TREASURE ISLAND

by Robert Louis Stevenson

TREASURE ISLAND

To S.L.O., an American gentleman in accordance with whose classic taste
the following narrative has been designed, it is now, in return for
numerous delightful hours, and with the kindest wishes, dedicated by his
affectionate friend, the author.

TO THE HESITATING PURCHASER

If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons,
And buccaneers, and buried gold,
And all the old romance, retold
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of today:

--So be it, and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
So be it, also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave
Where these and their creations lie!

CONTENTS

PART ONE The Old Buccaneer

I. THE OLD SEA-DOG AT THE ADMIRAL BENBOW . . . . 11
II. BLACK DOG APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS . . . . . . 17
III. THE BLACK SPOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
IV. THE SEA-CHEST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
V. THE LAST OF THE BLIND MAN . . . . . . . . . . 36
VI. THE CAPTAIN’S PAPERS . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

PART TWO The Sea Cook

VII. I GO TO BRISTOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
VIII. AT THE SIGN OF THE SPY-GLASS . . . . . . . 54
IX. POWDER AND ARMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
X. THE VOYAGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
XI. WHAT I HEARD IN THE APPLE-BARREL . . . . . . 70
XII. COUNCIL OF WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

PART THREE My Shore Adventure

XIII. HOW I BEGAN MY SHORE ADVENTURE . . . . . . 82
XIV. THE FIRST BLOW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
XV. THE MAN OF THE ISLAND. . . . . . . . . . . . 93

PART FOUR The Stockade

XVI. NARRATIVE CONTINUED BY THE DOCTOR:
HOW THE SHIP WAS ABANDONED . . . . . . . . 100
XVII. NARRATIVE CONTINUED BY THE DOCTOR:
THE JOLLY-BOAT’S LAST TRIP . . . . . . . . 105
XVIII. NARRATIVE CONTINUED BY THE DOCTOR:
END OF THE FIRST DAY’S FIGHTING . . . . . 109
XIX. NARRATIVE RESUMED BY JIM HAWKINS:
THE GARRISON IN THE STOCKADE . . . . . . . 114
XX. SILVER’S EMBASSY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
XXI. THE ATTACK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

PART FIVE My Sea Adventure

XXII. HOW I BEGAN MY SEA ADVENTURE . . . . . . . 132
XXIII. THE EBB-TIDE RUNS . . . . . . . . . . . 138
XXIV. THE CRUISE OF THE CORACLE . . . . . . . . 143
XXV. I STRIKE THE JOLLY ROGER . . . . . . . . . 148
XXVI. ISRAEL HANDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
XXVII. “PIECES OF EIGHT” . . . . . . . . . . . 161

PART SIX Captain Silver

XXVIII. IN THE ENEMY’S CAMP . . . . . . . . . . 168
XXIX. THE BLACK SPOT AGAIN . . . . . . . . . . . 176
XXX. ON PAROLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
XXXI. THE TREASURE-HUNT--FLINT’S POINTER . . . . 189
XXXII. THE TREASURE-HUNT--THE VOICE AMONG
THE TREES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
XXXIII. THE FALL OF A CHIEFTAIN . . . . . . . . 201
XXXIV. AND LAST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

TREASURE ISLAND

PART ONE--The Old Buccaneer

I
The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral Benbow

Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having
asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from
the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the
island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I
take up my pen in the year of grace 17—, and go back to the time when
my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the
sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.

I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the
inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow--a
tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the
shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with
black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid
white. I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself
as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so
often afterwards:

“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest--
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and
broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of
stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared,
called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him,
he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste and still
looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.

“This is a handy cove,” says he at length; “and a pleasant sittyated
grog-shop. Much company, mate?”

My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity.

“Well, then,” said he, “this is the berth for me. Here you, matey,” he
cried to the man who trundled the barrow; “bring up alongside and help
up my chest. I’ll stay here a bit,” he continued. “I’m a plain man; rum
and bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there for to watch
ships off. What you mought call me? You mought call me captain. Oh, I
see what you’re at--there”; and he threw down three or four gold pieces
on the threshold. “You can tell me when I’ve worked through that,” says
he, looking as fierce as a commander.

And indeed bad as his clothes were and coarsely as he spoke, he had none
of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast, but seemed like
a mate or skipper accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. The man who came
with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before at
the Royal George, that he had inquired what inns there were along the
coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and described as
lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place of residence. And
that was all we could learn of our guest.

He was a very silent man by custom. All day he hung round the cove or
upon the cliffs with a brass telescope; all evening he sat in a corner
of the parlour next the fire and drank rum and water very strong. Mostly
he would not speak when spoken to, only look up sudden and fierce and
blow through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the people who came
about our house soon learned to let him be. Every day when he came back
from his stroll he would ask if any seafaring men had gone by along the
road. At first we thought it was the want of company of his own kind
that made him ask this question, but at last we began to see he was
desirous to avoid them. When a seaman did put up at the Admiral Benbow
(as now and then some did, making by the coast road for Bristol) he
would look in at him through the curtained door before he entered the
parlour; and he was always sure to be as silent as a mouse when any such
was present. For me, at least, there was no secret about the matter, for
I was, in a way, a sharer in his alarms. He had taken me aside one day
and promised me a silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I
would only keep my “weather-eye open for a seafaring man with one leg”
and let him know the moment he appeared. Often enough when the first
of the month came round and I applied to him for my wage, he would only
blow through his nose at me and stare me down, but before the week was
out he was sure to think better of it, bring me my four-penny piece, and
repeat his orders to look out for “the seafaring man with one leg.”

How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On
stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house and
the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a
thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg
would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous
kind of a creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in the
middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and
ditch was the worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for
my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.

But though I was so terrified by the idea of the seafaring man with one
leg, I was far less afraid of the captain himself than anybody else who
knew him. There were nights when he took a deal more rum and water
than his head would carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his
wicked, old, wild sea-songs, minding nobody; but sometimes he would call
for glasses round and force all the trembling company to listen to his
stories or bear a chorus to his singing. Often I have heard the house
shaking with “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum,” all the neighbours joining
in for dear life, with the fear of death upon them, and each singing
louder than the other to avoid remark. For in these fits he was the most
overriding companion ever known; he would slap his hand on the table for
silence all round; he would fly up in a passion of anger at a question,
or sometimes because none was put, and so he judged the company was not
following his story. Nor would he allow anyone to leave the inn till he
had drunk himself sleepy and reeled off to bed.

His stories were what frightened people worst of all. Dreadful stories
they were--about hanging, and walking the plank, and storms at sea, and
the Dry Tortugas, and wild deeds and places on the Spanish Main. By his
own account he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest men
that God ever allowed upon the sea, and the language in which he told
these stories shocked our plain country people almost as much as the
crimes that he described. My father was always saying the inn would be
ruined, for people would soon cease coming there to be tyrannized over
and put down, and sent shivering to their beds; but I really believe his
presence did us good. People were frightened at the time, but on looking
back they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country
life, and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to
admire him, calling him a “true sea-dog” and a “real old salt” and
such like names, and saying there was the sort of man that made England
terrible at sea.

In one way, indeed, he bade fair to ruin us, for he kept on staying week
after week, and at last month after month, so that all the money had
been long exhausted, and still my father never plucked up the heart to
insist on having more. If ever he mentioned it, the captain blew through
his nose so loudly that you might say he roared, and stared my poor
father out of the room. I have seen him wringing his hands after such a
rebuff, and I am sure the annoyance and the terror he lived in must have
greatly hastened his early and unhappy death.

All the time he lived with us the captain made no change whatever in his
dress but to buy some stockings from a hawker. One of the cocks of his
hat having fallen down, he let it hang from that day forth, though it
was a great annoyance when it blew. I remember the appearance of his
coat, which he patched himself upstairs in his room, and which, before
the end, was nothing but patches. He never wrote or received a letter,
and he never spoke with any but the neighbours, and with these, for the
most part, only when drunk on rum. The great sea-chest none of us had
ever seen open.

He was only once crossed, and that was towards the end, when my poor
father was far gone in a decline that took him off. Dr. Livesey came
late one afternoon to see the patient, took a bit of dinner from my
mother, and went into the parlour to smoke a pipe until his horse should
come down from the hamlet, for we had no stabling at the old Benbow. I
followed him in, and I remember observing the contrast the neat, bright
doctor, with his powder as white as snow and his bright, black eyes and
pleasant manners, made with the coltish country folk, and above all,
with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours, sitting,
far gone in rum, with his arms on the table. Suddenly he--the captain,
that is--began to pipe up his eternal song:

“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest--
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest--
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

At first I had supposed “the dead man’s chest” to be that identical big
box of his upstairs in the front room, and the thought had been mingled
in my nightmares with that of the one-legged seafaring man. But by this
time we had all long ceased to pay any particular notice to the song; it
was new, that night, to nobody but Dr. Livesey, and on him I observed it
did not produce an agreeable effect, for he looked up for a moment quite
angrily before he went on with his talk to old Taylor, the gardener, on
a new cure for the rheumatics. In the meantime, the captain gradually
brightened up at his own music, and at last flapped his hand upon
the table before him in a way we all knew to mean silence. The voices
stopped at once, all but Dr. Livesey’s; he went on as before speaking
clear and kind and drawing briskly at his pipe between every word or
two. The captain glared at him for a while, flapped his hand again,
glared still harder, and at last broke out with a villainous, low oath,
“Silence, there, between decks!”

“Were you addressing me, sir?” says the doctor; and when the ruffian had
told him, with another oath, that this was so, “I have only one thing to
say to you, sir,” replies the doctor, “that if you keep on drinking rum,
the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!”

The old fellow’s fury was awful. He sprang to his feet, drew and opened
a sailor’s clasp-knife, and balancing it open on the palm of his hand,
threatened to pin the doctor to the wall.

The doctor never so much as moved. He spoke to him as before, over his
shoulder and in the same tone of voice, rather high, so that all the
room might hear, but perfectly calm and steady: “If you do not put that
knife this instant in your pocket, I promise, upon my honour, you shall
hang at the next assizes.”

Then followed a battle of looks between them, but the captain soon
knuckled under, put up his weapon, and resumed his seat, grumbling like
a beaten dog.

“And now, sir,” continued the doctor, “since I now know there’s such a
fellow in my district, you may count I’ll have an eye upon you day and
night. I’m not a doctor only; I’m a magistrate; and if I catch a breath
of complaint against you, if it’s only for a piece of incivility like
tonight’s, I’ll take effectual means to have you hunted down and routed
out of this. Let that suffice.”

Soon after, Dr. Livesey’s horse came to the door and he rode away, but
the captain held his peace that evening, and for many evenings to come.

II
Black Dog Appears and Disappears

It was not very long after this that there occurred the first of the
mysterious events that rid us at last of the captain, though not, as you
will see, of his affairs. It was a bitter cold winter, with long, hard
frosts and heavy gales; and it was plain from the first that my poor
father was little likely to see the spring. He sank daily, and my mother
and I had all the inn upon our hands, and were kept busy enough without
paying much regard to our unpleasant guest.

