Chapter XXII: “fetch Aft the Rum, Darby Mcgraw!”

Murray had predicted that the looting of the _Sanctissima Trinidad_ would send the frigates to sea from Santo Domingo, St. Pierre, the Havana and Kingston, and the adventures of the _Walrus_ furnished ample confirmation of his words. Six days’ sail to the southward we raised the tops’ls of a lofty stranger whom the lookouts identified as a King’s ship.

Flint, summoned from his perpetual debauch in the main cabin, agreed with them and ordered the helm put over. The _Walrus_ headed west, and the stranger followed her. She clung to us through the day and night, and in the morning our glasses revealed the ominous belt of gunports of a sixty-gun razee. But like all English second-rates, she was clumsy in the water; and Flint was a good seaman, if nothing else. He contrived to keep beyond cannonshot and during the second night shifted his course cleverly and gave our pursuer the slip.

Yet he dared not turn back immediately, and we held on northeast into the track of the Spanish _flotas_, passing four ships westbound in the three days we continued upon this course. On the fourth day Flint deemed himself safe from the razee, the _Walrus_ went about and he resumed his solitary rum-swigging in the cabin, drinking bottle after bottle the day long, cursing and singing and shouting his bloody tales and chanteys to an invisible audience that sat or fought with him.

For us three prisoners the _Walrus_ was a floating bedlam. Moira might not stir from her stateroom unless it be at night when Flint occasionally slept and the most of the crew were carousing in the fo’csle; but she never complained of the confinement that washed the color from her cheeks, and retained her buoyant spirits despite the hideous danger which shadowed her every hour.

Without Darby she would have been in even worse case. ’Twas he spied out the moments she could venture abroad and thrust himself dauntlessly betwixt her and any threats. He carried her such food as she would eat and often did the same for us, for Flint was become subject to seizures of ungovernable ferocity, in the grip of which he distrusted all aboard the ship saving Bill Bones and Darby, and was in terror of unseen presences that lurked about the cabin’s corners and mowed at him from the stern windows.

In these seizures he would take his pistols and shoot in every direction, regardless of who might be present, or with his hanger he would hack at the walls and pursue imaginary enemies along the companionway. But for Darby he would have slain Ben Gunn, and he did actually cut down one unfortunate fellow who goggled at him as he stamped out upon the deck, foaming and mouthing defiance of the ghosts that tormented him.

Darby alone could handle him. Bones he trusted, but would brook no interference from; Darby, however, could talk to him freely and sometimes curb his violence, providing rum was forthcoming whenever he demanded it.

In the latitude of the Windward Passage a Spanish line-ship and two frigates blundered upon us unexpectedly out of a bank of mist. There was naught to do but run, and again Flint rallied to the emergency. That day we held our own; but in the night a moderate gale blew up, and the seventy-four was able to carry canvas that would have ripped the masts from the _Walrus_.

At dawn she opened with her chase-guns, and for five glasses Flint must jockey his ship to dodge the eighteen-pounder shot. Then the wind moderated, and as we hoisted sail after sail we commenced to draw away from the big Spaniard. She was a lubberly craft, and her captain was no man to develop her possibilities--as her gunners were unable to get upon a bouncing target in those slashing head seas. The frigates even yet, I think, might have overhauled us, but they were afraid to close and engage by themselves.

In the night Flint attempted to escape his pursuers as he had the King’s ship by heading west toward the empty gulf of the Atlantic. But the Spaniards were prepared for this maneuver. They had spread out to cover a wide area of sea, with the result that we passed almost under the bows of one of the frigates, and the flashes of her guns warned her consorts where we were.

Undismayed, Flint varied the trick the next night, lying to in that dark hour which comes before moonrise, and they passed us without suspecting the ruse. By morning we were leagues away on our back-track, and Flint boasted of his luck until he became maudlin, sprawling upon the cabin-table in a mess of broken meats and glasses that must have sickened any sensible man.

He had a sorry awakening from his fool’s dream two days later when a stately French forty-four showed herself at our heels. Ah, she was a greyhound! Every foot of her hull was molded for speed, and her rakish spars were clothed with a sail area that drove her a good three leagues to the glass. Bones, with Darby to aid him, pulled Flint away from the cabin-table and threw buckets of sea-water over him to unlock the fetters the rum had fastened upon his brain. And he staggered on deck, cursing like a fiend, to squint his bloodshot eyes over the stern rail. In a moment he was cold sober.

