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By day, Flint bore these burdens manfully: there was much to do in driving the ship hard, watching constantly for another prize on the horizon–not to mention avoiding the ships of the various navies that infested these waters. These activities kept Flint merry all day, and Walrus’s people enjoyed a pleasant voyage to Savannah. But by night Flint groaned for the loss of the freedom he’d enjoyed on his island. At night, in his dreams, that part of the human mind which is animal, primeval and beyond conscious control, punished Joe Flint with memories of the most dreadful time in his entire life. The time when he had enjoyed no freedom at all, only bitter constraint…His childhood.
Chapter 8 (#u290d5c57-2e90-510e-9dca-388a83445eee)
8 a.m., 15th November 1732 The Chapel, Salvation House St Pancras Court, Opposite the Smallpox Hospital London
Twelve-year-old Joseph Flint stood trembling as his father got up from his prayers. The Reverend Mordecai Flint rose like a great, black snake, turning to face the wife and son who had so inexcusably interrupted his devotions. Although no speck of dust was suffered to exist within the chapel, he brushed his knees with a clean white handkerchief, which was then painstakingly folded before being returned to his pocket. When this was done he positioned himself, back to the altar, looming over them in his pious black coat, ominously stroking the clerical bands at his neck.
The reverend was a man of tremendous intellect; dominant, charismatic and vastly learned in Holy Scripture. Years of profound study and introspection had resulted in an unshakeable conviction that he was damned for uncleanliness of spirit, and he had therefore made it his life’s work to save those less wicked than himself–in particular, those he loved–in the hope they might yet be shriven by repentance. It was his tragedy–and still more that of those around him–that not a drop of love did they see, only an ocean of chastisement and castigation. Thus Joseph Flint flinched as his father stared at him, and clutched at his mother’s hand for comfort.
“Wretches!” said the reverend. “‘Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.’” He cocked his head expectantly…
“Daniel, five: twenty-seven,” said Joseph and his mother in unison. The reverend nodded and turned his eyes on his wife.
“So,” he said, “you come again to me, even into God’s house, with the matter that I have declared closed. I see it in your eyes! ‘All is vanity and vexation of spirit!’”
“Ecclesiastes, one: fourteen,” said Joseph’s mother. Then: “Mr Flint!” she cried, that being the constant manner of her address to him, for he was not ordained but self-appointed, and well he knew it. She took a step forward, shaking off Joseph’s hand. “Mr Flint,” she said, and the colour drained from her face and her eyes began to blink. She screamed in his face, her body shaking with rage, “You took our Joseph to the Turk!” She seized Joseph’s shoulder and thrust him forward. “See!” she cried. “Our boy stands before you even now, with the poison in his arm!”
Joseph sobbed as the awful weight of their emotions fell upon him. He clutched his bandaged arm and bowed his head, and believed that he was to blame.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m so sorry.”
But his guilt was nothing compared with his father’s. The reverend groaned as pain wrenched the depths of his belly. For he’d broken faith, even if in a noble cause. And worse than that…far, far worse…he’d been found out!
“Ah!” said Joseph’s mother, seeing his reaction. “You hypocrite! You swore on the Bible! You said that you would not do it…and you did!”
And so the parents screeched, and as the child looked on the hideous quarrel grew until words became blows and finally…Joseph Flint watched as his mother drew the hidden knife. He stood, eyes wide, as she fell upon his father and cut his throat. He looked on as she sat upon the reverend’s prostrate body and plunged the knife again and again into his face, paying back thirty years of mental cruelty with thirty seconds of demented revenge.
Chapter 9 (#u290d5c57-2e90-510e-9dca-388a83445eee)
One bell of the afternoon watch 2nd October 1752 Aboard Hercules off Cape Castillo, Niña de Cuba
Since Captain Bentham liked music, the ship’s band of musicians was scraping and blowing fiercely even as the bosun’s pipes saluted the coming-aboard of Captain Parry of Sweet Anne, and Captain Nichols of Favourite: these gentlemen, and their first mates, being summoned aboard the flagship for a council of war. The noise was terrific, and powder smoke swirled as the guns of the three ships added their voices to the din.
All was good fellowship and satisfaction, what with Captain Bentham having led his squadron safe and sound from Upper Barbados, making landfall exactly as he’d boasted and with fair winds and a swift passage besides.