It was one January morning, very early--a pinching, frosty morning--the
cove all grey with hoar-frost, the ripple lapping softly on the stones,
the sun still low and only touching the hilltops and shining far to
seaward. The captain had risen earlier than usual and set out down the
beach, his cutlass swinging under the broad skirts of the old blue coat,
his brass telescope under his arm, his hat tilted back upon his head. I
remember his breath hanging like smoke in his wake as he strode off, and
the last sound I heard of him as he turned the big rock was a loud snort
of indignation, as though his mind was still running upon Dr. Livesey.

Well, mother was upstairs with father and I was laying the
breakfast-table against the captain’s return when the parlour door
opened and a man stepped in on whom I had never set my eyes before. He
was a pale, tallowy creature, wanting two fingers of the left hand, and
though he wore a cutlass, he did not look much like a fighter. I
had always my eye open for seafaring men, with one leg or two, and I
remember this one puzzled me. He was not sailorly, and yet he had a
smack of the sea about him too.

I asked him what was for his service, and he said he would take rum; but
as I was going out of the room to fetch it, he sat down upon a table
and motioned me to draw near. I paused where I was, with my napkin in my
hand.

“Come here, sonny,” says he. “Come nearer here.”

I took a step nearer.

“Is this here table for my mate Bill?” he asked with a kind of leer.

I told him I did not know his mate Bill, and this was for a person who
stayed in our house whom we called the captain.

“Well,” said he, “my mate Bill would be called the captain, as like
as not. He has a cut on one cheek and a mighty pleasant way with him,
particularly in drink, has my mate Bill. We’ll put it, for argument
like, that your captain has a cut on one cheek--and we’ll put it, if you
like, that that cheek’s the right one. Ah, well! I told you. Now, is my
mate Bill in this here house?”

I told him he was out walking.

“Which way, sonny? Which way is he gone?”

And when I had pointed out the rock and told him how the captain was
likely to return, and how soon, and answered a few other questions,
“Ah,” said he, “this’ll be as good as drink to my mate Bill.”

The expression of his face as he said these words was not at all
pleasant, and I had my own reasons for thinking that the stranger was
mistaken, even supposing he meant what he said. But it was no affair of
mine, I thought; and besides, it was difficult to know what to do. The
stranger kept hanging about just inside the inn door, peering round the
corner like a cat waiting for a mouse. Once I stepped out myself into
the road, but he immediately called me back, and as I did not obey quick
enough for his fancy, a most horrible change came over his tallowy face,
and he ordered me in with an oath that made me jump. As soon as I
was back again he returned to his former manner, half fawning, half
sneering, patted me on the shoulder, told me I was a good boy and he had
taken quite a fancy to me. “I have a son of my own,” said he, “as like
you as two blocks, and he’s all the pride of my ’art. But the great
thing for boys is discipline, sonny--discipline. Now, if you had sailed
along of Bill, you wouldn’t have stood there to be spoke to twice--not
you. That was never Bill’s way, nor the way of sich as sailed with him.
And here, sure enough, is my mate Bill, with a spy-glass under his arm,
bless his old ’art, to be sure. You and me’ll just go back into the
parlour, sonny, and get behind the door, and we’ll give Bill a little
surprise--bless his ’art, I say again.”

So saying, the stranger backed along with me into the parlour and put me
behind him in the corner so that we were both hidden by the open door. I
was very uneasy and alarmed, as you may fancy, and it rather added to my
fears to observe that the stranger was certainly frightened himself. He
cleared the hilt of his cutlass and loosened the blade in the sheath;
and all the time we were waiting there he kept swallowing as if he felt
what we used to call a lump in the throat.

At last in strode the captain, slammed the door behind him, without
looking to the right or left, and marched straight across the room to
where his breakfast awaited him.

“Bill,” said the stranger in a voice that I thought he had tried to make
bold and big.

The captain spun round on his heel and fronted us; all the brown had
gone out of his face, and even his nose was blue; he had the look of a
man who sees a ghost, or the evil one, or something worse, if anything
can be; and upon my word, I felt sorry to see him all in a moment turn
so old and sick.

“Come, Bill, you know me; you know an old shipmate, Bill, surely,” said
the stranger.

The captain made a sort of gasp.

“Black Dog!” said he.

“And who else?” returned the other, getting more at his ease. “Black
Dog as ever was, come for to see his old shipmate Billy, at the Admiral
Benbow inn. Ah, Bill, Bill, we have seen a sight of times, us two, since
I lost them two talons,” holding up his mutilated hand.

“Now, look here,” said the captain; “you’ve run me down; here I am;
well, then, speak up; what is it?”

“That’s you, Bill,” returned Black Dog, “you’re in the right of it,
Billy. I’ll have a glass of rum from this dear child here, as I’ve took
such a liking to; and we’ll sit down, if you please, and talk square,
like old shipmates.”

When I returned with the rum, they were already seated on either side
of the captain’s breakfast-table--Black Dog next to the door and
sitting sideways so as to have one eye on his old shipmate and one, as I
thought, on his retreat.

He bade me go and leave the door wide open. “None of your keyholes for
me, sonny,” he said; and I left them together and retired into the bar.

For a long time, though I certainly did my best to listen, I could hear
nothing but a low gattling; but at last the voices began to grow higher,
and I could pick up a word or two, mostly oaths, from the captain.

“No, no, no, no; and an end of it!” he cried once. And again, “If it
comes to swinging, swing all, say I.”

Then all of a sudden there was a tremendous explosion of oaths and
other noises--the chair and table went over in a lump, a clash of steel
followed, and then a cry of pain, and the next instant I saw Black
Dog in full flight, and the captain hotly pursuing, both with drawn
cutlasses, and the former streaming blood from the left shoulder. Just
at the door the captain aimed at the fugitive one last tremendous
cut, which would certainly have split him to the chine had it not been
intercepted by our big signboard of Admiral Benbow. You may see the
notch on the lower side of the frame to this day.

That blow was the last of the battle. Once out upon the road, Black
Dog, in spite of his wound, showed a wonderful clean pair of heels and
disappeared over the edge of the hill in half a minute. The captain, for
his part, stood staring at the signboard like a bewildered man. Then he
passed his hand over his eyes several times and at last turned back into
the house.

“Jim,” says he, “rum”; and as he spoke, he reeled a little, and caught
himself with one hand against the wall.

“Are you hurt?” cried I.

“Rum,” he repeated. “I must get away from here. Rum! Rum!”

I ran to fetch it, but I was quite unsteadied by all that had fallen
out, and I broke one glass and fouled the tap, and while I was still
getting in my own way, I heard a loud fall in the parlour, and running
in, beheld the captain lying full length upon the floor. At the same
instant my mother, alarmed by the cries and fighting, came running
downstairs to help me. Between us we raised his head. He was breathing
very loud and hard, but his eyes were closed and his face a horrible
colour.

“Dear, deary me,” cried my mother, “what a disgrace upon the house! And
your poor father sick!”

In the meantime, we had no idea what to do to help the captain, nor any
other thought but that he had got his death-hurt in the scuffle with
the stranger. I got the rum, to be sure, and tried to put it down his
throat, but his teeth were tightly shut and his jaws as strong as iron.
It was a happy relief for us when the door opened and Doctor Livesey
came in, on his visit to my father.

“Oh, doctor,” we cried, “what shall we do? Where is he wounded?”

“Wounded? A fiddle-stick’s end!” said the doctor. “No more wounded than
you or I. The man has had a stroke, as I warned him. Now, Mrs. Hawkins,
just you run upstairs to your husband and tell him, if possible, nothing
about it. For my part, I must do my best to save this fellow’s trebly
worthless life; Jim, you get me a basin.”

When I got back with the basin, the doctor had already ripped up the
captain’s sleeve and exposed his great sinewy arm. It was tattooed
in several places. “Here’s luck,” “A fair wind,” and “Billy Bones his
fancy,” were very neatly and clearly executed on the forearm; and up
near the shoulder there was a sketch of a gallows and a man hanging from
it--done, as I thought, with great spirit.

“Prophetic,” said the doctor, touching this picture with his finger.
“And now, Master Billy Bones, if that be your name, we’ll have a look at
the colour of your blood. Jim,” he said, “are you afraid of blood?”

“No, sir,” said I.

“Well, then,” said he, “you hold the basin”; and with that he took his
lancet and opened a vein.

A great deal of blood was taken before the captain opened his eyes
and looked mistily about him. First he recognized the doctor with
an unmistakable frown; then his glance fell upon me, and he looked
relieved. But suddenly his colour changed, and he tried to raise
himself, crying, “Where’s Black Dog?”

“There is no Black Dog here,” said the doctor, “except what you have
on your own back. You have been drinking rum; you have had a stroke,
precisely as I told you; and I have just, very much against my own will,
dragged you headforemost out of the grave. Now, Mr. Bones--”

“That’s not my name,” he interrupted.

“Much I care,” returned the doctor. “It’s the name of a buccaneer of my
acquaintance; and I call you by it for the sake of shortness, and what I
have to say to you is this; one glass of rum won’t kill you, but if
you take one you’ll take another and another, and I stake my wig if you
don’t break off short, you’ll die--do you understand that?--die, and go
to your own place, like the man in the Bible. Come, now, make an effort.
I’ll help you to your bed for once.”

Between us, with much trouble, we managed to hoist him upstairs, and
laid him on his bed, where his head fell back on the pillow as if he
were almost fainting.

“Now, mind you,” said the doctor, “I clear my conscience--the name of
rum for you is death.”

And with that he went off to see my father, taking me with him by the
arm.

“This is nothing,” he said as soon as he had closed the door. “I have
drawn blood enough to keep him quiet awhile; he should lie for a week
where he is--that is the best thing for him and you; but another stroke
would settle him.”

III
The Black Spot

About noon I stopped at the captain’s door with some cooling drinks
and medicines. He was lying very much as we had left him, only a little
higher, and he seemed both weak and excited.

“Jim,” he said, “you’re the only one here that’s worth anything, and you
know I’ve been always good to you. Never a month but I’ve given you a
silver fourpenny for yourself. And now you see, mate, I’m pretty low,
and deserted by all; and Jim, you’ll bring me one noggin of rum, now,
won’t you, matey?”

“The doctor--” I began.

But he broke in cursing the doctor, in a feeble voice but heartily.
“Doctors is all swabs,” he said; “and that doctor there, why, what do
he know about seafaring men? I been in places hot as pitch, and mates
dropping round with Yellow Jack, and the blessed land a-heaving like the
sea with earthquakes--what do the doctor know of lands like that?--and I
lived on rum, I tell you. It’s been meat and drink, and man and wife,
to me; and if I’m not to have my rum now I’m a poor old hulk on a lee
shore, my blood’ll be on you, Jim, and that doctor swab”; and he ran on
again for a while with curses. “Look, Jim, how my fingers fidges,”
he continued in the pleading tone. “I can’t keep ’em still, not I. I
haven’t had a drop this blessed day. That doctor’s a fool, I tell you.
If I don’t have a dram o’ rum, Jim, I’ll have the horrors; I seen some
on ’em already. I seen old Flint in the corner there, behind you; as
plain as print, I seen him; and if I get the horrors, I’m a man that
has lived rough, and I’ll raise Cain. Your doctor hisself said one glass
wouldn’t hurt me. I’ll give you a golden guinea for a noggin, Jim.”

