Читать книгу Flint and Silver - John Drake, John Drake - Страница 13

20th February 1749 The island

Billy Bones trod heavily across the sand, making his way towards the marine sentry on guard at the latrine trench.

It was night but there was a bright moon and the marine recognised Mr Bones easily by the hulking shoulders and the blue officer’s coat with its rows of shiny buttons. Also there was a heavy ‘Pfff! Pfff! Pfff!’ of exhaled breath in time with the laboured footfalls, which was unique to Mr Bones. It was his unconscious and wordless protest at the need to struggle over soft sand in a hot climate.

The wretched marine drew himself to attention and reviewed all those little sins of omission and commission in the doing of his duties of which private soldiers can be found guilty by any superior officer who has a mind to do so.

It was bad enough being stuck out here by a stinking bog-pit to make sure that the bastard matelots shovelled sand over their shit when they’d shat, but it weren’t fair – not at all – for Mr bastard Billy Bones to come out to check that all was to rights. It was usually one of the mids, and they were all right. A quick “All’s well?” and off the little bastards went, holding their bastard noses. Then a shudder of ice ran down the marine’s backbone.

“Mygawdamighty!” he said as he realised what a fool he was, being afeared of Mr Bones, for if the bastard officers were walking the guard posts themselves and not sending of the mids … then the next one might be … Oh my eyes and soul … the next one might be Flint!

“Stand easy there!” said Billy Bones. “All’s well?”

“Aye-aye-suh!” said the marine, looking rigidly to his front.

“Huh!” said Billy Bones. He looked all around into the dark, as if a horde of wild savages was creeping inwards with sharpened spears. It was all for show, of course, as everyone now knew the island was uninhabited.

“Keep a sharp look out,” said Billy Bones.

“Aye-aye-suh!” said the marine. But Billy Bones lingered, cleared his throat, spat, and condescended to conversation.

“Damned hot,” he said.

“Aye-aye-suh!”

“Shouldn’t wonder if we don’t have fever on the lower deck before the week’s out.”

“Aye-aye-suh!”

And so they continued for some little time until one Emmanuel Pew came out to relieve himself in the trench. Pew was known to his mates as Mad Pew for his speaking of the Welsh language, and for being not quite right in the head.

“Ah,” said Billy Bones, and he waited until Pew had finished grunting and heaving, and had hauled up his breeches and buckled his belt. Then he turned and affected to take note.

“You there!” said he. “Damn your blasted eyes! Shovel away there with a will, like the blasted surgeon says, or I’ll flay the living skin off your blasted back!”

Pew jumped in terror and filled in half the trench in the excess of his desire to please Mr Bones.

“Now, back to camp at the double,” said Billy Bones. “And I’ll walk beside you so you don’t drown yourself falling into the blasted ocean.”

The marine went limp with relief as the big figure rolled away, puffing and cursing beside the thin, nervous, dark-eyed matelot who’d become the target of his attentions.

“Serve the bugger right!” thought the marine. “Bleeding mad bastard that one is an’ all, that bastard Pew.”

But the aforesaid Mad Pew was the objective of Mr Bones’s walk out to the latrine trench. As ever, Billy Bones marvelled at the acuteness of Flint’s observation, and his penetrating knowledge of the characters of the men.

Flint knew that Pew went to shit well after lights out, because at that time there was nobody there, and he wouldn’t be jostled and hurried. Some men are like that, and Flint’s knowledge of Pew’s habits enabled Billy Bones to get him alone for a few minutes’ conversation in the dark, with no possibility of being overheard. It thereby enabled Billy Bones to put certain proposals to Pew, and to ask certain questions of him, without risk of a hanging for the pair of them. And of course – did Mr Bones but know it – the fact that Lieutenant Flint was no part of the conversation meant that there was absolutely no risk to Flint himself. Indeed, Flint would have been the first to denounce Billy Bones as a traitorous mutineer, should the need arise.

So Billy Bones sounded out Pew and explained that Captain Springer was going to abandon him to his fate, but that there was a way out which was very much to Pew’s advantage. Pew nearly dropped in his tracks with amazement once or twice, to hear such things from Billy Bones. But he saw reason.

Over the next few weeks, Billy Bones had similar conversations with a number of others, all carefully chosen by Flint, and always in circumstances where Flint was saved harmless from any consequences, and always where nobody could see or hear what passed between Billy Bones and the other. Each man chosen was a skilled seaman, and together they formed the nucleus of a crew: Ben Gunn the helmsman, Israel Hands the gunner’s mate, Peter Black (better known as Black Dog) the carpenter, and Darby M’Graw the master-at-arms. These, together with Mad Pew the sailmaker, were the principal figures in Flint’s plan, but there were others too: foremast hands to haul on lines and work a ship.

Thus all this dangerous, careful work was planned by Flint, while all the actual risks were taken by Billy Bones. In this secret division of labour, Joe Flint wasn’t quite the perfect judge of men that he thought he was, for Flint believed it was no end of a joke that Billy Bones should stand between himself and danger, and what a fool Bones would think himself should he ever find out. But the truth of the matter was different. So great was Billy Bones’s devotion to Flint that he’d gladly have volunteered for the duty, if ever it had occurred to Flint to be honest with him. But such a thing would never have occurred to Joe Flint.

All the while, up at the North Inlet, close alongside the hull of the dead Elizabeth, the building of her daughter Betsy came forward in promising style. The carpenter’s crew laid her keel, raised up her ribs and planked her hull. They set her beam ends in place and fashioned old spars into new masts, and fitted her out with pumps and capstans, gratings and ladders, and all the complex gear that must be crammed into a sea-going vessel.

