Charles,” whispered Garland, “she’s raving! She’s come adrift and cast loose her moorings.” But he whispered too loud.
“No!” said Rebecca sharply. “It is my husband who was mad! Thus I killed him because he had gone too far. ‘Behold! Now is the accepted time’–Second Corinthians, six: eight!”
Sir Charles sighed and turned to the boy sitting alongside her.
“Now then, my lad–”
“He must have seen it, sir,” said Bains, who was hovering at the door. “He was in the chapel with her, sir. They went in together.”
“Yes, yes!” said Sir Charles, waving the servant away. He turned back to the boy. “My lad, I am a magistrate and I must ask you what has gone on here?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Then why your mother covered in blood?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Sir Charles asked more questions, but learned nothing. Finally he took Garland aside.
“He’s a good boy. Credit to his mother, poor soul. He’ll not betray her, while she, poor soul, has lost her mind. I’ve seen the like before: husband a bully, wife stands it twenty years, then one day takes a knife and stabs him fifty times!”
“Aye,” said Garland, nodding, “that’d be the way of it–and the swine deserved it, too! ’Tis only a pity she did it in front of the lad.”
“Indeed,” said Sir Charles, “But I know a doctor who’ll say what’s needed to keep her from the hangman and safe in a private madhouse.” Sir Charles glanced at the boy. “What about him, though? Shall you take him?”
“That I shall!” said Garland. “I’ve no other family, aside from the sea-service, so I shall enter him as a gentleman volunteer, first-class, and it shall be my pleasure to help him up the ladder!” He turned to his nephew and, managed a smile: “Now then, young Joseph,” he said, “come along o’ your uncle Peter and you shall be a king’s officer one day, and maybe even a captain. How’d you like the sound of Captain Flint?”
Early morning, 30th September 1752 The southern anchorage The island
“Remember,” said Long John, “a round turn and two half-hitches! Keep it simple. Don’t go trying to work a Turk’s head, nor a cable-splice!”
Ratty Richards, ship’s boy, grinned. “Aye-aye, Cap’n!” he said. Skinny, tired, and dripping wet, he was the only one of the seventy-one men and three boys on the island who could dive in six fathoms of water and still do a few seconds’ work at the bottom.
“You sure, lad?” said Long John. “You’ve already had a good whack. You don’t have to go again if you don’t want to…”
“I’m ready, Cap’n!”
“Ah, you’re a smart lad, you are. I knew it the moment I set eyes on you. So here’s your sinker and in you go.”
Splash! Ratty Richards rolled over the gunwale of the skiff into the cool water, one hand pinching his nose and the other clasping the heavy boulder that would take him down. As he sank, the safety line round his waist and the heavy rope looped through it paid out from their coils while Long John, Israel Hands, Sarney Sawyer and George Merry leaned over the side to see him go down.
“Bugger me!” said Israel Hands. “Is this goin’ to work, John? I’ve lost count how many times he’s been down.” He sighed heavily. “Don’t want to drown the lad.”
“Oh?” said Long John. “Weren’t it yourself as pleaded for the Spanish nine?” He jerked a thumb at the sea bed. “For myself, I’d not’ve tried to raise a twenty-six-hundredweight gun with this–” He looked at the two boats, joined by a pair of spars, floating with barely a yard between them. Long John and Sawyer were in the skiff, with Hands and Merry in the jolly-boat; Ratty Richards’s rope fed into a heavy block suspended from the spars and then to an iron windlass that had been firmly bolted to the midships thwart of the jolly-boat. The block-and-tackles were sound, but the boats were too small. Unfortunately, they were the only boats on the island.
“He’s down, Cap’n!” cried Sarney Sawyer, looking below. “And he’s workin’ on her. Go on Ratty, my son!”
“Go on, Ratty!” they all cried, peering through the clear water pierced to the bottom by the hot morning sun, showing every movement the boy made.
Down in the booming depths, the weight of water crushed Ratty’s chest as if a horse were rolling on him, and he strained to remember his orders. Water bubbled from his mouth as he grabbed one of the gun’s dolphins. The Spanish founders had followed obsolete style in adding these elegant decorations, but they were ideal for work such as this. The plunging sea-beasts, cast integral with the barrel, formed loops of iron perfect for lifting the gun. Ratty tugged the rope from the line round his waist then slid it through one dolphin and into the next.
So far, each attempt had failed. Now, lungs pounding, he struggled to secure the rope. In a ship, he could tie a knot without thinking; it was bred into him, instinctive. But not down here.
He threaded the rope through the second dolphin…a round turn… Ratty passed the rope around itself…and two half hitches… he tied the first hitch…torture and suffocation…he fumbled for the second hitch. He lost the rope. He fumbled again and again…blindness and agony…fear of death…Ratty kicked his bent legs almightily against the gun, launching himself like a soaring lark…up, up, up, frothing and bursting and spouting breath and blood and stretching for the blessings of light and air.
“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” he thrashed and splashed and breathed water and choked and broke surface.
“Gotcher me lad!” cried Long John, hauling him into the skiff and dumping him between the thwarts.
“Urgh! Uch! Yuch!” Ratty’s guts vomited seawater and his eyes stared wide, not quite believing he wasn’t dead.
“Did you do it lad?” said Long John, looming over him. “Did you make fast and secure?”
“Dunno,” said Ratty.
“Bugger!” said Israel Hands.
“Clap a hitch there, Mr Gunner!” said Long John, and laid a hand on Ratty’s shoulder. “This man’s done his best, and no man can’t do no more!” He stabbed a finger. “Or p’raps you’d like to heave off your britches and take a dive yourself?”
“Not I,” said Israel Hands. “Ah, you’re right, John! Bloody gun’s too big. What we needs is a proper longboat, and a good big ’un.”
“The which we ain’t got,” said Long John.
“Aye, but the gun did have dolphins,” said Israel Hands wistfully. “And Flint left us this, or we’d never have tried.” He patted the powerful iron windlass that sat beside him, “I wonder what he wanted with it?”
“Nothing good,” said Long John. “And I’ll have less jaw and more work, if you please, Mr Hands, else we’ll never recover your blasted nine-pounder!”
Silver sighed. They were marooned on the island, with Flint’s treasure buried who-knows-where, and Flint liable to return at any moment with a shipload of men hell-bent on skinning, gutting and roasting every one of them. Since they couldn’t build a vessel to carry all hands before Flint returned, and none could be left to face him, their aim was to defend the island. But how? Long John worried worse than anyone, being in command, for he’d been duly elected captain by all hands…excepting only Mr Billy Bones, who was still loyal to Flint, and who couldn’t now be harmed