He was growing more and more excited, and this alarmed me for my father,
who was very low that day and needed quiet; besides, I was reassured by
the doctor’s words, now quoted to me, and rather offended by the offer
of a bribe.

“I want none of your money,” said I, “but what you owe my father. I’ll
get you one glass, and no more.”

When I brought it to him, he seized it greedily and drank it out.

“Aye, aye,” said he, “that’s some better, sure enough. And now, matey,
did that doctor say how long I was to lie here in this old berth?”

“A week at least,” said I.

“Thunder!” he cried. “A week! I can’t do that; they’d have the black
spot on me by then. The lubbers is going about to get the wind of me
this blessed moment; lubbers as couldn’t keep what they got, and want to
nail what is another’s. Is that seamanly behaviour, now, I want to know?
But I’m a saving soul. I never wasted good money of mine, nor lost it
neither; and I’ll trick ’em again. I’m not afraid on ’em. I’ll shake out
another reef, matey, and daddle ’em again.”

As he was thus speaking, he had risen from bed with great difficulty,
holding to my shoulder with a grip that almost made me cry out, and
moving his legs like so much dead weight. His words, spirited as they
were in meaning, contrasted sadly with the weakness of the voice in
which they were uttered. He paused when he had got into a sitting
position on the edge.

“That doctor’s done me,” he murmured. “My ears is singing. Lay me back.”

Before I could do much to help him he had fallen back again to his
former place, where he lay for a while silent.

“Jim,” he said at length, “you saw that seafaring man today?”

“Black Dog?” I asked.

“Ah! Black Dog,” says he. “_He’s_ a bad ’un; but there’s worse that put him
on. Now, if I can’t get away nohow, and they tip me the black spot, mind
you, it’s my old sea-chest they’re after; you get on a horse--you can,
can’t you? Well, then, you get on a horse, and go to--well, yes,
I will!--to that eternal doctor swab, and tell him to pipe all
hands--magistrates and sich--and he’ll lay ’em aboard at the Admiral
Benbow--all old Flint’s crew, man and boy, all on ’em that’s left. I was
first mate, I was, old Flint’s first mate, and I’m the on’y one as knows
the place. He gave it me at Savannah, when he lay a-dying, like as if I
was to now, you see. But you won’t peach unless they get the black spot
on me, or unless you see that Black Dog again or a seafaring man with
one leg, Jim--him above all.”

“But what is the black spot, captain?” I asked.

“That’s a summons, mate. I’ll tell you if they get that. But you keep
your weather-eye open, Jim, and I’ll share with you equals, upon my
honour.”

He wandered a little longer, his voice growing weaker; but soon after I
had given him his medicine, which he took like a child, with the remark,
“If ever a seaman wanted drugs, it’s me,” he fell at last into a heavy,
swoon-like sleep, in which I left him. What I should have done had all
gone well I do not know. Probably I should have told the whole story to
the doctor, for I was in mortal fear lest the captain should repent of
his confessions and make an end of me. But as things fell out, my poor
father died quite suddenly that evening, which put all other matters
on one side. Our natural distress, the visits of the neighbours, the
arranging of the funeral, and all the work of the inn to be carried on
in the meanwhile kept me so busy that I had scarcely time to think of
the captain, far less to be afraid of him.

He got downstairs next morning, to be sure, and had his meals as usual,
though he ate little and had more, I am afraid, than his usual supply of
rum, for he helped himself out of the bar, scowling and blowing through
his nose, and no one dared to cross him. On the night before the funeral
he was as drunk as ever; and it was shocking, in that house of mourning,
to hear him singing away at his ugly old sea-song; but weak as he was,
we were all in the fear of death for him, and the doctor was suddenly
taken up with a case many miles away and was never near the house after
my father’s death. I have said the captain was weak, and indeed he
seemed rather to grow weaker than regain his strength. He clambered up
and down stairs, and went from the parlour to the bar and back again,
and sometimes put his nose out of doors to smell the sea, holding on to
the walls as he went for support and breathing hard and fast like a man
on a steep mountain. He never particularly addressed me, and it is my
belief he had as good as forgotten his confidences; but his temper was
more flighty, and allowing for his bodily weakness, more violent than
ever. He had an alarming way now when he was drunk of drawing his
cutlass and laying it bare before him on the table. But with all that,
he minded people less and seemed shut up in his own thoughts and rather
wandering. Once, for instance, to our extreme wonder, he piped up to a
different air, a kind of country love-song that he must have learned in
his youth before he had begun to follow the sea.

So things passed until, the day after the funeral, and about three
o’clock of a bitter, foggy, frosty afternoon, I was standing at the door
for a moment, full of sad thoughts about my father, when I saw someone
drawing slowly near along the road. He was plainly blind, for he tapped
before him with a stick and wore a great green shade over his eyes and
nose; and he was hunched, as if with age or weakness, and wore a huge
old tattered sea-cloak with a hood that made him appear positively
deformed. I never saw in my life a more dreadful-looking figure.
He stopped a little from the inn, and raising his voice in an odd
sing-song, addressed the air in front of him, “Will any kind friend
inform a poor blind man, who has lost the precious sight of his eyes in
the gracious defence of his native country, England--and God bless King
George!--where or in what part of this country he may now be?”

“You are at the Admiral Benbow, Black Hill Cove, my good man,” said I.

“I hear a voice,” said he, “a young voice. Will you give me your hand,
my kind young friend, and lead me in?”

I held out my hand, and the horrible, soft-spoken, eyeless creature
gripped it in a moment like a vise. I was so much startled that I
struggled to withdraw, but the blind man pulled me close up to him with
a single action of his arm.

“Now, boy,” he said, “take me in to the captain.”

“Sir,” said I, “upon my word I dare not.”

“Oh,” he sneered, “that’s it! Take me in straight or I’ll break your
arm.”

And he gave it, as he spoke, a wrench that made me cry out.

“Sir,” said I, “it is for yourself I mean. The captain is not what he
used to be. He sits with a drawn cutlass. Another gentleman--”

“Come, now, march,” interrupted he; and I never heard a voice so cruel,
and cold, and ugly as that blind man’s. It cowed me more than the pain,
and I began to obey him at once, walking straight in at the door and
towards the parlour, where our sick old buccaneer was sitting, dazed
with rum. The blind man clung close to me, holding me in one iron fist
and leaning almost more of his weight on me than I could carry. “Lead me
straight up to him, and when I’m in view, cry out, ‘Here’s a friend
for you, Bill.’ If you don’t, I’ll do this,” and with that he gave me a
twitch that I thought would have made me faint. Between this and that, I
was so utterly terrified of the blind beggar that I forgot my terror of
the captain, and as I opened the parlour door, cried out the words he
had ordered in a trembling voice.

The poor captain raised his eyes, and at one look the rum went out of
him and left him staring sober. The expression of his face was not so
much of terror as of mortal sickness. He made a movement to rise, but I
do not believe he had enough force left in his body.

“Now, Bill, sit where you are,” said the beggar. “If I can’t see, I can
hear a finger stirring. Business is business. Hold out your left hand.
Boy, take his left hand by the wrist and bring it near to my right.”

We both obeyed him to the letter, and I saw him pass something from the
hollow of the hand that held his stick into the palm of the captain’s,
which closed upon it instantly.

“And now that’s done,” said the blind man; and at the words he suddenly
left hold of me, and with incredible accuracy and nimbleness,
skipped out of the parlour and into the road, where, as I still stood
motionless, I could hear his stick go tap-tap-tapping into the distance.

It was some time before either I or the captain seemed to gather our
senses, but at length, and about at the same moment, I released his
wrist, which I was still holding, and he drew in his hand and looked
sharply into the palm.

“Ten o’clock!” he cried. “Six hours. We’ll do them yet,” and he sprang
to his feet.

Even as he did so, he reeled, put his hand to his throat, stood swaying
for a moment, and then, with a peculiar sound, fell from his whole
height face foremost to the floor.

I ran to him at once, calling to my mother. But haste was all in vain.
The captain had been struck dead by thundering apoplexy. It is a curious
thing to understand, for I had certainly never liked the man, though of
late I had begun to pity him, but as soon as I saw that he was dead, I
burst into a flood of tears. It was the second death I had known, and
the sorrow of the first was still fresh in my heart.

IV
The Sea-chest

I lost no time, of course, in telling my mother all that I knew, and
perhaps should have told her long before, and we saw ourselves at once
in a difficult and dangerous position. Some of the man’s money--if
he had any--was certainly due to us, but it was not likely that our
captain’s shipmates, above all the two specimens seen by me, Black
Dog and the blind beggar, would be inclined to give up their booty in
payment of the dead man’s debts. The captain’s order to mount at
once and ride for Doctor Livesey would have left my mother alone
and unprotected, which was not to be thought of. Indeed, it seemed
impossible for either of us to remain much longer in the house; the fall
of coals in the kitchen grate, the very ticking of the clock, filled
us with alarms. The neighbourhood, to our ears, seemed haunted by
approaching footsteps; and what between the dead body of the captain
on the parlour floor and the thought of that detestable blind beggar
hovering near at hand and ready to return, there were moments when, as
the saying goes, I jumped in my skin for terror. Something must speedily
be resolved upon, and it occurred to us at last to go forth together
and seek help in the neighbouring hamlet. No sooner said than done.
Bare-headed as we were, we ran out at once in the gathering evening and
the frosty fog.

The hamlet lay not many hundred yards away, though out of view, on the
other side of the next cove; and what greatly encouraged me, it was
in an opposite direction from that whence the blind man had made his
appearance and whither he had presumably returned. We were not many
minutes on the road, though we sometimes stopped to lay hold of each
other and hearken. But there was no unusual sound--nothing but the low
wash of the ripple and the croaking of the inmates of the wood.

It was already candle-light when we reached the hamlet, and I shall
never forget how much I was cheered to see the yellow shine in doors and
windows; but that, as it proved, was the best of the help we were likely
to get in that quarter. For--you would have thought men would have been
ashamed of themselves--no soul would consent to return with us to the
Admiral Benbow. The more we told of our troubles, the more--man, woman,
and child--they clung to the shelter of their houses. The name of
Captain Flint, though it was strange to me, was well enough known to
some there and carried a great weight of terror. Some of the men who
had been to field-work on the far side of the Admiral Benbow remembered,
besides, to have seen several strangers on the road, and taking them to
be smugglers, to have bolted away; and one at least had seen a little
lugger in what we called Kitt’s Hole. For that matter, anyone who was a
comrade of the captain’s was enough to frighten them to death. And the
short and the long of the matter was, that while we could get several
who were willing enough to ride to Dr. Livesey’s, which lay in another
direction, not one would help us to defend the inn.

They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other
hand, a great emboldener; and so when each had said his say, my mother
made them a speech. She would not, she declared, lose money that
belonged to her fatherless boy; “If none of the rest of you dare,”
she said, “Jim and I dare. Back we will go, the way we came, and small
thanks to you big, hulking, chicken-hearted men. We’ll have that chest
open, if we die for it. And I’ll thank you for that bag, Mrs. Crossley,
to bring back our lawful money in.”

Of course I said I would go with my mother, and of course they all cried
out at our foolhardiness, but even then not a man would go along with
us. All they would do was to give me a loaded pistol lest we were
attacked, and to promise to have horses ready saddled in case we were
pursued on our return, while one lad was to ride forward to the doctor’s
in search of armed assistance.

