Skull and Bones. John Drake
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Название: Skull and Bones
Автор: John Drake
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007366149
isbn:
“Cap’n, you’re a fine seaman, as all hands agree, and –”
“Oh, shut up, Billy! D’you know – I do believe this one would survive!”
“– and you know as how I’d follow you wherever you lead –”
“Bring the lantern. See! The skin’s not peeling off any more.”
Billy Bones brought the light and he and Flint looked down on Dr Stanley. The chaplain didn’t look the same without his clerical wig, but it was him all right, and he was definitely not dying.
“Cap’n!” said Billy Bones. “I akses you…not to.”
Flint frowned. “Not to what, Mr Bones?”
“Not to do it, Cap’n.”
“Shut up, Billy! Just you hold his arms.”
“Don’t, Cap’n. Please.”
Flint turned to look at Billy Bones as he stood with the lantern raised and his dark, ugly face gleaming in the amber light. Bones was shaking with fear, but he looked his master in the eye and begged:
“Don’t do it, Cap’n. Let’s be better men than that!”
“What’s wrong with you?” said Flint. “Brace up!”
Billy Bones shook his head. “No, Cap’n. I ain’t gonna do it.”
And there, alone in the heaving, groaning dark of the lower deck, Billy Bones faced the Devil coming out of Hell as Flint turned the full force of his personality upon him: the maniac personality, hidden by a handsome face, which was Flint’s fearful strength. It was his strength even above the fact that he moved so swift and deadly in a fight that he was terrifying in a merely physical sense. But it wasn’t that which frightened men who looked into Flint’s eyes. It was something else, something uncanny and deep, and which now burst forth in its fury: scourging and burning…and shrivelling Billy Bones’s honest little attempt at humanity into futile, smoking ashes.
Billy Bones could never recall what it was that Flint said to him – for it was all done with words, and never a finger raised – but those few minutes in Dr Stanley’s cabin became the evil dread of nightmares that woke Billy Bones, sweat-soaked and howling, from his sleep for the rest of his life.
After that – having been disciplined – he was made to hold Stanley’s arms while Flint smothered the good doctor with his own pillow for the crime of being too clever by half. Next, Flint found the cabin where Lieutenant Hastings lay: just eighteen years old and already dying. Billy Bones was made to hold his arms too. Billy wept as he did it, but could not resist.
“And now only Mr Povey is left…” said Flint, and smiled.
Early morning, 23rd March 1753
Upper Barbados
The Caribbean
The four forts that guarded Williamstown bay mounted between them nigh-on fifty twenty-four-pounder guns, and they were excellently placed, high above the sea, with a clear field of fire into the channel whereby ships entered the bay.
They were capable of resisting anything less than a major battlefleet, and even one of those couldn’t be sure of forcing an entry: not with one pair of forts at the mouth of the bay, where it narrowed to less than a quarter of a mile’s width, and the second pair placed to sweep the approaches just north of Williamstown’s harbour. Thus, the last time the attempt had been made – British intruders vs Spanish defenders – the fleet was driven off trailing blood and wreckage, and the town was taken only by landing five thousand redcoats at Porta Colomba, ten miles to the south east, and marching them overland with a siege train.
“Huh!” said Israel Hands, as Walrus came through the jaws of the bay, right under the guns of the outermost forts. “Wouldn’t believe this was safe haven for the likes of us!”
Long John frowned, irritably.
“And why not?” he said. “Ain’t we flying British colours like them?” He pointed up at the forts. “And haven’t we just saluted King George with all our guns?”
“Aye,” said Israel Hands. And forcing a grin, he waved a hand at the smoke still hanging about the ship. “But you know what I mean, Cap’n. It’s all down to Sir Wyndham, God bless him!”
Sir Wyndham Godfrey, governor of Upper Barbados, was a figure of fun among sailormen. He’d been a scourge of piracy until the bribes grew too great to refuse, and now he closed his eyes and opened his hand, such that men chuckled at the thought of him, and Israel Hands was hoping to cheer up Long John by the mention of his name. But Silver merely sniffed and turned away, stroking the parrot and staring at nothing.
Hands sighed. He’d been like that, had Long John, ever since Selena went off aboard Venture’s Fortune to make her fortune in London. It weren’t right for a seaman to take it so hard when he lost his doxy. There was always more of them. You soon forgot. Especially when you dropped anchor in a new port.
“Bah!” he said, and stopped fretting over John Silver, and looked instead at all the busy activity aboard Walrus: anchors were off the bows and hung by ring-stoppers at the catheads, bent to the cables flaked out on deck ready for letting go. The ship was scrubbed clean from bow to stern and under easy sail as she came up the dredged channel.
All hands, with the exception of Long John, were delighted at the prospect of going ashore. This was especially true of the two redundant navigators, who stood grinning at approaching freedom. But the shore party would not include the McLonarch, who was locked up below, or Mr Norton, who had been allowed above decks to check the course to Upper Barbados, only to be locked up again as soon as it was sighted. He was now the most miserable creature aboard.
Putting his glass to his eye, Israel Hands focused on the town, less than a mile away, with its whitewashed buildings – tiers and layers of them, rising up the flanks of the bayside mountain still known by its Spanish name of Sangre de Cristo – blood of Christ – for the rosy colour it took in the sunset, as did the white houses themselves. He shifted the glass to the excellent dockyards, which included dry docks capable of receiving anything up to a ship of the line.
And he looked at the offshore anchorage, which was full of every imaginable kind of vessel, with countless masts and yards, and busy boats pulling to and fro. There was one ship ahead of Walrus in the channel, coming into the wind to anchor, while yet another was astern of her, coming through the jaws of the bay.
It was a wonderful sight. After so many weeks at sea, alone on the empty ocean, it made any man cheerful to see such life. Overhead the gulls СКАЧАТЬ