Silver (15 page)

It will be clear from everything I have said that Natty and I passed almost the whole of every day in one another’s company – and almost the whole of every night as well. Yet in our proximity there was a kind of reserve. We could not allow anything we said to encourage the maturing of our friendship. To have done otherwise would have threatened Natty’s disguise, if any of the crew had observed us. It would also (speaking for myself) have worked my heart into a condition I might then have found difficult to control. Besides, and despite the warm feelings that Natty provoked in me, it was rather in my disposition at that time of my life to withdraw than to come forward, for I was somewhat in fear of mockery by womankind. Reflecting on this after many years, I suspect I had found an exquisite recipe for frustration. At the time I only felt that my timorousness and self-discipline encouraged me to notice everything, and enjoy everything, while sparing myself some anxieties about
what might happen next
.

Ten days after we lost sight of England, the wind that had propelled us from London suddenly failed, and we sank into a dead calm. I would rather be stupid, and numb, or better still unconscious, than endure again the lassitude of that time. How long did it last? I cannot tell. Perhaps a week. Perhaps two. Perhaps eternity. Long enough, at any rate, for me to feel a sailor’s life was the most desperate, the most tedious, and the most pointless, of any in Christendom. Our sails hung limp as grave-cloths. A rook that had followed us from the West Country, and evidently meant to emigrate to America, glued itself to our prow and closed its eyes. The Atlantic Ocean, which I had imagined to be made entirely of roaring billows, settled into a shimmering stillness, and was so seldom disturbed by any sort of activity that the appearance of a log, or a tuft of weed, seemed like a great event. And the men? Although the captain endeavoured to keep them occupied by setting them tasks such as mending sails and checking stores, they gradually subsided into a lethargy, and thence into something more sullen.

It was not difficult, even for someone as ignorant of the sea as myself, to realise this mood might easily spark into something troublesome. However much the crew respected their skipper, and notwithstanding they were generally good fellows and mindful of the rule of law, a certain insolence crept into their behaviour. A man who slipped in the rigging, and had to be caught one-handed by another, was more roundly chastised than he deserved to be. Spot, whose regular warnings to ‘Keep away’ and suchlike often rang out like banging metal, was threatened with the barbecue in voices that really made me fear for his survival. The games of dice and cards, which the men frequently played on deck in the shade of a sail they had arranged to make a tent, produced more vicious curses than seemed to fit the spirit of a game. Even when the captain entertained us by playing on his squeeze-box, only a few voices rose to join his
own – and these were very reluctant. I remember on one occasion he sang the bawdy old fragment beginning ‘Don’t speak to me …’, in which he presented himself as a woman for our amusement – but no one was amused:

On another, he gave us the whole of the ballad called ‘Mistress Anne’, without a single other voice joining him:

As the captain sang this song, I found myself becoming thoughtful, as often happens when we hear sweet music. In particular, I began to reflect on a lesson that our becalming had taught me – namely, that every man has a natural tendency to decline. Another idea was equally alarming. I saw I was mistaken in supposing I had been born into a gentler age than my father. Governments and navies might have begun to root out the piracy he had lived among, and the crew of the
Nightingale
might have reckoned they represented a nobler sort of savage than Mr Silver. But nothing had been done to alter a fundamental fact about our human nature – namely, the appetite for savagery passes unchanged from generation to generation, and will always emerge when a suitable occasion arises.

The calm in which we languished was just such an occasion. That is to say, the crew’s treatment of one another was soon worse than irritable; it had become a variety of sickness – and eventually the day arrived when Jordan Hands became an outright agitator. Natty and I heard this because we were sitting at our usual place in the roundhouse, with the door open, when Bo’sun Kirkby reported to the captain that, by sowing insults and fanning rivalries, Hands had set shipmates against one another, while always slinking away himself and pretending innocence. Although Hands could not easily
be accused of a particular crime, the captain immediately summoned him to explain himself.

Hands went through his interview without so much as a glance at his accuser, and his whole attention fixed on Natty and myself – who must have seemed like jury members, sitting on our bench in the roundhouse. Although he said nothing of great significance, the repeated and unnecessary references to his uncle all struck me as definitely as if they had been a series of blows. ‘My uncle always hated a calm,’ he said; ‘My uncle knew how to set a sail that would catch the breath of a butterfly’; ‘My uncle’ – he said this with a particular enthusiasm, looking directly into my eyes – ‘knew how to aim a cannon so it would blow the head off a match at a hundred yards.’

When this interview had ended, the captain sent Hands away with a warning to keep a civil tongue in his head, and learn how to rub along with his fellows – at which the fellow merely smiled to himself before slouching below deck. The captain seemed to think this meant nothing beyond a touch of ‘sea-fever’, and it was not my place to contradict him.

I did, however, mention my concerns to Natty when the day ended and we were alone together in our cabin. I told her plainly that I thought Hands meant to do me some ill. She gave a snort of derision – then the advice that I should not consider myself so interesting that Hands would reckon me worth hurting. I felt I had no choice but to accept the criticism. At the same time, I was implicated in his story and knew that he resented me. The thought gave me considerable anxiety, and I lay awake that night, listening for steps on the stairs that led down from the deck, long after Natty herself had fallen asleep.

The consequences followed with surprising speed, since rather than acting as a kind of balm, the captain’s advice to Hands in fact
excited him still further. The next day I saw him early, swaggering around the foredeck in a most ostentatious fashion, stumbling into others when he might easily have avoided them, and whispering insults that he pretended were remarks addressed only to himself.

