Skull and Bones. John Drake

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СКАЧАТЬ done, Selena – in her print gown and straw hat – attempted to clamber over two ships’ scraping, bumping rails that weren’t even hard alongside but divided by a gap of a yard or more that opened and closed like a crocodile’s jaws, with the white water frothing far below. Finally Mr Joe lifted her up and heaved her over bodily, into the arms of the men aboard Isabelle Bligh, who surged forward on sight of her, gaping and wondering, stretching their arms to catch her, and nervously glancing back at Long John, for every man aboard knew about their quarrels.

      Then her sea chest came after her with a bump and a thump, with her few goods and the money she’d saved, and the men stood back, touched their brows and doubled to their duties again with Israel Hands and Tom Allardyce yelling at them.

      Selena’s heart was beating, she had no idea what to do, she hadn’t even thought about how she might be received aboard this ship. Long John (who had his back to her) was deep in conversation with a hard-faced man in a calico suit. He didn’t see her, or hear, so she was left to look at the ship, which was well found, spanking new, and bursting with activity as Walrus’s men hoisted up a series of heavy chests from the waist and swung them back aboard their own ship.

      She looked forrard and saw the men, and some women, crammed into the fo’c’sle under guard. Instinctively she made her way down the ship towards them, Walrus’s men stepping aside to let her past, all of them giving the same uneasy glance towards Long John, who was still engrossed with the hard-faced man.

      “What’s this, ma’am? What’re you a-doing of?” said Israel Hands, looking up from the notebook where he’d been making a record of the cargo. He frowned and, as the others had done, glanced in Long John’s direction, then seemed about to speak, but up above a chest slid out of its lashings, and fell, and men jumped aside as it smashed open and showered silver dollars on the deck.

      “You slovenly buggers!” cried Hands. “You idle swabs! You…”

      Selena walked on, squeezing past the toiling seamen, stumbling now and again at the ship’s sickening, rolling motion, and made her way to the fo’c’sle and past the guards and blinked at the prisoners. There was a crowd of seamen, a few officers, and some landmen – presumably passengers – and two women. They stared at Selena, not knowing what to make of her, though the men looked her over as all men did at first sight.

      “Ah-hem!” said a little man: squat, short, and heavy, in a big hat and a long shiny-buttoned coat. He touched his hat and smiled, and was about to speak, when one of the two women pushed past him and threw out her arms to Selena.

      “My dear!” she cried. “My poor creature! I see that, like ourselves, you were made prisoner by these wicked pirates!”

      “Oh!” said the short man. “Ahhh!”

      “Ahhhh!” said the rest, nodding wisely to one another.

      “Yes!” said Selena, seizing upon this excellent explanation, which was so obvious that it was amazing she’d not thought of it herself.

      The woman advancing upon Selena was in her mid-fifties with twinkling eyes, a tiny nose and delicate bones in a neatlittle, sweet-little, dear-little face. She was expensively dressed, and had the speech and manners of a noblewoman, with artfully contrived gestures. She smiled radiantly at the world, and she simpered and flirted at men. She did it so well that it had never failed to control them, not once in forty years. Nonetheless, she was utter contrast to Selena, for while the lady – despite her years – was quite glitteringly pretty, she was not beautiful. She did not have that spiritual quality that Selena had, which takes the breath away and makes mortals stare, and stare, and worship. She was merely pretty, like a china fairy.

      “My dear!” said the lady, “I am Mrs Katherine Cooper: Mrs Cooper of Drury Lane.” She laughed, a sound like a tinkling bell, and added: “I have some reputation as a thespian.”

      “Aye!” said the rest, nodding among themselves, for Mrs Cooper’s reputation had been spread assiduously by Mrs Cooper, and they were very well aware of it.

      “Thespian?” said Selena, for this was not a word in everyday use aboard ship.

      “Actress, my dear,” said Mrs Cooper, embracing Selena. “But you must call me Katty, for it is my pet name among my friends.”

      “Ahhhh!” sighed the audience as Selena closed her eyes and rested her head on Katty Cooper’s shoulder, inexpressibly relieved to be amongst perfumed femininity and not rumsoaked, sweat-soaked, sailormen.

      But her moment of contentment was brief. Behind her she heard the distinctive thump, thump, thump…of John Silver’s timber leg advancing up the deck.

       Chapter 8

       Two bells of the middle watch

       27th March 1753

      Aboard Oraclaesus

       The Atlantic

      The storm was not a great one, but it nearly did for Oraclaesus. It came roaring out of the night, with streaks of black cloud chasing the moon and the white spray steaming off the wave-tops.

      Soaked from stem to stern, the big frigate heeled far over under the steady blow, the splendid curves of her hull enabling her to ride the glossy rollers, but she dipped at every downward plunge, and heaved up again with green water pouring from her head rails and figurehead.

      Oraclaesus was doing her utmost best, and was a credit to the men of Woolwich naval dockyard who built her. Nonetheless, she was riding out the storm only because of the seamanship and foresight of her new commander, Joe Flint. For Captain Baggot had long since been heaved over the side, sewn up in a hammock with a roundshot at his feet: him and all his sea-service officers, together with Mr Lemming, the surgeon, who never did recognise the disease that killed him. These great ones were gone, together with over a hundred of the ship’s lesser people, who received ever-more perfunctory funeral rites as Flint grew tired of reading the service and the surviving hands, exhausted and over-worked, despaired of the whole dreadful process.

      So the ship was surviving – and only just – because, with too few men to work her in a blow, and foul weather only to be expected in these latitudes at this time of year, Flint had long since sent down t’gallant masts and yards, taken in the fore and main courses, and set only close-reefed topsails and storm staysails: a task the hands could manage in easy weather. This left the ship with bare steerage way, but saved her when the storm struck, for otherwise she’d have lost her masts, rolled on her beam ends, and drowned every soul aboard of her.

      Now Flint and Billy Bones stood braced on the soaking, sloping planks, hanging on by the aid of the storm-lines rigged across the deck, and draped in the tarred blouses and breeches they’d taken from dead men’s stores. They huddled together to yell into each other’s ears against the howling wind and the dense salt spray that came up over the bow at every plunge of the ship, drenching as far back as the quarterdeck. But however hard they shouted, the wind blew away the sound such that no other could hear: not even ten feet away at the ship’s wheel where the helmsmen were fighting to hold the ship on course.

      “It’s no good,” said Flint.

      “It ain’t neither, Cap’n!” said Billy Bones.

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