Silver (20 page)

I shall return to these noises – as they also returned to me – in a little while. At the beginning of our journey, it was the communication of plants rather than animals that most preoccupied me. The rasp of leaves against our arms as we pushed uphill from the river; the soft explosion of tubers under our shoes; the squelch of wet grasses as we sank into slushy ground and pulled free.

In several places the vegetation was so densely woven together we had to crawl forward on our hands and knees, taking it in turns to grapple with the tendrils of vines and other obstacles. Mr Lawson, being small, might have shown the initiative here, but seemed nervous of what he might find. Natty immediately took his place, and showed such adeptness in making our path that she became the leader we all preferred. To see her slither like an eel through tangled roots, and spring like a cat across the barriers of fallen trees,
and worry like a dog at the knots of branches, made me think she must be a compendium of God’s creatures.

The reward for our persistence was to emerge, as soon as we left the valley, into the pine wood we had previously seen (or more properly
heard
) in darkness from the deck of the
Nightingale
. The contrast was wonderful, especially since the trees were impressive specimens, with some standing fifty feet, some nearer seventy feet high. To walk between them was a delight, and also very easy, since the ground was covered with a bed of needles that was smooth as a carpet.

We now began to make rapid progress, which should have lifted our spirits. Yet as we pressed ahead a peculiar nervousness began to settle on us again. This was due to the scuffling sound I have already mentioned. My first thought was: it must be some kind of small deer that was native to the island, since the noise was always accompanied by a sense of speed. But as we pressed deeper into the pine forest, where there was no underbrush, this seemed unlikely. And the more unlikely it became, the more frightening the noise seemed – until our fear suddenly turned into amazement.

We had stopped to drink a mouthful of water from our flasks, and so for a moment were unusually silent, when we saw the tree-tops ahead of us shake violently, then open to reveal a red squirrel bounding towards us. A red squirrel quite unlike any I had seen in England, for the simple reason that it was ten times larger – the size of a spaniel, in fact – and apparently not at all well suited to its treetop existence. For as long as the creature did not see us, it blundered through the high branches shaking down a shower of needles and twigs, and sometimes snapping off small branches; when we did come to its attention, it careered away at the fastest possible speed, causing as much damage as a miniature tornado.

Although I felt almost stupid with astonishment, I nevertheless reckon this was the moment I first accepted a truth that had already
begun to occur to me on the
Nightingale
: namely, that Treasure Island was the home to several creatures that were not to be found
anywhere else in the world
, let alone in England. Although this excited me very much, and made me feel there was a reason other than treasure for being where we were, it did not change my mood entirely. There was too much uncertainty in what else might be lurking around us, and too much fear of what more definitely lay ahead.

Judging by their faces, my companions felt the same. Once their pleasure in seeing the squirrel had faded, and the creature itself had thrashed off into the distance, I saw Bo’sun Kirkby fall into a melancholy stoop. I knew a part of the reason must be that he felt anxious about what we would find in the stockade. But I also suspected that he was influenced by our surroundings – by the drab country that opened in front of us as the pine forest ended. This was made of bare slopes coloured a uniform slate grey, that undulated like a frozen sea until they formed the foothills of the Spyglass, which ran up sheer on every side, then suddenly ended as if it had been hacked by an enormous axe.

The effect was extremely alarming, and found a natural accompaniment in the music we now began to notice – the boom of surf breaking along the shore on our left-hand side. When I first heard its thunder and foam, and the seabirds crying as they dived into its scrambling rollers, I immediately remembered my father saying how much he had come to hate Treasure Island. He insisted he never saw the sea quiet around its shores. The sun might dazzle overhead, the air be without a breath, the sky smooth and blue, but still these great rollers would be running along the eternal coast, thundering by day and night; he did not believe there was a spot on the island where a man could be out of earshot of their noise, and complained always about their
poisonous brightness –
the same that I now saw myself, as spray-light bounced off the rocks and boulders.

