Skull and Bones by John Drake Read Free Book Online Page A

Hanoverians."
        Everyone looked at Norton, who shrugged his shoulders.
        "I serve my king!" he said, afraid to say more.
        "And what might that mean?" said Long John.
        Norton thought before he spoke. He was a brave man but he was nervous, and with good reason. He couldn't guess whose side these pirates might take, and he knew McLonarch's power with words.
        "McLonarch is a leader of Jacobites," he said. "He would raise rebellion - civil war - to soak England in blood. He is under arrest by the Lord Chancellor's warrant, and I am charged with escorting him home for trial." Norton looked round to see how this was received.
        "Bah!" sneered McLonarch. "The man is a catchpole, a thief-taker, an agent sent to return me to England for judicial murder. He used bribery and deceit to capture me, and to steal the treasure lawfully gathered by my master the king."
        "Treasure?" said Silver, just when the politics was getting dull.
    "Treasure?" said a dozen voices.
        "A war chest of three thousand pounds in Spanish gold, which -"
        "THREE THOUSAND POUNDS?" they cried.
        "Which I was delivering to my master's loyal followers in London."
        "Where is it?" said Silver.
    "WHERE IS IT?" roared his crew.
        "In the hold, in strong boxes," said McLonarch, and pointed again at Norton: "He has the keys. He stole them from me."
        There followed half an hour of the most delightful and congenial work. Having been told exactly what would happen to him if he didn't co-operate, Norton swiftly produced a heavy ring of keys from his cabin. Meanwhile the main hatchway was broken open, a heavy block rigged to the mainstay, with lifting tackles, and the crew of Venture's Fortune set to the heavy labour of burrowing through the cargo - rum, sugar and molasses - to get to the heavy strongboxes which were on the ground tier down below.
        Then the captured crew were made to haul up the boxes, one at a time, for opening on the quarterdeck at Silver's feet, to thundering cheers, the fiddler playing, hornpipes being danced, and joy unbounded as rivers of Spanish coin poured out all over the decks, such that it was a tribute to Long John's leadership that all hands did not get roaring drunk and lose the ship.
        The only thing that puzzled Silver in that merry moment was why McLonarch had given up his treasure so easily. Silver pondered on that. Of course, the gelt was lost to McLonarch as soon as his ship was taken… but why speak up quite so helpful: saying how much there was, and who'd got the keys, an' all? It wasn't right. No man behaved like that. So what was going on?
        He got his answer later, when Tom Allardyce brought McLonarch down to the stern cabin, where Silver was sitting at Captain Fitch's desk, going through the ship's papers for anything that might be useful.
        "Cap'n!" said Allardyce. Silver looked up. Allardyce stood with his hat in his hands, bent double in respect for the man beside him, and whom he kept glancing at, in awestruck respect. McLonarch, free of chains and even more imposing than he'd been before, stood beside Allardyce with his nose in the air, and gazing down upon Silver as if he were a lackey with a chamber pot. Silver frowned.
        "Who took his irons off, Mr Bosun?"
        "Er… me, Cap'n."
        "On whose orders?"
        "Seemed the right thing, Cap'n," said Allardyce, torn between two loyalties.
    "'The right thing, you say? Now see here, my lad, I'll not -"
        "Captain Silver!" said McLonarch. "That is your name, is it not?"
        Silver stared at McLonarch, whom he did not like - not one little bit - having taken against him on sight, for McLonarch was a man who expected doors to open in front of him and close behind him, and who sat down without looking… such was his confidence that a minion would be ready with a chair! Silver forgave him that, for it was the way of all aristocrats.