks, such that it was a tribute to Long John’s leadership that all hands did not get roaring drunk and lose the ship.

The only thing that puzzled Silver in that merry moment was why McLonarch had given up his treasure so easily. Silver pondered on that. Of course, the gelt was lost to McLonarch as soon as his ship was taken…but why speak up quite so helpful: saying how much there was, and who’d got the keys, an’ all? It wasn’t right. No man behaved like that. So what was going on?

He got his answer later, when Tom Allardyce brought McLonarch down to the stern cabin, where Silver was sitting at Captain Fitch’s desk, going through the ship’s papers for anything that might be useful.

“Cap’n!” said Allardyce. Silver looked up. Allardyce stood with his hat in his hands, bent double in respect for the man beside him, and whom he kept glancing at, in awestruck respect. McLonarch, free of chains and even more imposing than he’d been before, stood beside Allardyce with his nose in the air, and gazing down upon Silver as if he were a lackey with a chamber pot. Silver frowned.

“Who took his irons off, Mr Bosun?”

“Er…me, Cap’n.”

“On whose orders?”

“Seemed the right thing, Cap’n,” said Allardyce, torn between two loyalties.

“The right thing, you say? Now see here, my lad, I’ll not –”

“Captain Silver!” said McLonarch. “That is your name, is it not?”

Silver stared at McLonarch, whom he did not like – not one little bit – having taken against him on sight, for McLonarch was a man who expected doors to open in front of him and close behind him, and who sat down without looking…such was his confidence that a minion would be ready with a chair! Silver forgave him that, for it was the way of all aristocrats. What made him uneasy was McLonarch’s belief that he was the right hand of Almighty God, and his uncanny gift of convincing others of it: which gift now bore down upon John Silver.

“Aye, milord! Silver’s my name,” said Long John. “Cap’n Silver, at your service.”

Silver couldn’t believe he’d just said that. He disowned the words on the instant. But he’d said them all right, and worse still, he felt an overpowering urge to stand up and take off his hat! A lesser man would have been up like a shot, and even Silver was half out of his seat before he realised what was happening and slumped back, scowling fiercely. But McLonarch nodded in satisfaction, and waved a gracious hand.

“Captain,” he said, “I welcome you into my service. There is much work for you to do, and you will begin by locking His Majesty’s monies into their strongboxes once again and replacing the boxes in the hold.”