Flint's Island Page 6

  “Why, and so I have, sir, in a manner of speaking,” said Silver. “Many’s the time I’ve thought about getting the treasure off of this here island and I’ve thought everything out, for I never gave up hope but that a ship would come and I wouldn’t have to leave my bones here. I’ve had dreams about it too and often I’ve woke up in the night in a sweat, sure that a ship had passed while I was asleep, or was maybe just clearing the point. Aye, and I’ve leaped up and flung along on my crutch, a mile or two miles or maybe more, in the middle of the night hollering aloud like a fool in Bedlam, and found nothing but the sea rolling around and flashing white here and there in the starlight.

  “There was times too when I told myself that if I didn’t look at the sea for a week, there would be a ship there the first day I looked, making a bargain, in a manner of speaking, with my Creator. But two hours I reckon was as long as I could keep my eyes off the sea in daylight, though there’s many a time I’ve thought that there is nothing in God’s world as cruel as the ocean.”

  “You’d have done better to have kept a fire going,” said Captain Samuels, cutting him short, and the remark, so lacking in sympathy, did not sit well with Silver—or the crew, for that matter.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE JANE’S ANCHOR came up with a will at first light on the following day. The patience of the crew, with treasure awaiting them, had been tried to the fullest by Captain Samuels, and I think even he became aware that this was not the best time for picking pine gum, topping up water casks, and replacing spars. When the order to weigh was given, there were more hands at the capstan than our mud berth warranted, and the bosun’s mate had the pump already rigged to hose down the big bower as it came up to the cathead. We had only the smallest breeze and spread all our canvas but the hands would willingly have taken to the boats and towed or kedged us past Haulbowline Head, had that been demanded. The head lay to the south, and what breeze we had being northerly, we had soon reached it, when Long John, with a quick glance about, suggested with the greatest deference that we stand off a mile or two to clear the lee of Mizzenmast Hill.

  “There’s a bit of tide flows past the head inshore,” he said. “It will run foul at this hour, but if we stand off a mile, we will be out of it.”

  “Keep her south then,” said the captain to the helmsman, and then to Silver, “Where will we pick up the true wind?”

  “As soon as we are a little over a mile off,” said Silver. “It will come in at north to northeast, and between the Mizzen and Spyglass peaks ’tis a man-o’-war’s wind and no mistake. There’ll be enough I do believe to carry her through the lee of the Foremast, and then the same wind all the way to North Inlet, though dropping with the sun.”

  “And the total passage ten leagues, you say?” asked the captain.

  “Ten leagues,” said Silver, “and not a shot more. We should fetch North Inlet by high noon in such a craft as this.” The compliment, suggesting that the Jane could average five knots in her voyage around two sides of the island, was not lost on Captain Samuels. “By six bells of the forenoon watch, if I could trust my topmasts,” said the captain, bringing a hearty “Aye, aye” from Silver.

  It was a pleasure to watch the man, now that he was aboard a ship after his years spent marooned ashore. His eyes were everywhere, traveling up the shrouds and along the yards, darting to the braces and buntlines and sheets, then to the stays and clew earrings and all the bits of gear and tackle that are the quiet delight of all seamen.

  I do not know of any calling in which all of its members, however humble, take such pleasure in its workaday trappings as that of the sea. It is not so, I think, with carters or with quarrymen, for I have tried my hand at those trades. But among seamen a well-made splice, nicely tarred ratlines and deadeyes, even the puddening on yards to prevent chafing are sources of pleasure and much good talk. Silver, long deprived of them, took more pleasure in these things than any man aboard.

  Since he was to be our pilot, he stood on the poop deck, normally reserved for the captain, the officer of the watch, and the helmsman. But he took his position to leeward and at a respectful distance from Captain Samuels. He had his crutch hung about his neck on a lanyard, and his parrot was perched on one shoulder, enjoying the breeze as much as its master. I had thought that Silver would have trouble getting about. But he was wonderfully spry on that crutch of his, and indeed at times at an advantage over two-legged men, for he would put it before him, the end wedged up against a ring in the deck, and lean comfortably on it in the rolling and pitching of the ship, while we at times had to reach for some handhold to steady us.

