"John! John! Get aboard!" cried Israel Hands. "Swing the boat, lads!"
They nearly did it. They threw Selena aboard. They heaved the boat round, all hands together. They pointed the prow at safety. They seized oars and pulled for their lives. A man can't run in water over his thighs, and he certainly can't fight another man in a boat. That's all it would take. A few strokes, good strokes, and they'd be free. Silver, meanwhile, was hauling his pistols and aiming and shooting at the savages: Click. Click. Soaked priming! Nothing! So he and Selena — the only ones not rowing — commenced picking up every firelock in the boat, and pulling them out of men's belts, and blazing back at the dense, on-rushing hordes and dropping two, but not stopping the rest. Then they were battering pistol-butts into the heads and arms of the brown devils that came plunging and whooping forward, and the boat rocking from the impact, and slippery wet bodies climbing aboard, and cutlasses and knives out, and the men dropping the useless oars and fighting for their lives, and roaring and yelling and crying. It went on, and on, and on…
And then it stopped. It stopped when Silver and his men grew tired. For the Patanq weren't fighting. They were defending and hanging on. They were taking wounds, and some even dying, but they weren't striking back. Silver was held down by three of them. Every man in the boat, and Selena too, was held helpless by overwhelming weight of numbers. A great mass of humanity filled and pressed down on the launch and gasped and panted and sweated and slowly got back its breath.
Utter despair filled Silver. It was over. All over.
Chapter 40
"Where is One-Leg?" cried a voice.
"Here!" cried the three men hanging on to Long John.
They spoke in their own language, so Silver didn't understand. He only knew that he was wrenched up and out of the wallowing launch — which was nearly sunk with the weight of bodies aboard — and thrown face down into the water to gasp and splutter, and attempt to struggle upright, and which is so difficult a thing for a one-legged man to do that he'd have drowned if hands hadn't seized him and pulled him upright and dragged him to the shore, hopping and scraping his one foot and trying to keep up, and still coughing up so much salt water that he hadn't the strength to fight.
"John Silver!" said a voice in English. Silver wiped his streaming eyes, and swayed to keep upright, as the same voice said, "Find his staff. Give it to him!" And Silver steadied as his familiar crutch was shoved under his arm. When his eyes cleared, he saw a small, red-brown man with a stone-hard, cruel, face: tattooed, painted, and bald with a single topknot of hair that was stuck with a feather. Though he looked ill and shrivelled, he seemed totally in command. The other savages pressed round, half-naked, fiercely armed, and glaring at Silver, while two more hung on to his arms. But they kept a respectful distance from the little man, and treated him with profound respect.
"I'm Silver," said Long John, "I'm him!"
"I see that," said the Indian, as anyone would have. Silver was by far the biggest man present. "And I am Dreamer."
"Well then, Mr Dreamer," said Silver, "I knows what you're a-gonna do to me and the rest. But there's a woman among them there — " he jabbed his thumb at the boat "- and she ain't nothing to us." He shrugged his shoulders. "Why! She ain't even one of us. So just you leave her alone, d'you hear? Don't… don't…" Silver faltered. He stumbled over his words. He fell silent and looked at the ground. And when he looked up again and spoke… it wasn't very clever, and it wasn't very good, but it was all he could think of: "So don't you kill her. Don't waste such a fine woman. Take her for yourself!"
Dreamer looked at Silver, impassive and unreadable. To Silver, he was the embodiment of pitiless cruelty.
"I cannot take the woman," said Dreamer.
"And why not?"
"Because she is yours."
"What? No she ain't."
"Bring the woman!" said Dreamer, and Selena was pulled out of the boat and put beside Long John. He wanted to put an arm around her. His arm moved but he forced it down. That wouldn't fit the tale he was telling.
Dreamer looked at the two of them.
"You — woman! Selena, the black one who Sun-Face Flint desires." Selena looked at Long John. "Speak your mind!" said Dreamer.
"She ain't mine, she's Flint's!" cried Silver, desperately trying anything to keep Selena safe. He looked at Dreamer. "Flint's a friend to you, ain't he? She's Flint's!"
"No, I'm not," she said. "Dreamer knows that."
Dreamer nodded.
"But Flint wants you," he said. "Him and many others. And so does he — " Dreamer looked at Long John.
"I told you," said Long John, "she ain't nothing to me!"
"So," Dreamer looked at Selena, "are you John Silver's woman? Would you be his wife?"
Selena looked at Long John. She considered the question Dreamer had just asked, and — as with her feelings on finding Silver again — her response was swift and true.
"Yes!" she said, and threw her arms around his neck, and pulled down his head and kissed him.
"Ah!" said Dreamer. He nodded. He stepped forward. He took Selena's left hand and placed it in Silver's right. "Then it is done," he said, and smiled. "Marriage is made by the woman's consent. So be together and be true!" The smile vanished. He looked up at Silver. "There is much to do, One-Leg. I need you and your men!"
Lieutenant Gordon Heffer, aged twenty-three years, was intoxicated with his triumph over his enemies: Lieutenant Simon Clark, aged twenty-two, in command of Bounder, and Lieutenant Arnold Comstock, aged twenty, in command of Jumper, both being junior to himself and now under his orders.
To be precise, they were his rivals not his enemies, but Heffer couldn't help seeing them as that, for they — like himself — were junior, and inexperienced, officers in temporary command of their ships, while the true lords and masters were ashore with the commodore, digging up gold and diamonds, chasing pirates up trees and shoving bayonets up their arses. That meant that Heffer was actually in command of an actual squadron with orders to cruise the coast in search of any pirates that might be lurking thereabouts, and to inflict the most fearful possible violence upon them. Thus could Lieutenant Heffer expect to cover himself in glory and secure the promotion he craved — unless that glorious ambition was scuppered by one of his peers letting down the squadron with slackness or incompetence — or, worse, achieving some stroke of spectacular efficiency that would put Lieutenant Heffer's own efforts into the shade!
God forbid! thought Heffer.
"Make to the squadron!" he bawled to the signal midshipman.
"Aye-aye, sir!" cried the mid, and Heffer's chest swelled magnificently.
"Keep proper station!"
The flags were bent to the halliard. Willing hands heaved. Whizz-whirr, went the blocks. And up went the totally unnecessary signal, to stream totally unnecessarily in the wind. Bounder and Jumper were already in excellent formation, in line abeam of the flagship, extended such that Leaper — sailing just offshore — got the best sight of anything anchored there, while Bounder and Jumper kept watch on whatever might be in the offing, with Bounder the furthest out.