Silver (41 page)

I nodded, thinking I must be patient with her distractedness, until her mind had healed. ‘And I am sorry about Scotland,’ I said.

‘Perhaps he did not want to live any longer,’ she replied.

This seemed blunt, even allowing for Natty’s distress, which I showed by frowning at her. When she returned my look without flinching, I reminded myself how often she used boldness as a way of concealing her more delicate feelings.

‘Because of his wife?’ I said.

‘Because of his wife,’ she repeated. ‘Because of his poor wife’ – and that was the end of it. By mutual consent we shifted to more practical matters. In particular, we decided that we should return to the shore, and not continue to the
Nightingale
, so that we could lay Scotland to rest beside his wife as soon as possible, and then attend to the captain’s body, and to everyone else who had been killed. Once this was agreed, we completed our journey in silence, with Natty smiling to herself as she remembered her safety, and frowning as she reflected on its cost. Despite this self-communing, or perhaps because of it, she collected herself very quickly when the prow of our boat rasped into the sand, seizing hold of the rope and urging me to follow. We climbed into the water together and set about helping our passengers onto dry land.

To return to the island, and not to be on board the
Nightingale
, must have been a bitter blow for them. None showed this, however, but instead they hobbled, or ran if they were able, to join those they had recently left. Once they had greeted one another, which was done with great enthusiasm, as if they had been separated for months, they began to discuss everything they had seen: the pursuit of Smirke and Stone, the bravery of Scotland, the recovery of the
silver. Although the detail of what they said was lost on me, the subjects were easily identified – thanks to the vivacious waving of arms, or melancholy head-shakes.

Whenever this talk appeared to relate to the slavers hidden in the forest, there was no sign of anxiety – only a few wondering looks towards the trees, and a few fists shaken in the same direction. I took this as proof of their confidence in our bravery, and also of their estimation (which I shared) that our enemies had been so demoralised by the death of their leaders, they had no more stomach for a fight. Certainly, when I stared towards the slopes of Spyglass Hill myself, and pricked up my ears for any sound, I heard only the sigh of wind, and the occasional squawk of birds.

As for my shipmates: a few were heartless or foolish enough to think that because they were now wealthy men, nothing but good had come of our efforts; a couple even went so far as to dance on the sand, with their old caps bouncing on their heads. Others, including Bo’sun Kirkby, continued to balance their pleasure against their sadness, as I could see from the way he sometimes began to smile, then fell into a study, then smiled again.

Our captain’s death was undoubtedly one reason for this. Another, I conjectured, was the fact that he had been so used to working under a superior all his life, he was not used to taking complete command of a ship.

I suppose the same thought must suddenly have dawned on Natty, for what we said next had an uncanny symmetry.

‘Bo’sun Kirkby, Mr Tickle,’ we called in unison. ‘Bring Scotland ashore and carry him to the stockade, then we shall make a plan.’ There might have been a small difference in the last sentence, such as Natty saying, ‘Then we shall decide what to do’ – but this was negligible. Much more important was the fact that Natty and I had both decided we must take some responsibility for our adventure.
The fact that our bo’sun accepted this, which he showed by smoothing his beard and wading out to the boat immediately, seemed quite remarkable. Or rather, it seemed remarkable until I remembered that it would never have happened without the invisible authority of our two fathers. Natty and I thought we had sailed to Treasure Island to escape their influence; instead, we had found them waiting for us.

‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said Mr Tickle, straightening his cap; being made of carpet, and now wet with spray, it drooped down heavily on one side of his head. ‘What do you think to those other swabs? I reckon we’ve seen the last of them.’

It occurred to me that he wanted my reply to convey a captain-like sense of certainty, which I duly endeavoured to give. After pausing for a moment, and squaring my shoulders, I told him the slavers were degenerates who preferred to watch us leave the island with their treasure, and take their chance as maroons, than die in opposing us. We would, I assured him, have no more trouble from them.

Mr Tickle was evidently satisfied by this; he grinned, and patted the sword at his belt to show they would be foolish to consider any other course. ‘Very good, Master Jim,’ he said simply, when I had finished my answer.

