Silver (19 page)

My inspection ended with the splash of the anchor going down – which several sleepy birds thought a rude interruption, and criticised as they flew away through the undergrowth. This had the most striking effect on Spot, who had so far slept through our recent adventures at his place in the roundhouse. As the clamour died, he made his own contribution by uttering a sentence I did not know he had learned. ‘What to do? What to do?’ he demanded, scraping his bill backwards and forwards across the bars of his cage. This provoked several of our shipmates to laugh aloud, and reply, ‘You tell me?’ or ‘What indeed?’

The answer to Spot’s question was: wait until morning – which the captain soon told us. At this, Bo’sun Kirkby turned to Mr Stevenson, our angular Scotsman, and ordered him to replace Mr Tickle in the crow’s-nest, and so become our eyes and ears for the night; he then recommended the rest of the crew to go below decks, and get the sleep they would need before tackling whatever the morning might bring.

I was about to follow when the captain called me back, and also Natty, and led us into the roundhouse. Here he draped a cloth over Spot’s cage so we would not be interrupted, and invited us to sit beside him while he pulled a silver flask from the pocket of his
breeches. After taking a swig he passed it across to us. Natty swallowed a nip and so did I, and the rum licked through me like a tongue of fire. I then handed the flask back to the captain, who took another long mouthful before sliding it into his pocket again. With such small signs of celebration, and the air flapping as softly as muslin onto our faces through an open window, and the blossom on the bushes around us glowing like lamps in the moonshine, we might have been friends overstaying our welcome at an evening picnic.

Yet when the captain began speaking, his voice was very grave. ‘What do you think you saw there, Jim – back in the Anchorage?’

I was surprised to be asked so direct a question, having expected the captain would first give his own opinion.

‘I am not sure, sir,’ I said. ‘Men and women. Strange things.’

‘And you, Nat, what did you see?’ The captain used a gentler voice when speaking to Natty, which was his way of admitting who she was, without dishevelling her disguise. I liked it because it showed loyalty to her and to her father at one and the same time.

‘I saw their fire’ she said, with her usual straightforwardness. ‘Jim saw people.’

‘Indeed,’ said the captain. ‘People.’

‘My father,’ I added, wanting to make up for my uncertainty a moment before, ‘my father told me only three men were left on the island …’

‘Three men,’ Natty repeated. ‘No more than three.’

As she said this, I remembered my father telling me how, when he had left the island some forty years before, he had felt shocked by the sight of these men: Tom Morgan, a man named Dick, and another pirate whose name we did not remember. The three of them had been hunting in the undergrowth – distracted by the chase, my father supposed, and not aware they would soon be
abandoned. Yet as the
Hispaniola
moved off through the narrows near the southern-most part of the island, they suddenly understood their fate and appeared all together on a spit of sand with their arms raised in supplication, begging to be taken back to England. He described it as a most pitiful sight, and had never forgotten any detail of it – including how, as the ship quickened on her course into open water, one of the three had glimpsed the desert of loneliness stretching before him; he had jumped to his feet, whipped his musket to his shoulder, and sent a shot burning over Mr Silver’s head and through the mainsail.

These pictures glowed so vividly in my own mind, I could not help mentioning them to the captain and Natty – ending with the reflection that it had been a desperate act, performed by desperate men.

‘And now more desperate still,’ said the captain, ‘if my eyes are to be believed. But this does not explain what else was there – the women and the other men.’

Neither of us felt able to reply to this, and apparently the captain had no further thoughts of his own that he was willing to share. These other men and women must have arrived from across the sea, that was all we knew, and the majority of them were evidently in thrall to a few of them.

‘We should investigate tomorrow,’ I said.

‘Or find our treasure and make our escape.’ That was Natty’s opinion, or rather the possibility she offered – for when the captain replied, she quickly changed her ground.

‘Those people we saw,’ he said. ‘Several of them seemed to be slaves. They were certainly in difficulties.’

‘Great difficulties,’ I said. ‘Terrible difficulties.’

‘Then we should investigate,’ said Natty, after a pause.

‘Certainly,’ I said, to make my own feelings as clear as possible.
‘We should take a look at them at close quarters, and then decide what to do.’

The captain did not give his own opinion. Instead, he clapped his hands on his knees and levered himself to his feet. Peering through the open window to see what kind of weather we might find in the morning, he said that rain was coming, and we had best close up the roundhouse before we turned in. With that we also stood, and he solemnly shook us by the hand before bowing goodnight, calling the same to our watchman in the rigging above us, and disappearing towards his cabin. Natty and I soon followed without any more words being spoken. I like to think it was not fear or confusion that kept us silent, merely the longing for sleep, now the first part of our adventure was over.

When I awoke it was no thanks to daylight creeping through our porthole, but the result of an immense cacophony around the
Nightingale
. I left Natty pulling the blanket over her ears and climbed on deck to find Captain Beamish standing with his arms akimbo, scowling in outrage. Because a thick mist still hung over the inlet, it was impossible to see exactly what creatures were responsible for the hubbub, only to be sure they felt their proximity to one another was so disagreeable, it must be condemned in a steady barrage of whistles, grunts, squawks, flaps, rattles, whoops, skirls, snaps, laughs and watery ululations. For a moment I thought these were sufficiently offensive to explain the captain’s annoyance. Then I understood more clearly. Had the island’s other human inhabitants wanted to creep up on us undetected,
using the racket as a protection, they might easily have done so.