“Gut me, ’tis a Frenchy! We’re his meat, mates. But we’ll sell for our own price, eh? Pipe all hands to quarters, Bill. Cast loose and provide.”

There was muttering amongst the crew. This was what Allardyce had foretold, and the survivors of his group of protestants were not slow to exploit the opportunity. But the majority of the men went to the guns as doggedly determined as Flint.

“Fight, ye dogs!” he bade them from the poop, swaying his mottled blue jowl from side to side. “’Tis a noose or the galleys for ye the one way, and Davy Jones’ locker the other. Betwixt the two ye may win free if ye fight. But wi’out fighting ye are ruined men.”

The Frenchman disdained to use his chase-guns, so confident was he of bringing us to action at broadside range; but all the forenoon the breeze dwindled, and at midday both ships were caught in a dead calm. The frigate put out her boats, and so did we, and at once the advantage shifted in our favor. For ’twas one thing to tow a great forty-four, loaded with vast weight of metal, men and stores, and entirely a different task to tow the _Walrus_, of two-thirds the bulk and practically unladen below the gundeck. Moreover, the French sailors were in no wise so hardy or so desperate as the pirates, who knew that their chances of life were in proportion to the distance they extended betwixt the two vessels.

Flint swaggered around the fo’csle, swearing and urging on the men in the boats like the spectator of a horse-race who has staked more than he can afford upon the issue.

“We’ll make it, ---- me,” he would say. “My luck’s with us, I tell ye all. Here, Darby, jump on to the bulwarks and let ’em see your red head. Mark him, men! There’s luck for ye. There don’t live the man can stop me whilst the lad’s with us.”

And he would brandish his hanger at the towering sails of the frigate, lying slack against the yards, just out of cannonshot, and burst into the wildest imprecations and challenges.

“No Frenchman’ll pull down John Flint! Aye, ---- ---- me for a ---- ---- ---- if he will! I tell ye I ha’ luck. Look to what I ha’ done. There were three after us but two days since, and we lost ’em as we’ll lose yon fellow.”

His promises were justified amazingly. In the course of the afternoon we gained a hard-won league; and that night under cloak of darkness we stole silently north before a freshening wind, which by morning was a tempest. The French frigate disappeared, making the best of the heavy weather, and the _Walrus_ was blown north and west for five days, past the latitude of Spyglass Island, past the scattered rocks and cays of the Bahamas, past the Floridas. Impossible now to watch for the tall spars of fighting-ships--as impossible as it would have been to fight them or for them to fight us, with the gray waves toppling mainyard high and the gunports buried half the time.

Flint had only dead reckoning to go by, for low-hung clouds and black banks of rain obscured sun and stars. Literally we did not know where we were, and our lookouts were peering through the scud for a landfall in the Bermoothes the morning the storm flailed itself to pieces.

It was this morning that the fever first appeared in our midst. I can still see the look, half-doubt, half-misgiving, in Silver’s face as he heaved himself aft by one of the life-lines which grilled the maindeck and hailed Flint on the poop.

“There’s ten lads groanin’ in their hammocks, cap’n.”

“Take your crutch to ’em,” snapped Flint.

“Them lads is sick,” answered Silver. “Bellyaches and headaches a-twistin’ em in knots.”

“They’re soldierin’ so as not to have to go aloft,” returned Flint. “But if you’re afraid of ’em, I’m not.”

The first of the sick men he prodded with his hanger already was dead, and he hastened back to the cabin and fortified himself anew with rum. I heard him mumbling to Bones as he entered the companionway:

“It’s main queer, Bill. I don’t like it. Maybe my luck ain’t good against sickness.”

“Maybe,” answered Bones. “What ha’ ye done wi’ the map?”’

Flint’s teeth gritted together.

“If I thought ye----”

“Belay there, John. I’m only thinkin’ as if ye was sick some o’ them swabs for’ard might try and come by it.”

“Don’t ye worry about that,” advised Flint grimly. “It’s safe--and it will stay safe.”

A second man died the next day, and there were eighteen sick instead of ten. A panic possessed the crew, and Silver mustered a fo’csle council of frightened pirates, who whispered and nudged each other as they gazed awestruck at Flint’s congested visage atop of the barrel which was his official throne. Thorough scoundrels themselves, they accorded him the sincere respect which was the due of one who utterly surpassed them in wickedness. He was “a rare ’un,” “a main desperate rogue”; “lead and steel was same as bread and meat to him.”