My heart was beating finely when we two set forth in the cold night upon
this dangerous venture. A full moon was beginning to rise and peered
redly through the upper edges of the fog, and this increased our haste,
for it was plain, before we came forth again, that all would be as
bright as day, and our departure exposed to the eyes of any watchers.
We slipped along the hedges, noiseless and swift, nor did we see or hear
anything to increase our terrors, till, to our relief, the door of the
Admiral Benbow had closed behind us.

I slipped the bolt at once, and we stood and panted for a moment in the
dark, alone in the house with the dead captain’s body. Then my mother
got a candle in the bar, and holding each other’s hands, we advanced
into the parlour. He lay as we had left him, on his back, with his eyes
open and one arm stretched out.

“Draw down the blind, Jim,” whispered my mother; “they might come and
watch outside. And now,” said she when I had done so, “we have to get
the key off _that;_ and who’s to touch it, I should like to know!” and she
gave a kind of sob as she said the words.

I went down on my knees at once. On the floor close to his hand there
was a little round of paper, blackened on the one side. I could not
doubt that this was the _black spot;_ and taking it up, I found written
on the other side, in a very good, clear hand, this short message: “You
have till ten tonight.”

“He had till ten, Mother,” said I; and just as I said it, our old clock
began striking. This sudden noise startled us shockingly; but the news
was good, for it was only six.

“Now, Jim,” she said, “that key.”

I felt in his pockets, one after another. A few small coins, a thimble,
and some thread and big needles, a piece of pigtail tobacco bitten away
at the end, his gully with the crooked handle, a pocket compass, and a
tinder box were all that they contained, and I began to despair.

“Perhaps it’s round his neck,” suggested my mother.

Overcoming a strong repugnance, I tore open his shirt at the neck, and
there, sure enough, hanging to a bit of tarry string, which I cut with
his own gully, we found the key. At this triumph we were filled with
hope and hurried upstairs without delay to the little room where he had
slept so long and where his box had stood since the day of his arrival.

It was like any other seaman’s chest on the outside, the initial “B”
burned on the top of it with a hot iron, and the corners somewhat
smashed and broken as by long, rough usage.

“Give me the key,” said my mother; and though the lock was very stiff,
she had turned it and thrown back the lid in a twinkling.

A strong smell of tobacco and tar rose from the interior, but nothing
was to be seen on the top except a suit of very good clothes, carefully
brushed and folded. They had never been worn, my mother said. Under
that, the miscellany began--a quadrant, a tin canikin, several sticks of
tobacco, two brace of very handsome pistols, a piece of bar silver, an
old Spanish watch and some other trinkets of little value and mostly of
foreign make, a pair of compasses mounted with brass, and five or six
curious West Indian shells. I have often wondered since why he should
have carried about these shells with him in his wandering, guilty, and
hunted life.

In the meantime, we had found nothing of any value but the silver and
the trinkets, and neither of these were in our way. Underneath there
was an old boat-cloak, whitened with sea-salt on many a harbour-bar. My
mother pulled it up with impatience, and there lay before us, the last
things in the chest, a bundle tied up in oilcloth, and looking like
papers, and a canvas bag that gave forth, at a touch, the jingle of
gold.

“I’ll show these rogues that I’m an honest woman,” said my mother. “I’ll
have my dues, and not a farthing over. Hold Mrs. Crossley’s bag.” And
she began to count over the amount of the captain’s score from the
sailor’s bag into the one that I was holding.

It was a long, difficult business, for the coins were of all countries
and sizes--doubloons, and louis d’ors, and guineas, and pieces of eight,
and I know not what besides, all shaken together at random. The guineas,
too, were about the scarcest, and it was with these only that my mother
knew how to make her count.

When we were about half-way through, I suddenly put my hand upon her
arm, for I had heard in the silent frosty air a sound that brought my
heart into my mouth--the tap-tapping of the blind man’s stick upon the
frozen road. It drew nearer and nearer, while we sat holding our breath.
Then it struck sharp on the inn door, and then we could hear the handle
being turned and the bolt rattling as the wretched being tried to enter;
and then there was a long time of silence both within and without.
At last the tapping recommenced, and, to our indescribable joy and
gratitude, died slowly away again until it ceased to be heard.

“Mother,” said I, “take the whole and let’s be going,” for I was sure
the bolted door must have seemed suspicious and would bring the whole
hornet’s nest about our ears, though how thankful I was that I had
bolted it, none could tell who had never met that terrible blind man.

But my mother, frightened as she was, would not consent to take a
fraction more than was due to her and was obstinately unwilling to be
content with less. It was not yet seven, she said, by a long way; she
knew her rights and she would have them; and she was still arguing with
me when a little low whistle sounded a good way off upon the hill. That
was enough, and more than enough, for both of us.

“I’ll take what I have,” she said, jumping to her feet.

“And I’ll take this to square the count,” said I, picking up the oilskin
packet.

Next moment we were both groping downstairs, leaving the candle by
the empty chest; and the next we had opened the door and were in full
retreat. We had not started a moment too soon. The fog was rapidly
dispersing; already the moon shone quite clear on the high ground on
either side; and it was only in the exact bottom of the dell and round
the tavern door that a thin veil still hung unbroken to conceal the
first steps of our escape. Far less than half-way to the hamlet, very
little beyond the bottom of the hill, we must come forth into the
moonlight. Nor was this all, for the sound of several footsteps running
came already to our ears, and as we looked back in their direction, a
light tossing to and fro and still rapidly advancing showed that one of
the newcomers carried a lantern.

“My dear,” said my mother suddenly, “take the money and run on. I am
going to faint.”

This was certainly the end for both of us, I thought. How I cursed the
cowardice of the neighbours; how I blamed my poor mother for her honesty
and her greed, for her past foolhardiness and present weakness! We were
just at the little bridge, by good fortune; and I helped her, tottering
as she was, to the edge of the bank, where, sure enough, she gave a sigh
and fell on my shoulder. I do not know how I found the strength to do it
at all, and I am afraid it was roughly done, but I managed to drag her
down the bank and a little way under the arch. Farther I could not move
her, for the bridge was too low to let me do more than crawl below it.
So there we had to stay--my mother almost entirely exposed and both of
us within earshot of the inn.

V
The Last of the Blind Man

My curiosity, in a sense, was stronger than my fear, for I could not
remain where I was, but crept back to the bank again, whence, sheltering
my head behind a bush of broom, I might command the road before our
door. I was scarcely in position ere my enemies began to arrive, seven
or eight of them, running hard, their feet beating out of time along
the road and the man with the lantern some paces in front. Three men ran
together, hand in hand; and I made out, even through the mist, that the
middle man of this trio was the blind beggar. The next moment his voice
showed me that I was right.

“Down with the door!” he cried.

“Aye, aye, sir!” answered two or three; and a rush was made upon the
Admiral Benbow, the lantern-bearer following; and then I could see
them pause, and hear speeches passed in a lower key, as if they were
surprised to find the door open. But the pause was brief, for the blind
man again issued his commands. His voice sounded louder and higher, as
if he were afire with eagerness and rage.

“In, in, in!” he shouted, and cursed them for their delay.

Four or five of them obeyed at once, two remaining on the road with the
formidable beggar. There was a pause, then a cry of surprise, and then a
voice shouting from the house, “Bill’s dead.”

But the blind man swore at them again for their delay.

“Search him, some of you shirking lubbers, and the rest of you aloft and
get the chest,” he cried.

I could hear their feet rattling up our old stairs, so that the
house must have shook with it. Promptly afterwards, fresh sounds of
astonishment arose; the window of the captain’s room was thrown open
with a slam and a jingle of broken glass, and a man leaned out into the
moonlight, head and shoulders, and addressed the blind beggar on the
road below him.

“Pew,” he cried, “they’ve been before us. Someone’s turned the chest out
alow and aloft.”

“Is it there?” roared Pew.

“The money’s there.”

The blind man cursed the money.

“Flint’s fist, I mean,” he cried.

“We don’t see it here nohow,” returned the man.

“Here, you below there, is it on Bill?” cried the blind man again.

At that another fellow, probably him who had remained below to search
the captain’s body, came to the door of the inn. “Bill’s been overhauled
a’ready,” said he; “nothin’ left.”

“It’s these people of the inn--it’s that boy. I wish I had put his eyes
out!” cried the blind man, Pew. “There were no time ago--they had the
door bolted when I tried it. Scatter, lads, and find ’em.”

“Sure enough, they left their glim here,” said the fellow from the
window.

“Scatter and find ’em! Rout the house out!” reiterated Pew, striking
with his stick upon the road.

Then there followed a great to-do through all our old inn, heavy feet
pounding to and fro, furniture thrown over, doors kicked in, until the
very rocks re-echoed and the men came out again, one after another, on
the road and declared that we were nowhere to be found. And just
the same whistle that had alarmed my mother and myself over the dead
captain’s money was once more clearly audible through the night,
but this time twice repeated. I had thought it to be the blind man’s
trumpet, so to speak, summoning his crew to the assault, but I now found
that it was a signal from the hillside towards the hamlet, and from its
effect upon the buccaneers, a signal to warn them of approaching danger.

“There’s Dirk again,” said one. “Twice! We’ll have to budge, mates.”

“Budge, you skulk!” cried Pew. “Dirk was a fool and a coward from the
first--you wouldn’t mind him. They must be close by; they can’t be far;
you have your hands on it. Scatter and look for them, dogs! Oh, shiver
my soul,” he cried, “if I had eyes!”

This appeal seemed to produce some effect, for two of the fellows began
to look here and there among the lumber, but half-heartedly, I thought,
and with half an eye to their own danger all the time, while the rest
stood irresolute on the road.

“You have your hands on thousands, you fools, and you hang a leg! You’d
be as rich as kings if you could find it, and you know it’s here, and
you stand there skulking. There wasn’t one of you dared face Bill, and
I did it--a blind man! And I’m to lose my chance for you! I’m to be a
poor, crawling beggar, sponging for rum, when I might be rolling in a
coach! If you had the pluck of a weevil in a biscuit you would catch
them still.”

“Hang it, Pew, we’ve got the doubloons!” grumbled one.

“They might have hid the blessed thing,” said another. “Take the
Georges, Pew, and don’t stand here squalling.”

Squalling was the word for it; Pew’s anger rose so high at these
objections till at last, his passion completely taking the upper hand,
he struck at them right and left in his blindness and his stick sounded
heavily on more than one.

These, in their turn, cursed back at the blind miscreant, threatened him
in horrid terms, and tried in vain to catch the stick and wrest it from
his grasp.

This quarrel was the saving of us, for while it was still raging,
another sound came from the top of the hill on the side of the
hamlet--the tramp of horses galloping. Almost at the same time a
pistol-shot, flash and report, came from the hedge side. And that was
plainly the last signal of danger, for the buccaneers turned at once
and ran, separating in every direction, one seaward along the cove, one
slant across the hill, and so on, so that in half a minute not a sign of
them remained but Pew. Him they had deserted, whether in sheer panic
or out of revenge for his ill words and blows I know not; but there he
remained behind, tapping up and down the road in a frenzy, and groping
and calling for his comrades. Finally he took a wrong turn and ran a few
steps past me, towards the hamlet, crying, “Johnny, Black Dog, Dirk,”
and other names, “you won’t leave old Pew, mates--not old Pew!”

