Pieces Of Eight Read online

  When he chose to be, Flint was irresistibly charming and now he worked his magic, with verse after verse of his favourite, hideous song, each more grim than the last, but always seeming funny when Flint sang it; he passed from man to man, pulling noses, clapping shoulders, poking ribs, and all the while dancing to the beat of his own song. Even Selena and Cowdray laughed, who both should have known better. As for the crew, they worshipped and adored their captain in that happy moment.

  But Cowdray was right. There was worse to come.

  "Now, shipmates!" cried Flint when the song was done, and he beamed at the close-packed ring of red faces, leering as the tropical sun went down. "Now, my jolly boys…" And Flint changed the entire mood with a solemn expression and hands raised to heaven. "Lads, let us remember those of our brothers foully slain in today's action. Those slain against all the laws of war, when we had offered honourable surrender!"

  "Aye!" they roared.

  "What's he saying?" said Selena to Cowdray. "That's nonsense."

  "I think you might wish to go below, my dear," said Cowdray.

  "Why?"

  Cowdray looked away. "Experto credite!" he said. "Trust one who knows."

  Selena paused. She looked at Cowdray. He was a scholar who loved Latin, and had the habit of spouting it when swayed by strong emotion, be it happiness, fear… or shame.

  "What do you mean?" she said.

  "Just go below."

  "I see you recognise the villainy we endured today!" cried Flint. "And since we still have, under hatches, three of the guilty ones…" A deep and animal growl drowned out his words. "Silence between decks!" cried Flint, and instantly they obeyed.

  "Since we have three of them, I have made preparations in the name of justice." He grinned wickedly. "Justice - and your amusement. So, clear the decks, and hold your patience!" He nodded to Allardyce and Morton, who had their orders and immediately stepped up to the lee rail.

  There was an intense buzz of conversation among the hands as Allardyce and Morton took a two-fathom plank (fresh from Christiaan Hugens) and shoved it over the lee rail so that half its length stuck out over the side, while the rest remained inboard, nailed firmly to the top of a heavy barrel. When this was done, they went below and brought up one of the prisoners. Barefoot, wearing only a pair of calico slops and with his hands tied behind him, the man was already shaking with fright, and he flinched pitifully as Walrus's crew bayed like the mob at the Roman games. Finally, Allardyce and Morton heaved him bodily up on to the plank, where he stood swaying and shaking and gazing about in terror.

  "What is this?" whispered Selena to Cowdray.

  "I don't know. This is new." He turned to face her. "But I am going below now, and I think you should too."

  "No…"

  "Selena, please follow me."

  "Can't we stop him?"

  "Flint? Never! But I beg you, on my knees, not to see this."

  Selena, horrified and fascinated, remained where she was.

  Cowdray sighed and shook his head. "On your own head be it!" he said, and vanished down the quarterdeck hatchway.

  "Brothers!" cried Flint. "Those who know me will recall some of my merry games - Flint's games!"

  "Aye!" they roared, nodding at one another in glee. There was one that they knew all too well, played atop an overturned tub with a belaying pin, where all the player had to do was move faster than Flint to avoid getting his fingers broken. They laughed and laughed, even those whose fingertips had been smashed. Indeed, some now displayed their scars with pride, and laughed louder than all the rest.

  "But this is a new game," said Flint, lowering his voice like a conspirator. "And this the first time it's been tried. So watch me, shipmates. Watch and learn!"

  With that, Flint picked up a boarding pike and began to sing his song again:

  "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest…" He cocked an ear to the audience.

  "Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" they cried, and burst into laughter as - on the word rum - Flint pricked the victim's side with the sharp point of the pike.

  "Aaah!" cried the man.

  "Drink and the devil had done for the rest…"

  "Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

  Flint jabbed again, sharp on cue, and blood flowed. Selena, sobbing, finally took Cowdray's advice and ran below.

  "Aaah!" cried the victim.

