"Never fear, John," said Flint. "I know what I'm doing, and I know where I'm going." He leaned forward confidentially. "You must let me show you how the thing is done. The calculations are simple enough. A child could do it — should he have the aptitude. And it is, of course, the thing of all things that marks out a gentleman from a lower-deck hand." He grinned and Silver frowned, beaten at his own game. "Why look," said Flint, "here's Mr Bones coming, who hasn't the brains of a bullock munching grass. But even he can plot a course."
"Bastard!" said Silver.
"Mr Bones," said Flint, "help Mr Silver below decks. At the double now!"
Silver took the hint. With Israel Hands and the rest of Long John's men busy about the ship, the last thing he wanted was Billy Bones's assistance in making his way down ladders into the darkness of the ship's interior. Without another word, Long John lunged forward, past the helmsman, past Flint, around and between the scurrying hands, and plunged down the nearest hatchway. He'd become agile again. The crutch was slung from a loop of line passed over his shoulder, and he could get along fast by hopping on his one leg. It was faster than walking until he lost balance. But even that was getting better, and the falls were less frequent.
The hatchway ladder was a fearful challenge though, and only the threat of Billy Bones's attentions made him take it at speed. With the crutch dangling, he fell forward and caught the coaming with his two hands, and tried to swing his leg down the ladder. Thump-scrape! His shoe-leather slipped off the rungs and he half fell, half slipped and entirely bumped his way the six feet down to the deck, cracking his head, bruising his knee, and nearly dislocating his shoulder as the crutch jammed into the deck, driving the shock of the impact straight into his armpit.
Rumble-Boom! The hatch ground home over his head, cutting out the light, and a steady hammering told him that the carpenter and his mates were nailing it down tight against the storm. Long John groaned and sat upright. He was battered and bruised, but at least he was alive. Billy Bones would have killed him, given the chance: pitched head-first down the hatchway, and then Billy-my-chicken's foot on his windpipe till he was nice and quiet. Billy would do it if he could. He'd do it for Flint and he'd do it for himself, for the time he'd felt the weight of Long John's fists.
Long John groaned and beat the deck in shame and frustration. There would have to be a reckoning with Billy Bones, for it wasn't just Bones himself that had to be considered. Where Billy-boy led, others were following, and the very men who'd cheered when Long John first came up on deck were now sniggering behind his back at Billy Bones's mockery of the one-legged cripple. So if there wasn't a reckoning soon, then Long John's own followers would fall behind Billy Bones, leaving Long John entirely at Flint's mercy.
Again and again, Long John cursed the loss of his leg, and he cursed Flint, whose fault it was through his greed and refusal to listen to a word of good advice. But even then, and even in the depths of his despair, Long John grudgingly gave credit — if credit were the word — to an unknown merchant skipper who'd fought like the captain of a ship of the line.
Chapter 27
With no lights burning below decks, and all hatchways secured, Long John was in total darkness in the narrow space below the quarterdeck hatch. He sat himself beside the ladder and felt around so his hands could tell him what was around him, since his eyes certainly could not. He found one of his pistols, fallen out of his belt, and stuck it back. He decided he'd better crawl than try to walk, for up above there was a howling of wind and the bellowing of Flint and Billy Bones as the storm struck and the ship began to plunge and buck.
The nearest light would be in Flint's cabin, so Long John pulled himself astern as the ship moaned and creaked and chattered to itself. The timbers of a wooden ship are always working to be free of one another, especially in a storm. The joints, lovingly mated and bolted by the shipwrights, will strain and groan. The great oaken knees will wrench against the deckhead and the hull, and the planks of the deck will do their best to gape open and spit out their caulking. To this increasingly loud accompaniment of ship's music, Long John crawled aft. He well knew that this was only the overture, or rather the tuning up of musicians' instruments before the real playing begins.
He found the stern cabin, and shoved open the hatch. Light flooded out: dim light, no more than stars and moon, but it was like sunshine after the blackness outside.
"Who's there?" cried a voice.
"Selena?" said Long John. He'd actually forgotten her. She had the run of Flint's cabin.
"Long John?" she said. "What are you doing here?"
"Sent below, ma'am, to keep a guard on the pork and beef, and the ship's rats!" He peered around the cabin. Flint's table and chairs were secured to the deck, and everything else was lashed down. There was no movement that Long John could see. "Where are you, girl?"
"Here," she said, "by the window." Silver looked harder and thought he saw her outline. But even the stars and the moon were going out now, and it was hard to see.
He dragged himself across the dark cabin, towards the row of lights at the stern: lozenge-shaped panes of crude glass, leaded into the wooden frames. Flint had had a padded seat built across the width of the cabin: about ten feet long and three deep. He slept on it sometimes. Now Selena was crouched on the seat, with her back against the side of the hull and her knees drawn up under her chin. Silver hauled himself up beside her, unshipped his crutch, laid it aside, and dusted himself off. Lightning flickered far away and a distant thunderclap sounded. As the storm grew louder, up on deck Billy Bones was bellowing himself hoarse. Selena jumped at the thunder, but she eyed Silver steadily.
"What are you doing here?" she asked again, and for want of anything better to say, Silver told the simple truth.
"Ain't no use for a one-legged man up topsides."
"Oh," she said, and looked away, then jumped as a fizzing bolt of lightning lit the sky, and another thunderclap rumbled, this time much closer. Selena shivered. She had never liked thunder, even ashore, let alone on the heaving ocean. A squall of rain thrashed down upon the ship and the wind began to blow in earnest. Every time Walrus's plunging gave a view of the waves outside, they seemed higher and blacker and angrier. A third thunderclap came simultaneously with the brilliant blue-white flash, and so hideously loud that even Long John twitched in fright, and Selena threw herself at him and clutched her arms tight around him, with eyes screwed shut.
"Aye, my lass," he said, "we're in for a blow, and no mistake." He stroked her hair and patted her back, and searched his memory for words of comfort and tenderness. But he'd lived a hard life and the ludicrous best he could do was borrowing from Joe Flint.
"There, my chicken," he said. And, straining his powers of imagination to the limit, "My chick, my little chicky…" And with these attempts at tenderness, there flowered within Long John Silver something that had been waiting to grow ever since that day in Charley Neal's storeroom.
Meanwhile the wind roared, the seas thundered, the ship's timbers shrieked and crackled and howled, and the entire narrow, dark world of Flint's cabin tossed and bounced like a pannier on a galloping horse. Selena was outright terrified. She clung to Silver like a child to a mother. But let no man or woman think the less of her for doing so; not unless they too have been on board a two hundred ton wooden ship in a tropical hurricane, and managed to bear themselves better than she did — and that the first time they've experienced it, besides.