Silver (36 page)

The conflict of my feelings kept me at a standstill for a moment. I glanced at Jinks in his chair a few paces from me and knew I felt nothing about his death, except curiosity that a man could seem so like himself yet not be himself at all. A little string of saliva hung between his sunburned lips, but no breath disturbed it. Then I stared beyond the compound towards the open sea.

Although the sun had been shining a little while before, clouds had suddenly turned the entire picture into a pattern of different greys. Grey earth inside the stockade; grey sodden ash in the ruins of the bonfire; grey barricade; grey rice-fields stretching down to the Anchorage; grey trees and rocks on Skeleton Island. The single dot of brightness was the White Rock a few dozen yards offshore, and the only definite green the tuft of ferns that sprouted from its crown. Around and beyond it, waves rolled in a melancholy succession. Grey, empty waves, on which there was no sign of the
Nightingale
.

I was never a suspicious child, or a believer in magic that had no foundation in nature. But as this scene closed and the next began, I wondered if my unhappiness had somehow provoked everything
that followed. In plain English: my longing to quit Treasure Island now rushed into my mind with such force, it was equivalent to a hand-clap or a shout. Something palpable, at any rate, that was obvious to others. For when I looked across the compound again, I found the pirates had finally woken from their stupor and were bundling onto the veranda outside their cabin. This made me feel I was responsible for our discovery, even if I was not precisely to blame for it.

Smirke was first out of the hut, yawning and rubbing his head with the flat of his hand. He continued like this for several seconds, believing himself alone, then suddenly understood and began wildly swinging his arms about, roaring for his fellows to wake up. As he did this, I saw a pistol was tucked into his belt, and my heart began to beat more quickly.

‘Jinks!’ he bellowed, at the body still apparently sleeping where we had left it – and, when it did not move, issued a torrent of curses that I thought must have hurried his shipmate’s soul on its way to hell. As he did this, I remembered that Scotland had described him as a
monster
. He seemed to overflow himself, and made the air around him seem solid with his presence.

The captain was not in the least confused by this, but continued giving orders in a clear and deliberate voice.

‘Bo’sun Kirkby,’ he called. ‘No need for caution now. Make your way to the shore with all possible speed.’

It was sensible advice but less sensibly received. The very sight of Smirke had created panic in the prisoners, who immediately began running pell-mell towards the southern exit of the compound. This chaos made them easy prey – although I could see they might still keep the advantage, if only they could pass through the gate, since the captain would be able to defend it like a modern Horatius.

Other pirates had now joined Smirke on the veranda, all struggling into their shirts, buckling their belts, pressing on their hats, and barging into one another in a fury. I counted ten of them, which was the number Scotland had mentioned were survivors of the
Achilles
. One, I noticed, had a thick grey beard that reached almost to his waist. Another carried a toasting-fork, which he waved in our direction as if it were a broadsword. This made them seem a comical collection of villains – but their threat to us was real enough. It was nothing compared to Stone, who now floated to Smirke’s shoulder as if he had materialised from a nightmare. His long face was absolutely white and expressionless, and the scar across his throat was like a neckerchief. He looked at Jinks, then back towards us, and slowly bared his teeth. Although this suggested he wanted to chew us into pieces, for the time being he stayed still, his china eyes flickering as if they were operated by a machine.

I was surprised by this – surprised that all the pirates did not immediately pursue us. But as I watched Smirke swagger around his veranda, taking long steps that made his pistol scrape against the sword in his belt, I began to understand. He might think it outrageous that his mate was dead, but he had no reason to be hasty – only the utmost confidence that he would overwhelm us in
a fight. We were as defenceless as birds limed on a twig; he would wring our necks at any time he chose.

We hurried as much as we could, all the same, and as we followed the last pitiful members of our party through the gate, the captain ordered Mr Stevenson and Mr Creed to take their place on one side while I crouched on the other. In this way we were protected by the timbers of the stockade. The captain, meanwhile, had planted himself four-square in the very mouth of danger, with his feet apart as if he were on the deck of the
Nightingale
in a rolling sea.

