But was it real? Was Flint really there? How could this blasted savage know where Flint was? Silver hopped to the rail, and aimed his glass where Dreamer had pointed. But he couldn't see anything. He was looking straight into a bank of mist and heat-haze on the surface of the sea. No doubt they could see more from the tops. He turned to Dreamer again.
"Is it Flint? What's the swab doing?"
But Dreamer had no more words, nor even strength to stand. They laid him gently down while everyone looked to John Silver.
"Flint!" said Silver, and looked past the masts and sails and out over the bow into the fog. Then he grabbed Cut-Feather's arm and shook him, for Cut-Feather — war sachem of the
Patanq nation — was groaning in fright. "What's Flint doing?" said Silver.
"Sun-Face goes to the fleet," said Cut-Feather. "We thought we had left him on land. But he has a boat! He goes to our women, taking his demons!" He looked at Dreamer. "Our father saw this! He foretold the demons! He said Flint would take demons to kill our women and children."
"What bloody demons?"
"Small demons. Demons with tails."
"And horns and cloven hoofs? Pah!"
"John!" Selena was pulling at his arm. "Listen! I know something — it might be important. He said a terrible thing to me. And we argued and he hit me."
"Flint?"
"Yes! He spoke to me on the beach. He said he wouldn't share the goods, except with me…" She saw the jealousy on Long John's face. "Don't blame me, John! That's what he said! He said he'd not share it with anyone but me. He said he'd kill the rest: the seamen and the Indians, and their women and children too. And I was to hide on the island till it was done, so I'd be safe. When I asked him how he'd do it, he laughed and he said 'with smallpox'."
And there it was. Silver jumped the gap. He understood. He thought of Sarney Sawyer and his men, and the old Jesuit and his men… and Ratty Richards's face, staring up dead and disfigured in the moonlight.
Silver was sickened.
"It's the monkeys!" he said. "There's some left. Flint's got 'em!"
"Monkeys?" said Cowdray. "What've monkeys to do with smallpox?" Silver told him. Cowdray gaped.
"I knew he was not a good man, but — "
"What'll it do to them?" said Selena. "The Indians?"
"Smallpox?" said Cowdray. "It is most dreadful for them. They have no resistance and few survive." He shook his head.
"But that would be ordinary smallpox — this is worse! If it kills nine in ten white men…" he paused, pushed beyond knowledge. "If Indians catch it, perhaps none may survive." He turned to Van Oosterhout. "How many are embarked in the Patanq fleet?"
"About twelve hundred," said Van Oosterhout. "Mostly women and children, and a few old ones. Them and about two hundred seamen." He looked at Cut-Feather. "Are they all of your women? Are there no more?"
"They are all," said Cut-Feather. "They are everything. If they die, the nation dies."
Lieutenant Clark gasped. He clenched his fists. He ground his teeth. The tears sprang from his eyes at the shame of it. He'd shot so fast across Walrus's bow that he'd failed to rake her with his broadside and he'd run on beyond her. So he'd attempted to resume pursuit by tacking through the wind, but bodged the manoeuvre such that Bounder fell all aback with her mainsail thundering against the mast, her blocks rattling and her people not daring to look him in the eye while the speeding schooner forged onward with her sails bulging and those damned bloody pirates openly laughing at the navy and making lewd signs with their fingers over the stern.
Clark looked at his men. A great guilt was on his head. He knew that it was his fault; had an admiral been looking on, his career would be at an end now, and his name would live on as a figure of fun and contempt: the man who let Flint get away by pitiful, lubberly no-seamanship.
But then fortune smiled. One of his rivals was in an even worse state.
"Cap'n! Cap'n!" cried one of his mids. "Look — the flagship's on fire!"
"What?"
Clark leapt to the rail, clapped a glass to his eye…
"Bugger!" there was smoke pouring off the tangled wreckage of Leaper's deck, where her ruined mainsail hung in rags. No flame yet. Could be anything — a smouldering wad from the enemy's guns, a firelock discharged by accident… It was all too easy for a ship that had been battered and left rolling like a barrel to catch light. And then… and then… Ah! thought Clark, and the sun came out in glory as he realised who was now in command, what with Lieutenant blasted Heffer's ship being disabled.
"Make to the squadron!" he cried. "Jumper to assist Leaper!"
"Aye-aye, sir!" said the signals midshipman.
"And the rest of you, get this ship under way and after them!"
He stabbed a finger towards Walrus, and wondered how much she had aboard in treasure, and how much might now be his, given the complexities of shifting precedence.
After that, things slid smooth as silk. Bounder's crew excelled themselves in the speed with which they made good their previous mistakes. She was got before the wind, and once under way began to demonstrate just what a rake- masted, copper-bottomed vessel was capable of in the way of speed, to the extent that her young captain and his young crew were soon united in the thrill of the chase, the hopes of prize money, and yelling out to one another that they really were overhauling the pirate schooner, which unaccountably was slowing and lowering a boat as it crept into the mist bank ahead under close-reefed topsails. Soon, it would soon be in gun range, and Clark was contemplating bringing one of his maindeck guns into the fo'c'sle, just to show what he could do, when…
CRRRRUNCH!
Bounder ran full on to a sandbank going twelve knots. The lookouts hadn't being paying attention. They'd not seen the swirling waters. Or perhaps they just weren't visible.
Bounder had reached the archipelago. She'd reached it, found it, and sat on it. There was no possibility of her going anywhere else that day.
Flint was in the bow, paying careful attention to his chart and his compass… and the job was getting done. They were running the passage, hidden from view, and it was Flint's happy impression that any pursuit would be a slow one, because there was less water in the passage now than when he'd led through Walrus, Sweet Anne, and Hercules.
Ah! he thought. Poor Danny Bentham. Where is he now — him and Mr Bulldog O'Byrne?
Then the mist cleared ahead.
Huh! thought Flint. The climate was strange here, unique. It was like a door opening. And so he got his first sight of the Patanq fleet.
"Ah-hah!" he said, and snapped his fingers in delight, and his four hands grinned as they saw their captain so happy, for they knew how much their own happiness depended on his.
Flint looked at the thicket of masts and yards and the angular geometry of rigging lines… and he sighed with relief. For he saw at once that a certain problem was solved, one that had been causing him some concern.
"Chk-chk-chk!" he said to the monkeys. There were four of them.
"Chk-chk-chk!" they said, and looked at him with their intelligent eyes.