“What’ll ye have?” he growled.

“Well, ’tis this way, cap’n,” Silver broached diplomatically. “The crew feels as the fever comes from the ship bein’ foul and so long at sea----”

“We ain’t been long at sea.”

“Maybe not so long from the Rendeyvoo, but we ain’t careened or cleaned ship this year.”

“Whose fault is that?”

“It ain’t nobody’s fault. But it do seem as if we’d oughter run into some likely port where we could get sweet water and greens and check the fever before it runs through the crew.”

“There’s a many ports we could make,” commented Flint sarcastically.

“We could allus head up for the island,” interposed a man.

“So’s ye could go for to dig up the treasure we just stowed away,” snorted Flint. “Not if I know it!”

“There ain’t been talk o’ the island,” said Silver hastily. “But what would ye say to the Bermoothes?”

“Too many reefs to pile ourselves on--and Hamilton is a port o’ call for the King’s ships.”

“Them’s the very words I said myself!” exclaimed Silver. “And what would ye say to Savannah, cap’n, which same is a quiet spot and has no garrison, seein’ as Georgy is the newest o’ all the colonies in Ameriky?”

Flint reached down to the deck beside him and lifted a bottle of rum to his mouth, going through the usual performance of draining it at one colossal gulp to the considerable admiration of the crew.

“Aaa-aah,” he muttered, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “Savannah, eh? That might do. But mind ye, men, I’ll ha’ no talk o’ disbandment there or elsewhere. We’ll stop by to clean up the fever and water, and when that’s done we’ll square off south and collect what’s comin’ to us on the Dead Man’s Chest. I’m a man o’ my word!”

Silver made quick assent.

“Fairly put. And the while we’re lyin’ off Savannah the frigates will be a-wearin’ themselves out on false scents. It works both ways, cap’n.”

“It’ll work my way,” rapped Flint.

He slid off the barrel, balanced dizzily for a moment and walked into the companionway under the poop.

“Darby McGraw!” he called harshly. “Ho, Darby, fetch aft the rum.”

That night he had another of his fits, declaring that Andrew Murray was come aboard to slay him. He chased Bones from the cabin, hanger in hand, and was for setting upon the watch on deck when Darby restrained him with a bottle of rum, asserting it to contain Murray’s heart’s blood. Flint tossed it off with howls of infernal glee and retired to snore on the cabin floor, twitching and foaming at the mouth in his slumber like one possessed. The next day as we rolled in the oily swell under a torrid sun with the pitch pricking up in bubbles from the seams, the fever laid its hot hand upon him.

“Don’t ye look at me that way, Gonzalez,” he would scream. “Here, Bill, what kind o’ shipmate are you to be lettin’ old Ross in here wi’ his bloody throat?”

And then he would turn pious.

“Ah, now, mother, ye’d not ha’ me bide home all my days like a baby, would ye? Look at these gold jos. Ain’t they pretty? I’ll wager ye ain’t got a friend as has a son can fetch her stuff the like o’ that! No, no; don’t ye ask no questions. Oh, dear Christ, what a pain I got! God, God, don’t ye let me go this way. I’ll build a chapel home to Tewkesbury when I find Murray’s cache. A million and a half pounds, God; aye, that and more--and just you ’n’ me to share it, wi’ some for Bill Bones and Darby, as is a good lad and lucky.”

He babbled childishly of his luck.

“Ye wouldn’t break my luck, God! Oh, Ye wouldn’t! There never was none like John Flint to rove the seas, John Flint as outwitted old Murray and was the end of him.”

The droning voice would ramble on day and night, with intervals of exhausted sleep, punctuated by awful, explosive screams:

“Ho, Darby! Darby McGraw! Fetch aft the rum, Darby!”

And again:

“I’m a-burnin’ in my guts, Darby. Ye wouldn’t leave me to burn. Fetch me a noggin o’ rum!”

Other times he would sing, and always the one song that had been my introduction to his company:

“Bellamy’s hangin’ all dried and brown--
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle o’ rum!
A-rattlin’ his chains by Kingston town--
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle o’ rum!”