  And so it went on. Since the plank led out over the side, even the dullest spectator knew how the game must end, and any fool could simply have driven someone off its end with prods of a pike. But Flint was an artist. He worked to music and to rhythm, constantly leading his man to the end of the plank, then allowing him to stagger to safety, only to drive him back again or push him to one side, then to the other, with a dozen wounds oozing blood and the poor devil deranged with horror and begging in his own language for mercy.

  The special horror of it was any man's innate fear of falling, especially from a wobbling plank run out over the ocean, so the victim collaborated in the entertainment, even torturing himself by fighting to keep his footing, leaning against the sharp point that was driving him into the sea in a desperate attempt to resist the final plunge, hands-bound, into the hungry waters below. And Flint's evil genius - his unique gift - was to make this funny.

  Finally, when Flint judged the time was ripe, he paused proceedings for conversation with the victim.

  "My dear fellow," he said, "King Richard of England was ransomed with one hundred thousand marks. What will your nation pay for you?"

  This brought howls of laughter from the crew, and desperate pleas - understood by nobody - from the victim.

  "What will you give me then for your life?" said Flint, snarling and vicious now, rousing the blood lust of his crew. "Nothing?" said Flint. "Then take this…" Slowly and deliberately he pushed the steel pike-head into the man's flesh, forcing him agonisingly backward, resisting all the way and spattering blood and sweat, shaking his head and grinding his teeth.

  "Goodbye!" said Flint, and pushed him off the edge with a final thrust.

  The crew shrieked in delight and Walrus rolled heavily as they rushed to the side to see him drown.

  The game wasn't over yet, though. It was time for the second Dutch prisoner to be brought up, the man in the grey coat who'd led the fight by Christiaan Hugens's people. He was fit and muscular with sandy hair, a beard and moustache, and high, slanted cheekbones that made him look more Slav than Hollander. He struggled cunningly as he was dragged forward, being particularly nasty in the way he kicked: cracking sharply into shins and stamping a heel sideways into one man's kneecap such that he limped ever after. But finally he was heaved up on the plank and menaced by blades so he couldn't jump off.

  The game proceeded as before; the crew, deeper in drink by this time, were bellowing Flint's song, while their captain danced and spun and switched hands on the pike-staff, all the while jabbing and jabbing and jabbing. As before, it ended with the prisoner, dripping blood, at the end of the plank with the pike's tip in his guts and Flint demanding a ransom. The only difference was that this man spoke English. He spoke it well enough to curse Flint - which Flint played upon with cruel skill to make the game even more entertaining. His men were near paralysed with laughter and begging for him to stop.

  "King Richard of England was ransomed with one hundred thousand marks…" said Flint.

  "You go fuck your mother!" cried the man.

  "Sadly she is deceased so I cannot," said Flint. "But what will your nation pay to ransom you?"

  "Damn you to hell!"

  "Where else? But how much?"

  "Bastard!"

  "Perhaps," said Flint. "But how much?"

  Finally, judging his moment, Flint turned nasty, spitting out his words in anger.

  "I say, for the last time, what will you give me for your life?" He twisted the pikehead into flesh.

  "Argh!" gasped the man on the plank.

  "Nothing?" said Flint. "You have nothing for me? Then over you go!
" And he readied the pike for a long, slow thrust.

  "Longitude!" cried the man.

  "What?" said Flint, lowering the pike.

  "I give you longitude. I find it at sea."

  "Nonsense," said Flint, "that's impossible!"

  "No! I do it by lunar observation."

  Flint blinked, and his heart began to thump as he realised what quality of man he was about to push into the sea: a man who offered longitude in the face of death. Flint thought of every year's crop of shipwrecks and the thousands drowned, the rich cargoes lost through ignorance of a ship's true position. Fine navigator that he was, he was limited like all others to working by latitude. If he could find longitude at sea, it would give him the most colossal advantage over the rest of seafaring mankind… It was an undreamed of prize. It was magnificent. It was priceless. Flint made another quick decision, this time an easy and obvious one.

  "Take him down!" he said. "You! Allardyce and Morton! Take him down and free his hands."

  The crew didn't like it. They didn't know longitude from a loblolly boy. They wanted their fun, and they bellowed in anger at being deprived of it. Allardyce and Morton worked fast. They hauled the man off the plank and dragged him aft, followed by Flint.