Of the greasy mob that filled Hercules’s maindeck, only Brendan O’Byrne was frowning. He frowned because he hadn’t the guile to hide his feelings, and he was scrutinising the new arrivals as they clambered over the rail, in their best clothes and their best hats, and into the arms of Cap’n Bentham and his crew, to be welcomed as jolly companions.
Ugh! thought O’Byrne There it was: the look. He’d seen it on three faces. Not Cap’n Parry’s, God bless him! Not him, for he knew Danny Bentham of old. But his first mate didn’t, and Cap’n Nichols didn’t, and nor his first mate neither. So they were staring at Cap’n Bentham in the way men did who met him for the first time.
So it was a puzzled, questioning look and one that tormented O’Byrne. Worse still, it filleted the backbone out of him, so instead of being fired with manly anger he was cast down and enfeebled.
The fact was that O’Byrne couldn’t bear any insult to Cap’n Danny. Not when his feelings for the captain were so intense, and their precise nature–stemming as they did from his own nature–were a mystery even to himself. For while O’Byrne didn’t normally care for women, any feelings towards men were ruthlessly denied…such that Cap’n Danny was a unique door through which desires might emerge that otherwise must be contained.
With a heavy sigh and a shrug, O’Byrne told himself that it was all part of the privilege of sailing under Cap’n Danny–like never mentioning the captain’s latest wife once Williamstown was under the horizon.
Fortunately, Cap’n Danny himself was immune to such concerns. He was what he was, and he was used to it, though he swaggered a bit at first meetings, and took care to deepen his voice.
“Rum!” cried Bentham now. “And lay out the chart!” The crew cheered, and with much good humour kegs of spirits were brought up from below decks. A big empty cask was then up-ended by the landward quarterdeck rail to serve as a table, and as the shipmasters and their leading men gathered around it, all hands pressed forward, as befitted their status as equals under the articles they’d signed.
“So,” said Bentham, one finger on the chart and one pointing towards land, three miles to the north. “That there’s Isabel Bay, into which the River Ferdinand runs. The bay’s a thousand yards wide at the mouth, between Cape Castille and Cape Aragon, with a great anchorage within, and Isabel Island sits between the two capes, like a sausage in a dog’s jaws.”
“So where’s the fort?” said Captain Parry.
“And the dollars!” said Captain Nichols.
“See here–” said Bentham, studying the chart “–to the east of Isabel Island is sandbanks and shoals. The safe channel lies to the west, between the island and Cape Aragon, past the fort, which is down here at the southernmost tip of the island.”
Nichols took off his hat and fanned himself against the heat.
“If we take the channel,” he said, “we’ll be under fire from the fort all the way in. An’ it’ll be eighteen-pounders at least, and maybe twenty-fours.”
“It’s twenty-four-pounders,” said Bentham, “but we’ll go in at sunset with the light in the gunners’ eyes, and them having to split their fire between three ships, and ourselves firing back to hide us with smoke.”
“Hmm…” they said.
“And,” said Bentham, “the fort’s got emplacements for thirty guns, but there’s only a dozen pieces within the walls.”
“Aye,” said Parry, nodding, “that’s often the way of it. No bugger’ll pay for the full set! Not King George, King Louis, nor the King o’ the Dagoes.”
“A dozen twenty-four-pounders?” said Nichols. “That’s still enough to sink the three of us, even with the sun in their eyes.”
“Not if they’re spread round the fort, so as to cover an attack from any side,” said Bentham. “There’s only five guns facing the channel, and the guns aren’t exercised more than once in three months!”
“How d’you know that?” said Nichols.
“Same way as I know that an’ more,” said Bentham. “The fort’s a slaving station–blacks is offloaded there from the middle passage, and paid for from a chest of dollars in the fort’s strong room–an’ there’s never less than twenty thousand dollars in the chest!”
“Ahhh!” they said.
“But how’d you know?” said Nichols.
“Ask him–” Bentham winked confidentially at O’Byrne “–he’s the boy for secrets!”
O’Byrne stepped forward, cheered by the merry recollection he was about to share.
“We know,” he said, “’cos we took a Dago slaver in June. And when we’d done pluckin’ ’em, we hung the crew by the ankles and I beat their bollocks with a belaying pin until they told us all they knew.”
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” cried Danny Bentham, holding his crotch with both hands and staggering bandy-legged as if in agony. That drew a great laugh, for men followed where Bentham led. He had that gift. He cut a fine figure–and was respected for being big and dangerous; especially dangerous, for Bentham could turn nasty over a wrong word or a sour look, and then God help any man within reach of his long arm and his Spanish sword.