  As for moving about, he sometimes used the crutch and sometimes with a quick movement tossed it behind him and pulled himself along with a powerful grasp of the bulwarks or rigging. This need to use his arms to get about had developed in him immensely powerful shoulders, and the calf of his one leg bulged almost as thick as a man’s thigh through the red seaman’s stockings with which he had been supplied from the ship’s slop chest.

  He was quite right about the weather. We had a booming wind between the Mizzen and Spyglass, when we had cleared Haulbowline Head. The Jane enjoyed the work. Baltimore built, she had a clean run from amidships aft and laid down a flat but boiling wake which told us, without a single cast of the log, that she was making a good eight knots. I regretted my promotion, which, putting me in charge of the forenoon watch, prevented me taking her wheel, and there was a touch of pride in Captain Samuels’s expression as the Jane bowled along, heeling to the wind and sending a rainbow of spray into the air now and again from her bows in sheer delight.

  We had run the length of the west coast of the island in a little over an hour and a half, and then having stood off a league or more to make one board of the north coast to North Inlet, we Wore about to the larboard tack and, rounding the blunt-ended northern peninsula of the island, ran down to North Inlet with a following wind.

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” said Silver, touching his hat and addressing Captain Samuels. “She has too much way on her in this wind. Topsails and the forestaysail and nothing more would be handsome.”

  “Make it so,” said Captain Samuels, eyeing the narrowing channel ahead, and I gave the order to reduce canvas and hands to stand by sheets and braces for further work.

  “Not wishing to be forward,” said Long John, “but I’d like to take her now, the channel being tricky.” A nod from the captain gave him permission to relieve the man at the wheel. It was an education to see him there, propped on his one leg and a crutch, moving the wheel with his powerful shoulders, his eyes flicking about the binnacle before him to the luff of the topsail, to the water ahead, and to the landmarks ashore. Sea cook he might have been, but he was a master mariner too.

  The anchorage in North Inlet lay down a passage with scarcely two fathoms between us and coral, and not more than fifty yards wide. The fate that awaited us should Silver misjudge that channel, or should we lose the wind at the wrong time, was clearly shown in the wreck of a three-masted vessel at the far end of the inlet. Only stumps of her masts now showed, and the rotting decks were a riot of creepers and flowers. Two pelicans were perched disdainfully on the ends of her bowsprit, from which vines drooped toward the surface of the water.

  “Keep her drawing, if you please, sir,” said Silver to me. “Keep her drawing if you will, for the coral would make a Christian out of a Turk. We must have steerage and there’s not room here for a bumboat to swing on a hook.”

  I had the watch trimming sail to my order, and we handled the brig like a fishing smack coming up to her mooring in a dying wind. The Jane was a lady and daintily answered to all this attention. The last wave had been left behind when we turned into the narrow part of the inlet, and the water on which we now sailed was as smooth and as clear as a sheet of Venice glass. Whenever there was the slightest flutter of canvas from overhead, we trimmed sail; whenever the breeze stiffened or Long John at the wheel fell off the wind, we slacked a trifle, and so w
e glided over the mirror surface, where at times the bottom was so clear it seemed that we were sailing on air.

  The sea cook was splendid in his handling of the brig, and when we were deep in the cove, with scarcely room to turn it seemed, he put the wheel to windward and the Jane turned neatly about with no more than twenty feet between her and the shore. We let the anchor go instantly, and as the wind pushed the brig’s head around, backing her yards, we could feel it hold immediately.

  “Eight fathom is all you’ll need,” said Silver. “And if a stern line was taken ashore in a boat and a couple of turns taken around one of them pines, she’ll lie here secure until kingdom come.”

  “Thank you, my man,” said Captain Samuels. “You brought her in handsomely.”

  “There was a deal of pleasure in it, sir, thanking you kindly,” said Silver. Just then, one of the hands up forward serving the hawse cried out and pointed over the knightheads to something in the water below our bows.