As these vital works proceeded, Mr Flint kept himself mightily busy – and clear away from Billy Bones – in building an impressive fortification at the other end of the island. For this major work he took nearly half the able-bodied men, with a month’s supply of food, and all the tools the carpenter could spare. They tramped across the island, and Flint took some more detailed observations of its geography as they went. Finally he chose a site on a thickly wooded hill, with a spring of clear water welling up near the summit.

“You will fell all the trees within musket-shot of this point,” he told the two midshipmen he’d brought with him as his subordinates.

He reached up and scratched the poll of his green parrot. This had become a habit of his when wrapped in thought. The midshipmen looked at one another and at the size of the pines on the hill, and they were glad that they wouldn’t personally be doing the physical labour.

“You will trim and shape the trunks, and they will be used to build a blockhouse according to this plan,” said Flint. He produced a rolled-up paper and looked around the hot, thick, pine-smelling forest with its buzzing insects and soaring trunks. There was not a rock or a bush or a bank of earth; only columns of living wood and the sandy soil beneath. There was nothing to rest the paper on.

“You there – Billingsgate!” he called to a seaman standing a respectful distance away, burdened with a heavy bundle of canvas for making tents. “At the double now! Here, Fido! Here, Prince! Good dog!” He smiled his shining smile and the seaman dropped his bundle and sped forward. “Down, Rover!” said Flint, forcing Billingsgate on to all fours. “And don’t you move, not on fear of a striped shirt.”

The man’s back formed a sufficient table to spread Flint’s plan. Like everything Flint did, it was beautifully done. It showed a loop-holed blockhouse of heavy timbers, with an encircling palisade of split logs. The mids leaned forward and examined the design. The more intelligent – or perhaps not – of them, Mr Hastings, frowned and spoke up.

“Please, sir,” said he, “don’t this plan more readily suit a defence against armed men already ashore? So wouldn’t we be better strengthening the seaward batteries up at … ugh!”

He shut up as the elbow of his less – or perhaps more – intelligent comrade, Mr Midshipman Povey, caught him hard in the ribs. He looked up to see the deadly smile splitting Flint’s face, for Mr Hastings had spoken the unchallengeable truth. Flint’s blockhouse was a nonsense. Any threat could only come from the sea and was best countered by batteries covering the few places on the island where ships, or ships’ boats, could make a landing. But from Flint’s point of view, the blockhouse was a most wise and sensible thing to build, since it kept himself so visibly away from Mr Bones’s politics at the other end of the island.

“Mr Boatswain!” he cried, and acting-boatswain Tom Morgan came doubling through the tree trunks. “Get yourself a cane, Mr Morgan, and stripe this insolent child a couple of dozen across the fat of his arse.” The colour drained from Mr Hastings’s face and he swallowed hard. Flint turned his face to the other mid. “And then deliver two dozen unto this one, for he’s as insolent as the other.” Flint smiled and tickled his parrot. “I’ll not have nasty young gentlemen answering back to their betters.”

Two weeks later the blockhouse was built and ready for occupation. Where only virgin forest had stood, there was now a great clearing with a massive log-house in the centre, surrounded by the stumps of the trees that had been sacrificed for its construction. As a fortification, it was thoroughly well made, commanding a clear field of fire in all directions, while the six-foot palisade was well placed to break up an assault, but too insubstantial to enable an enemy to take shelter there.

Had there been any real need for such a building, it would have served to perfection, and Flint even attended to minor details such as the fact that there was no natural basin around the spring from which water might be drawn. He had a large ship’s cauldron brought up, and the bottom knocked out of it, so it could be sunk in the ground at the spring-head to provide an artificial tank that constantly filled and brimmed with fresh water.

With the blockhouse built, Flint left a guard of four marines to occupy it, and marched his command back to the North Inlet, the Elizabeth, the Betsy, and Captain Springer. The long, straggling column, heavy-laden as it was (by Flint’s own design), laboured heavily to complete the journey and suffered various casualties. One man broke his leg, one got lost, four developed severe blisters from the straps of their packs and fourteen presented themselves to the surgeon with rashes from poisonous jungle plants.

Flint dealt promptly with all these accidents. He had the gratings rigged and awarded a dozen each to the rash-sufferers for carelessness, two dozen to the lost soul for stupidity, three dozen to the blister brigade for incompetence in lashing their kit, and four dozen to the broken leg (so soon as he could stand on it) for wilfully rendering himself unfit for duty.

With these punishments and others, there was now hardly one man of the three hundred foremast hands and petty officers that once had been Elizabeth’s people who had not felt either the lash or some more spiteful punishment. The mood of the crew was sullen and resentful, and only one push was needed to drive them to the great leap that Flint had planned: some of them … enough of them … sufficient for Flint’s purpose.

By now, too, Betsy looked like a ship rather than a collection of timbers. Her lower masts were stepped, and her standing rigging in place. The carpenter and his mates had even contrived to serve her hull with pitch and paint, to offset the worm. All she needed was men turning the capstan and she’d warp herself sweetly down the greased slide-way already laid out before her, and she’d swim in the waters of the North Inlet.

Flint saw that things had reached the moment of truth, and he held a conference that very night, safely away from the camp and out in the dark forest, with Billy Bones and some others including Israel Hands and Black Dog, who were the most intelligent, and others who were the least stupid of the chosen ones. Flint explained what each of them had to do, and made each man repeat it until it was clear they’d understood. Hands and Black Dog learned fast enough, but for the rest Flint had to keep his temper entirely under control. For once, he had to be patient and encouraging as these morons stumbled and mumbled and struggled towards learning their parts.

He could not afford any noise or dispute at this stage, for now he, Joseph Flint, was personally involved, and the danger to himself was acute.