Читать книгу Flint and Silver - John Drake, John Drake - Страница 15

24th March 1749 The island

On the morning after his secret conference, when Flint had taken his irreversible step and now stood at risk of betrayal by too many men for him to face down, he went to Captain Springer.

The man was sunk beyond belief in drunkenness. As far as Flint could judge, Springer was a worse hulk than Elizabeth. He was decayed and rotting in his tent. Flint sighed. By the look of Springer, this would delay vital preparations by a week or more; or at least by however long it took to get Springer off the rum and looking like some passably good imitation of an officer. But since Springer was unconscious, Flint went and found Springer’s servant and put Billy Bones to work, kicking the servant’s unfortunate arse around the camp for sufficient time to drive home the message that the captain was to receive no more strong drink, no matter what threats or entreaties he might offer.

In the event, Flint was lucky. Springer came from a tough old breed, and his liver was so powerfully exercised by its life’s work that it had him sobered up that very evening.

Then, after a day spent in blinding headaches and purgative vomits, Springer was fit to walk, talk and to be washed and shaved and put into a clean shirt by the morning of the day after. Flint duly presented himself at the captain’s tent, and – as his deputy and representative during the captain’s indisposition – he gave Springer an account of all the island’s news that was masterly in the very small proportion of untruth that was added in order to deceive Springer completely, and to set him off on the false trail that Flint had planned.

When Flint was done, and was standing humbly before his captain with his hat in his hands, Springer glared at him with bloodshot yellowed eyes and with hatred that could have been cut into blocks and sold by the pound as rat poison. But Springer knew his duty (or so he thought), and he never hesitated.

“Muster the men, you bloody lubber!” he growled. “This is your fault, as I’ve always said, and I’ll see you broke for it as soon as we rejoin the squadron!”

“Aye-aye, Captain,” murmured Flint, with downcast eyes. And after suffering a sufficient quantity of oaths and curses from Springer, Flint withdrew, found Billy Bones, and gave his final instructions.

Half an hour later, every soul on the island, excepting the four marines still guarding the useless blockhouse, were mustered on the beach under the hot sun, before the tented encampment and the almost-completed Betsy, while stuck on her sandbank a cable’s length off, the empty corpse of the Elizabeth was a constant reminder of past failures, and a spectator to what happened next.

Springer got up on a chest, the better to speak to the men. He sweated heavily in his uniform coat and cocked hat, and his shirt and stock. But these were the indispensable icons of his rank, especially given the shockingly ugly mood of the men. Springer had never seen the like before, and he stuck out his chin and clenched his fists in anger. He wasn’t the man to tolerate skulking and scowling from the lower deck, as they would bloody soon learn!

Around him, in their blue navy coats, stood Lieutenant Flint, Acting-Master Bones, and five midshipmen. The surgeon and the purser stood to one side of them, with a group of senior warrant officers including the boatswain, the gunner and the carpenter. Further off still was the comforting block of twenty-nine marines, drawn up with bayonets fixed, under Sergeant Dawson and two corporals.

Facing Captain Springer, divided into starboard and larboard watches, stood nearly two hundred lesser folk and foremast hands of the manifold varieties of their kind: topmen, coopers, waisters, cooks, afterguard, boys and so on. Springer ground his teeth at the muttering and scowling that came from them, and the insolence on their stupid faces.

“Avast there!” he bellowed. “Silence on the lower deck!”

They looked at him and waited, still defiant but listening to what he might have to say. When it came, it wasn’t very much, and it wasn’t very clever. Springer was no maker of speeches: he simply stamped and spouted and told them to do their duty and God help them as didn’t! Since the men had already been flogged and punished beyond all reason, this was the last thing they wanted to hear. But Springer didn’t know that, for Flint hadn’t told him, and finally, the captain got round to the subject of leaving the island.

“Our new ship lies a-waiting and ready to bear away for Jamaica!” he cried, pointing to the Betsy. “She’s well found and ship-shape and will bear fifty men …” At this there came a deep, animal growl from the belly of the crowd. “Silence!” yelled Springer, but all he got was a chorus from the play so lovingly crafted by Mr Flint, who nearly choked with laughter as his actors delivered their lines.

“What about the Dons?” cried one.

“What if they come back?” cried another.