So they laughed, Nichols, Parry and the rest, and they nudged one another and were impressed. And when Danny Bentham explained his plan for taking the fort, they cheered from the bottom of their hearts. Across the water, Sweet Anne’s, and Favourite’s people cheered along with them, for they caught the merry mood even if they didn’t know what was afoot.
As the sun set, Sweet Anne and Favourite formed line astern on Hercules, and the three came up the Ferdinand River with the flaming sun to larboard and the guns of the fort booming and thudding ineffectually on their starboard beams. Just as Bentham had predicted, they came through unscathed, and in the great anchorage to the north of Isabel Island they found five slavers that duly lowered their colours, and cringed in fright, and begged only to be left alone.
At dawn the three ships, now double-anchored, hoisted out their longboats. Loaded with armed men, they pulled for the northern end of Isabel Island, each with a ship’s captain at the helm: Bentham leading, followed by Parry, followed by Nichols.
“Give a song, you men!” cried Bentham, leading off with the first line:
“Farewell an’ adieu to you fair Spanish ladies…”
“Farewell an’ adieu for ’Tis parted we’ll be!” they sang.
“For we have our orders to sail home to Eng-er-land…”
“And t’will be a sad time till we shall see thee!”
And thus, with a great deal of noise, and much waving of blades and firing off of pistols, the three boats crossed the anchorage to their chosen destination, which was thickly wooded and the only part of their journey that was not under plain sight from the fort at the other end of the island.
In due course, the three longboats emerged from the cover of the trees, and only the oarsmen and helmsmen could be seen as the boats returned to their squadron, passing out of view behind the flagship. Then came more roaring and carousing and the boats emerged, dense-packed again, pulling strongly for the shore. As before, they returned with just oarsmen and helmsmen to take on yet another load of armed men. And so it continued, to and fro.
These activities were studied with interest by a group of gentlemen peering through telescopes on the northern ramparts of the fort. They wore the cocked hats of sea-service officers, and their blue coats and red vests marked them out as men of the Real Armada Española: the Spanish Royal Navy.
Their commander, Capitan de Navio Frederico Alberto Zorita, turned from his telescope to smile at his subordinates.
“And so they spoil a good plan!” he said.
Chapter 10 (#u290d5c57-2e90-510e-9dca-388a83445eee)
Dawn, 2nd October 1752 The southern anchorage The island
“All hands mustered and ready for to march, Mr Gunner!”
“Very good, Mr Joe,” said Israel Hands, and did his best to look over the men as Long John would have done.
There were a dozen of them, paraded on the beach, with muskets, water canteens, and big hats constructed of sliced and plaited palm-leaves for protection against the sun. They stood grinning and yarning, some of them chewing tobacco, but they were cheerful and ready, and Israel walked up and down the line, making sure that each one had a good pair of shoes, and water in his canteen rather than rum, and that no lubber had primed his firelock without orders.
“You! And you!” cried Israel Hands, picking two of the nimblest. “You’re the advance guard, which shall march ahead as lookouts.” Then he picked the two biggest: “You two shall follow on behind, a-walloping and a-belting of them as won’t keep up!” The men laughed.
“And the rest shall proceed in line astern of myself and Mr Joe, and shall attend to my signals–” He put a bosun’s call to his lips and blew a single sharp note. “Well?” he said.
“Forward!” they cried.
“And this?” he said, blowing a sharp double-note.
“’Vast heaving!” cried some.
“Belay!” cried others.
“Stop!” said Israel Hands. “That’n means stop!”
“Stop!” they said, nodding.
“And this?” A long trembling call.
“Enemy in sight!” they roared.
There were a few more simple signals: easily understood, and a credit to Israel Hands’s capacity to innovate, since never before had he led men through a forest.
“Stand by!” cried Israel Hands.
“Huzzah!” cried the men.
“Forward!” cried Israel Hands.
In single file, they set off up the beach towards the palms, leaving the tented encampment almost empty. “Camp Silver” they were calling it now. A few men were still working on the wreck of Lion, while most of the others had already left–on Long John’s orders–on expeditions led by Black Dog and Sarney Sawyer.
There was also a small guard of ten men left to defend the camp with a quartet of four-pounders charged with canister and mounted in their carriages on firing platforms of ships timbers, the better to load and train in case of attack. These men were also responsible for Long John’s parrot, who’d never go willingly into a boat–even with him–and awaited its master’s return here, with its own perch and a supply of food and drink, and a bit of shade rigged over it.