I edged closer to him, and peered round the side of the gateway. Smirke and the others had clanked heavily towards us, stopping when they were half a dozen yards off. All of them were breathing very heavily – but more with excitement than effort, like hounds closing on their prey. Being so close, I could see their hands and faces were patched everywhere with weeping sores; their lips, too, were blackened with sunburn.

I expected Smirke to glare at us with contempt – always supposing he chose not to spring straight for our throats. But while there was an element of disdain in his look, there was a greater degree of curiosity. We were the largest collection of strangers he had seen for a long while – and although he detested our existence, he could not conceal his fascination with us. Our faces, our clothes, our hair: everything was a kind of marvel to him.

A marvel for a moment, at any rate – for within the blink of an eye, Smirke seemed to have satisfied his hunger for novelty, and to have reverted to his old ways. He put his hands on his hips. He nodded his big shaggy head. He ran his large tongue over the stumps of his teeth. He allowed himself a chuckling laugh. Had his stock of ammunition been greater, I have no doubt he would have dispatched us there and then.

‘Tired of hiding?’ Smirke spoke at last, with extravagant insolence,
his wet mouth adding a horrible shine to the words. They were the first I had heard him speak that were not insults of some kind, yet thanks to the manner of their delivery they might as well have been.

None of us answered, which gave me the chance to look at him more closely. Beneath the creases of his topcoat, and around his cuffs, the shirt-front was stiffened with grime.

‘Tired of slinking round not showing your faces?’ Smirke continued, then suddenly raised his voice to a shout. ‘Tired of murdering men as they sleep?’ The words were intended to make him superior, and he increased their effect by glancing around for victims of his own – especially towards the shore, where the bo’sun and Mr Tickle were now herding the prisoners into a tight little group. Scotland was at the head of them, with his bare arms extended behind him as if his body were a shield.

I noticed him with admiration but also a curious detachment. Most of my attention was now focused on the captain, as I silently urged him to ask about Natty, and discover what had become of her.

But the captain was following his own course. ‘No one has been hiding,’ he said, with a convincing appearance of calm. ‘I have merely been observing. I have been watching how you run your estate here.’

‘My estate!’ Smirke echoed. ‘It is more than an estate, I assure you.’ He was no longer interested in the shore, having satisfied himself that his prisoners were still within his reach. Instead, he was examining the captain once more – not just looking at his face to read his mind, but at his boots, his trousers, his coat, even the way he had trimmed his whiskers (which was ruggedly, but well enough). As he did this, the tip of his tongue, which was very chubby and red, continually appeared between his sunburned lips to soften them. He was, I realised, suffering a second paroxysm of curiosity; one
part of him wanted to kill the invader; another longed to sit down and hear news from the wide world.

The captain understood the confusion as well as I did, and stood ready to use it for his advantage. ‘Say what you mean,’ he said, with commendable boldness. At no time did he make any mention of Jinks, and neither did Smirke seem interested in remembering him.

‘My estate is a
kingdom
,’ replied Smirke. ‘And now you are here, you are one of its citizens. One of
my
citizens.’

‘I belong to no one but myself and England,’ said the captain, in a voice as still as a mill-pond. ‘And thanks to that I call myself a free man. Free enough to take a view of your kingdom, at any rate.’

Smirke looked awkward at this; he was not used to hearing opinions that ran counter to his own. Although his instinct was to crush them immediately (as I could tell by seeing his fingers tighten round the handle of his sword), he remembered what he used to be: an ordinary sailor, who knew his betters because he had served under them.

‘And what do you guess the verdict would be, Captain – once you had taken your view?’

‘I do not need to
guess
the verdict,’ the captain replied. ‘I know it. The verdict would be that you are a disgrace. A thief, and a traitor, and a murderer. I am resolved that you will come back with us to London, where you will get the justice you deserve. You and the rest as well’ – here he swept his hand sideways, to include everyone standing behind or beside Smirke.

Looking over these words now, which reproduce exactly what the captain said, I can see they are somewhat stiff and schoolmasterly. The captain had such qualities about him. But they were an aspect of his decency, not a flaw, and did not seem inadequate at the time. They sounded nothing less than the truth – and although it increased our danger to hear him spell out our purpose so definitely,
it was also a relief. We had set our course, and knew we must stick to it.

