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round the cabin, Billy Bones could see those developments already going forward very nicely.
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Chapter 5
        
    Four bells of the afternoon watch 18th March 1753
    Aboard Walrus
    Off Upper Barbados
        
        With Walrus's keel sprouting too much weed for swift sailing, she was brought alongside of Venture's Fortune only by cunning: Walrus having hoisted British colours upside- down - a sign of distress - and left her sails hanging in a slovenly manner as if some disaster had befallen her people.
        "Steady, boys," said John Silver to the armed men hiding behind the bulwarks, and anywhere else where they couldn't be seen from the approaching ship.
        "Steady boys," croaked the parrot on his shoulder and the hands laughed.
        "Stow that!" hissed Silver, and clapped a hand on the bird's beak.
        It would be a tragic waste to spoil things now. The sun was high in the blue heavens, the sea was calm with a fresh wind, and there were even gulls above, ventured out from the land just under the horizon, while a fine, fat three-masted ship came offering itself up, all bright and spanking new, with fresh white sails and bright-coloured flags that hadn't seen a drop of weathering, and jolly tars aboard who couldn't imagine what a mistake they were making in coming to give aid.
        "John," said Selena, standing next to him by the tiller, "I give you one last chance not to do this. It's shameful deceit. How can you do this to others who use the sea?"
        "Belay that!" he said. "We can't take a prize no other way we're too slow. It's this or nothing! D'you think I'd not rather bear down with colours flying?" He cursed and beat the deck with his crutch, and he looked at her and sneered: "An' if you're so moral and mighty, what're you doing on deck in your gown so they sees a woman and ain't afraid?"
        "Huh!" she said. "You know why! If they're taken by surprise there'll be less fighting, that's why!" But she blinked and looked away, for that wasn't entirely the truth. She wasn't so sure of anything now, having considered what Dr Cowdray had said… and… and… a soft word now, from John Silver, a friendly smiling word, might have closed the gulf between them. But Silver was too angry. Too many harsh words had been spoken.
        "Well, there you are then!" he said with extreme bad grace. "So stand fast, and clap a hitch on your jawing tackle - or go below with them two swabs of navigators as I've locked in my cabin to save their precious innocence!" And there followed even more temper and more shouting, which ended in her being ordered below - at which she screamed defiance and then being dragged below… causing consternation aboard Venture's Fortune, the big West Indiaman, coming on under close-reefed topsails, for her quarterdeck people were studying the wallowing, helpless Walrus through telescopes.
        "There, sir!" cried Mr Philip Norton, a big, young, muscular man, well dressed and handsome, with the confidence that comes with power. "Did I not say it was madness to approach her? Look at the number of gun-ports! And now there's fighting aboard her."
        "Bollocks!" cried Captain Fitch, a veteran seaman and a master of his craft, but cursed with the short stature which turns a man to bloody-mindedness when the tall look down on him and tell him what to do. And that went double when the tall one represented something that all decent men despise: the government. He glared defiance at Norton. "I shall render assistance to a mariner in distress, according to the ancient traditions of the sea," he said. "And as for the risk that terrifies you , Mr Norton, you well know that I have a Protection in case of that!" And clapping his eye to his glass again, Fitch told himself there was nothing to worry about in the sight of two men manhandling a shrieking woman down a hatchway while a one-legged man with a green bird on his shoulder looked on, shouting and pointing, and apart