Flint and Silver. John Drake

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.

       Chapter 11