Smirke was stung, as the captain wished him to be. But he kept still, which the captain also intended. The longer their confrontation continued, the more time it allowed for the
Nightingale
to sail to our rescue. ‘You forget yourself, Captain,’ Smirke burst out, his lips quivering. ‘Your life, and the life of all your crew – they belong to me. If I decide you live, you live. If I decide you die, you die. I’ve sailed the seas in my time, and I’ve come to know the land. I’ve seen good and bad, better and worse, fair weather and foul, provisions running out, and what not. And I tell you, I’ve never seen good come of goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don’t bite; that’s my view – amen, so be it. Dead men don’t bite.’

His words might have terrified me, but they were delivered with such bluster and eye-rolling, they meant less than they should have done. My mood soon changed, however, since after he had let fly with his threats, Smirke tipped back his head and gave a great shout of laughter. The guffaw was so loud, a group of parakeets were disturbed from the trees nearest the compound, and whizzed off towards the Anchorage like green arrows.

Such roaring seemed to me like absolute insanity, and finished as abruptly as it had begun. Whereupon Smirke fixed on the captain more intently than ever, and said in his horrible soaked voice, ‘You will die like that brat you sent ahead, you coward. That scout or whatever you might call him. Fancy you, playing chuck-farthing with the last breath in his body. Fancy you sending him for pork.’

By this he meant Natty, and although I knew it might challenge the captain’s authority, I could not stop myself in what followed. I rose up from my position beside the gateway of the stockade, and shouted at Smirke: ‘What have you done?’

This was greeted by a moment of stillness, in which the captain turned to look at me, and at the same time slipped the pistol from his belt. He evidently believed my question would disturb the balance he had made, and lead more quickly to violence on one side or the other.

‘What have I
done
?’ Smirke replied, with a languid swivel of his hips. ‘What are my doings to you, you pup? Have you lost something precious?’ There was something uncanny in his phrasing, which made me think he had seen through Natty’s disguise. His next words, dreadful as they were, reassured me that he did not know what he had implied.

‘Your shipmate,’ he said, ‘won’t be sailing with you again. He’s walking about underground now, safe from the sea and the storms.’

When Smirke spoke these words, which squeezed my heart as definitely as if he had pushed his hand into my chest, the pirates gathered round him more tightly, muttering and fidgeting. This seemed to confirm what he said – although the precise meaning was obscure to me. I took it to be the worst, in any event, and would have begun my grieving instantly had everything else allowed it. But as Smirke finished his little speech, and folded his arms across his chest, which made him look delighted with his own wickedness, his henchman Stone at last stepped forward. There was a listlessness about Stone that showed he cared nothing for anything or anyone – yet at the same time made him seem implacable in the pursuit of his own aims. He had decided that he was weary of Smirke’s methods, and wanted a more direct route to the end of things.

This made me crouch down again, and peer as before round the edge of the gate-post as before; I felt I was seeing a dead man who could feel no more pain, but only inflict it on others.

The captain was still determined to drag out the encounter for as long as possible. ‘You are mistaken,’ he said, ignoring Stone and
speaking only to Smirke. ‘I have given you the chance to recognise the evil you have done here, and to submit to justice. If you will not, I have no choice except to take you prisoner – you and all your fellows.’

This provoked another great roar of laughter. ‘Do you hear that, boys?’ Smirke said, when he was capable of speech again. ‘The captain is going to take prisoner all us fo’c’sle hands. We can clear a storm, but we’re only good enough for the gallows. What do you think of that, eh, lads?’

As he expected would happen, the muttering behind him now rose into baying and yelps. I knew it would be impossible for him to restrain his men much longer, and turned for a moment to look behind me, hoping to see a sign of our deliverance. It was a most melancholy disappointment. The trees along the bay were shivering in the grey light, as if they felt the same fear as we did ourselves. Also the foliage on the White Rock, which lay half a mile off and completely encircled by water; its plume of ferns was trembling with a peculiar vigour, and beyond it the waves lay empty as far as the horizon.