Just then the noise of horses topped the rise, and four or five riders
came in sight in the moonlight and swept at full gallop down the slope.

At this Pew saw his error, turned with a scream, and ran straight for
the ditch, into which he rolled. But he was on his feet again in a
second and made another dash, now utterly bewildered, right under the
nearest of the coming horses.

The rider tried to save him, but in vain. Down went Pew with a cry that
rang high into the night; and the four hoofs trampled and spurned him
and passed by. He fell on his side, then gently collapsed upon his face
and moved no more.

I leaped to my feet and hailed the riders. They were pulling up, at any
rate, horrified at the accident; and I soon saw what they were. One,
tailing out behind the rest, was a lad that had gone from the hamlet to
Dr. Livesey’s; the rest were revenue officers, whom he had met by the
way, and with whom he had had the intelligence to return at once. Some
news of the lugger in Kitt’s Hole had found its way to Supervisor Dance
and set him forth that night in our direction, and to that circumstance
my mother and I owed our preservation from death.

Pew was dead, stone dead. As for my mother, when we had carried her up
to the hamlet, a little cold water and salts and that soon brought her
back again, and she was none the worse for her terror, though she still
continued to deplore the balance of the money. In the meantime the
supervisor rode on, as fast as he could, to Kitt’s Hole; but his men
had to dismount and grope down the dingle, leading, and sometimes
supporting, their horses, and in continual fear of ambushes; so it was
no great matter for surprise that when they got down to the Hole the
lugger was already under way, though still close in. He hailed her. A
voice replied, telling him to keep out of the moonlight or he would get
some lead in him, and at the same time a bullet whistled close by his
arm. Soon after, the lugger doubled the point and disappeared. Mr. Dance
stood there, as he said, “like a fish out of water,” and all he could do
was to dispatch a man to B---- to warn the cutter. “And that,” said he,
“is just about as good as nothing. They’ve got off clean, and there’s
an end. Only,” he added, “I’m glad I trod on Master Pew’s corns,” for by
this time he had heard my story.

I went back with him to the Admiral Benbow, and you cannot imagine a
house in such a state of smash; the very clock had been thrown down
by these fellows in their furious hunt after my mother and myself;
and though nothing had actually been taken away except the captain’s
money-bag and a little silver from the till, I could see at once that we
were ruined. Mr. Dance could make nothing of the scene.

“They got the money, you say? Well, then, Hawkins, what in fortune were
they after? More money, I suppose?”

“No, sir; not money, I think,” replied I. “In fact, sir, I believe I
have the thing in my breast pocket; and to tell you the truth, I should
like to get it put in safety.”

“To be sure, boy; quite right,” said he. “I’ll take it, if you like.”

“I thought perhaps Dr. Livesey--” I began.

“Perfectly right,” he interrupted very cheerily, “perfectly right--a
gentleman and a magistrate. And, now I come to think of it, I might as
well ride round there myself and report to him or squire. Master Pew’s
dead, when all’s done; not that I regret it, but he’s dead, you see, and
people will make it out against an officer of his Majesty’s revenue,
if make it out they can. Now, I’ll tell you, Hawkins, if you like, I’ll
take you along.”

I thanked him heartily for the offer, and we walked back to the hamlet
where the horses were. By the time I had told mother of my purpose they
were all in the saddle.

“Dogger,” said Mr. Dance, “you have a good horse; take up this lad
behind you.”

As soon as I was mounted, holding on to Dogger’s belt, the supervisor
gave the word, and the party struck out at a bouncing trot on the road
to Dr. Livesey’s house.

VI
The Captain’s Papers

We rode hard all the way till we drew up before Dr. Livesey’s door. The
house was all dark to the front.

Mr. Dance told me to jump down and knock, and Dogger gave me a stirrup
to descend by. The door was opened almost at once by the maid.

“Is Dr. Livesey in?” I asked.

No, she said, he had come home in the afternoon but had gone up to the
hall to dine and pass the evening with the squire.

“So there we go, boys,” said Mr. Dance.

This time, as the distance was short, I did not mount, but ran with
Dogger’s stirrup-leather to the lodge gates and up the long, leafless,
moonlit avenue to where the white line of the hall buildings looked on
either hand on great old gardens. Here Mr. Dance dismounted, and taking
me along with him, was admitted at a word into the house.

The servant led us down a matted passage and showed us at the end into a
great library, all lined with bookcases and busts upon the top of them,
where the squire and Dr. Livesey sat, pipe in hand, on either side of a
bright fire.

I had never seen the squire so near at hand. He was a tall man, over six
feet high, and broad in proportion, and he had a bluff, rough-and-ready
face, all roughened and reddened and lined in his long travels. His
eyebrows were very black, and moved readily, and this gave him a look of
some temper, not bad, you would say, but quick and high.

“Come in, Mr. Dance,” says he, very stately and condescending.

“Good evening, Dance,” says the doctor with a nod. “And good evening to
you, friend Jim. What good wind brings you here?”

The supervisor stood up straight and stiff and told his story like a
lesson; and you should have seen how the two gentlemen leaned forward
and looked at each other, and forgot to smoke in their surprise and
interest. When they heard how my mother went back to the inn, Dr.
Livesey fairly slapped his thigh, and the squire cried “Bravo!” and
broke his long pipe against the grate. Long before it was done, Mr.
Trelawney (that, you will remember, was the squire’s name) had got up
from his seat and was striding about the room, and the doctor, as if to
hear the better, had taken off his powdered wig and sat there looking
very strange indeed with his own close-cropped black poll.

At last Mr. Dance finished the story.

“Mr. Dance,” said the squire, “you are a very noble fellow. And as for
riding down that black, atrocious miscreant, I regard it as an act of
virtue, sir, like stamping on a cockroach. This lad Hawkins is a trump,
I perceive. Hawkins, will you ring that bell? Mr. Dance must have some
ale.”

“And so, Jim,” said the doctor, “you have the thing that they were
after, have you?”

“Here it is, sir,” said I, and gave him the oilskin packet.

The doctor looked it all over, as if his fingers were itching to open
it; but instead of doing that, he put it quietly in the pocket of his
coat.

“Squire,” said he, “when Dance has had his ale he must, of course, be
off on his Majesty’s service; but I mean to keep Jim Hawkins here to
sleep at my house, and with your permission, I propose we should have up
the cold pie and let him sup.”

“As you will, Livesey,” said the squire; “Hawkins has earned better than
cold pie.”

So a big pigeon pie was brought in and put on a sidetable, and I made
a hearty supper, for I was as hungry as a hawk, while Mr. Dance was
further complimented and at last dismissed.

“And now, squire,” said the doctor.

“And now, Livesey,” said the squire in the same breath.

“One at a time, one at a time,” laughed Dr. Livesey. “You have heard of
this Flint, I suppose?”

“Heard of him!” cried the squire. “Heard of him, you say! He was the
bloodthirstiest buccaneer that sailed. Blackbeard was a child to Flint.
The Spaniards were so prodigiously afraid of him that, I tell you, sir,
I was sometimes proud he was an Englishman. I’ve seen his top-sails with
these eyes, off Trinidad, and the cowardly son of a rum-puncheon that I
sailed with put back--put back, sir, into Port of Spain.”

“Well, I’ve heard of him myself, in England,” said the doctor. “But the
point is, had he money?”

“Money!” cried the squire. “Have you heard the story? What were these
villains after but money? What do they care for but money? For what
would they risk their rascal carcasses but money?”

“That we shall soon know,” replied the doctor. “But you are so
confoundedly hot-headed and exclamatory that I cannot get a word in.
What I want to know is this: Supposing that I have here in my pocket
some clue to where Flint buried his treasure, will that treasure amount
to much?”

“Amount, sir!” cried the squire. “It will amount to this: If we have the
clue you talk about, I fit out a ship in Bristol dock, and take you and
Hawkins here along, and I’ll have that treasure if I search a year.”

“Very well,” said the doctor. “Now, then, if Jim is agreeable, we’ll
open the packet”; and he laid it before him on the table.

The bundle was sewn together, and the doctor had to get out his
instrument case and cut the stitches with his medical scissors. It
contained two things--a book and a sealed paper.

“First of all we’ll try the book,” observed the doctor.

The squire and I were both peering over his shoulder as he opened
it, for Dr. Livesey had kindly motioned me to come round from the
side-table, where I had been eating, to enjoy the sport of the search.
On the first page there were only some scraps of writing, such as a man
with a pen in his hand might make for idleness or practice. One was the
same as the tattoo mark, “Billy Bones his fancy”; then there was “Mr. W.
Bones, mate,” “No more rum,” “Off Palm Key he got itt,” and some other
snatches, mostly single words and unintelligible. I could not help
wondering who it was that had “got itt,” and what “itt” was that he got.
A knife in his back as like as not.

“Not much instruction there,” said Dr. Livesey as he passed on.

The next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious series of
entries. There was a date at one end of the line and at the other a
sum of money, as in common account-books, but instead of explanatory
writing, only a varying number of crosses between the two. On the 12th
of June, 1745, for instance, a sum of seventy pounds had plainly become
due to someone, and there was nothing but six crosses to explain the
cause. In a few cases, to be sure, the name of a place would be added,
as “Offe Caraccas,” or a mere entry of latitude and longitude, as “62o
17′ 20″, 19o 2′ 40″.”

The record lasted over nearly twenty years, the amount of the separate
entries growing larger as time went on, and at the end a grand total
had been made out after five or six wrong additions, and these words
appended, “Bones, his pile.”

“I can’t make head or tail of this,” said Dr. Livesey.

“The thing is as clear as noonday,” cried the squire. “This is the
black-hearted hound’s account-book. These crosses stand for the names of
ships or towns that they sank or plundered. The sums are the scoundrel’s
share, and where he feared an ambiguity, you see he added something
clearer. ‘Offe Caraccas,’ now; you see, here was some unhappy vessel
boarded off that coast. God help the poor souls that manned her--coral
long ago.”

“Right!” said the doctor. “See what it is to be a traveller. Right! And
the amounts increase, you see, as he rose in rank.”

There was little else in the volume but a few bearings of places noted
in the blank leaves towards the end and a table for reducing French,
English, and Spanish moneys to a common value.

“Thrifty man!” cried the doctor. “He wasn’t the one to be cheated.”

“And now,” said the squire, “for the other.”

The paper had been sealed in several places with a thimble by way of
seal; the very thimble, perhaps, that I had found in the captain’s
pocket. The doctor opened the seals with great care, and there fell out
the map of an island, with latitude and longitude, soundings, names of
hills and bays and inlets, and every particular that would be needed
to bring a ship to a safe anchorage upon its shores. It was about nine
miles long and five across, shaped, you might say, like a fat dragon
standing up, and had two fine land-locked harbours, and a hill in the
centre part marked “The Spy-glass.” There were several additions of a
later date, but above all, three crosses of red ink--two on the north
part of the island, one in the southwest--and beside this last, in
the same red ink, and in a small, neat hand, very different from the
captain’s tottery characters, these words: “Bulk of treasure here.”

Over on the back the same hand had written this further information:

Tall tree, Spy-glass shoulder, bearing a point to
the N. of N.N.E.

Skeleton Island E.S.E. and by E.