Whether Natty compared her own impressions with her father’s, I could not tell. She had spoken so sparingly of Mr Silver since leaving England, it was not clear how much was strange to her, and how much she recognised. All I know is: she kept very silent as we continued across our shaly floor, with her shoulders slumped and her eyes fixed on the ground, as though she were being pulled forward by an invisible force. Whenever she shook off its authority, she dropped into place at my side and threw me a look that seemed like a request to confirm something she had just asked – but I had never heard the question.

After half an hour of this, during which we skirted the edge of Spyglass Hill and began a slow descent towards the south-east corner of the island, our suspicions deepened. The ground here was more fertile, and we found large stretches of azalea, mainly red and purple, with a few thickets of green nutmeg trees that mixed their spice with the aroma of the flowers. The effect would have been delicious if the walking had been easier; as it was, we picked a way around the bushes with some difficulty – and almost every footstep provoked a prodigious amount of scrambling and flapping from the creatures we disturbed in their lairs.

Sometimes we caught a glimpse of feather or fur, and these sightings tended to confirm that here at least we were unlikely to meet something larger than ourselves. On one occasion, however, as we paused in a patch of open ground, we heard a different and much more alarming sound. At first it was almost indistinguishable from silence – yet seemed a
heightened
sort of silence, rising from deep within one of the larger bushes. Slowly this sound developed, becoming first a soft scratching, then a definite shaking rustle. A part of me thought it might be some sort of spirit – a spirit of the place, if you like – but I could not entertain this idea for long, and told Natty and the rest that it must be a monkey. They gave me a
blank look. We had neither seen nor heard a trace of monkeys elsewhere on the island. Certainly, whatever it was had the ability to move through thick undergrowth at great speed. If it had been impelled by fear, as seemed likely, I did not like to think how intense that fear must have been.

In later life I have often the chance to notice that people who discern a particular mood in others will soon feel it in themselves. So it was with us, as silence settled round us again. Hitherto on our march, any feelings of dread or sadness had been assuaged by self-congratulation: we were equal to the task our captain had assigned us. Now we were near our goal, I could not feel so optimistic. I knew in my heart that what I had already glimpsed in the stockade was enough to justify all the horror I felt growing inside me.

For this reason, it was a relief that Bo’sun Kirkby began to lead us much more carefully, repeatedly holding up his hand like a scout to indicate when we should halt in file behind him. As it turned out, we faced a more immediate danger than any we knew. For as we continued to creep forward, we suddenly found ourselves at the edge of what I can only call a ravine. My first indication of this was seeing our bo’sun fling out his arms and lurch wildly. When I leaned forward to offer him a hand (he gave me a scowl that said my help was not necessary), I saw over his shoulder a horrible gash in the earth, as if God himself had scratched a fingernail across his creation. It was not wide – only about six or seven feet – but about forty deep, with extraordinarily smooth sides that were interrupted here and there by saplings sprouting from small fissures and ledges. Jagged stones lay on the bottom, green with damp, and also the white ribcage of a large goat, or perhaps a pig.

A very peculiar sort of air rose from this ravine, which produced a feverish sensation of cold and damp as it entered my lungs. Natty must have felt it too, for while I was still intent on looking, she put
her hand on my arm and urgently led me away – led us all away, in fact, so that we continued our descent along a path that ran a good distance away from any risk of falling. I say
path
, but in truth there was no such thing, only a floor of roots coated with moss, and clumps of flowers the same colour as bluebells, but like celandines in their shape.

At another time, I would have relished the chance to botanise among them; now, after we had continued for another minute or so, I found the wilderness had suddenly ended, and was criss-crossed by a number of tracks, some running true and purposeful, others circling as though they described the movements of someone who had no idea of where they wanted to be. Because we reckoned these had been made by human feet, and meant we might soon be discovered, we were very glad the ground-cover soon changed yet again, and concealed us inside a thick belt of rhododendron. Here we gratefully dropped onto our hands and knees, and took shelter in the darkness under their leaves.

