Pieces of Eight. John Drake
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there!” it cried, and Israel Hands grinned, knowing himself favoured, and he plodded on.
He smiled again as he looked at Mr Joe marching ahead, a heavy Jamaican cane-cutlass in his belt, ready to clear a path if need be. The lad was a slim, wiry black who’d grown up with such a quick temper that he failed to see the joke when an overseer, finding Joe bent over to cut cane, had merrily cracked his arse with a whip. Thus Joe replied with a cutlass slash that removed a diagonal quarter of the overseer’s head, plus all hope of promotion for Joe in his career as a plantation slave, obliging him to seek advancement elsewhere.
Israel Hands grinned at the thought. Joe was quick and intelligent, and under Hands’s instruction he was speedily learning his letters and his numbers, to the point that he was now rated gunner’s mate, and addressed as Mr Joe by all hands, even Long John himself.
Joe had his little faults, of course. He could not stand to be teased, and he was dreadfully afraid of the dark, since as a child he’d been told by his mother that, if he didn’t behave, at midnight the Jumba-Jumba man would come in his big black hat and fetch Joe away in a sack. Even at nineteen years of age, Joe was still looking out for him, but Israel Hands thought no worse of the lad for that, since all sailormen believed such things: Mr Hands himself–when alone–would never look over the side at night for fear of seeing Davy Jones, the hideous fiend that lay in wait for the souls of drowned men.
A day’s marching, with stops for meals and the heat of noon, had taken Israel Hands’s team clear of the palms and sweltering jungle that lined the island’s southern shores. Steering by a small brass compass, they had moved steadily north into a terrain of sandy hills interspersed with small, open clearings surrounded by broadleaf trees: mainly live-oaks, but with an increasing number of pines, and all with dense foliage at their bases. With night falling, they set about making camp–and made their first discovery.
“Look, Mr Hands,” said Joe. “You see them stumps there?”
“Aye, lad,” said Israel Hands. The spot they’d chosen was a clearing that the forest was slowly reclaiming. About a dozen big trees, all pines, had been felled many years ago, leaving stumps which were now so heavily overgrown with moss and fungus, and so surrounded by undergrowth and young trees, that it was hard to spot them. But they were there if you looked; proof that men had been this way before.
“Looks like this island ain’t so secret as some would believe!” said Israel Hands.
“Aye, Mr Hands,” said Joe, peering into the darkness between the standing trees. “Now we get back with the others, eh? And we make the fire?”
“Aye,” said Israel Hands, smiling, for the others were only a few steps away.
That night Joe had the horrors and no mistake. He woke constantly. He heard noises in the night. He got up and paced about, and repeatedly told the sentries to keep a sharp lookout.
“Yes, Mr Joe! No, Mr Joe!” they said, levelling their muskets at nothing, just to keep him quiet.
They all thought him a bloody fool, until early next morning when the expedition made its second discovery. As the sun came up, those on guard duty saw a figure peering at them from behind a tree: looking, but afraid to come forward.
“There he is, Mr Hands!” said one of the sentries. “It’s a white man, not a savage. Miserable-looking sod, though.” He cocked his musket. “Shall I take a pop?”
“No!” said Israel Hands, as the camp stirred and men gathered around him. “I think I know who that is!” He stepped forward and called out:
“Ahoy there! Come alongside! We’re all friends here. Friends and jolly companions.”
There was a stir of surprise as the bedraggled figure left the cover of his tree, and–with utmost nervousness–crept forward, hunched over in humble supplication, with fearful eyes staring out of a simple, pleasant face. He was bareheaded, bare-chested and barefoot, deeply sunburnt with a sprouting beard and hair like broken straw. All that he had in the world was a pair of breeches, an old belt, and a sailor’s knife in a sheath. But the thing that drew gasps of surprise was the creature holding his hand like a child and scampering along beside him: a large and most beautiful monkey.
The ape was handsomely marked, with thick fur–mostly dark brown, apart from its creamy breast, arms and face–and a shock of black, upstanding hair on top of its head. It had the most appealing and intelligent face and came forward entirely without fear.
When the man thought he was close enough, he stopped, and began to speak in a self-pitying whine.
“I’m Benn Gunn, I am,” he said, shaking off the monkey and clapping his hands together as if in prayer. “Poor Benn Gunn, what’s lived alone for weeks with not a bite of Christian food, nor what’s not spoke to a Christian soul.”
“Step up, Ben Gunn!” said Israel Hands. “You know me, don’t you?”
“That I do, Mr Hands,” said Ben Gunn. “An’ you knows me, for I’m Ben Gunn what was blown clear o’ the old Walrus in the battle, and what clung to a shattered timber and what floated ashore and what’s lived on fruits and roots these past weeks and never a taste of pork nor cheese…especially cheese.”
Ben Gunn was duly fed and watered, and the monkey became an instant favourite for its friendliness and cleverness. Jumping from man to man, it took the bits of fruit they offered, and looked its benefactors in the eye with the most charming expression.
“Bugger’s almost human!”
“Ain’t he a jolly little bleeder!”
“Look at the little face on him–he’s laughing!”
“Chk-chk-chk!” said the monkey, climbing into Mr Joe’s arms and reaching its small, inquisitive hand towards one of the pistols hooked to his belt.
“Belay!” said Joe, laughing. “Don’t touch that, child, else you be blowin’ me bollocks off me!” And the men laughed.
But always the creature ran back to Ben Gunn.
“Followed me, he did,” said Ben Gunn, stroking its head. “There’s a whole tribe of ’em in the trees, up that way–” he pointed vaguely into the forest. “Don’t reckon they ain’t never seen men before, and they’s tame as pussy-cats…ain’t you, matey?”
“Chk-chk-chk!” said the monkey.
The rest of Israel Hands’s expedition was uneventful, except that it took nearly five days to reach the far north of the island and return to Camp Silver in the southern anchorage, not the two days they’d expected. Sarney Sawyer and Black Dog told the same tale on their return–the island was at least twice the size they’d supposed it to be, based on what Flint had told them.
There was just one further discovery to be made, which awaited Israel Hands on his return.
“Look, Mr Gunner,” said one of those who’d been guarding the camp. He was holding out the remains of a small, broken egg. “Long John’s parrot laid it. It’s a she!”
“Well bugger me tight!” said Israel Hands. He looked at the big green bird, rocking on its perch nearby. “That’ll tickle Long John when he gets back!” Hands halfway reached out to stroke the bird, but then recalled Black Dog’s missing fingers and thought better of it.
“Bugger me tight!” said the parrot.
Silver’s voyage round the island, taking bearings and soundings, took a week. The morning after the jolly-boat had finally grounded in the shallows of the southern anchorage, he called a council of his leading men in his tent–the biggest in the camp–where there was a table and some chairs saved out of Lion.
First on the agenda was the matter of Ben Gunn. With his monkey trailing along behind him, Gunn was brought before them. He stood outside the big tent, in the cool of the early morning, awaiting their judgement.
“Well, Ben Gunn,”