Facing Captain Springer, divided into starboard and larboard watches, stood nearly two hundred lesser folk and foremast hands of the manifold varieties of their kind: topmen, coopers, waisters, cooks, afterguard, boys and so on. Springer ground his teeth at the muttering and scowling that came from them, and the insolence on their stupid faces.
"Avast there!" he bellowed. "Silence on the lower deck!"
They looked at him and waited, still defiant but listening to what he might have to say. When it came, it wasn't very much, and it wasn't very clever. Springer was no maker of speeches: he simply stamped and spouted and told them to do their duty and God help them as didn't! Since the men had already been flogged and punished beyond all reason, this was the last thing they wanted to hear. But Springer didn't know that, for Flint hadn't told him, and finally, the captain got round to the subject of leaving the island.
"Our new ship lies a-waiting and ready to bear away for Jamaica!" he cried, pointing to the Betsy. "She's well found and ship-shape and will bear fifty men…" At this there came a deep, animal growl from the belly of the crowd. "Silence!" yelled Springer, but all he got was a chorus from the play so lovingly crafted by Mr Flint, who nearly choked with laughter as his actors delivered their lines.
"What about the Dons?" cried one.
"What if they come back?" cried another.
"AYYYYYE!" the crowd roared.
"What?" yelled Springer. "What bloody Dons?"
"Them as was seen from Spy-glass Hill!"
"Them as was looking for a landing!"
"They'll murder every man jack of them as gets left behind!"
Now other voices joined in, genuinely frightened of a mass slaughter at the hands of the Spaniards. Frogs and Dutchmen was one thing; even the Portuguese; but they'd get no precious mercy out of the Dagoes!
"Mr Flint?" said Springer, looking down at his subordinate. "What the poxy damnation are the sods blathering about?"
"I cannot imagine, sir," said Flint with a sneer. "Why don't you ask the men?" In that instant, seeing the look in the other's eyes, Springer came as close as he ever did to understanding Flint and to guessing what was actually underway.
"You whoreson bastard!" he said, and he cast about, this way and that, wondering what to do next. He was the very picture of indecision, and to the angry mob in front of him, he looked exactly like a man who'd been found out.
"See!" cried Israel Hands. "The bugger knew it all along. He's leaving us to the bloody Dons!"
"No!" cried Springer. "No! No! No! The ship'll take a good fifty, maybe more, and I'll come back for…"
"And who's to say who goes and who stays?" cried George Merry, in wild terror. Swept on by the furious emotions around him, Merry — who in any case was not one of the brightest — was now so deep into the role given him by Flint, that he actually believed it.
"ARRRRRGH!" roared the crew.
"Sergeant Dawson!" screamed Springer, as the mob rolled forward. But Dawson was already giving his orders.
"Make ready!" he barked, and twenty-nine muskets snapped into the left hands of their bearers, enabling the right hands to cock the locks. A howl of fright went up at this show of deadly force.
"Bastards!" cried Israel Hands and, reaching the climax of his own part, he produced a hidden pistoclass="underline" a little one, small enough to hide under his few clothes. He took a breath. He ran forward, and while the marine's muskets were still pointing harmlessly upwards he let fly with his pistol.
"Ahhhh!" screeched a marine, and dropped his musket as the ball took him in the face and smashed his jaw. It was the first blood. The wretch continued to bawl and groan, but his mates straightened up, as they'd been taught, and faced their front.
"Present!" cried Dawson, and the muskets swept down to bear on the mob.
CRACK! Another shot came out of the mob: Black Dog this time, with the second of Flint's own pair of pocket pistols. The ball flew nowhere. The cries of the mob became general, and a hail of two-pounder, swivel-gun shot (distributed earlier by Billy Bones) was thrown by muscular arms to arch up, and drop viciously down on the redcoats. One marine went down stunned. More shot flew and the mob charged.
"Fire!" cried Springer.
"Fire!" yelled Dawson.
BA-BANG-BANG-BOOM! Twenty-seven muskets blazed together at such close range that powder-flash singed the hair of the maddened seamen at the front of the mob, while Captain Springer hauled out his own pistol and discharged it at Israel Hands, who was running at him with a drawn knife.
Instantly, fifteen men went down, struck by musket balls, and Springer fell backwards off the chest with the thumb and two fingers blown off his pistol hand, and one eye put out by flying fragments of the burst barrel. Being half-blinded, he did not notice that Israel Hands simply ignored him, leapt over his fallen body, and ran off after Flint, Billy Bones, Black Dog, George Merry and about fifty others.
While these favoured ones vanished into the jungle at the edge of the beach, a hideous, murderous fight took place: marines, mids and warrant officers against the remaining seamen. It was bayonets, dirks and swords, against knives and fists. It was entirely hand-to-hand, for the marines had no chance to reload. Consequently the struggle between former shipmates lasted only as long as it took for all parties to exhaust their strength and fall back sickened by what they had done, or rather what they had most cunningly, deliberately and skilfully been caused to do, by Lieutenant Joseph Flint.
The final tally was forty-five dead, including most of the marines, Sergeant Dawson, Captain Springer, most of the mids, nearly all the warrant officers and a large number of seamen. Many more were wounded, some grievously. But there was a still worse moral effect of what had been done. This was to place the greater part of those alive entirely beyond the law, and in all probability under delayed sentence of death at the hands of the service they had just betrayed.
The surviving marines were safe. The two surviving midshipmen were safe, as were all the rest who'd fought for their King and his laws. But the rest had shared in a mutiny, and an extremely bloody one at that. They had been a part of the ultimate crime, the crime which the Royal Navy would never, ever forgive — they had slain their captain. They now faced either permanent exile from their native land or being hunted down for a naval court martial, and the short, jerking journey up the yardarm with the aid of a running noose.
Thus the survivors broke naturally into two parties that limped and bled and drew away from one another as far as they could go. The smaller party, perhaps thirty strong, consisted of the mids, the marines and the purser, plus those seamen and petty officers who'd remained loyal. This party had two muskets, a few pistols and a pair of midshipman's dirks between them. The larger party, nearly two hundred strong, carried off the rest of the marines' firelocks and ammunition. Being the stronger, they took command of the camp and immediately broke open the spirit casks and proceeded to get roaring drunk.
In this condition, they were later visited by Captain Flint, as he was now known, at the head of the only body of men on the island who were sober, under discipline, and fully armed from the supply of weapons thoughtfully hidden in the woods at Flint's orders. Flint told his followers — Israel Hands, George Merry and the rest — that they were restoring order and conquering mutineers. This was abject nonsense, but it served, and a second slaughter followed, since Flint's real purpose was to eliminate from the surviving seamen as many as possible of those whom he felt unable to trust in the greater purpose which was to come.
When the sun set that night there were less than a hundred men left alive on the island. Flint stood in the dying light and eyed the wreckage and slaughter all around. He stroked his parrot and smiled.