  "Get him below, quick!" said Flint.

  "No!" said the man. "I am Cornelius Van Oosterhout. I am a Christian and I do not move from here."

  "What?" said Flint. "Are you mad? Get down to my cabin this instant, before they turn ugly." He looked at the crew, muttering and scowling.

  "You want longitude, yes?" said Van Oosterhout.

  "Yes," said Flint. He wanted it like all the jewels of Arabia.

  "Then you save the man below. He is from my crew. If you put him there -" he looked at the plank "- I tell you nothing. I jump in the sea. You don't need to push!"

  "Poppycock!" said Flint, sneering. "Do as I say, or I shall put you back on the plank, and you'll sing any tune I choose!"

  "No," said Van Oosterhout firmly. "One day I stand before God. I am responsible. You save two, or you save none. It is your choice."

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  Morning, 24th September 1752

  Charlestown Bay, South Carolina

  Drums beating, colours flying and bayonets fixed, the eight hundred men of the Craven County Regiment of Militia marched splendidly into the tented camp established on the southern bank of the Ashley River where it opened into Charlestown harbour, less than a quarter of a mile from the town itself and close enough that their fifes and drums could be heard from the city walls. The officers were in British scarlet, with gorgettes and soldierly cocked hats, while the ranks wore whatever was practical for campaigning in the field. But every man shouldered a Brown Bess musket and carried sixty rounds of ball cartridge in his pouch, and stepped out to the beat of the drum.

  They advanced in two columns, and between them - escorted, guarded and enclosed - came the Patanq nation: First the warriors, then the old men, then the women and children burdened with all the nation's goods. The marching militia - in columns of three - just covered the three hundred and four warriors, leaving the tail of old men, and women and children stringing along behind. Nobody worried about them.

  The formation was received with drum-rolls and dipped colours by the remaining five militia regiments of the Royal Colony of South Carolina, paraded in arms, and which - together with the Craven County Regiment - numbered close on six thousand men, not to mention the three troops of horse militia that trotted outside the marching columns, with spurs and broadswords jingling, and who were over one hundred strong in their own right.

  Mounted, uniformed, and with flashing swords drawn in salute, the colonels of the five regiments stood before their men, with Colonel Douglas Harper of the Charlestown Regiment - who was the senior - in the middle and a horse length to the fore, an aide on either side of him.

  They sheathed swords and Colonel Harper spoke to the young officer to his right, who on other days was his eldest son Tom.

  "Fine sight, Lieutenant!"

  "Indeed, sir!"

  "What a day for the Colony!"

  "Aye! Damned Indians."

  "Hmm," said Colonel Harper, and pondered, for he'd been a great man in the Charlestown fur trade, and had grown rich by it, and every fur he ever sold was trapped and brought in by the Indians. Still… he looked back at the walls of Charlestown, which weren't there to protect against the French and Spanish only, but against Indians too. And today the Colony was taking the wonderful opportunity to rid itself of the entire Patanq nation, all fifteen hundred of them, in their moccasins and blankets. These days they weren't the most numerous of the Indian nations, but they were Indians and times were changing, and better they should live anywhere other than South Carolina, and preferably in the moon if only they could be got there. So thought Colonel Harper.

  "Pa?" said Lieutenant Harper.

  "Colonel!" corrected Harper.

  "Sorry, Pa… Colonel."

  "Well?"

  "Why's there so many of us? All the regiments? There's more of us than there is of them, even counting the women and little 'uns!" Harper frowned.

  "Don't you ever listen? Haven't I told you about them savages?" Colonel Harper was fifty-five years old and had been more things than a trader. He'd fought the Patanq in his time, and shuddered at the thought of it. Especially the recollection of going to battle against them in the woods. "Listen, boy, if there's enough of us here today to put the idea of fighting clean out of their heathen heads, then there's not one man too many! So shut up and face your front."