The bird squawked at Israel Hands as he scrunched past, ankle deep in sand, bobbing its head in greeting.
“Ahoy there!” it cried, and Israel Hands grinned, knowing himself favoured, and he plodded on.
He smiled again as he looked at Mr Joe marching ahead, a heavy Jamaican cane-cutlass in his belt, ready to clear a path if need be. The lad was a slim, wiry black who’d grown up with such a quick temper that he failed to see the joke when an overseer, finding Joe bent over to cut cane, had merrily cracked his arse with a whip. Thus Joe replied with a cutlass slash that removed a diagonal quarter of the overseer’s head, plus all hope of promotion for Joe in his career as a plantation slave, obliging him to seek advancement elsewhere.
Israel Hands grinned at the thought. Joe was quick and intelligent, and under Hands’s instruction he was speedily learning his letters and his numbers, to the point that he was now rated gunner’s mate, and addressed as Mr Joe by all hands, even Long John himself.
Joe had his little faults, of course. He could not stand to be teased, and he was dreadfully afraid of the dark, since as a child he’d been told by his mother that, if he didn’t behave, at midnight the Jumba-Jumba man would come in his big black hat and fetch Joe away in a sack. Even at nineteen years of age, Joe was still looking out for him, but Israel Hands thought no worse of the lad for that, since all sailormen believed such things: Mr Hands himself–when alone–would never look over the side at night for fear of seeing Davy Jones, the hideous fiend that lay in wait for the souls of drowned men.
A day’s marching, with stops for meals and the heat of noon, had taken Israel Hands’s team clear of the palms and sweltering jungle that lined the island’s southern shores. Steering by a small brass compass, they had moved steadily north into a terrain of sandy hills interspersed with small, open clearings surrounded by broadleaf trees: mainly live-oaks, but with an increasing number of pines, and all with dense foliage at their bases. With night falling, they set about making camp–and made their first discovery.
“Look, Mr Hands,” said Joe. “You see them stumps there?”
“Aye, lad,” said Israel Hands. The spot they’d chosen was a clearing that the forest was slowly reclaiming. About a dozen big trees, all pines, had been felled many years ago, leaving stumps which were now so heavily overgrown with moss and fungus, and so surrounded by undergrowth and young trees, that it was hard to spot them. But they were there if you looked; proof that men had been this way before.
“Looks like this island ain’t so secret as some would believe!” said Israel Hands.
“Aye, Mr Hands,” said Joe, peering into the darkness between the standing trees. “Now we get back with the others, eh? And we make the fire?”
“Aye,” said Israel Hands, smiling, for the others were only a few steps away.
That night Joe had the horrors and no mistake. He woke constantly. He heard noises in the night. He got up and paced about, and repeatedly told the sentries to keep a sharp lookout.
“Yes, Mr Joe! No, Mr Joe!” they said, levelling their muskets at nothing, just to keep him quiet.
They all thought him a bloody fool, until early next morning when the expedition made its second discovery. As the sun came up, those on guard duty saw a figure peering at them from behind a tree: looking, but afraid to come forward.
“There he is, Mr Hands!” said one of the sentries. “It’s a white man, not a savage. Miserable-looking sod, though.” He cocked his musket. “Shall I take a pop?”
“No!” said Israel Hands, as the camp stirred and men gathered around him. “I think I know who that is!” He stepped forward and called out:
“Ahoy there! Come alongside! We’re all friends here. Friends and jolly companions.”
There was a stir of surprise as the bedraggled figure left the cover of his tree, and–with utmost nervousness–crept forward, hunched over in humble supplication, with fearful eyes staring out of a simple, pleasant face. He was bareheaded, bare-chested and barefoot, deeply sunburnt with a sprouting beard and hair like broken straw. All that he had in the world was a pair of breeches, an old belt, and a sailor’s knife in a sheath. But the thing that drew gasps of surprise was the creature holding his hand like a child and scampering along beside him: a large and most beautiful monkey.
The ape was handsomely marked, with thick fur–mostly dark brown, apart from its creamy breast, arms and face–and a shock of black, upstanding hair on top of its head. It had the most appealing and intelligent face and came forward entirely without fear.
When the man thought he was close enough, he stopped, and began to speak in a self-pitying whine.
“I’m Benn Gunn, I am,” he said, shaking off the monkey and clapping his hands together as if in prayer. “Poor Benn Gunn, what’s lived alone for weeks with not a bite of Christian food, nor what’s not spoke to a Christian soul.”
