Flint and Silver. John Drake

the new brother, “I do enter into freely and volunteerly and thus do I solemnly swear. Article one: that I shall obey the commands of my captain in all matters of seafaring and warfare, upon pain of the law of Moses, viz: forty lashes – barring one – upon the bare back …”

      And so it went on. There were twenty-three articles in England’s book, mainly self-evident statements of the need for discipline on board any ship that ever went to sea in all of mankind’s history. There was much other good sense too, on such matters as forbidding the dangerous business of smoking below decks, and the filthy business of pissing in the ballast, which lazy sailormen will do who can’t be bothered to go to the heads on a dark night. Anyone caught doing that was obliged to drink a pint of the same liquid, piping hot, donated by his messmates. Also, there were ferocious punishments for taking private shares of the loot before its formal division. In all these matters, the articles were similar to those in use by numerous other freebooters and buccaneers currently doing business in the Indian Ocean and Caribbean.

      But England’s articles had some extras. He punished rape by castration, torture by hanging, and sodomy by dropping the offenders over the side, bound together, with roundshot tied to their feet. These eccentricities the crew took in good part (even the astounding prohibition of rape) because England was a fine and lucky seaman with a nose for smelling out gold.

      So the new brother worked his way through the list till he came to the end, where followed four clear signatures, one obviously that of the draughtsman of the articles, plus a few painfully worked names such as children might attempt, then several hundred crosses, marks and scrawled drawings: some of fish, or birds, or animals, some of hanged men, some skulls-and-crossbones, and one splendid likeness of a face, the size of a penny piece, as finely drawn as the work of any London caricaturist, which was the mark of an illiterate man who nonetheless had this remarkable gift. Each mark had a name beside it in the draughtsman’s hand. Many (including the likeness) were neatly ruled out in red ink, with a date beneath it. These were the dead.

      The Englishman sighed. He took up the pen, dipped it into the ink, and paused. In fact he was only half an Englishman, for his seafaring Portuguese father had married an English girl and settled in Bristol. The son had taken his father’s size and strength, his mother’s yellow hair, and at thirteen had run away to sea to escape his father’s belt. His name, as given to him by his father, had been João De Silva: a foreign-sounding name to some and therefore tainted, but not to him. Unlike the vast body of land-rooted, home-fast Englishmen, he had no disdain of things foreign, because seafaring men are an international breed taught by hard reality to know that all races have their strengths and weaknesses, and the only thing that matters is how your shipmate behaves when the sea turns nasty – and certainly not the land of his birth. But for all that he was still an Englishman in his loyalties, and so he signed with a flourish as …

       Chapter 2

       4th January 1749 Aboard HMS Elizabeth The Caribbean

      Captain Springer controlled his anger with effort.

      “Lieutenant Flint,” he said, “I swear that if I hear that tale once more, I shall put you in irons.”

      “Will you, though?” said Flint. “Then I pray that you may be cursed as I was. Four years under Anson, suffering scurvy, shipwreck and sores, only to see thirty-two wagons full of gold unloaded at London, and not a penny piece was my share!”

      Springer glanced around the quarterdeck. The mids and the seamen were muttering and looking sly. Mr Bones, the master’s mate, was staring attentively at Flint as if waiting for some word of command. Springer ground his teeth, Bones was Flint’s man through and through, while next to him, Dawson, the sergeant of marines – who was loyal to Springer – was glaring his contempt at this public squabbling.

      “Mr Flint,” said Springer, “a word.”

      Springer walked up the sloping deck to the weather side and waited for Flint to join him while the crew looked on in wary fascination. Springer was pure tarpaulin: lumpish, heavy and elderly with a fat lower lip, watery eyes and a bristling white stubble that no razor ever conquered, while Flint was smooth as a cat, with an olive, Mediterranean skin. He moved like an athlete and had a beautiful, brilliant smile. He was slim-built and only of average height, but men always thought of him as tall.

      Together, these two opposites stood locked in argument in their long blue coats with the brass buttons.

      These uniform coats were badges of rank which few officers were wearing as yet, for they were an innovation introduced only the previous year. But Elizabeth’s officers all had them, thanks to Lieutenant Flint, who, wanting a smart ship, had spent his own money to get them – including one for Springer, who’d never have bothered if left to himself.

      But if the coats were uniform, nothing else was: not the shirts, nor breeches, nor shoes, nor the big straw hats the two men wore against the sun. Nonetheless, the coats served their purpose of marking out the wearers as officers of His Majesty King George II. In fact, since Elizabeth was sailing with a reduced, peace-time, crew, they were the only two commissioned officers on board, and it was sheer madness for them to be seen in open dispute before their men.

      “Mr Flint,” said Springer, “look about you. If we continue in this manner, there’ll be no discipline worthy of the name in this ship. So, listen to me: I am resolved to proceed to São Bartolomeo according to my orders –”

      “And leave a fortune in prize money to pass by?” said Flint. “We named this ship Elizabeth when we took her, but she was Isabella la Católica before that, and she’s Spanish from keel to maintruck. We could use that to come alongside of any Spanish ship –”

      “But we ain’t at war with the Dons!” said Springer. “Can you not appreciate that, you bugger? Not since last year!”

      “Bah!” said Flint. “There’s no war, but there’s no peace neither. Not out here. It’s dog eat dog: us and the Dons and the French! And I know ports where a prize’ll be bought for cash money and never a question asked.”

      “No …” groaned Springer, and he wavered. He distinctly wavered, and Flint spotted it instantly and changed tack. He was exceedingly charming when he chose, and now he spoke sweet and friendly.

      “See here, Captain, sir,” he said, “there’s a way to square the matter between us, I do declare. Indeed, I take my oath on it, for I’d not see a brother officer suffer in such a matter.”

      The words meant nothing, but they were so fairly spoken that Springer relaxed. The scowl left his face and he gave Flint his entire attention.

      Ah-ha! thought Flint, and rejoiced, for it was his guess that deep within Captain Springer there was greed that was just itching to be squared with duty, if only the means could be found.

      “The fact is, sir …” said Flint.

      “Aye?” said Springer.

      “… I lost my share of the greatest treasure ever taken because of that bastard Anson, and I’d not see you lose your own best chance –”

      But Springer snarled like a wolf as Flint struck a wildly false note by harping back upon the great wrong that had scarred his life.

      Flint had sailed with Anson on his famous circumnavigation of 1740–44, when the Manila galleon was taken: the most fabulous prize in British naval history. But before that, Flint’s ship Spider had foundered going round the Horn, and Anson had taken her people into his own ship, Centurion, where Spider’s officers had nothing to do and were rated “supernumeraries”. As Flint told the story, this meant that they fell into legal limbo and got no share of the loot: a monstrous injustice, but one that a man got sick of hearing about.

      “Mr Flint,” roared Springer at the top of his voice, “you will attend to your duties this instant, or I’ll not