Natty, when I pointed this out to her, was at last inclined to think I had not been exaggerating the danger he represented. ‘He has lost his wits,’ she told me, which she evidently thought must absolve her from having made a wrong judgement about him. I told her I thought that was indeed the case. Hands rolled his head as he spoke, and his long fingers, with their red knuckles, plucked continually at once another.

Such unsettledness, though alarming, should really be a cause for compassion. The captain evidently thought so, which is why he did not straightaway put Hands under lock and key. If he had been able to observe the man more closely, he might have taken a different course – and great trouble might have been saved. But to speak plainly, the captain was often unsighted at this time in our journey, since the canvas shelter beneath which the crew played their cards, and where Hands often strutted and gyred, had been built between the two masts of the
Nightingale
; this made it only partly visible to a person in the stern, where the captain habitually stood. For this reason it was not he but Natty and I who saw everything exactly as it happened, since we often relieved our boredom by perambulating round the deck, taking in the scenery of greasy waves and glaring horizons.

On the day I am thinking about, half a dozen crew had formed a circle inside their tent, most of them sitting cross-legged and leaning inwards to place their bets, or slap down their cards, or gather their winnings. (These bets and winnings were made with marbles, and pieces of bone, and other tokens that represented the share of treasure they supposed would eventually come to them.)
Hands was one of this group – standing outside the ring as was his wont, keeping a watch on proceedings and making occasional remarks that were meant to be disparaging. The heat of the afternoon and the somnolence of our mood initially made these too insignificant to cause offence.

Natty and I continued on our patrol, stepping over the strips of tar wherever the heat had made them bubble up between the deck-boards. Slop-slop came the sound of the ocean against our hull. Creak-creak went the rigging. Groan-groan said the masts. Down and down sank all our minds into a state of waking sleep, where our usual watchfulness was diminished. Diminished and then entirely suspended, since I did not for the life of me notice the transformation in the scene I was watching.

Later reports established that Hands had delivered an exceptional insult to one of his fellows, a gingerish man named Sinker, whose lack of humour was notable, perhaps as a result of teasing about his name. Sinker responded with an equally foul word – whereupon the card game was suddenly abandoned and the circle broken. Hands and Sinker crouched at one another, bare feet braced on the deck, arms hanging low, and each holding a knife.

The moment I saw this, I ran forward with Natty and Bo’sun Kirkby. The captain, who must have peered round the obstacle of the masts, soon joined us. By this time so absolute a silence had fallen over the crew, even the scuffle of the two men’s feet over the planks sounded enormous, and the captain’s voice, when it came, was like a trumpet.

‘Stop this!’ he bellowed, placing his hands on his hips and pushing back the edge of his topcoat, to show the sword hanging from his waist. His face wore an expression of complete command, which reminded everyone the
Nightingale
was his ship, and subject to his enactments of the law.

The fact that neither Hands nor Sinker paid him any attention only deepened his anger. ‘Stop this!’ he repeated, even more loudly. ‘Stop this now, and we shall hear no more of it.’

I was aware (because I saw a flash of black, like a shadow leaving us) that our companionable rook had been sufficiently alarmed by the disturbance to leave his post at the prow, and float into the rigging. Sinker, who was beginning to recover his temper, stood still. Hands, however, seemed to have slipped beyond the reach of his own intelligence, and continued his prowling. Perhaps this should not have surprised me, given what I already knew of his ancestor. Perhaps, too, I should not have been taken aback by his next action – which I admit did knock me very hard. He turned quite leisurely towards everyone watching, scanned our faces, then singled me out and gave me a sarcastic smile as if to say: ‘It is you I am punishing, Jim Hawkins. You. No one else.’

Hands then swung round to Sinker again, shaking the hair out of his eyes and tossing his weapon lightly from palm to palm. After a few moments of jabbing and feinting, he said – more to me, I felt, than to Sinker – ‘You cheated me.’ His voice was not in the least excited but quite factual. Indeed, he might not have been disappointed by the murmur that arose round him, and perhaps believed it was a show of sympathy. There was certainly a moment when he stood more nearly upright, and rolled his shoulders – which seemed to me like the prelude to peace, and a handshake, and the remainder of the card game.

I was quite wrong. Hands was not standing himself down. He had merely sensed an advantage. Dipping to the left and gripping his knife more tightly (which I saw by the whitening of his knuckles), he threw it quickly forward.

Sinker’s shirt-front, which until this moment had hung loose from his bony shoulders, was suddenly pinned above his heart, as though
it had snagged on a thorn. Around the thorn, a blossom of blood appeared. Sinker stood still, with his neck twisted to look down at his wound, and seemed to be astonished by it – as were we all, to judge by the stillness that seized us. Eventually, with a marvellous slowness, he grasped the knife handle and attempted to remove the blade from his body. When it would not come, a frown of annoyance passed over his face, but only of a mild kind, which suggested that he would slip downstairs to the galley in a moment, and comfort himself by eating a biscuit. Then this expression changed into a mask of sadness and his legs gave way beneath him. He made no attempt to protect himself in the fall, whereupon the back of his head banged loudly against the deck, and two of his shipmates rushed forward, kneeling at his side. One took his pulse, then looked round at the rest of us and pursed his lips.

My first dead man.

I had been so caught in the scene while it unfolded, I had no sense of what might follow. But as I stared at Sinker where he lay, I realised I should now be concerned that Hands might turn on the rest of us, and on me especially, to continue in his madness. I could think of nothing except how the soles of Sinker’s feet, where they were angled towards me, were blotched with soft buttons of tar, and fissured like the dried bed of a stream. When I lifted my eyes, I found that Hands himself had fallen into a similar kind of reverie. Far from chasing after other victims, he stood still and exhausted, with his whole body as useless as the sails that drooped above our heads.