Flint and Silver. John Drake

of having to swallow such an appalling meal of abstract thinking, which was so different from the simple, physical seamanship that he’d learned by hard labour.

      “No matter, Cap’n,” he said. “Show me the workings of her.” Long John was no coward. So he took the quadrant when England offered it, and he paid his best attention to the explanations, so carefully given, and he did his best to ask questions.

      But it was no good. The worry turned to fear: fear of being exposed as an incompetent before England and the crew. Later, in England’s cabin, when the captain tried to explain latitude and longitude and how a ship might find its way across the empty oceans, it was even worse. Long John tried to the very utmost of his ability, but the bearings and degrees and minutes had no meaning to him. Instead, his head felt thick and hot, a band of pain clamped round his brow, and his eyes watered like a blubbering child’s. Finally, as England waved a pair of elegant brass dividers with blue-steel needle-points, trying to explain dead reckoning, Long John Silver swayed and stumbled with nausea, and had to be helped into a chair by a dumbfounded Nathan England.

      “What is it, John?” he said. “Have you got the ague? Is it some damned fever? What is it, shipmate?”

      “Can’t do it, Cap’n,” said Silver. “Show me any other task. Let me dive for gold on the sea bed. Let me lead boarders into a three-decker’s broadside. Anything.”

      “What d’you mean, lad?” said England, more concerned than he’d realised. England had no son. He had no family at all. He’d taken powerfully to John Silver and it had become England’s hope and pleasure to see the younger man advanced in his profession.

      “Can’t do it, Cap’n,” Silver repeated. “Not with charts an’ all. Please don’t ask me.”

      “Nonsense!” said England. “Everyone thinks they can’t do it at first. We shall persevere.”

      And so they did. Neither man was one to give up easily. They persevered for weeks. Sometimes Long John even thought he was getting a grasp on the thing. But the best he ever achieved was like the performance of a clumsy musician who sounds one plodding note after another, to the dismay of those around him, and to his own despair, recognising his failure.

      “How can it be, John?” said England at last. “I’ve seen you calculate the value of a ship’s cargo down to the penny – and that done in your head without pencil and paper. How can you manage that, yet not master this piece of glass and wood?” He held up a quadrant.

      “Cargoes is things I can touch,” said Silver. “But that bloody thing …” he stared hopelessly at the instrument “… that’s black magic!”

      England sighed. “It’s no good, is it, shipmate?”

      “No,” said Long John. “And happy will I be to try this no more!”

      “So be it,” said England. “I shall rate you as an officer, nonetheless: whether it be coxswain, master-at-arms or something of my own invention, for I still say that men follow where you lead. But the fact of it is, John Silver, that only a gentleman and a navigator may command a ship, and I fear you will never be one.”

       Chapter 4

       4th January 1749 Aboard HMS Elizabeth The Caribbean

      Flint crept silently down a companionway, drawn by the unnatural silence on the dinnertime gun-deck, which should have been rattling and echoing with noise. The silence could only mean some punishable insubordination and it was his delight to catch them at it. He was enjoying the anticipation of a hunter who takes his prey unawares, especially when at last he stepped through a hatchway and caught sight of the whole crew gaping at Ben Gunn, their stupid mouths hanging open, still speckled with food and dripping with grog.

      This was the delicious moment. The moment just before the trap was sprung, when a word from him would jump the swabs out of their skins. Prolonging the pleasure, he nuzzled his parrot and held his hand over its beak to keep silence. Flint wondered what the solemn and miserable Ben Gunn might have to say that could so captivate them.

      Had he been only a little more patient he would have found out; and then he too would have been captivated. He would have been captivated, bound in chains and sunk beyond soundings in the limitless depth of interest in what Ben Gunn was about to reveal … but he couldn’t contain himself. The anticipation of the moment was too exquisite.

      “What’s this?” he boomed. “Is there disaffection among the hands? Is there wickedness in the wind?”

      A hundred men leapt in terror as the fear of hell took their hearts with an icy claw, for they’d spun round to see Flint, smooth and shining, neat and suave, with his parrot on his shoulder. He gazed upon the sea of terror and shook with laughter, tickled beyond bearing by their comical faces. His parrot flapped and cackled, he snapped his fingers and stamped his foot in glee. Then he walked up and down between the mess tables, making jokes and clapping men on the shoulder in merriment. The coin of Flint’s character had spun and come up bright, and now he worked black magic with his charm and his wit, and there wasn’t a man present who could help but like him, and smile in admiration of him.

      Afterwards, though, nobody could ever persuade Ben Gunn to finish his story, and the mystery of an unspeakable past hung about Flint and made them fear him more than ever.

      And all the while Springer watched in dull, uncomprehending hatred. He was sixty-two years old. He’d been at sea fifty years. He’d learned his trade in King Billy’s time, when precious gentlemen despised the service, and he knew no other way than a rough way. He’d kicked arses and knocked men down all his life, and he believed flogging was the only way to keep idle seamen to their duties. What’s more, Elizabeth under Flint’s hand was the tightest ship Springer had ever known. And yet … there was something about the way Lieutenant Flint went about his duties that upset Springer, and it nagged at him that he couldn’t make out what it was.

      The sorry truth was that Springer had not the wit to distinguish the ruthless, straight discipline that he practised himself – and which seamen respected – from the sadism inflicted upon them by Flint. So Springer avoided Flint and spent many hours in his cabin, reading and re-reading Commodore Phillips’s orders and studying the rough map that Phillips had got from the hands of the dying Portugee. Phillips’s eyes had blazed over the island, thinking it would be another Jamaica: a sugar island to coin money. Springer hoped Phillips was right, and he hoped he might get his hands on a little of the money.

      Then he’d roar for his servant to bring a bottle, and he’d damn the lure of Flint’s plan, which he knew might bring a quick return, whereas any benefit from the island was far distant and entirely dependent on the goodwill of the commodore, whose arse was as tight as a Scotchman’s purse.

      In fact, Springer need not have worried about Phillips’s greed, because the commodore would soon be incapable of enjoying that deadly sin. In a matter of weeks, a violent storm would run Phillips’s squadron on to a reef off Morant Point, Jamaica, with the loss of over a thousand men. This catastrophe would leave all knowledge of the island of São Bartolomeo exclusively in Springer’s command, to the degree that even the name São Bartolomeo would never be heard again.

      What Springer should have worried about was the temper of his crew under Flint, whose reign over the lower deck was unpredictable in the extreme. On the positive side, Flint had some excellent qualities. He knew the name of every man on board, and all their characters and peculiarities. He was a superb seaman and navigator, and his exacting standards were evident in the gleaming brass and snow-white decks. Above all, men leapt to his orders like lightning.

      Many of the crew, led by Billy Bones, would have followed Flint into the cannon’s mouth. Billy Bones was a big, plain, simple man with a dog’s need for a master. He had enough education to find his latitude and plot his course. He had enough – plenty enough and more – of muscles to knock down any man he didn’t like.