‘Yes,’ said Natty, seeming equally adamant. ‘We’re ready for them – ready while we go about our other …’

Without finishing her sentence, and to show she did not think our enemies worth any further thought, Natty then began directing the mates who had been our oarsmen to lift Scotland’s body from the boards of the boat. It was an awkward task, which involved a great deal of splashing and bending and adjusting, while all the time giving a proper impression of respect and sorrow. Natty and I both stood in the shallow water with our heads bowed as the men hoisted
him onto their shoulders at last. I did not look into Scotland’s face as he passed me, but only saw the water dripping from his body, and the footprints of the sailors in the sand; they left very deep clear marks, owing to the weight they carried.

Our friends had collected to wait for us at the edge of the old marsh, and formed an avenue through which we passed before they fell in behind. We then proceeded inland at a stately pace and, as the pall-bearers reached the entrance to the stockade, slowed down still further. At this point, I moved forward to speak to Bo’sun Kirkby and Mr Tickle. It was not an easy thing to do, since they were both stooped under Scotland’s weight, supporting him at either shoulder; the man’s head hung down between them with his mouth open and horribly smeared with blood. To make matters worse, I realised the spot on which I was now standing was exactly where the captain had fallen. The memory made me feel the ground was screaming under my feet.

Natty came to my rescue. ‘This way; this way,’ she said, trotting up beside me and pointing towards the graveyard that lay adjacent. It was what I should have said myself, if I had not been so bemused by the occasion – and when I looked, I could see that several of our shipmates were already standing among the old crosses and headstones, with the bodies of everyone killed in our battle, including the pirates, laid out before them. These had been brought together very quickly by our friends, who only a moment before had been watching our sea-fight from the shore. The corpses made a wretched sight, lying among the memorials to poor Tom Redruth, the sullen gamekeeper; and Joyce, shot through the head; and the Irish man O’Brien; and the others who got their rations in my father’s time. Then the slaves who had not survived their hardships, laid out in rows: I counted more than a dozen graves, including some no longer than my arm, which must have been children.

When our cortege had walked forward a few more paces, Scotland’s body was tenderly set down beside that of his wife, with the captain on his other side; the first part of our work to restore order and decency was complete. At this point a heavy silence fell, disturbed by the hiss of wind through the pine trees on the rising ground ahead of us, and the boom of the surf behind.

I shall not mention everything I might about the work we did next. It is too melancholy to remember. But I will report that we were conscientious enough to dig separate graves for Smirke and Stone, whose heads I noticed were very bloody and disfigured, having bumped across hard earth when their bodies were dragged to the graveyard. Scotland and his wife we buried together, as we knew they would have wanted. Finally, we set above each fresh mound of earth a wooden cross that was carved with a name – where we knew it.

The captain was the last we buried. By this time we had devised a little service to accompany our proceedings. Rebecca, the prisoner who could not be separated from her Good Book, and who spoke a little English, would read a passage of scripture; I would say a prayer; and the whole congregation, gathered in a ring, would give an ‘Amen’ before those who had shovels began piling back the earth. My role in this was often difficult, since when I looked upon Smirke and Stone, and upon Jinks with his baldness and blisters, I could find very little compassion in me. They therefore went to their everlasting rest with a perfunctory hope for their life hereafter, and not much wish that it should contain the kindness they had denied to others. Monkey and old Turner, the two men I had killed myself, I did not look at.

The captain, however, I wanted to bid farewell in a way that showed the particular affection I felt for him. Although I had the eyes of some fifty people watching, I knelt beside his body and
spoke to him as if he could actually hear. I thanked him for his care of us during our voyage, and for the fatherly way he had looked over me. I said I did not doubt that he had behaved with a similar generosity in the earlier parts of his life, of which I knew nothing. I promised that when we returned to England, we would give a good account of him, and seek out his friends so that we could tell them how bravely he had died.

All the while I spoke, a low murmur of assent came from everyone around me – although I dared not look at them, thinking that if I saw how much they sympathised, I would lose my self-control. I did not dare to look at the captain’s wound either, though I glimpsed it was very black and surprisingly precise in the centre of his forehead. Instead, I kept my eyes fixed on his brown hair and his freckles, and the lines round his eyes that showed where he had narrowed them to stare into the weather ahead.

