Skull and Bones. John Drake

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СКАЧАТЬ to take over. It didn’t matter. Not so long as he said sir.

      “Come!” said Flint. “We must go on deck.”

      The three climbed the ladder up to the maindeck, with its lines of broadside guns, which was open to the skies at the waist, apart from the ship’s boats lashed to the skidbeams that spanned the gap. So the air was fresher, but conditions were as bad as the lower deck, with a dozen or more dying men wallowing in their own filth. One was sitting with his back against the mainmast, moaning and cursing in the ghastly act of peeling the skin from his hands so that it came off whole, like a pair of gloves.

      Flint heaved at the sight: sudden, violent and helpless. He threw up over his shoes and shirt and coat-front, and staggered to one of the guns and sat on the fat barrel and glared at Billy Bones.

      “Water!” he said. “Get water!” Lennox stood dithering while Billy Bones dashed off, and Flint stared up and down the ship. All the precision and cleanliness of a man-o’-war was gone. The deck was in vile disorder, with tackles and gear left muddled and un-secured. And the awful stench of the lower deck rolled up from below. Flint blinked. He who was so fastidious was be-smeared with his own vomit. He was ashamed. Ashamed he’d disgraced himself and…possibly…just possibly…he was ashamed of what he’d done in bringing the smallpox aboard.

      But then Billy Bones was back, labouring with a full bucket of fresh water, and Flint was kneeling over it and ducking his head in it, and scrubbing himself clean.

      “Ohhhh!” said Flint and shuddered, and shivered and shook. But then he mastered himself. He buttoned up his coat. He made himself as tidy as he could. He put on his hat. “Quarterdeck!” he said. “Come on!” And briskly he led the way up a ladder to the larboard gangway, and then aft past the barricade, to the quarterdeck, the capstan, the binnacle and the ship’s wheel, where a group of men were huddled with gaunt, frightened faces. They were mostly lower-deck hands, barefoot and pigtailed.

      By sheer, ingrained habit of discipline, the appearance of Lennox in his officer’s coat and gorget had the hands saluting and standing to attention, each making an effort to hold up his head. They looked mainly to Lennox, but glanced at Flint and ignored Billy Bones completely.

      Careful now, thought Flint, for he needed these men. “Who’s officer of the watch?” he said to Lennox.

      “Me, sir!” said an elderly man with a long coat and a tricorne hat.

      “Who’s he?” said Flint to Lennox.

      “Baxter, sir. Ship’s carpenter, sir,” said Lennox.

      “The carpenter? Are there no navigating officers?”

      “All sick, sir. He’s the best we’ve got.”

      “What of the captain and the lieutenants?”

      “Bad sick, sir.”

      “Sick but alive?”

      “Yes, sir, thank God, sir.”

      “Hmm…then how many fit men do we have aboard?”

      “Don’t know, sir,” said Lennox, but Baxter stepped forward and saluted politely.

      “Us here, sir. Us, an’ them there,” he said, and pointed.

      Flint looked and saw a man in the foretop, and five hands standing by to trim the rigging if need be, although the ship was snugged right down under minimum possible sail: just close-reefed fore and main topsails.

      “What course are you steering?” said Flint, and so it went on. The more questions Flint asked, the more Lennox deferred to him, and the more the hands took note, and spoke direct to Flint, and he to them, and Lennox gratefully stood back. Thus – cautiously at first – Flint took over. He straightened his back, he clasped his hands behind him…and…after a break of some four years devoted to other pursuits…he resumed his career as a British naval officer: pretended to, at any rate.

      “So!” he said. “I have seen the disgraceful condition of this ship and am resolved to put it right in the name of King George, God-bless-him!”

      “God bless him,” murmured the hands miserably.

      “God bless him!” roared Flint. “And damn him as don’t!”

      “God bless him!” they cried, for Flint had them in his eye now, and so did Billy Bones, who instinctively stood beside Flint, with scowling brow and fists clenched in the old way that had never failed him…and Mr Lennox looked on, like a three-legged horse at a steeplechase.

      “I’m Flint,” said Flint. “You don’t know me yet, but soon you shall, and I’ll start by sending a team below with mops and buckets to clean away the filth. For I tell you two things: first, that you’re all safe from the pestilence, and second, that no man ever born shall suffer as any of you shall suffer who disobeys my orders!”

      Lennox gaped, for there wasn’t even a token resistance from the men. But he looked at Flint and Bones again and understood. They were the very incarnation of the officer caste that the lower deck was bred up to obey. Meanwhile, Flint was still speaking…

      “Mr Lennox himself shall lead you to your duties!” he said.

      “Aye-aye, sir!” they said.

      “Oh?” said Lennox, and “Aye-aye, sir!”

      Soon, the bucket brigade was below, while the carpenter and two hands kept the ship on course, enabling Flint to have a private word with Billy Bones, aft at the taffrail.

      “Where’s Ben Gunn, Mr Bones? You said he came aboard! He survived the smallpox as a child, so he should be among the living.”

      “Oh, him!” said Bones contemptuously.

      “What of him?”

      “Went over the side, Cap’n, when we was putting to sea.”

      “Did he now?”

      “Aye, Cap’n: the minute he heard you was aboard.”

      Flint laughed. “The old rogue! Did he drown?”

      “No, Cap’n! Last seen swimming for shore. Going strong.”

      “Pity. His was a mouth to be closed. Still –” Flint shrugged and turned to other matters “we have begun well, Mr Bones,” he said, “but the problem is hands!”

      “Hands to work her, sir?”

      “Aye, Mr Bones.” Flint looked at the ship with her towering masts and broad yards. She was the biggest vessel he’d been aboard for years, and a seaman’s delight. Over eight hundred tons burden, and mounting twenty-eight twelve-pounders, she was a superb modern frigate: lavishly equipped and even boasting copper plating on her hull – a recent innovation which gave greater speed than a normal hull and complete freedom from the ship-worm, that menace of tropical seas that burrowed into timber hulls and ruined them.

      “Oraclaesus,” said Flint, savouring the name. “She came to the island with two hundred and fifty-one men aboard, including a commodore, a captain, three СКАЧАТЬ