It wasn't easy passing through rocks and shoals, but eventually it was done, and they cleared the shallows… and there was the island! Not just a smudge on the horizon, but a clear profile of land, trees and hills. Van Oosterhout looked at it. He knew that he could find it again. He knew Flint could. But… the fingers-and-thumbs persons who steered the ships of the Patanq fleet couldn't. Not without detailed sailing instructions.
So, he wondered, could there be advantage in this? Presumably Flint would dig up the treasure and share it out. But what if he didn't? What if something went wrong? Van Oosterhout didn't know, but it was fascinating to speculate, and the wheels turned and turned in his mind. Meanwhile, there was work to be done. Flint would have anchored in the northern inlet. Van Oosterhout steered towards it, keen to discover how things had gone for Flint and the Patanq warriors.
Chapter 31
Flint was happy. Everything was going well. He'd shaken off Bentham, O'Byrne and the rest. Even they left him alone when he dropped his breeches and squatted behind a tree. And as soon as they'd gone, he'd darted off to spend some time alone, to develop some ideas in his mind. But first he had to make sure his courtiers were really gone…
Ah, there they were! He peered between the leaves and saw the backs of his ever-present followers as they wandered back to camp to find their lord and master — himself — whom they loved so dearly because only he knew where the treasure lay. Flint smiled and corrected himself, because in fact he knew the several different places where various parts of it lay, accompanied in some cases by members of that happy band who'd been so delighted to come ashore with their commodore to do the hard work of burying. Flint thought of their innocent faces: so coarse, so open, and so ridiculously expectant. He laughed when he thought what he'd done with them.
Then he strolled along the beach towards the wreck of Elizabeth, keeping close under the shadow of the trees so he shouldn't be seen.
Every day now, the savages pressed him to raise some of the treasure. Enough to pay them. Every day he pointed out that the last fort had not fallen. Ridiculously, that was accepted by Dreamer as excuse enough. And so it went on, with Flint content. He hadn't yet quite worked out how he would raise the goods and ship them aboard Walrus, and sail off leaving the island — and all those on it — but he had several good ideas, including a most ingenious plan for a frontal assault on the fort, which would trim a few dozen more off the total of Patanq warriors, of whom there were more than he needed and more than enough to be dangerous.
That's why he had to be alone. So he could think. And he liked to come to the remains of the old Elizabeth for the memory of days past… which brought back thoughts of Silver. It was always Silver, before anything: Silver, Silver, Silver! The only man he feared. The only man he'd ever admired. The man who'd taken Selena, the island — even the damned parrot. Flint half raised a hand to his shoulder to stroke the bird that wasn't there.
"Bah!"
And then he smiled. He smiled with the enormous relief that all Silver's preparations had been in vain. All that planning and calculating and back-breaking labour — all of it futile! A few forts, that was all it amounted to, of which all but one had fallen. Was that really the best Silver could do? Perhaps he'd-
"Sun Face!"
Flint jumped as if scalded. He'd not heard. He'd not seen. Damn! Damn! Damn! It was always the same.
Dreamer, Cut-Feather and some others had come out of nowhere, from some path in the woods. And they had a prisoner
"Well, bless my living soul!" said Flint, for trembling wretchedly between two of the tall warriors, his arms bound tight with leather thongs, was a man he knew.
"Good day to you, Ben Gunn!" said Flint.
"Cap'n! Cap'n!" cried Ben Gunn, desperate in terror. "God bless you, sir, for a Christian gentlemen, and don't let these heathen take me!" He shuddered and shivered and looked around. "I knows Indians, Cap'n. I been in the Americas years ago, and I seen what they done to their prisoners!" Ben Gunn fell to his knees, with the tears rolling down his cheeks. "Don't let poor Ben Gunn come to that, Cap'n! Not him! Not you, Cap'n…" On and on he went.
Well, thought Flint, here's Ben Gun, got hold of the wrong end of the stick! Unlike other Indians, the Patanq did not torture their prisoners. They killed and scalped them, certainly. But they didn't play with them. No need to tell Ben Gunn that, though, Flint decided.
"Shut him up!" said Flint. Dreamer nodded and one of the Patanq clouted Ben Gunn's head a heavy smack.
"Ugh!" said Ben Gunn, knocked half senseless.
"We found him in the forest," said Dreamer. "He has spied on us for many days. He treads softly and moves fast, but we caught him at last." Dreamer looked at Ben Gunn. "He is clever in the forest, but his mind is broken." He turned back to Flint. "And now he begs your protection, Sun-Face. He says he is your man."
"Mine?" said Flint, stepping forward and poking Ben Gunn with the toe of his shiny boot. "Are you mine, Ben Gunn?" He smiled his smile. "I thought you went over to Silver."
"No! No! Not I!" said Ben Gunn, and out poured a tumbling torrent of words, which were the adventures of Ben Gunn as told by Ben Gunn. He was particularly eloquent on the subject of monkeys. Flint listened, and a possibility twinkled elusively at the back of his mind. But first he must get a firm hold on the very slippery Ben Gunn.
"You're no use to me, Mr Gunn," he said. "I shall give you to the Patanq."
Ben Gunn howled in terror. It was a hideous death for him: death by slow torture.
"Or perhaps not," said Flint, once he was sure Ben Gunn had taken sufficient fright. "Dreamer — he is my man. He is under my protection. Release him."
Ben Gunn grovelled and slobbered and kissed Flint's boots when they cut him free, and followed Flint when he walked off towards the ruined ship, and the Patanq disappeared into the forest.
Flint found a quiet corner where the trees sheltered them from view but they could see the moss-grown timbers, and there were some rocks to sit on.
And there Flint had a very long and most fascinating conversation with Ben Gunn and pumped him dry of every scrap of information held within his miserable memory. And in that dark and tangled place — among the disconnected jumble of facts, fears and misapprehensions — Joe Flint found some gemstones.
Or at least they were gemstones to Flint. They were rubies, sapphires and diamonds, and this because Joe Flint perceived certain unique opportunities. He then concentrated his mind on devising a means to exploit them. The result was a plan that decent men would have despised and rejected. But Flint was proud of it. He was proud, and amazed that Ben Gunn — damaged, wretched creature that he was — should be the source of so much power.
So Flint turned to practicalities, and began to give Ben Gunn his orders, and to make arrangements… arrangements which, to his annoyance, were interrupted by the arrival of that peerless navigator, that esteemed friend of Selena, that confidant of Cowdray, that practitioner of the Batavian art of silat: Cornelius damned Van Oosterhout. For the Dutchman had chosen that moment to land his longboat right opposite the northern inlet camp, and having disembarked he began strutting up and down, and sending men to find Captain Flint so that he might proclaim the safe delivery of the women and children of the Patanq nation.