Once we had got our breath, Bo’sun Kirkby pressed down a branch so that we were able to look ahead. Imagine a child opening a book written in a language of which he speaks almost nothing. Just such a book is what I saw when I looked a hundred yards down the slope ahead. I mean I saw confusion. Confusion slowly settling and resolving. The stockade, for example: I recognised that. Also the cleared area, and the cemetery, and the farm pen. Further off, a quarter-mile beyond the stockade, the marshes had been drained, and rice was growing in small fields divided by low mud walls.

All these things suggested order and were therefore reassuring. But then my eyes lifted towards Captain Kidd’s Anchorage, and I found the entire harbour blighted by the wreck of a large sailing ship. She was a very desolate sight, lolling four-square against the backdrop of Skeleton Island, with the neat little obstacle of the White
Rock shaking its fronds fifty years astern. Her decks were as bare as one of the prison hulks I had often seen in the Thames at home, with all the masts and rigging torn away. Her hull was split in two and many of its planks were broken or missing. It may sound extravagant, but this ruin spread a pall of misery across everything that lay round about: whatever catastrophe had brought her to the Anchorage still lurked within her timbers like a tyrant in his castle.

Why did I feel this so certainly? Because of what I saw when I looked more carefully at the stockade. I reckoned it must be fifty yards long, and fifty wide. On either side of the open ground were the two log-houses, one much better built than the other, with a shack leaning against its side-wall for a purpose I could not immediately decide. Midway between them, and occupying the heart of the place, rose the large fan-shape I had previously seen from the
Nightingale
. Now that I was looking from the landward side I could see it resembled a court – with a chair (or throne) in the centre, a dock below, and on either side two benches that might be filled by a jury and an audience.

I might not have so soon deduced the purpose of this structure, had it not been in use – and as I began to comprehend this use, I also understood why other activities in the camp were all suspended. Seated on the bare ground before the court, and arranged into separate rows of men and women, were the Negro inhabitants of the island that yesterday I had seen suffering at the hands of their white-skinned masters. They were even more shabbily dressed than I had thought – wearing rags where clothes covered them at all – and all wretchedly thin and slumped and dejected. Even the few children struggling free of their mothers’ arms had a listlessness that made them seem sickly. Sickly and terrified, since very often their rambles were blocked by the five or six white men (though their skins were very stained with dirt) who wandered around the
compound. These men held long bamboo sticks, which they occasionally slapped against their legs with a menacing insouciance – or poked into the shoulders and backs of those huddled at their feet.

Natty, who lay beside me so quietly I had not even heard her breathing, now turned to look at me: our faces were inches apart. A leaf fragment had glued to her cheek, but in the movement of her skin when she whispered to me, it fell off.

‘Is this a trial?’ she said.

I nodded.

‘Who are these people? Where have they come from?’

I gave a grimace and a shrug, which told her that I did not know, then said, ‘The ship?’

Natty frowned, but slowly, to show she thought this was a possibility – then we resumed our watching.

At the distance of some thirty yards, we were too far off to hear exactly what was being said. The general sense, however, was easy to understand. In the high throne sat, or rather
lounged
, a judge – a large, foul-looking villain with a greenish cocked hat on his head and a fuzz of grey hair reaching as far as his shoulders. Directly beneath him, and previously unnoticed because he stood very still, was a figure in absolute contrast. This fellow wore sailor’s trousers, a shirt that had once been white but was now brown as a biscuit, and a short blue jacket that flapped open to reveal a sword at his waist. His face showed a complete lack of expression and was as pale as a cadaver’s – except for a russet smear that ran across his throat.

I assumed this must be some trick of the light, and turned instead to look at the accused. This wretch stood lowest of all in the construction, with his hands tied in front, and his eyes switching between the companions sitting on the ground before him, and a third and very confused-looking pirate, who paraded before the empty right-hand bench, tossing out occasional remarks and otherwise mumbling
to himself; he wore a very battered old hat, with one of its cocks fallen down, and a handkerchief underneath to protect his neck from the sun. I thought by the way this man swayed against the rail that ran alongside him, he was probably drunk.