When I had finished my eulogy, and heard Rebecca recite her passage from the Bible, and said my prayer for his soul, I leaned forward to touch him for the last time. His cold face, then his shirt-front, where the linen still seemed to hold a little warmth. As my hand pressed down, I realised it was not his skin I was feeling through the material, but something unyielding. I did not have to think, in order to understand. It was my father’s map, which the captain still kept in its little satchel around his neck. Before I was fully aware of my own actions, my fingers had fumbled at the buttons, thinking I must recover what belonged to my father, so that I could return it to him. When my mind caught up with my instincts, I stopped. I knew the map should be buried with the captain – so that the directions it contained would not be seen again. The world would have been a happier place if Treasure Island had never been found.

No one saw what I had discovered and decided. They thought I
had merely laid my hand over the captain’s heart, which in a manner of speaking I had done. As I withdrew my weight, I pulled his coat straight, then climbed to my feet and told the gravediggers to complete their work. They slid ropes beneath the captain’s body, hoisted and swung it, then lowered it slowly enough for me to watch his face sinking into the darkness. When the ropes had been pulled out again, I picked up a handful of the island’s sandy soil and threw it down – hearing it patter on the captain’s clothes with a hollow sound, like rain after a drought. With that I turned away and walked to the edge of the graveyard, where I could look on the open sea beyond the
Nightingale
, and contemplate the grey waves as they folded over one another.

I remained in this state of reverie for a decent interval, which ended at last with a silent promise to the captain that I would never forget him. Then I returned to my work.

‘Bo’sun Kirkby,’ I said, no doubt interrupting his own private meditations at the captain’s graveside. Like the good fellow he was, he immediately stepped up to me, encouraging the rest of our shipmates to follow suit. We stood apart from the others, which I regretted since our discussion affected them directly. But they were not accustomed to determining their own fate, and I was not yet bold or considerate enough to include them.

‘Begging your pardon,’ said the bo’sun, using the polite phrase that nevertheless told me he knew exactly what he wanted to say and do. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, we need all hands on the
Nightingale
before sunset, in case we’ve made the wrong judgement of those villains presently hiding from us, and they decide to have another dart at us after all.’

‘And in case they have another of them
canoooes
,’ added Mr Tickle, elongating the word to show he thought they were ridiculous contraptions. ‘We don’t want them boarding our beauty and sailing clear away. There’s only Mr Allan and a handful more on board.’

Although it seemed unlikely to me that a second canoe was lain up for such use, in view of the maroons’ great idleness and complacency during their sojourn on the island, I reckoned it was wise to be cautious. I repeated my opinion that the slavers were cowards, as well as villains, and would therefore not bother us – but agreed we should take sensible precautions. Natty evidently thought the same, and now joined in.

‘We must be smartish,’ she said in her own voice – the one she had tried to deepen in disguise. Bo’sun Kirkby had never taken orders from a woman before, but seemed to accept that a revolution had occurred in his existence, and smiled broadly enough to show twice the number of tooth-pegs he usually revealed.

‘Thank you,’ he said, and with no more to-do began instructing Mr Stevenson and Mr Creed to divide our friends into parties of a dozen each, which would then be ferried out to the
Nightingale
one after the other in our jolly-boat. Mr Tickle and Natty and I volunteered to stay on the island until everyone had been safely taken away, so that we could stand against our enemies if they proved me wrong and decided to reappear.

During all this discussion, no mention whatsoever was made of the silver, and when we would take that aboard. Common sense told me it could not easily be stolen away from us now, so might as well stay where it was until our other work was finished. The silence of the others on this subject seemed to prove they agreed
– although Mr Tickle, I saw, had removed his ingot from the jolly-boat and was carrying it with him wherever he went. When I asked him about this, he told me it was ‘for safe keeping’, and would be shown to Mr Allan and the rest as proof of our good fortune when he returned to the
Nightingale
. All this was said with such child-like enthusiasm, I could not resent it.