"Sod the cap'n! I told you thems was screams we heard yesterday."
"It wasn't!"
"It was. When we was a-raising the spar… It was Fraser!"
"Wasn't!"
"It was! It was that bugger Flint, a-doing for him!"
"Was it?"
"Who else could it sodding be? It wasn't any of us, was it?"
"P'raps it was them… creatures…"
"Horse-shit! D'you know what Fraser said to me?"
"No?"
"He said them noises was Flint playing games in the dark."
Both men fell silent again. They were thinking over all that they'd heard about Flint — none of which was very nice. They were doing this with rudderless, fog-bound minds, while weak and wounded, and laid out helpless in the open, and in agony… and with darkness approaching when daytime certainties about the non-existence of creatures would not be so certain any more.
"Franky?" said Cameron.
"What?"
"What was we s'posed to be guarding up here?"
"Dunno. Flint said guard the hill. That's all."
"What if he comes back?"
"Oh, bugger me! What if he wants the goods for himself?"
"Oh, shag me ragged!"
"Come on, shipmate, up anchor! He'll do for the pair of us if we don't."
Thus Cameron and Skillit began their descent of Spy-glass Hill. They scraped and dragged and crawled. They set their teeth against the pain. They helped one another like jolly companions, each encouraging his shipmate when the other seemed likely to fail. They even did what they could for their wounds: Skillit hauling the knife out of Cameron's back, and Cameron using it to cut one leg off Skillit's slops to make a bandage for the bullet hole.
Sadly, the removal of the knife only made Cameron's wound bleed all the faster, and Skillit's bandage was promptly dragged off by his slithering over the ground.
Nonetheless, since it was downhill all the way and along a goat track, they made steady progress, covering nearly a hundred yards, until finally, just before it got properly dark, they heard — faintly in the distance — a cheerful voice singing, and the steady beat of a man's footsteps coming up the track towards them.
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest!
"Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
It was amazing how this put life into Cameron and Skillit. There was no more lizard-like dragging themselves over the ground. Not for them! Somehow — heroically — they struggled up on to their legs. Then, leaning heavily on one another, and clutching their wounds, they stepped out at double their previous pace, even though it was now uphill all the way.
They got a remarkably long way before the cheerful singer caught them.
Chapter 44
Flint was puzzled. The parrot wouldn't come back. It fluttered in the darkness like an owl, except that owls didn't cackle and groan.
Flint was used to the parrot flying off on certain occasions. He was far too sharp not to have noticed that. He'd put it down to the little peculiarities that all creatures have, parrots as well as men. But this was different. Usually the bird would settle in the rigging, or here on the island it would find the branch of a tree. He peered into the warm, smooth darkness and looked up at the enormous pines. Crickets chirped, the surf rolled, the stars glittered… and there came the bird again… a screeching fury like those in the Greek legends.
"Ah!" said Flint, as a claw scratched his face, dangerously close to his eyes, almost as if the bird were attacking him, almost as if it disapproved.
It came back again and again. It came out of the dark, howling and squawking. And all he'd been doing was settling Skillit and Cameron. Just a bit of fun, tickling them up with an inch of the cutlass point to make them run: just a jab here, and a stab there. And then a bit of sobbing and pleading from the pair of them, and one of them calling for his mother — Flint couldn't remember which — while the other fell to screaming and raving and damning Flint's eyes. And then Cameron managed to pop off all by himself, while Flint laughingly explained to Skillit that he'd taken such a liking to that gentleman's ears that they must come off for keepsakes before their owner was sent upon his way.
That was the source of the problem. Once Skillit and Cameron were quiet, the parrot had come back to Flint's shoulder. It was then that he'd attempted — in all innocence and meaning no harm — to feed it one of the ears. And that, unaccountably, seemed to have turned the bird's mind.
Screeching manically, it came again, and this time caught Flint an outright blow on the brow. It was attacking and no mistake. Flint was unnerved. He could have drawn steel and cut the bird out of the air. He could have used his pistols. But the bird was his companion and he wanted it back. He didn't want it dead.
Another strike, and that was it. Flint ran. He held his hands over his head and sped down the goat track to the forest with its undergrowth and intertwined branches where the bird could take no advantage of him.
And there he found darkness: utter, smothering darkness. So dark that nothing could be seen and nothing could be done. Not even the stars shone here. Not here in the foetid, stinking mould of rotting plants and wriggling insects: centipedes, millipedes, slugs and spiders, every one far bigger than a decent man would have wished, and proceeding in company with whatever else there might be that slithered through the night-time jungle. It was neither a cosy nor an inviting place. For once, Joe Flint had found a billet as slimy as the entrails of his own mind.
But billet it was. Flint was here for the night. He couldn't go forward through the invisible jungle, and he couldn't go back — not in the dark with an airborne demon trying to take his eyes out. So, with utmost reluctance, Flint sat down, his back to a tree, put his cutlass and pistols across his lap, and resigned himself to sleep. He told himself that he was bound to be safe, for the island had no leopards or panthers — not so far as he knew — and he had no fear of snakes, not in the daytime at least.
Just as he was falling asleep, he heard a fluttering high up above his head. He recognised this as the parrot, settling in for the night. His last thought was that at least he had a friend nearby.
Chapter 45
Parson Smith kept his mind off rape for nearly a day and a half.
He managed this because he had become a very considerable seaman and officer — at least in his own eyes. For one thing, after his triumph over Silver, the hands were treating him with a reasonable approximation of respect, rather than merely stifling their contempt through fear of Flint. For another, he truly enjoyed the pleasures of mathematics, and was full of self-satisfaction with his constant polishing of his calculations of latitude and longitude.
So, Mr Smith strutted around thinking himself a man of action and a gentleman of fortune, and he fantasised that, on his return to civilisation, with the enormous wealth that would be his — why — he might well continue in some honest and profitable seafaring venture, a venture such as would make him the master and owner of a huge East Indiaman: a man recognised as a prince of commerce, a nabob and a millionaire!
It was by that very route that he fell — inevitably — into sin. For the East Indies conjured up visions of sybaritic pleasures and harems full of perfumed women… and so, in the end, he couldn't keep his grubby little mind off the succulent flesh locked in Flint's cabin, where that bastard Cowdray — who was probably after her for himself — was taking her food so she need never come out.