"Thank you, sir," said Flint, as Springer — lost in sleep — snorted and gargled like a hog. "Bah!" said Flint. "Will you just look at the swab?" He plucked out the pistol from under Springer's hand and turned to Billy Bones. "Give me your chaw, Billy," he said.
"What?" said Bones, his brow furrowed in puzzlement.
"What, sir!" said Flint. "Just spit out your chaw, at the double now." Flint held out his hand.
"Me chaw?" said Bones, tested beyond comprehension. "Into your hand, sir?"
"Spit!" said Flint. "Now!"
"Aye-aye, sir!" said Bones. He'd seen the look in Flint's eye and dared not disobey. So he leaned forward and spat out a plastic gob of black-brown tobacco, sticky and slimy with saliva. It splattered into the palm of Flint's hand. Flint smiled without the least sign of disgust. He squeezed and moulded the tobacco to his liking, then he filled half the barrel of Springer's pistol with sand, and rammed the sticky plug of tobacco down on top of it as a wad. Finally he deftly replaced the pistol without waking Springer.
"There," he said quietly as he wiped his hands on Billy Bones's shirt. "Just in case he ever gets the courage, eh, Mr Bones?"
"Aye-aye, sir," said Billy Bones.
Then they walked out again into the fierce heat and the high, blazing sun.
"We'll set them building the blockhouse tomorrow, Billy- my-chicken," said Flint, "and you can let the word out among the people that Captain Springer is going to abandon them."
Billy Bones licked his lips. He blinked and trembled. He muttered and groaned. He summoned every grain of his courage… and he ventured to dispute the matter.
"Bugger of a risk, this mutiny, begging your pardon, Cap'n," said Bones, instinctively adding that last word — the supreme honorific of his vocabulary — in the hope that it might protect him. It was an arm raised in anticipation of a blow.
"Billy-boy, Billy-boy," said Flint in a peculiar soft voice, without ever giving Bones so much as a glance, reaching instead to pet the green bird that clamped its claws in his shoulder and chuckled and nuzzled his ear. "Don't ever question my orders again. Not so long as you wish to live. Do you hear me?"
Billy Bones was armed equally as well as Flint with pistols and cutlass. He was the bigger man, being taller and broader in the chest. He was a man in the prime of his strength and was used to keeping discipline over the scum of the lower deck. But he gulped and swallowed in terror, he bowed his head, he shook in fright. Then he took refuge in the seafaring man's universal safe response to the words of his betters.
"Aye-aye, sir!"
Chapter 7
As Long John laughed, he took care to keep an eye on the girl. He laughed till his belly ached at what she'd said. He laughed wildly over the thought that — of all the warped and twisted fiends that came in nightmares — Flint might be a gentleman. It was the solemn way she'd said it. It was the innocence of it, God love her, with her plump little arse and her big eyes and her bouncing tits. So even with the tears blinding his eyes, Long John kept a close watch on her, and on the room itself, Charley Neal's liquor store.
The door was the only way out. The walls were heavily built, with one high window covered by an iron grille to make sure that the liquor did not wander off during the night. Still laughing, Long John kicked the door shut behind him, and leaned himself against it to make entirely sure she'd not escape.
He took these unconscious precautions because Walrus had been months at sea and not a sight of anything female had Long John taken in all that time, and when coming ashore to Charley Neal's house Long John was as used to making up for lost time as any other seafaring man.
Finally, Long John drew forth a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. He took a deep breath, sighed happily and smiled at Selena, who all the while had kept an even closer watch on him than he had upon her. She was watching and waiting. She knew precisely what was in the man's mind, and she knew that all the other girls were at that very moment laid on their backs with drunken sailors snoring contentedly between their legs, breeches blown to the four winds and hairy buttocks displayed to the world. She knew too, that each girl would be clutching a fistful of gold, which (after Neal's percentage) they would keep for their own selves.
"Now then, my girl," said Silver, "what might your name be? For I've taken the most powerful fancy to you, and no mistake!"
The words were true in a constricted sort of way. Long John looked at Selena in the dim light of the hot storeroom and he liked what he saw. The cheap cotton gown was her sole garment and it was thin. It covered her nakedness for decency's sake, but all the pleasures beneath jutted and curved most appealingly.
"My name is Selena," she said. "And I'm no whore." She had made her decision and set down the rules. All she had to do now was enforce them.
"Indeed you ain't," said Long John. He smiled and produced a large gold coin. He held it up and turned it so it gleamed and shone.
"It's no use," she said.
"Oh?" said Silver, and looked at her afresh. "Aye," he said thoughtfully, and nodded. "You ain't like some o' them dog- faced drabs neither, nor ain't you neither. You're quality, my girl. That you are!" He produced another coin. She sneered. He produced a third. There was now more money on offer than Selena could earn in years by any other means.
"I told you, John Silver, it's no use. I've never been a whore, and I'm never going to be one."
"Oh?" he said, with a sneer of his own. "Don't tell me there's been a virgin found in Savannah, for there ain't never been one yet!"
She blinked, considering her own precise status in that regard, following attentions pressed upon her by a certain Mr Fitzroy Delacroix, who had once been her owner. Long John grinned, mistaking the signs.
"Well, there you are then, my little bird," he said. "What was good for them, is good for me. And I ain't no Jew nor Scotchman when it comes to paying the reckoning." He flourished his three gold pieces. He set them on a nearby barrel. He thought the matter settled. "This'll do nicely," he said, looking round the room. "Private like, and quiet as a church."
He threw off his hat and pulled his shirt over his head. He was a fine-muscled man: strong in the arms, flat in the belly, with a dominating physical presence. Selena crushed the impulse to run because there was nowhere to go. Instead, she stood her ground.
"I said, I am not a whore!" she cried, with all the force in her body, but she was seized by two powerful hands and hoist up off her feet, her eyes level with his.
"Well then, madam," said Long John, glancing at the gold pieces, "just what is the price, then?" He grinned. "And don't I get a little something for what I already laid down?"
He tried to kiss her lips, but she turned her face away. He ran his tongue all over and around the silky black column of her throat. She stayed rigidly still. He gave up. He set her down. He was puzzled and annoyed.
"Beach and burn me, girl!" said Silver. "Just how much d'you expect? You're a rare fine shaped 'un, I'll grant you that, but this ain't Paris nor London, and you ain't King George's mistress!"
"I told you. I'm not a whore!"
"Oh yes you are!"
"Oh no I'm not!"
"No?"
"No!"
"You bitch!"
"You bastard!"
"Whore!"
"I AM NOT A WHORE!"
In his anger and balked desire, Silver swung back his hand. But when it came to it, he couldn't bring himself to strike the small, helpless figure. So he sighed and growled and cursed. And then, eventually, and very late in the day, it occurred to him that it just might be a good idea to pay some attention to what she'd been saying.