Skull and Bones. John Drake

That does our king remain,

       And save him from his exile,

       To bring him home again!

      Two men looked on in silence. They were not gobbling their dinners because they were on watch, and they weren’t singing because they weren’t Jacobites. They were Long John Silver, elected captain of the ship, and his master gunner, Israel Hands. Both wore the long coats and tricorne hats that proclaimed their rank, and they stood by the helmsman at the ten-foot tiller on the quarterdeck, braced against the ship’s canted deck with practised ease, even Long John with his timber limb.

      Israel Hands smiled to see Long John recovering at last, after wounds that had struck him down in the fight with the navy over Flint’s Island, which Walrus barely escaped, leaving Flint in the navy’s hands, and his Treasure still hidden ashore.

      Now Tom Allardyce the bosun was on his feet and giving the second verse. He was a tall, yellow-haired Scot who’d fought at Culloden seven years earlier, when the English army’s modern musketry butchered a medieval mob of Highland swordsmen: the Protestant House of Hanover defeating the Catholic House of Stuart.

       Here’s to the devil to take fat George,

       And fetch him down to Hell,

       To trim his Hanoverian ears,

       And roast his arse full well!

      Allardyce was a Jacobite to the soul and hated King George with a passion. As he sang, he went among the crew slapping shoulders while they cheered him on. Some cheered because they supported his cause, while others had no loyalty to a king who was chasing them with a noose.

      “Merry buggers, ain’t they?” said Israel Hands, looking at the crew. Then he glanced anxiously up at Long John’s big, square face.

      “Will they do, John? And have you chosen your course?”

      Silver reached up to pet the big green parrot that sat with its claws clamped into the material of his coat.

      “What do you think, Cap’n Flint?” he said, tickling the bird’s chest. She squawked and shifted her feet and nuzzled his ear.

      “Merry Buggers!” she said, for she had a perfect gift of mimicry, and used words to purpose, and with meaning.

      Long John sighed, for he had much on his mind.

      “Well, the ship won’t do,” he said, looking Walrus over. She was a New England schooner: two hundred tons burden, a hundred feet from bow to stern, sharp-hulled and with a broad spread of canvas on two raked masts. She mounted fourteen six-pounder guns and had once been a swift, handy ship, but she’d suffered a battering in recent actions, and hadn’t been careened for months, which meant – in these tropical waters – that the underwater hull must be a seething tangle of weeds and growth.

      “A Thames barge would out-sail her as she is!” said Silver.

      “Does that mean we’ll be chasing one?” said Israel Hands.

      “We’ve just thirty-two hands,” said Silver, ignoring the remark.

      “Gentlemen o’ fortune every one!” said Israel Hands.

      “Mostly…but them two ain’t! Useless bloody lubbers!”

      Silver nodded at a pair of men who were sitting miserably apart from the crew. They wore long coats and were the ship’s navigating officers – such as they were – for neither Silver nor anyone else aboard had that skill. The pair of them had been taken out of the merchant service under Silver’s promise to be freed at Upper Barbados – Walrus’s destination – for they were honest men. Honest, but found wanting. They might be able to feel their way up a coastline, but they were at a loss on the deep waters, and growing more nervous each day.

      “Them swabs has only got this far by dead reckoning and fair weather!” said Silver. “One good blow, and we’ll be off their charts. Then God help us all!”

      “Never mind them,” said Israel Hands. “We’ll hire afresh and take on others, too.” He looked sideways at Long John and decided to broach the great question: “What worries me, John, is that thirty-three hands is plenty for a merchantman, but not for such business as ours.”

      Silver, however, wouldn’t be drawn. He shook his head and fell deep into his own thoughts. He’d never wanted to be a pirate – a “gentleman o’ fortune” – but had become one because it was that or certain death. And thus by easy stages to robbery and murder, and putting a pistol ball into a child – which, of all the things he’d done, came back most often to flog him with guilt, though he’d done it of necessity, to stop the spread of island smallpox. Even now he could feel the jump of his pistol firing and see the open-mouthed disbelief on the face of Ratty Richards, ship’s boy, as he dropped down dead; slaughtered by the captain he worshipped.

      And now he had a wife whom he loved fiercely, and who’d made clear that she’d not live with him unless he became an honest man. Or so she said…But did she mean it? She loved him; he knew that much. Or so he thought.

      So…there was what the crew wanted, which was prizes, gold, tarts and rum. There was what she wanted, which was an honest life for Mr and Mrs Silver. And then there was what he wanted…which he didn’t know, and couldn’t decide because he couldn’t live without her and maybe couldn’t live with her. The bitter internal conflict was turning him sour and angry.

      “John,” said Israel Hands and nudged him, “it’s her…”

      Silver turned. She’d come up from below decks without him even seeing. Now she stood with her hands on her hips facing him. She was a small, slim, black girl, not yet eighteen years old, extremely lovely in face and figure, with a dainty elegance of movement, and of speech and manners too. She stood in a cotton gown and a straw hat, looking up at Silver and defying him.

      “Well?” she said, but he avoided her eyes and said nothing. “Huh!” she said, investing the simple sound with eloquence.

      All hands were watching. They shifted and muttered and a few got up for a better look. These arguments had gone on for days, and now Silver roused himself and tried to speak gentle. He tried to explain. So did she, for a while, but soon they were shouting and screeching, with fists clenched and words spat viciously, as tempers burst and fury rose in the passionate rage of a man and woman for whom no one else in the whole wide world mattered quite so much as the other.

      As for the spectators, they shrugged their shoulders and scratched their armpits and turned away, no longer entertained by a piece of theatre that had been played out flat. They thought Silver should put the rod across her plump little arse till she saw reason. But that was his business and they’d chosen him as their leader, so there weren’t no more to be said in the matter. Selena was his wife and that was that.

      But later, the ship’s surgeon, Mr Cowdray, was forced to join the quarrel. The only gentleman in the ship, he’d practised in London till learned rivals drove him out for his ludicrous insistence on boiling his instruments before surgery, which he said prevented sepsis, and which they couldn’t abide because it did. Selena liked Cowdray and valued his opinion, and thus she’d asked him to meet her on the forecastle after dark.

      “What do you want, girl? Bringing me here?” he looked back down the dark length of the ship, past masts and bulging sails, and hung on to the rail against the ship’s motion, flinching as spray came over the plunging bow.

      “It’s wide open here,” she said, “so nobody can say you’re meeting me in secret.”

      “And why should I do that?” he said.

      She shrugged. She’d seen how he looked at her. He might be a surgeon, but he was a man, even if he was middle-aged.

      “You can always say you were going to use the heads,”