Skull and Bones. John Drake

fiercely. But McLonarch nodded in satisfaction, and waved a gracious hand.

      “Captain,” he said, “I welcome you into my service. There is much work for you to do, and you will begin by locking His Majesty’s monies into their strongboxes once again and replacing the boxes in the hold.”

       Chapter 6

       One bell of the afternoon watch

       18th March 1753

      Aboard Oraclaesus

       The Atlantic

      Flint’s leg-irons were secured by the curled-over end of an iron bar. Billy Bones got the bar nicely on to the small anvil he’d brought below for purposes of liberation, took up the four-pound hammer, frowned mightily for precision…and struck a great blow.

      Clang! said the irons.

      “Another,” said Flint.

      “Aye-aye, Cap’n!”

      Clang!

      “Ahhh!” said Flint, and pulled the straightened bar through the holes in the loops that had encircled his ankles before hurling the irons with passionate hatred into the dark depths of the hold, where they rattled and clattered and terrified the ship’s rats as they went about their honest business.

      “Dear me,” said Flint, not unkindly, “I do apologise, Lieutenant!” For the hurtling iron had knocked off the hat, and nearly smashed in the brow, of the goggle-eyed young officer of marines – he looked to be about seventeen – who knelt holding a lantern beside Billy Bones.

      “You do give your parole?” said the lieutenant. “Your parole not to escape?”

      “Of course,” said Flint, ignoring the nonsensical implication that there might be some place to escape to, aboard a ship at sea. He sighed, and stood, and stretched his limbs, then turned to the lad as if puzzled: “But has not Mr Bones already made clear,” he said, “that Captain Baggot was about to order my release?”

      “Was he?” said the lieutenant, weighed down by responsibility and peering at Billy Bones as they got to their feet. Billy, for his part, was bathed in the warm smile of a man entirely free of responsibility, since all future decisions were now in the hands of his master.

      In fact, Billy Bones was so happy that he was quite taken by surprise: “About to release Cap’n Flint?” he said doubtfully. But a glimpse of Flint frowning nastily was sufficient to restore his memory. “Ah!” said Billy Bones. “‘Course he was, Mr Lennox!” And recalling his manners, he jabbed a thumb at the red-coated officer. “This here’s Mr Lennox, Cap’n, sir…the senior officer surviving.”

      “Senior officer…surviving?” said Flint, relishing the concept, before correcting Billy Bones. “You will address Mr Lennox as ‘sir’, for he bears His Majesty’s commission.”

      “Oh!” said Bones, peering at the skinny youngster. Flint was right: he was out-ranked! Billy had never risen higher than master’s mate, a rank far below a marine lieutenant. This lapse of protocol embarrassed him, for contrary forces were now at work within Billy Bones. He was still Flint’s man, but – being aboard a king’s ship once more – he was starting to think in the old ways: the navy ways he’d followed before Flint.

      “Beg pardon, sir, I do declare,” he said, saluting Lieutenant Lennox.

      “Granted, Mr Bones,” said Lennox.

      “Aye-aye, sir,” said Billy Bones, and attempting reparation in words, added: “At least you’re one o’ them what’s immune!”

      “Am I?” said Lennox, and looked at Flint, sweating in anxiety.

      “Oh, yes,” said Flint, placing a comforting hand on Lennox’s shoulder. “If you have not yet succumbed, then you are safe.” He nodded gravely. “For reasons known only to God, some ten men in every hundred are safe.”

      Lennox closed his eyes and trembled in relief. “What about the rest?” he asked. “Will they die?”

      “Yes,” said Flint, “most of them. I am very sorry.”

      Lennox bowed his head and shed tears for his comrades. But so wonderful was the prospect of escaping the hangman that Flint had to pinch himself to affect solemnity and crush the urge to laugh! Merriment would not do: not now. It would undoubtedly upset Mr Lennox, who must be kept sweet until such time as Flint’s freedom was assured – and that time was some way off as yet.

      “Come, Mr Lennox,” said Flint, with every appearance of kindness, “let us go on deck. I must know the worst, if I am to be of any help.”

      

      Soon, Flint did know the worst, and it was a very dreadful worst. It was so bad that even he was shaken.

      The ship stank worse than a slaver, and it echoed with a dreadful, communal moan, like a long discord of bass violins, which was the constant, unceasing groan of the dying: one voice starting up as another paused to draw breath, and dozens more in the background, over and over in a hideous choir of grief and pain.

      The lower deck was a fetid dormitory of helpless men, swinging side by side, in massed, packed hammocks slung fore-and-aft from the deckhead beams, some with just eighteen inches of width per man. Such closeness was normally prevented at sea by the traditional watch system, which had half the hands on deck while the others slept, giving a comfortable thirty-six inches per man. But now, with most of the crew too sick to move or even to go to the heads, the lower deck was crammed – stinking, roiling, foul – with slimy hammocks that dripped a vile liquid mixture of urine, vomit and excrement.

      That was bad enough, but the mutilating horror of the disease itself, on the faces and arms of the victims shivering in their blankets – cold in the steaming heat of the lower deck – was atrocious to behold. Some were in the full-flowering pustular rash of the disease, others were shedding skin in sheets, leaving raw, bleeding wounds. Still others were already – and very obviously – dead, with the tropical climate working upon them and rendering their bodies swollen and black.

      Flint, Lennox and Bones, having come up from the hold, stood by the main hatchway plumb in the middle of the swaying hammocks and festering bodies. They crouched under the low deckhead and flinched from contact with the horrors around them and their stomachs heaved, for the stench was hideous beyond belief.

      “God save us!” said Flint. “Can nothing be done with the stink?”

      “No, sir,” said Lennox. “The fit hands won’t go below to clean and swab.”

      “Won’t they, though?” said Flint. “We’ll see about that!” He affected grim resolve, but bells of joy rang inside his mind. Lennox – senior officer surviving – had just called him sir! Unlike Billy Bones, Flint had been a sea-service lieutenant, outranking the marine equivalent. Perhaps Lennox knew that? More likely he was desperate for someone to take over. It didn’t matter. Not so long as he said sir.

      “Come!” said Flint. “We must go on deck.”

      The three climbed the ladder up to the maindeck, with its lines of broadside guns, which was open to the skies at the waist, apart from the ship’s boats lashed to the skidbeams that spanned the gap. So the air was fresher, but conditions were as bad as the lower deck, with a dozen or more dying men wallowing in their own filth. One was sitting with his back against the mainmast, moaning and cursing in the ghastly act of peeling the skin from his hands so that it came off whole, like a pair of gloves.

      Flint heaved at the sight: sudden, violent and helpless. He threw up over his shoes and shirt and coat-front, and staggered to one of the guns and sat on the fat barrel and glared at Billy Bones.

      “Water!” he said.