But words cannot describe the horrors of the week which succeeded. For five days men died at the rate of three a day. Then the disease seemed to diminish in virulence, and although we had as many as seventy sick at once, practically all survived. As a rule, men who were stricken either perished within twenty-four hours or else made a slow recovery. Flint was one of the few exceptions, and I can only suppose that in his case the illness resolved itself into a battle betwixt a naturally sinewy frame and the weaknesses developed by the strong liquors with which it had been saturated.

That we three and Darby were untouched I attribute as much as anything to the measures which Peter took. He brewed a drastic purgative of rum, molasses and gunpowder, and he was insistent that Darby should procure a large earthen crock to contain boiled water which we kept in Moira’s stateroom. Bones, Silver, Pew and those others of the crew who escaped the infection did so simply because of their physical vigor or perhaps because they were so accustomed to living in filth that the exaggerated conditions aboard the _Walrus_ might not harm them.

A week from the day we steered westward we sighted the mouth of a broad river, crossed a bar at high tide and bore upstream between low, sandy shores overgrown with pine forests. On the verge of evening we rounded a point of land and dropped our anchor opposite a little, log-built town perched on a sandy bluff.

A huddle of merchant shipping eyed askance the splintered sides and serried ports of the _Walrus_, and there was a general tendency to slacken anchor-cables and allow us ample room. Ashore men scurried to and fro; several small cannon were run out upon the platform of the stockade, and the British flag was displayed.

Peter and I had seized the opportunity of the semidarkness to escort Moira to the rail for a view of our new surroundings, and we were staring hungrily at this outpost of civilization when the thud-thud of Silver’s crutch sounded on the deck behind us.

“Ye might think from them goin’s-on ashore as there was a mighty treasure in Savannah,” he observed; “but bless ye, there ain’t enough worth the takin’ in that town to pay for the gunpowder to blow down the stockade.”

I assented, and Flint’s voice came faintly through the twilight:

“Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest--
Yo-ho-ho, and a----

“Ho, Darby! Darby McGraw! Fetch aft the rum, Darby McGraw!”

“He’s main bad, Flint is.”

Silver thrust a thumb over his shoulder.

“Won’t hardly last till mornin’, Bill says.”

“Oh, poor soul!” exclaimed Moira. “And him with so much wickedness to answer for! I am thinking he will have a great need of prayers, so if you will be after taking me below, Bob----”

“Bide a moment, mistress,” interrupted Silver. “Ha’ ye seen aught o’ the map, Master Ormerod?”

“No,” I answered briefly. “And I’ll not be involved in your quarrels aboard this hell-ship.”

“Easy, easy,” he admonished me. “Rough words won’t further ye, my gentleman. Here’s me as will be glad to stand your friend, and you know best whether you need a friend. Figger it out for yourselves. Flint’s as good as dead. Who comes a’ter him--me or Bill Bones? Which o’ us would ye plump for? Bill, he’s a desp’rate villain--and has his fish-eyes on the maid here.

“Long John, he wants treasure and a clean path home. I’m none o’ your rum-swiggers and tavern-brawlers, gentlemen. I ha’ had eddication, and I aims to get more. Give me a million and a half pounds to divvy, and I’ll sack the old _Walrus_ and ride to Parlyment in my coach, I will.”

“What has that to do with us?” I demanded.

He winked.

“What has it to do with you, says you? Ah, what! Why, just this. I’m your friend. You stand by me and I’ll stand by you. There’ll be a ’lection of a cap’n, and if I knows this crew, him as has the treasure-map will come out on top. You get me the map, and I’ll put you ashore.”

Flint called out again suddenly in a frenzy of fear:

“Bill! Where’s Bill Bones? Stand afore me, Bill. There’s them here I can’t face.”

The guttural mutter of Bones’ voice answered the plea. Silver cocked his head on one side, hand cupped to ear, listening eagerly. But the words were impossible to distinguish.

“No, no, not yet, Bill,” wailed Flint. “I ain’t a-goin’ to die. Where’s Darby? Here, lad, you come and sit by me. You’re my luck, Darby. I can’t die with you by me.”

Bones spoke again, and with an oath Silver cuddled his crutch in his armpit and hopped over the deck to the companionway.

“We better go,” said Peter. “_Ja_, we take der little gal to her room, Bob. I don’t like this.”