Ten feet.

The bar silver is in the north cache; you can find
it by the trend of the east hummock, ten fathoms
south of the black crag with the face on it.

The arms are easy found, in the sand-hill, N.
point of north inlet cape, bearing E. and a
quarter N.
J.F.

That was all; but brief as it was, and to me incomprehensible, it filled
the squire and Dr. Livesey with delight.

“Livesey,” said the squire, “you will give up this wretched practice
at once. Tomorrow I start for Bristol. In three weeks’ time--three
weeks!--two weeks--ten days--we’ll have the best ship, sir, and the
choicest crew in England. Hawkins shall come as cabin-boy. You’ll make
a famous cabin-boy, Hawkins. You, Livesey, are ship’s doctor; I am
admiral. We’ll take Redruth, Joyce, and Hunter. We’ll have favourable
winds, a quick passage, and not the least difficulty in finding the
spot, and money to eat, to roll in, to play duck and drake with ever
after.”

“Trelawney,” said the doctor, “I’ll go with you; and I’ll go bail for
it, so will Jim, and be a credit to the undertaking. There’s only one
man I’m afraid of.”

“And who’s that?” cried the squire. “Name the dog, sir!”

“You,” replied the doctor; “for you cannot hold your tongue. We are not
the only men who know of this paper. These fellows who attacked the
inn tonight--bold, desperate blades, for sure--and the rest who stayed
aboard that lugger, and more, I dare say, not far off, are, one and all,
through thick and thin, bound that they’ll get that money. We must none
of us go alone till we get to sea. Jim and I shall stick together in the
meanwhile; you’ll take Joyce and Hunter when you ride to Bristol, and
from first to last, not one of us must breathe a word of what we’ve
found.”

“Livesey,” returned the squire, “you are always in the right of it. I’ll
be as silent as the grave.”

PART TWO--The Sea-cook

VII
I Go to Bristol

It was longer than the squire imagined ere we were ready for the sea,
and none of our first plans--not even Dr. Livesey’s, of keeping me
beside him--could be carried out as we intended. The doctor had to go
to London for a physician to take charge of his practice; the squire was
hard at work at Bristol; and I lived on at the hall under the charge of
old Redruth, the gamekeeper, almost a prisoner, but full of sea-dreams
and the most charming anticipations of strange islands and adventures.
I brooded by the hour together over the map, all the details of which
I well remembered. Sitting by the fire in the housekeeper’s room, I
approached that island in my fancy from every possible direction; I
explored every acre of its surface; I climbed a thousand times to that
tall hill they call the Spy-glass, and from the top enjoyed the most
wonderful and changing prospects. Sometimes the isle was thick with
savages, with whom we fought, sometimes full of dangerous animals that
hunted us, but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange and
tragic as our actual adventures.

So the weeks passed on, till one fine day there came a letter addressed
to Dr. Livesey, with this addition, “To be opened, in the case of his
absence, by Tom Redruth or young Hawkins.” Obeying this order, we
found, or rather I found--for the gamekeeper was a poor hand at reading
anything but print--the following important news:

_Old Anchor Inn, Bristol, March 1, 17--._

Dear Livesey--As I do not know whether you
are at the hall or still in London, I send this in
double to both places.

The ship is bought and fitted. She lies at
anchor, ready for sea. You never imagined a
sweeter schooner--a child might sail her--two
hundred tons; name, HISPANIOLA.

I got her through my old friend, Blandly, who
has proved himself throughout the most surprising
trump. The admirable fellow literally slaved in
my interest, and so, I may say, did everyone in
Bristol, as soon as they got wind of the port we
sailed for--treasure, I mean.

“Redruth,” said I, interrupting the letter, “Dr. Livesey will not like
that. The squire has been talking, after all.”

“Well, who’s a better right?” growled the gamekeeper. “A pretty rum go
if squire ain’t to talk for Dr. Livesey, I should think.”

At that I gave up all attempts at commentary and read straight on:

Blandly himself found the HISPANIOLA, and
by the most admirable management got her for the
merest trifle. There is a class of men in Bristol
monstrously prejudiced against Blandly. They go
the length of declaring that this honest creature
would do anything for money, that the HISPANIOLA
belonged to him, and that he sold it me absurdly
high--the most transparent calumnies. None of them
dare, however, to deny the merits of the ship.

So far there was not a hitch. The
workpeople, to be sure--riggers and what not--were
most annoyingly slow; but time cured that. It was
the crew that troubled me.

I wished a round score of men--in case of
natives, buccaneers, or the odious French--and I
had the worry of the deuce itself to find so much
as half a dozen, till the most remarkable stroke
of fortune brought me the very man that I
required.

I was standing on the dock, when, by the
merest accident, I fell in talk with him. I found
he was an old sailor, kept a public-house, knew
all the seafaring men in Bristol, had lost his
health ashore, and wanted a good berth as cook to
get to sea again. He had hobbled down there that
morning, he said, to get a smell of the salt.

I was monstrously touched--so would you have
been--and, out of pure pity, I engaged him on the
spot to be ship’s cook. Long John Silver, he is
called, and has lost a leg; but that I regarded as
a recommendation, since he lost it in his
country’s service, under the immortal Hawke. He
has no pension, Livesey. Imagine the abominable
age we live in!

Well, sir, I thought I had only found a cook,
but it was a crew I had discovered. Between
Silver and myself we got together in a few days a
company of the toughest old salts imaginable--not
pretty to look at, but fellows, by their faces, of
the most indomitable spirit. I declare we could
fight a frigate.

Long John even got rid of two out of the six
or seven I had already engaged. He showed me in a
moment that they were just the sort of fresh-water
swabs we had to fear in an adventure of
importance.

I am in the most magnificent health and
spirits, eating like a bull, sleeping like a tree,
yet I shall not enjoy a moment till I hear my old
tarpaulins tramping round the capstan. Seaward,
ho! Hang the treasure! It’s the glory of the sea
that has turned my head. So now, Livesey, come
post; do not lose an hour, if you respect me.

Let young Hawkins go at once to see his
mother, with Redruth for a guard; and then both
come full speed to Bristol.
John Trelawney

_Postscript._--I did not tell you that Blandly,
who, by the way, is to send a consort after us if
we don’t turn up by the end of August, had found
an admirable fellow for sailing master--a stiff
man, which I regret, but in all other respects a
treasure. Long John Silver unearthed a very
competent man for a mate, a man named Arrow. I
have a boatswain who pipes, Livesey; so things
shall go man-o’-war fashion on board the good ship
HISPANIOLA.

I forgot to tell you that Silver is a man of
substance; I know of my own knowledge that he has
a banker’s account, which has never been
overdrawn. He leaves his wife to manage the inn;
and as she is a woman of colour, a pair of old
bachelors like you and I may be excused for
guessing that it is the wife, quite as much as the
health, that sends him back to roving.
J. T.

P.P.S.--Hawkins may stay one night with his
mother.
J. T.

You can fancy the excitement into which that letter put me. I was half
beside myself with glee; and if ever I despised a man, it was old
Tom Redruth, who could do nothing but grumble and lament. Any of the
under-gamekeepers would gladly have changed places with him; but such
was not the squire’s pleasure, and the squire’s pleasure was like law
among them all. Nobody but old Redruth would have dared so much as even
to grumble.

The next morning he and I set out on foot for the Admiral Benbow, and
there I found my mother in good health and spirits. The captain, who had
so long been a cause of so much discomfort, was gone where the wicked
cease from troubling. The squire had had everything repaired, and the
public rooms and the sign repainted, and had added some furniture--above
all a beautiful armchair for mother in the bar. He had found her a boy
as an apprentice also so that she should not want help while I was gone.

It was on seeing that boy that I understood, for the first time, my
situation. I had thought up to that moment of the adventures before me,
not at all of the home that I was leaving; and now, at sight of this
clumsy stranger, who was to stay here in my place beside my mother, I
had my first attack of tears. I am afraid I led that boy a dog’s life,
for as he was new to the work, I had a hundred opportunities of setting
him right and putting him down, and I was not slow to profit by them.

The night passed, and the next day, after dinner, Redruth and I were
afoot again and on the road. I said good-bye to Mother and the
cove where I had lived since I was born, and the dear old Admiral
Benbow--since he was repainted, no longer quite so dear. One of my last
thoughts was of the captain, who had so often strode along the beach
with his cocked hat, his sabre-cut cheek, and his old brass telescope.
Next moment we had turned the corner and my home was out of sight.

The mail picked us up about dusk at the Royal George on the heath. I was
wedged in between Redruth and a stout old gentleman, and in spite of the
swift motion and the cold night air, I must have dozed a great deal from
the very first, and then slept like a log up hill and down dale through
stage after stage, for when I was awakened at last it was by a punch
in the ribs, and I opened my eyes to find that we were standing still
before a large building in a city street and that the day had already
broken a long time.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Bristol,” said Tom. “Get down.”

Mr. Trelawney had taken up his residence at an inn far down the docks to
superintend the work upon the schooner. Thither we had now to walk, and
our way, to my great delight, lay along the quays and beside the great
multitude of ships of all sizes and rigs and nations. In one, sailors
were singing at their work, in another there were men aloft, high over
my head, hanging to threads that seemed no thicker than a spider’s.
Though I had lived by the shore all my life, I seemed never to have been
near the sea till then. The smell of tar and salt was something new.
I saw the most wonderful figureheads, that had all been far over the
ocean. I saw, besides, many old sailors, with rings in their ears, and
whiskers curled in ringlets, and tarry pigtails, and their swaggering,
clumsy sea-walk; and if I had seen as many kings or archbishops I could
not have been more delighted.

And I was going to sea myself, to sea in a schooner, with a piping
boatswain and pig-tailed singing seamen, to sea, bound for an unknown
island, and to seek for buried treasure!

While I was still in this delightful dream, we came suddenly in front
of a large inn and met Squire Trelawney, all dressed out like a
sea-officer, in stout blue cloth, coming out of the door with a smile on
his face and a capital imitation of a sailor’s walk.

“Here you are,” he cried, “and the doctor came last night from London.
Bravo! The ship’s company complete!”

“Oh, sir,” cried I, “when do we sail?”

“Sail!” says he. “We sail tomorrow!”

VIII
At the Sign of the Spy-glass

When I had done breakfasting the squire gave me a note addressed to John
Silver, at the sign of the Spy-glass, and told me I should easily
find the place by following the line of the docks and keeping a bright
lookout for a little tavern with a large brass telescope for sign. I
set off, overjoyed at this opportunity to see some more of the ships and
seamen, and picked my way among a great crowd of people and carts and
bales, for the dock was now at its busiest, until I found the tavern in
question.

It was a bright enough little place of entertainment. The sign was
newly painted; the windows had neat red curtains; the floor was cleanly
sanded. There was a street on each side and an open door on both, which
made the large, low room pretty clear to see in, in spite of clouds of
tobacco smoke.

The customers were mostly seafaring men, and they talked so loudly that
I hung at the door, almost afraid to enter.

As I was waiting, a man came out of a side room, and at a glance I was
sure he must be Long John. His left leg was cut off close by the hip,
and under the left shoulder he carried a crutch, which he managed with
wonderful dexterity, hopping about upon it like a bird. He was very tall
and strong, with a face as big as a ham--plain and pale, but intelligent
and smiling. Indeed, he seemed in the most cheerful spirits, whistling
as he moved about among the tables, with a merry word or a slap on the
shoulder for the more favoured of his guests.