The captain need not have worried. Soon after the sun had risen, every creature forgot its reasons for feeling insulted and the rumpus ended – or at any rate was replaced by the gentler chirping of countless insects. As the air steadied, and the vapour thinned, our new world was revealed to us. Both banks of the river were covered by the foliage of extraordinary plants – all growing together so densely, with such profusion of blossom, that after the predominant blues and greens and greys of the previous weeks they seemed unnatural as well as delightful.

Most I had never encountered before – although here and there were ferns that seemed related to smaller varieties I knew at home: these had furry trunks rising to the height of a man, and the tendrils of a gigantic octopus. Also camellias and rhododendrons – with pink, white, yellow, red and purple flowers of astonishing size. As their mixture of scents intensified with the sun it became actually overpowering – so that I soon felt a touch delirious, and wondered whether I might have arrived in the country of the lotus-eaters.

While I continued in this state of wonder, the rest of the crew emerged from their sleep in dribs and drabs – and eventually Natty, rubbing her eyes in amazement. They were not allowed to remain in their dizzy state for long.

‘Good morning, men, good morning,’ said the captain, clapping his hands when everyone was assembled. He then called each of us by name, to make sure we had not been carried off by wild beasts in the night – and at the end almost lost his hat when a flock of birds skimmed very low over the
Nightingale
and flew fast out to sea. I had the chance to notice they were as large as widgeon, but with gold feathers across their wings and back, and bills that were blue as cobalt.

The captain began by telling the men a little of what he and I had
seen through the telescope the previous evening: enough to let them understand we might be close to danger, but not so much that they might be daunted. They responded with a show of courage that did them credit – clapping one another on the back, and boasting they were afraid of nothing. The captain smiled very broadly when he saw this, and moved on to other matters. He told us he had studied our map during the night and realised the inlet was only a short distance from the place marked as the site of the silver; once again, he made no mention of the arms. He said this discovery turned what had felt like an inconvenience on the previous evening into something that seemed like good fortune now – except that we faced a dilemma. Put simply, it was this: should we send a party to retrieve the treasure, then slip away from the island as stealthily as we had come? Or should we investigate the area around Captain Kidd’s Anchorage, and intervene if we found that crimes were occurring there?

No sooner had the captain presented us with these questions than we answered them. He announced that four men would accompany him to the site of the silver, and to collect some fresh water (and if possible some fresh meat) for the
Nightingale
; some other men, including Mr Allan the cook, who was not built for exertion outside the galley, would stay behind to defend our ship if necessary, with Mr Stevenson still glued to his lookout post; and a third party would trek south to spy on the stockade.

This third group apparently had the hardest task, since the way was uncertain and the outcome possibly dangerous. It was therefore a surprise to hear the captain decide that I should be a part of the expedition, along with Natty and Mr Lawson, under the supervision of Bo’sun Kirkby. Mr Lawson was a dainty fellow, as I have already noticed – but taciturn, and for that reason I had not spoken to him much during our voyage. I now looked on him as someone who might shortly have my life in his hands – but he avoided my eye;
his face was badly scarred with smallpox, which I thought explained his shyness.

After considering for a moment, I understood the captain had made these divisions of labour in order that our duties should be more or less equal, and everyone should feel they were somehow responsible for the safety of us all. It seemed a sensible way of keeping us linked together, even when we were separate. If the captain had known a half of what I was about to see, I am sure he would have chosen differently and decided to keep me and Natty on board.

When the arrangements were settled, we set about fuelling ourselves with water and biscuit and apples, while collecting enough of the same to last a day’s march. The captain also provided, from the chest in his cabin where they had been locked before we left London, a short sword for each of us, and a pistol for himself and Bo’sun Kirkby. The allocation of these items was undertaken with the formality of a solemn rite. The captain did not need to say that our weapons should be used only in extremity, nor did Bo’sun Kirkby have to support this by giving a speech of his own. One look from his badger’s face, and I understood my duty was not to be courageous, but to be quiet.

The two parties disembarked at the same time, clambering down ropes over the side of the
Nightingale
then rowing the short distance to shore in our jolly-boat. I saw as I descended that the submerged part of our hull was covered in brilliant green weed; it was very slimy to the touch, and I thought must have attached itself as we came into the warmer waters around the island.

This was the first time for six or seven weeks that I had stepped onto dry land – if you can call it
land
when the ground bubbles, and wobbles, and shows an insatiable desire to take the boot off a foot. After so many days of rolling decks and plunging seas, even this degree of solidity was extremely strange, and brought
on such a fit of giddiness that as I reached the vegetation I actually sank to my knees. This disappointed me, because I had meant to enjoy the moment I came to stand in my father’s footsteps at last. Instead I could only think how wildly everything was heaving around me, as if the whole earth were suffering a convulsion. The consolation was seeing a small orange lizard, which seemed to have a divided tail, look me straight in the eye. I had never seen such a strange creature in my life before, but it vanished so quickly I thought I might have invented it, and therefore said nothing to any of my party.

After we had shaken hands with the captain and wished him good luck, I watched him and his men disappear into the undergrowth – and heard what I thought must have been a kind of macaw give an opinion of their prospects. It ended with a derisive laugh. No sooner had this faded than a similar verdict was shouted in our own direction: a riotous outburst of mirth and sneering, that was suddenly interrupted by a series of loud and clumsy-sounding scuffles.