Silver reached the door of Flint’s stateroom as we stepped inside the companionway. We could see him distinctly in the light of the fading sunset glow which came through the stern-windows. Ben Gunn was crouching by the door, with his back toward us, hugging his arms about himself and evidently eavesdropping upon what went on in the stateroom. As we watched, Silver swung his right arm and dealt Gunn a blow which knocked him head over heels into the main cabin. The steward emited one agonized howl and scuttled under the cabin table. Silver wrenched open the stateroom door and poked his head inside.

“Well, well, if this ain’t a touchin’ picter!” he remarked. “Bill, I see you’re doin’ the kind and dootiful by our lamented skipper. But anybody as knowed ye would expect it of ye. Is that the treasure-map?”

“What are ye goin’ to do about it?” snarled Bones by way of answer.

Silver backed into the companionway, as if in mute obedience to a leveled weapon.

“Do?” he repeated. “That depends, Bill. We’ll see what the crew has to say.”

“Aye, that we will,” retorted Bones, and his voice vibrated with undisguised triumph. “Who’s to come a’ter ye, cap’n?” he added.

“I ain’t goin’ to die, Bill,” came Flint’s mournful wail. “Where’s the rum, Darby? I’m a-burnin’ wi’ thirst.”

“Who’s to come a’ter ye, John?” pressed Bones remorselessly.

Silver indulged in a mocking laugh.

“Aye, he knows what to answer!”

And Flint echoed him gaspingly:

“Bill’s mate. He--has--map.”

“Satisfied?” jeered Bones.

“I be, Bill,” Silver assured him. “But we’ll put it to the crew first, all fair and reg’lar. And whatever they say, Bill, you remember I’ll be watchin’ ye. Don’t try any tricks wi’ that map. I’m ready for ye, and if ye start tricks we’ll put the Black Spot on ye.”

“To ---- wi’ you and your Black Spot!” roared Bones. “Get out o’ here afore I take my knife to ye.”

Silver stumped toward us, his face distorted with rage.

“He has it,” he rasped. “---- him for the shifty scoundrel he is! Well, the next move is for ye to plot, Master Ormerod.”

“I see it not,” I said coldly.

“Wait till he thinks o’ the maid here,” replied the one-legged man and hopped out on deck.

From Flint’s stateroom Darby’s voice rose in protest.

“Take your hand off me, ye-- Ah, if he wants the rum do be lettin’ him have it! Sure, what will it matther----”

“’Tain’t no use wastin’ good rum on a dead man,” said Bones, chuckling thickly.

There was a gurgle of liquor, and Flint moaned:

“Where’s my rum? Fetch aft the rum, Darby McGraw!”

“Ah, ye black-hearted wretch!” shrilled Darby. “May the banshees whistle for ye, and-- I’ll not! Beware do ye touch me, I say, or I’ll----”

The door of the stateroom crashed open again, and Darby was bundled out into the companionway.

“’Tis bad luck, and not good, I’ll wish on ye!” he screamed.

Bones’ ugly face was projected from the doorway long enough to squirt a stream of tobacco-juice at the boy.

“Be off with ye, ye red-haired rat,” he growled. “You and your luck! Aye, ’tis fine luck ye brought to John Flint, wi’ the rattles in his throat.”

“Darby McGraw!” wailed Flint. “Ho, Darby! Fetch aft the rum, Darby McGraw!”

The stateroom door slammed shut on the dying man’s plaint, and Darby stood for an instant shaking his fist at its panels.

“May the priest fall dead that would be sayin’ mass for your soul!” he cursed. “May him that offers ye bite or sup put the bitter poison in it! May ye never know sleep that will rest ye or kindness that-- Ah, but what will be the use of it all? For there will be nothing but just the fires of hell to punish one that’s as bad as you.”

He turned wearily and saw me, and the tears trickled down his freckled cheeks.

“Oh, Master Bob, I doubt me the cap’n dead or close to it, and Bones he--he--drove me forth, for--for fear I’d spy on him, says he--and him wi’ the treasure-map he blan-handered from Flint in his weakness! By the Rock o’ Cashel, I’m finished wi’ pirates. They’re a poor lot. Leave us go home.”

“If we only could, Darby!” I said.

He dashed a grimy paw across his eyes and gave me one of his shrewd looks.

“Troth, Master Bob, I’m thinkin’ we’re none of us like to live else,” he answered.