Now, to tell you the truth, from the very first mention of Long John in
Squire Trelawney’s letter I had taken a fear in my mind that he might
prove to be the very one-legged sailor whom I had watched for so long at
the old Benbow. But one look at the man before me was enough. I had seen
the captain, and Black Dog, and the blind man, Pew, and I thought I knew
what a buccaneer was like--a very different creature, according to me,
from this clean and pleasant-tempered landlord.

I plucked up courage at once, crossed the threshold, and walked right up
to the man where he stood, propped on his crutch, talking to a customer.

“Mr. Silver, sir?” I asked, holding out the note.

“Yes, my lad,” said he; “such is my name, to be sure. And who may you
be?” And then as he saw the squire’s letter, he seemed to me to give
something almost like a start.

“Oh!” said he, quite loud, and offering his hand. “I see. You are our
new cabin-boy; pleased I am to see you.”

And he took my hand in his large firm grasp.

Just then one of the customers at the far side rose suddenly and made
for the door. It was close by him, and he was out in the street in a
moment. But his hurry had attracted my notice, and I recognized him at
glance. It was the tallow-faced man, wanting two fingers, who had come
first to the Admiral Benbow.

“Oh,” I cried, “stop him! It’s Black Dog!”

“I don’t care two coppers who he is,” cried Silver. “But he hasn’t paid
his score. Harry, run and catch him.”

One of the others who was nearest the door leaped up and started in
pursuit.

“If he were Admiral Hawke he shall pay his score,” cried Silver; and
then, relinquishing my hand, “Who did you say he was?” he asked. “Black
what?”

“Dog, sir,” said I. “Has Mr. Trelawney not told you of the buccaneers?
He was one of them.”

“So?” cried Silver. “In my house! Ben, run and help Harry. One of those
swabs, was he? Was that you drinking with him, Morgan? Step up here.”

The man whom he called Morgan--an old, grey-haired, mahogany-faced
sailor--came forward pretty sheepishly, rolling his quid.

“Now, Morgan,” said Long John very sternly, “you never clapped your eyes
on that Black--Black Dog before, did you, now?”

“Not I, sir,” said Morgan with a salute.

“You didn’t know his name, did you?”

“No, sir.”

“By the powers, Tom Morgan, it’s as good for you!” exclaimed the
landlord. “If you had been mixed up with the like of that, you would
never have put another foot in my house, you may lay to that. And what
was he saying to you?”

“I don’t rightly know, sir,” answered Morgan.

“Do you call that a head on your shoulders, or a blessed dead-eye?”
cried Long John. “Don’t rightly know, don’t you! Perhaps you don’t
happen to rightly know who you was speaking to, perhaps? Come, now, what
was he jawing--v’yages, cap’ns, ships? Pipe up! What was it?”

“We was a-talkin’ of keel-hauling,” answered Morgan.

“Keel-hauling, was you? And a mighty suitable thing, too, and you may
lay to that. Get back to your place for a lubber, Tom.”

And then, as Morgan rolled back to his seat, Silver added to me in a
confidential whisper that was very flattering, as I thought, “He’s
quite an honest man, Tom Morgan, on’y stupid. And now,” he ran on again,
aloud, “let’s see--Black Dog? No, I don’t know the name, not I. Yet I
kind of think I’ve--yes, I’ve seen the swab. He used to come here with a
blind beggar, he used.”

“That he did, you may be sure,” said I. “I knew that blind man too. His
name was Pew.”

“It was!” cried Silver, now quite excited. “Pew! That were his name for
certain. Ah, he looked a shark, he did! If we run down this Black Dog,
now, there’ll be news for Cap’n Trelawney! Ben’s a good runner; few
seamen run better than Ben. He should run him down, hand over hand, by
the powers! He talked o’ keel-hauling, did he? I’LL keel-haul him!”

All the time he was jerking out these phrases he was stumping up and
down the tavern on his crutch, slapping tables with his hand, and giving
such a show of excitement as would have convinced an Old Bailey judge
or a Bow Street runner. My suspicions had been thoroughly reawakened on
finding Black Dog at the Spy-glass, and I watched the cook narrowly. But
he was too deep, and too ready, and too clever for me, and by the time
the two men had come back out of breath and confessed that they had lost
the track in a crowd, and been scolded like thieves, I would have gone
bail for the innocence of Long John Silver.

“See here, now, Hawkins,” said he, “here’s a blessed hard thing on a
man like me, now, ain’t it? There’s Cap’n Trelawney--what’s he to think?
Here I have this confounded son of a Dutchman sitting in my own house
drinking of my own rum! Here you comes and tells me of it plain; and
here I let him give us all the slip before my blessed deadlights! Now,
Hawkins, you do me justice with the cap’n. You’re a lad, you are, but
you’re as smart as paint. I see that when you first come in. Now, here
it is: What could I do, with this old timber I hobble on? When I was an
A B master mariner I’d have come up alongside of him, hand over hand,
and broached him to in a brace of old shakes, I would; but now--”

And then, all of a sudden, he stopped, and his jaw dropped as though he
had remembered something.

“The score!” he burst out. “Three goes o’ rum! Why, shiver my timbers,
if I hadn’t forgotten my score!”

And falling on a bench, he laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks.
I could not help joining, and we laughed together, peal after peal,
until the tavern rang again.

“Why, what a precious old sea-calf I am!” he said at last, wiping his
cheeks. “You and me should get on well, Hawkins, for I’ll take my davy
I should be rated ship’s boy. But come now, stand by to go about. This
won’t do. Dooty is dooty, messmates. I’ll put on my old cockerel hat,
and step along of you to Cap’n Trelawney, and report this here affair.
For mind you, it’s serious, young Hawkins; and neither you nor me’s come
out of it with what I should make so bold as to call credit. Nor you
neither, says you; not smart--none of the pair of us smart. But dash my
buttons! That was a good un about my score.”

And he began to laugh again, and that so heartily, that though I did not
see the joke as he did, I was again obliged to join him in his mirth.

On our little walk along the quays, he made himself the most interesting
companion, telling me about the different ships that we passed by,
their rig, tonnage, and nationality, explaining the work that was going
forward--how one was discharging, another taking in cargo, and a third
making ready for sea--and every now and then telling me some little
anecdote of ships or seamen or repeating a nautical phrase till I had
learned it perfectly. I began to see that here was one of the best of
possible shipmates.

When we got to the inn, the squire and Dr. Livesey were seated together,
finishing a quart of ale with a toast in it, before they should go
aboard the schooner on a visit of inspection.

Long John told the story from first to last, with a great deal of spirit
and the most perfect truth. “That was how it were, now, weren’t it,
Hawkins?” he would say, now and again, and I could always bear him
entirely out.

The two gentlemen regretted that Black Dog had got away, but we all
agreed there was nothing to be done, and after he had been complimented,
Long John took up his crutch and departed.

“All hands aboard by four this afternoon,” shouted the squire after him.

“Aye, aye, sir,” cried the cook, in the passage.

“Well, squire,” said Dr. Livesey, “I don’t put much faith in your
discoveries, as a general thing; but I will say this, John Silver suits
me.”

“The man’s a perfect trump,” declared the squire.

“And now,” added the doctor, “Jim may come on board with us, may he
not?”

“To be sure he may,” says squire. “Take your hat, Hawkins, and we’ll see
the ship.”

IX
Powder and Arms

The Hispaniola lay some way out, and we went under the figureheads and
round the sterns of many other ships, and their cables sometimes grated
underneath our keel, and sometimes swung above us. At last, however,
we got alongside, and were met and saluted as we stepped aboard by the
mate, Mr. Arrow, a brown old sailor with earrings in his ears and a
squint. He and the squire were very thick and friendly, but I soon
observed that things were not the same between Mr. Trelawney and the
captain.

This last was a sharp-looking man who seemed angry with everything on
board and was soon to tell us why, for we had hardly got down into the
cabin when a sailor followed us.

“Captain Smollett, sir, axing to speak with you,” said he.

“I am always at the captain’s orders. Show him in,” said the squire.

The captain, who was close behind his messenger, entered at once and
shut the door behind him.

“Well, Captain Smollett, what have you to say? All well, I hope; all
shipshape and seaworthy?”

“Well, sir,” said the captain, “better speak plain, I believe, even at
the risk of offence. I don’t like this cruise; I don’t like the men; and
I don’t like my officer. That’s short and sweet.”

“Perhaps, sir, you don’t like the ship?” inquired the squire, very
angry, as I could see.

“I can’t speak as to that, sir, not having seen her tried,” said the
captain. “She seems a clever craft; more I can’t say.”

“Possibly, sir, you may not like your employer, either?” says the
squire.

But here Dr. Livesey cut in.

“Stay a bit,” said he, “stay a bit. No use of such questions as that but
to produce ill feeling. The captain has said too much or he has said too
little, and I’m bound to say that I require an explanation of his words.
You don’t, you say, like this cruise. Now, why?”

“I was engaged, sir, on what we call sealed orders, to sail this ship
for that gentleman where he should bid me,” said the captain. “So far
so good. But now I find that every man before the mast knows more than I
do. I don’t call that fair, now, do you?”

“No,” said Dr. Livesey, “I don’t.”

“Next,” said the captain, “I learn we are going after treasure--hear
it from my own hands, mind you. Now, treasure is ticklish work; I don’t
like treasure voyages on any account, and I don’t like them, above all,
when they are secret and when (begging your pardon, Mr. Trelawney) the
secret has been told to the parrot.”

“Silver’s parrot?” asked the squire.

“It’s a way of speaking,” said the captain. “Blabbed, I mean. It’s my
belief neither of you gentlemen know what you are about, but I’ll tell
you my way of it--life or death, and a close run.”

“That is all clear, and, I dare say, true enough,” replied Dr. Livesey.
“We take the risk, but we are not so ignorant as you believe us. Next,
you say you don’t like the crew. Are they not good seamen?”

“I don’t like them, sir,” returned Captain Smollett. “And I think I
should have had the choosing of my own hands, if you go to that.”

“Perhaps you should,” replied the doctor. “My friend should, perhaps,
have taken you along with him; but the slight, if there be one, was
unintentional. And you don’t like Mr. Arrow?”

“I don’t, sir. I believe he’s a good seaman, but he’s too free with
the crew to be a good officer. A mate should keep himself to
himself--shouldn’t drink with the men before the mast!”

“Do you mean he drinks?” cried the squire.

“No, sir,” replied the captain, “only that he’s too familiar.”

“Well, now, and the short and long of it, captain?” asked the doctor.
“Tell us what you want.”

“Well, gentlemen, are you determined to go on this cruise?”

“Like iron,” answered the squire.

“Very good,” said the captain. “Then, as you’ve heard me very patiently,
saying things that I could not prove, hear me a few words more. They are
putting the powder and the arms in the fore hold. Now, you have a good
place under the cabin; why not put them there?--first point. Then, you
are bringing four of your own people with you, and they tell me some of
them are to be berthed forward. Why not give them the berths here beside
the cabin?--second point.”

“Any more?” asked Mr. Trelawney.