  Colonel Harper looked at the Indians, raising dust as they tramped in, bedraggled from their long march. In fact Tom was right in a way; there were not more than a few hundred warriors in all. But you never knew with the Patanq. They moved like ghosts, you wouldn't hear them coming, and you'd only realise they'd cut your throat when your shirt front turned red.

  He turned in the saddle and raised his voice:

  "Three hearty rousing cheers for the Craven County men. Hip-Hip-Hip…"

  Thundering cheers bellowed out as the mustered regiments raised their caps on their bayonets and gave three tremendous huzzahs. In response to the cheers, bells clanged and pealed from the town.

  "Colonel?" said a voice from his left: Lieutenant David Harper, his second eldest, and by far the brightest son. "Is that the Dreamer?" He pointed to the head of the Patanq column.

  "Aye," said Colonel Harper, pleased that one son had paid attention, "that's him, their famous medicine man. And that's Dark Hand, the war sachem, or chief, at his side." Harper looked at them as they came past. He knew Dreamer very well. Him and all the Patanq leaders. Now he drew steel to salute them. And the sachems raised their right hands formally to acknowledge him. For they knew him, too.

  There were a dozen of them, leading their nation in procession with Dreamer and Dark Hand. Dreamer was a small, shrivelled man, marked by long illness. He looked a miserable creature beside Dark Hand, but he was the soul of the Patanq nation, and a formidable negotiator - as Harper knew all too well, having attended the lengthy council sessions that had brought the Patanq here today, granted safe passage and a fleet of six ships to carry them off, along with the gold they'd accumulated through years of fur trading and bringing in scalps for the bounty.

  The thought of scalps made Harper glance nervously at the warriors, fearful creatures that they were… tall men every one: lithe and muscular, upright, hook-nosed, black-eyed and stone-faced. They wore bright-coloured trade blankets round their shoulders and carried long guns in their arms. Their heads were shaven except for dangling, befeathered queues, their cheeks were tattooed in geometric lines and they wore silver nose-rings and elaborate, beaded jewellery.

  At last the Patanq came within sight of the harbour, and the ships anchored under the guns of Fort Johnson, with the launches and longboats beached and ready on the shore. And a chatter arose, first from the sachems, and then from the warriors. Harper shook h
is head in wonder. This was an unheard of vulgarity for the Patanq, who habitually endured the shocks of life in silence. But the chattering was nothing to the shrill cries of the women and children, to whom the ships and the boats and the endless rolling waters were magical wonders.

  They surged forward, led by the matriarchs who even the warriors must treat with respect. They shouted and yelled and urged the children forward, elbowing aside the Craven County Militia, who grinned indulgently and opened ranks to let them through. After all, who were they to stand in the way of Indians about to board ship and sail away for ever? So the militiamen grinned, the young girls shrieked, the children laughed, and the watching regiments cheered in delight as the women and children of the Patanq nation ran headlong down to the shore.

  The sachems and warriors maintained their dignity, keeping a steady pace and manly bearing. But Harper saw that some of them were in doubt and arguing noisily.

  Oh no! he thought, and a tingle of fright shot up his spine. Don't let them baulk at the last moment. Please no. Not after all this…

  "Colonel," said his second-eldest, "what's going on, sir? Some of their chiefs are stopping."

  "No they're not," said the colonel. "They're just puzzled. Most of these have never seen the sea before, nor ships neither. They're surprised, that's all."

  He wanted it to be true, but it wasn't. As the arguments grew, the sachems came to a halt, and nervous conversations began among the colonels behind Harper, and among the troops too. Up and down the lines of infantry, men stopped cheering and began fingering their muskets and wondering if they might have to use them. Harper took a deep breath. He couldn't let all this come to nothing.

  "You two follow me," he said to his sons, "the rest of you stand fast!" He was digging in his spurs and riding forward, wondering what he'd have to say, what he'd have to offer them, when he saw Dreamer raise his hands and lift up his voice to address the sachems in the Patanq tongue. "Whoa!" said Harper to his horse, and patted her neck. His heart thumped as Dreamer spoke, and spoke… and then the sachems were following behind the medicine man like lambs, down towards the shore and the boats and the laughing women.