"Aye-aye, sir!"
And it was done; the first chest was swaying aboard, and Flint was pouring out smooth explanation of all the good things that had passed ashore, and York not quite ready to invite him aboard, still wondering where Cap'n Van was.
Meanwhile, the Patanq women were in no doubt at all. They were all around York, squealing and laughing, and their children too, for they liked the look of Captain Flint. They liked his fine face and his bright eyes. And they loved the little brown creature he pulled out of a cage in the boat, and cuddled like a baby. The women shouted and called out delight. They summoned kinfolk, and Lord Stanley swayed as more women and children came over the side from the ships moored alongside until the ship was rolling with them, hundreds of them, and hundreds more pressing forward from the other ships until it was one enormous crowd of Patanq women and children, dense-packed, shoulder to shoulder.
After all, that's why York had lashed the ships together. It made it that much easier to share stores, and for the women to go from ship to ship, in their eternal visiting and talking. For they didn't like going aboard boats at sea, not one little bit! In the absence of a proper harbour, and being on the open sea, it was next best thing.
"Ayorka.'" said the women. They couldn't say York, but they tried because they liked him. "Look! Look!"
"Hmm," thought York, and rubbed his black stubble and looked at them as they danced around him, and pointed at the monkeys. They liked him and he liked them. They were such pretty little things, and had smiled so friendly that he'd not been able to resist, and now there wasn't only "Sally" — which was the closest he could get to her real name — but also "Molly" and "Jenny", her sisters.
"Little people!" they screeched. "Like beaver, like baby!" Obviously they'd never seen monkeys before, and were bewitched by them. York grinned and looked at the monkey in Flint's arms. It was a jolly little fellow and no mistake.
"Monkeys, sir!" said Flint, seeing his expression. "Found them on the island. Delightful and quite tame. Will you not take this one aboard? Just lower a line and he'll cling to it and you can haul him up."
"Yes!" cried the women. "Ayorka, bring him up!"
"Hmmm," said York. "Not so sure about that…"
"Go on, Ayorka!" said Sally and her sisters, coming alongside of him, and they wound themselves round him and tickled him, and all the other women laughed, knowing what was going on between them, and York laughed too.
"Get off!" he said. "Bring a line," he said to one of his men. "Let the monkey up!" Flint might be a bloody-handed pirate, but there was no harm in a monkey, now, was there?
The line dropped over the side. Flint reached out for it. He missed. He tried again, and York's first mate spoke.
"Cap'n! Boat pulling out of the passage, sir!"
"Where?"
"There, Cap'n."
York put his glass on the boat. There were four oarsmen, pulling like maniacs. There were two men in the bow, one an Indian. There were two men in hats and long coats — officers, obviously — in the sternsheets… and one of them looked like Mr Van… Indeed, it was Mr Van!
"What's this, Mr Flint?" said York.
"What?" said Flint, reaching again for the swinging line.
"That boat! That's Mr Van on board of her!"
"Ah!" said Flint, catching the line at last. "Good! I'm pleased to hear that!"
"Why?"
"Because…" said Flint, and pulled at the monkey's arms where they clung to his neck. But the monkey wouldn't budge. It cried out.
"Because of what?" said York. "What's a-going on, Mr Flint?"
"Just a moment," said Flint, and wrenched the monkey's arms free. The creature howled in pain and all the women cried out in pity. "Get on, damn you!" said Flint, and shoved the line into the monkey's hands.
Clank! Clank! Clank! The sound of the boat's oars could be heard.
"Flint!" said York. "What's going forward?"
"Nothing, dear sir."
Flint whacked the monkey. It shrieked. It jumped three feet up the rope and sat there hanging on, and chattering.
"Pull him up, dear sir!" said Flint, managing a lovely smile.
"Pull him up, Ayorka!" said the women.
Clank! Clank! Clank! The boat was two hundred yards off, the oarsmen hauling themselves off their benches with clenched teeth and muscles straining, and driving the boat onward at a tremendous rate of knots. York frowned. Something was wrong. Mr Van was waving. The Indian was lying in the bow.
"Flint," said York, "what's Cap'n Van doing in that boat?" "I'll tell you as soon as I'm aboard, sir." "Pull him up! Pull him up!" cried the women. The seaman with the line shrugged and hauled it in hand over hand. He couldn't see no harm in no monkey, neither. So up it came.
Chapter 45
"Yes!" said Flint as the monkey clung to the line and the line was hauled in. "Go on, my little fellow!" he said, even as his neck ached from looking up and the boat swayed under his feet, bumping against the massive hull of the collier.
Flint could hear muttering from the four men behind him, nervously fingering their muskets and eyeing the progress of Silver's boat, which was coming on fast. It was still two hundred yards off, though; already they were too late. His plan was secure. The Indian women — hordes of them — were hanging over the side, chattering and giggling. By some quirk of good fortune, they'd all been brought together in one great mass, instead of different ships, as he'd been expecting — for that would have posed a problem even Flint had no solution for, though he'd been wrestling with it for days now.
He watched the monkey on its way. Up, up, up it went.
"A present for you, my ladies," said Flint. And they laughed and he laughed, and they stretched out their hands, each trying to be the first to snatch the pretty little creature from off the rope. To snatch it and stroke it and comfort the poor thing from its dreadful fright, from hanging over the fearful wet sea.
Chk-chk-chk! said the monkey, which was, in all truth, terrified. And everyone was reaching out for it, with Sally leaning out the furthest and Captain York grinning and hanging on to her behind, and she stretching… and stretching…
"Yes…" said Flint.
And her fingertips were closing towards the fur…
"Go on!" said Flint.
Smack-crack! The ball arrived before the sound of the shot, thumping into the small, furry body, knocking it clean off the rope, and spattering blood all over Flint. But whether by pure blind chance or the grace of a beneficent God, no blood, no fur, no tissue, no nothing came aboard Lord Stanley, nor did any of it touch those aboard.
The dead monkey plummeted into the mighty ocean which, forever and uncomplaining, swallows the filth of the land.
The women screamed. York cursed. Flint stood speechless with the blood spatter unwiped from his face…
A hundred yards away, with oars backed and the boat stopped and steady, Dreamer was rising to his knees, his long- rifle in his hands, and the white smoke clearing from the bow. Then the boat was rocking as all aboard cheered and reached out to clap him on the back.
But Flint wasn't done. Never one to give up, he fought on, even if what he was now doing was driven purely by spite — for there was no chance now of his ever getting aboard Lord Stanley. Not with York bellowing at him, and Van Oosterhout, Dreamer and John Silver yelling too, and their boat under way again, and Flint's four men grabbing at him and demanding to be off, so that Flint had to flatten one of them to show the others… And when that was accomplished he got back to battering open the monkey-cage with the butt of his pistol, so that he might let out the other three, and throw, hurl, cast — whatever it took to get them aboard that ship and exact his revenge on the Patanq.