“AYYYYYE!” the crowd roared.

“What?” yelled Springer. “What bloody Dons?”

“Them as was seen from Spy-glass Hill!”

“Them as was looking for a landing!”

“They’ll murder every man jack of them as gets left behind!”

Now other voices joined in, genuinely frightened of a mass slaughter at the hands of the Spaniards. Frogs and Dutchmen was one thing; even the Portuguese; but they’d get no precious mercy out of the Dagoes!

“Mr Flint?” said Springer, looking down at his subordinate. “What the poxy damnation are the sods blathering about?”

“I cannot imagine, sir,” said Flint with a sneer. “Why don’t you ask the men?” In that instant, seeing the look in the other’s eyes, Springer came as close as he ever did to understanding Flint and to guessing what was actually underway.

“You whoreson bastard!” he said, and he cast about, this way and that, wondering what to do next. He was the very picture of indecision, and to the angry mob in front of him, he looked exactly like a man who’d been found out.

“See!” cried Israel Hands. “The bugger knew it all along. He’s leaving us to the bloody Dons!”

“No!” cried Springer. “No! No! No! The ship’ll take a good fifty, maybe more, and I’ll come back for …”

“And who’s to say who goes and who stays?” cried George Merry, in wild terror. Swept on by the furious emotions around him, Merry – who in any case was not one of the brightest – was now so deep into the role given him by Flint, that he actually believed it.

“ARRRRRGH!” roared the crew.

“Sergeant Dawson!” screamed Springer, as the mob rolled forward. But Dawson was already giving his orders.

“Make ready!” he barked, and twenty-nine muskets snapped into the left hands of their bearers, enabling the right hands to cock the locks. A howl of fright went up at this show of deadly force.

“Bastards!” cried Israel Hands and, reaching the climax of his own part, he produced a hidden pistol: a little one, small enough to hide under his few clothes. He took a breath. He ran forward, and while the marine’s muskets were still pointing harmlessly upwards he let fly with his pistol.

“Ahhhh!” screeched a marine, and dropped his musket as the ball took him in the face and smashed his jaw. It was the first blood. The wretch continued to bawl and groan, but his mates straightened up, as they’d been taught, and faced their front.

“Present!” cried Dawson, and the muskets swept down to bear on the mob.

CRACK! Another shot came out of the mob: Black Dog this time, with the second of Flint’s own pair of pocket pistols. The ball flew nowhere. The cries of the mob became general, and a hail of two-pounder, swivel-gun shot (distributed earlier by Billy Bones) was thrown by muscular arms to arch up, and drop viciously down on the redcoats. One marine went down stunned. More shot flew and the mob charged.

“Fire!” cried Springer.

“Fire!” yelled Dawson.

BA-BANG-BANG-BOOM! Twenty-seven muskets blazed together at such close range that powder-flash singed the hair of the maddened seamen at the front of the mob, while Captain Springer hauled out his own pistol and discharged it at Israel Hands, who was running at him with a drawn knife.

Instantly, fifteen men went down, struck by musket balls, and Springer fell backwards off the chest with the thumb and two fingers blown off his pistol hand, and one eye put out by flying fragments of the burst barrel. Being half-blinded, he did not notice that Israel Hands simply ignored him, leapt over his fallen body, and ran off after Flint, Billy Bones, Black Dog, George Merry and about fifty others.

While these favoured ones vanished into the jungle at the edge of the beach, a hideous, murderous fight took place: marines, mids and warrant officers against the remaining seamen. It was bayonets, dirks and swords, against knives and fists. It was entirely hand-to-hand, for the marines had no chance to reload. Consequently the struggle between former shipmates lasted only as long as it took for all parties to exhaust their strength and fall back sickened by what they had done, or rather what they had most cunningly, deliberately and skilfully been caused to do, by Lieutenant Joseph Flint.

The final tally was forty-five dead, including most of the marines, Sergeant Dawson, Captain Springer, most of the mids, nearly all the warrant officers and a large number of seamen. Many more were wounded, some grievously. But there was a still worse moral effect of what had been done. This was to place the greater part of those alive entirely beyond the law, and in all probability under delayed sentence of death at the hands of the service they had just betrayed.