  “What is it?” asked Captain Samuels, and I ran forward to find out. At first glance I could see nothing but the gleaming coral of the bottom. Then the bosun directed my attention to an area a few feet to the left of where the hawse curved down to the anchor, clearly visible ahead of us. And there on the bottom, with rags of clothing still clinging to the bones, were two human skeletons. One lay on the other, the grinning skull cradled in its mate’s lap, a tatter of a red knitted cap still showing under the gleaming cranium.

  “More of Flint’s hands, I suppose, Mr. Silver?” said Captain Samuels when I gave him the news.

  Silver, before replying, crossed himself piously. “This here island,” he said, “has got the very smell of death about it. But who they may be, I don’t know. Flint’s hands is as good a guess as any, but”—pointing to the flower garden of a ship at the end of the bay—“they maybe were part of her crew. I’ve not been aboard her, for she’s crawling with centipedes.”

  For myself, I glanced from the bones in the water to the old, moldering ship and then about our own trim brig, and a coldness passed over me. Flint’s mark, which was death, lay over the whole island, and I wondered how many of us would leave our bones in this terrible place. I think the thought was common to the crew. They were quiet about their work, reflecting perhaps that they were not the first to come for Flint’s hoard, and others who had tried for the old pirate’s treasure had paid for it with their lives.

  CHAPTER 9

  WE HAD TWO hours’ work when we got ashore to get to the cave where the treasure lay. The cave was not far from North Inlet in a direct line—no more, I would think, than two miles. It lay about a third of the way up a small hill just south of Foremast on the northern peninsula of the island, but we had first to climb a steep cliff by a path hardly sufficient for goats, and then, reaching the top, make our way through a thicket of pines and evergreen oaks with here and there growths of thorns so dense that neither man nor beast could penetrate them.

  Captain Samuels came ashore with the first party, leaving five men aboard under Mr. Hogan on the Jane. They were to keep a lookout and commence removing our ballast. Long John assured us that there was enough pig silver to ballast the Jane to perfection.

  The captain and I took muskets with us, while cutlasses were issued to the other hands, so that, getting out of the boats, we looked more like a boarding party from a sloop-of-war than a group of merchant seamen landing from a trading brig. The more able-bodied men were soon on the cliff top, and amused themselves with hallooing and shouting like boys on a picnic, while the captain and Long John plowed slowly upwards. Long John looked askance at the arms, for he had assured us there was not another soul on the island but himself. Yet it was not unreasonable for the men to be armed. These were uncertain waters. War might have been declared with France or Spain the day after we sailed. Flint was by no means the only pirate to cruise the Caribbean. If Captain Samuels had a middle name, it might well have been “Caution,” and he was living proof of the truth of the New England saying that there are no reckless old sea captains—only reckless young ones, and they soon dead, or converts to caution.

  The party at the top had to await the arrival of Long John before they could go on, and when he reached the summit, they paid far more attention to the sea cook than they did to the captain, which brought many a snort of contempt from Captain Samuels. But Long John had become the most important man among us, and I never met a man who could influence men so readily as the sea cook. The secret lay in more than his good humor, his willingness, and the skill with which, one-legged, he handled himself in every situation. In addition to these, he seemed to have a personal regard for everyone of the crew. He never passed one of them without a cheery word, and if he had a favorite I think it was the young seaman Green, who was his constant companion. Nor was he for a moment neglectful of Captain Samuels, who did not endear himself to the crew by his evident dislike, for no reason any of us could discover, of the sea cook.

  “Not far now, sir,” Long John said when we had all reached the woods at the cliff top. “An hour and we’ll be there, and even in the heat of the day the cave itself is cool.”

  The captain, who was sweating like a bull, grunted. He had up-ended his musket across his back before getting into the boat, so that should the boat founder in shallow water, the lock would not be wet. He still carried the musket this way. The stock had knocked his cocked hat over his eyes and he fetched his breath in great gusts of wind. But he did not slow down for all his discomfort or call a rest when he reached the cliff top.

  The trees thinned as we approached the hill on whose flank the cave was situated, and we came then to a vast acreage or savanna of palmettos—small palms with fan-like leaves, growing no more than a foot or two above the ground and spiked on every frond with sharp thorns. These thorns were tough enough to tear clothing, and this place was the habitat of large, gray-green lizards, which scampered away in clouds of dust on their hindlegs as we approached, their tails thrust out to balance their foreparts, and looking for all the world like small dragons.

  “They’re harmless,” said Long John, “and eat as good as chicken, but a little sweet, in a manner of speaking. Salt horse is more to my fancy, but then we always hankers for what we haven’t got, human nature being contrary-minded.”

  “There’s the cave,” came a shout from ahead, and instantly the whole crew, with a loud huzza, scampered off, leaving Long John, Captain Samuels, and myself still toiling over the loose sand among the palmettos. They were all inside when the captain arrived, and the place reverberating with the hubbub of voices as he entered. Green greeted him at the entrance, grinning and staggering under a huge bar or ingot of silver which he had in his arms. “One for you, sir,” cried Green, seeing the captain.

  “Put that where you found it,” snapped Captain Samuels, and Green shuffled off with no good grace.

  The men fell back when they saw that the captain had arrived, some of them holding silver bars, others turning to put them down, shamefaced. They made an opening for him and he walked through in silence, I at his heels. Then he stopped and I heard him catch his breath at the incredible sight revealed to us at the back of the cave. There, piled up to the ceiling, was a wall of solid silver, pig upon pig of the precious metal laid like bricks from floor to roof and with a neatness that would have done credit to a master mason. The silver had not a high glitter to it. It was dark, almost leaden, but through this darkness the metal glowed with a soft deep light—the very soul of the silver, as it were, peering through its mask of tarnish.

  “By thunder,” said Captain Samuels, breaking the silence, “what a man was Flint.” His admiration, viewing that wall of treasure, was genuine, and I think that from that moment he held another view of that frightful pirate whose name struck terror throughout the whole of New England and the Caribbean. I think he saw, beyond the looting, burning, slaughtering, blasphemous creature that Flint was, a great figure, capable of tremendous plans and daring assaults, of exact organization and imme
nse control over his fellows. The treasure before us was the spoil of no petty action but of some great assault upon a treasure fleet or upon a city. Such daring, put to the purpose of patriotism and service of his king, would have made Flint’s name rank with that of Hawke and Anson. Some such thought as this, I feel sure, brought forth from Captain Samuels that exclamation of pure admiration, “What a man was Flint.”

  “Ah,” said Long John, whose mind was running in the same direction, “had he flown the king’s colors, he’d be buried now in Westminster Abbey, an example to all honest seamen, instead of dying of rum off Savannah.”

  “I wonder what set him wrong,” said Green, hoping by such a question, I think, to regain a little of the captain’s favor. He was unlucky, however, for Captain Samuels turned fiercely on him and said, “The same thing that had you staggering out of the cave there with a bar of silver in your hands and a look on your face that would disgrace an ape. Greed! Plain greed. The difference between a king’s officer and a pirate is that one chooses service and the other chooses self.”

  “Amen to that,” said Long John gravely. “There’s a power of reflection there. And Flint was an educated man, I’ve heard. Could spout Latin like a parson, and write as good as a lawyer.”

  Beside that wall of silver at the end of the cave, there were four great chests in a kind of alcove on the right-hand side of the cave. The chests were reinforced with so many iron plates and bars as to be practically indestructible, and four bars of iron running through the side and the lid formed the locks on them.

  They were not locked now, for Long John had had plenty of time in which to open them. He drew out the bolts, which fitted so well in their channels that they moved without any resistance, and threw open the lid of one of the chests. Even Captain Samuels gasped when he saw what lay inside. Diamonds, rubies, aquamarines, emeralds, pearls (both black and white), and sapphires and topaz lay about in profusion—in single gems, in broaches, in necklaces, in rings, in crucifixes, in bracelets, in medallions, in cups—indeed in every design that the human mind could contrive. Silver was all forgotten in a moment. It was nothing more than ballast compared with the splendor of these jewels. We stared at them, while the fire flickered on the cut diamonds and the rubies glowed like blobs of blood in the depth of the chest. Then Long John, shifting his weight onto his good leg and leaning against the wall for support, put the end of his crutch into the chest and lifted up a magnificent necklace of diamonds that sparkled like hoarfrost on a January morning.