The surviving marines were safe. The two surviving midshipmen were safe, as were all the rest who’d fought for their King and his laws. But the rest had shared in a mutiny, and an extremely bloody one at that. They had been a part of the ultimate crime, the crime which the Royal Navy would never, ever forgive – they had slain their captain. They now faced either permanent exile from their native land or being hunted down for a naval court martial, and the short, jerking journey up the yardarm with the aid of a running noose.

Thus the survivors broke naturally into two parties that limped and bled and drew away from one another as far as they could go. The smaller party, perhaps thirty strong, consisted of the mids, the marines and the purser, plus those seamen and petty officers who’d remained loyal. This party had two muskets, a few pistols and a pair of midshipman’s dirks between them. The larger party, nearly two hundred strong, carried off the rest of the marines’ firelocks and ammunition. Being the stronger, they took command of the camp and immediately broke open the spirit casks and proceeded to get roaring drunk.

In this condition, they were later visited by Captain Flint, as he was now known, at the head of the only body of men on the island who were sober, under discipline, and fully armed from the supply of weapons thoughtfully hidden in the woods at Flint’s orders. Flint told his followers – Israel Hands, George Merry and the rest – that they were restoring order and conquering mutineers. This was abject nonsense, but it served, and a second slaughter followed, since Flint’s real purpose was to eliminate from the surviving seamen as many as possible of those whom he felt unable to trust in the greater purpose which was to come.

When the sun set that night there were less than a hundred men left alive on the island. Flint stood in the dying light and eyed the wreckage and slaughter all around. He stroked his parrot and smiled.

“Well, Billy-boy,” he said to the creature that clung to him even closer than the green bird, “it seems we are become free men, to go a-privateering after all. Isn’t it a shame that Mr Springer never saw reason in the first place, to save me all this trouble?” And Flint laughed and laughed and laughed.

But there had to be a few more risings of that sun before Flint got entirely what he wanted. To begin with, Betsy wasn’t quite as ready for sea as had been hoped, and vital work remained to be done, and also Flint had to deal with the remaining loyal hands on the island.

Some of them weren’t hard to find, since they came limping into the camp at North Inlet in ones and twos, begging for food. The others were hunted down with whooping and haloo-ing and merriment, at least on Flint’s part, for he took a lead in all such congenial operations, leaving Billy Bones the task of completing Betsy’s fitting out.

“Chop ‘em down, lads!” he cried, on the first occasion they took captives. “Chop ‘em down like so much pork!” But in this he was baulked. To his surprise, his men turned nasty as their consciences stirred. After all, as far as they knew, they’d mutinied in face of abandonment and certain death, and then they’d fought the marines when fired upon. But they’d never set out to cut the throats of their own shipmates. What’s more, the captives included Mr Hastings and Mr Povey, the last surviving midshipmen: two youngsters who were good officers and popular with the crew.

Flint glowered and cursed, but saw that he could not oppose the men in this matter. He was well aware that not everyone on the lower deck was stupid. Some were capable of working out that Flint had taken command from Captain Springer by force. In that case, what was good for Springer might become good for Flint, should Flint upset the men too much. This gave Flint a nasty fright. It was his first sight of a problem that – for all his cleverness – he had not foreseen, and which would come back to sit upon his shoulder like his parrot. Given his great pride and vanity, it was deeply disturbing.

But the prisoners were spared: all of them.

Finally in late May of 1749 when Betsy was warped out into the North Inlet, laden with men and stores and guns, to spread her sails and head north, she towed astern of her a longboat containing the remaining loyal hands. There were twenty-three of them, but the longboat was a good, big one, so they weren’t too crowded. They had their own store of food and water too – the crew had insisted on that – and this proved a blessing, since soon after Betsy had left the island under the horizon, the towline somehow got slipped during the dead of night.

Flint explained that this had been an unfortunate accident which was all for the best, since it removed those who had unaccountably refused to win wealth and riches by privateering. For their part, with the longboat gone and nobody forced personally to witness what might be the fate of the boat’s occupants, the crew allowed themselves to believe Flint’s words, and were thereby led down a slippery path towards outright bloody-handed piracy.

In this profession – having at last got what he wanted – Flint proved a passing fair success. Or perhaps he just was lucky. Whichever, he took some good prizes, and beat up and down the Caribbean for many jolly months before fate caught up with him.