“One more,” said the captain. “There’s been too much blabbing already.”

“Far too much,” agreed the doctor.

“I’ll tell you what I’ve heard myself,” continued Captain Smollett:
“that you have a map of an island, that there’s crosses on the map to
show where treasure is, and that the island lies--” And then he named
the latitude and longitude exactly.

“I never told that,” cried the squire, “to a soul!”

“The hands know it, sir,” returned the captain.

“Livesey, that must have been you or Hawkins,” cried the squire.

“It doesn’t much matter who it was,” replied the doctor. And I could
see that neither he nor the captain paid much regard to Mr. Trelawney’s
protestations. Neither did I, to be sure, he was so loose a talker; yet
in this case I believe he was really right and that nobody had told the
situation of the island.

“Well, gentlemen,” continued the captain, “I don’t know who has this
map; but I make it a point, it shall be kept secret even from me and Mr.
Arrow. Otherwise I would ask you to let me resign.”

“I see,” said the doctor. “You wish us to keep this matter dark and to
make a garrison of the stern part of the ship, manned with my friend’s
own people, and provided with all the arms and powder on board. In other
words, you fear a mutiny.”

“Sir,” said Captain Smollett, “with no intention to take offence, I
deny your right to put words into my mouth. No captain, sir, would be
justified in going to sea at all if he had ground enough to say that. As
for Mr. Arrow, I believe him thoroughly honest; some of the men are the
same; all may be for what I know. But I am responsible for the ship’s
safety and the life of every man Jack aboard of her. I see things going,
as I think, not quite right. And I ask you to take certain precautions
or let me resign my berth. And that’s all.”

“Captain Smollett,” began the doctor with a smile, “did ever you hear
the fable of the mountain and the mouse? You’ll excuse me, I dare say,
but you remind me of that fable. When you came in here, I’ll stake my
wig, you meant more than this.”

“Doctor,” said the captain, “you are smart. When I came in here I meant
to get discharged. I had no thought that Mr. Trelawney would hear a
word.”

“No more I would,” cried the squire. “Had Livesey not been here I should
have seen you to the deuce. As it is, I have heard you. I will do as you
desire, but I think the worse of you.”

“That’s as you please, sir,” said the captain. “You’ll find I do my
duty.”

And with that he took his leave.

“Trelawney,” said the doctor, “contrary to all my notions, I believed
you have managed to get two honest men on board with you--that man and
John Silver.”

“Silver, if you like,” cried the squire; “but as for that intolerable
humbug, I declare I think his conduct unmanly, unsailorly, and downright
un-English.”

“Well,” says the doctor, “we shall see.”

When we came on deck, the men had begun already to take out the arms and
powder, yo-ho-ing at their work, while the captain and Mr. Arrow stood
by superintending.

The new arrangement was quite to my liking. The whole schooner had been
overhauled; six berths had been made astern out of what had been the
after-part of the main hold; and this set of cabins was only joined to
the galley and forecastle by a sparred passage on the port side. It had
been originally meant that the captain, Mr. Arrow, Hunter, Joyce, the
doctor, and the squire were to occupy these six berths. Now Redruth and
I were to get two of them and Mr. Arrow and the captain were to sleep
on deck in the companion, which had been enlarged on each side till you
might almost have called it a round-house. Very low it was still, of
course; but there was room to swing two hammocks, and even the mate
seemed pleased with the arrangement. Even he, perhaps, had been doubtful
as to the crew, but that is only guess, for as you shall hear, we had
not long the benefit of his opinion.

We were all hard at work, changing the powder and the berths, when
the last man or two, and Long John along with them, came off in a
shore-boat.

The cook came up the side like a monkey for cleverness, and as soon as
he saw what was doing, “So ho, mates!” says he. “What’s this?”

“We’re a-changing of the powder, Jack,” answers one.

“Why, by the powers,” cried Long John, “if we do, we’ll miss the morning
tide!”

“My orders!” said the captain shortly. “You may go below, my man. Hands
will want supper.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” answered the cook, and touching his forelock, he
disappeared at once in the direction of his galley.

“That’s a good man, captain,” said the doctor.

“Very likely, sir,” replied Captain Smollett. “Easy with that,
men--easy,” he ran on, to the fellows who were shifting the powder; and
then suddenly observing me examining the swivel we carried amidships,
a long brass nine, “Here you, ship’s boy,” he cried, “out o’ that! Off
with you to the cook and get some work.”

And then as I was hurrying off I heard him say, quite loudly, to the
doctor, “I’ll have no favourites on my ship.”

I assure you I was quite of the squire’s way of thinking, and hated the
captain deeply.

X
The Voyage

All that night we were in a great bustle getting things stowed in their
place, and boatfuls of the squire’s friends, Mr. Blandly and the like,
coming off to wish him a good voyage and a safe return. We never had
a night at the Admiral Benbow when I had half the work; and I was
dog-tired when, a little before dawn, the boatswain sounded his pipe
and the crew began to man the capstan-bars. I might have been twice
as weary, yet I would not have left the deck, all was so new and
interesting to me--the brief commands, the shrill note of the whistle,
the men bustling to their places in the glimmer of the ship’s lanterns.

“Now, Barbecue, tip us a stave,” cried one voice.

“The old one,” cried another.

“Aye, aye, mates,” said Long John, who was standing by, with his crutch
under his arm, and at once broke out in the air and words I knew so
well:

“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest--”

And then the whole crew bore chorus:--

“Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

And at the third “Ho!” drove the bars before them with a will.

Even at that exciting moment it carried me back to the old Admiral
Benbow in a second, and I seemed to hear the voice of the captain piping
in the chorus. But soon the anchor was short up; soon it was hanging
dripping at the bows; soon the sails began to draw, and the land and
shipping to flit by on either side; and before I could lie down to
snatch an hour of slumber the HISPANIOLA had begun her voyage to the
Isle of Treasure.

I am not going to relate that voyage in detail. It was fairly
prosperous. The ship proved to be a good ship, the crew were capable
seamen, and the captain thoroughly understood his business. But before
we came the length of Treasure Island, two or three things had happened
which require to be known.

Mr. Arrow, first of all, turned out even worse than the captain had
feared. He had no command among the men, and people did what they
pleased with him. But that was by no means the worst of it, for after a
day or two at sea he began to appear on deck with hazy eye, red cheeks,
stuttering tongue, and other marks of drunkenness. Time after time
he was ordered below in disgrace. Sometimes he fell and cut himself;
sometimes he lay all day long in his little bunk at one side of the
companion; sometimes for a day or two he would be almost sober and
attend to his work at least passably.

In the meantime, we could never make out where he got the drink. That
was the ship’s mystery. Watch him as we pleased, we could do nothing to
solve it; and when we asked him to his face, he would only laugh if
he were drunk, and if he were sober deny solemnly that he ever tasted
anything but water.

He was not only useless as an officer and a bad influence amongst
the men, but it was plain that at this rate he must soon kill himself
outright, so nobody was much surprised, nor very sorry, when one dark
night, with a head sea, he disappeared entirely and was seen no more.

“Overboard!” said the captain. “Well, gentlemen, that saves the trouble
of putting him in irons.”

But there we were, without a mate; and it was necessary, of course, to
advance one of the men. The boatswain, Job Anderson, was the likeliest
man aboard, and though he kept his old title, he served in a way as
mate. Mr. Trelawney had followed the sea, and his knowledge made him
very useful, for he often took a watch himself in easy weather. And the
coxswain, Israel Hands, was a careful, wily, old, experienced seaman who
could be trusted at a pinch with almost anything.

He was a great confidant of Long John Silver, and so the mention of
his name leads me on to speak of our ship’s cook, Barbecue, as the men
called him.

Aboard ship he carried his crutch by a lanyard round his neck, to have
both hands as free as possible. It was something to see him wedge the
foot of the crutch against a bulkhead, and propped against it, yielding
to every movement of the ship, get on with his cooking like someone safe
ashore. Still more strange was it to see him in the heaviest of weather
cross the deck. He had a line or two rigged up to help him across the
widest spaces--Long John’s earrings, they were called; and he would hand
himself from one place to another, now using the crutch, now trailing it
alongside by the lanyard, as quickly as another man could walk. Yet some
of the men who had sailed with him before expressed their pity to see
him so reduced.

“He’s no common man, Barbecue,” said the coxswain to me. “He had good
schooling in his young days and can speak like a book when so minded;
and brave--a lion’s nothing alongside of Long John! I seen him grapple
four and knock their heads together--him unarmed.”

All the crew respected and even obeyed him. He had a way of talking
to each and doing everybody some particular service. To me he was
unweariedly kind, and always glad to see me in the galley, which he kept
as clean as a new pin, the dishes hanging up burnished and his parrot in
a cage in one corner.

“Come away, Hawkins,” he would say; “come and have a yarn with John.
Nobody more welcome than yourself, my son. Sit you down and hear the
news. Here’s Cap’n Flint--I calls my parrot Cap’n Flint, after the
famous buccaneer--here’s Cap’n Flint predicting success to our v’yage.
Wasn’t you, Cap’n?”

And the parrot would say, with great rapidity, “Pieces of eight! Pieces
of eight! Pieces of eight!” till you wondered that it was not out of
breath, or till John threw his handkerchief over the cage.

“Now, that bird,” he would say, “is, maybe, two hundred years
old, Hawkins--they live forever mostly; and if anybody’s seen more
wickedness, it must be the devil himself. She’s sailed with England,
the great Cap’n England, the pirate. She’s been at Madagascar, and at
Malabar, and Surinam, and Providence, and Portobello. She was at the
fishing up of the wrecked plate ships. It’s there she learned ‘Pieces
of eight,’ and little wonder; three hundred and fifty thousand of ’em,
Hawkins! She was at the boarding of the _Viceroy of the Indies_ out of
Goa, she was; and to look at her you would think she was a babby. But
you smelt powder--didn’t you, Cap’n?”

“Stand by to go about,” the parrot would scream.

“Ah, she’s a handsome craft, she is,” the cook would say, and give her
sugar from his pocket, and then the bird would peck at the bars and
swear straight on, passing belief for wickedness. “There,” John would
add, “you can’t touch pitch and not be mucked, lad. Here’s this poor old
innocent bird o’ mine swearing blue fire, and none the wiser, you may
lay to that. She would swear the same, in a manner of speaking, before
chaplain.” And John would touch his forelock with a solemn way he had
that made me think he was the best of men.

In the meantime, the squire and Captain Smollett were still on pretty
distant terms with one another. The squire made no bones about the
matter; he despised the captain. The captain, on his part, never spoke
but when he was spoken to, and then sharp and short and dry, and not a
word wasted. He owned, when driven into a corner, that he seemed to have
been wrong about the crew, that some of them were as brisk as he wanted
to see and all had behaved fairly well. As for the ship, he had taken a
downright fancy to her. “She’ll lie a point nearer the wind than a man
has a right to expect of his own married wife, sir. But,” he would add,
“all I say is, we’re not home again, and I don’t like the cruise.”

The squire, at this, would turn away and march up and down the deck,
chin in air.

“A trifle more of that man,” he would say, “and I shall explode.”

We had some heavy weather, which only proved the qualities of the
HISPANIOLA. Every man on board seemed well content, and they must have
been hard to please if they had been otherwise, for it is my belief
there was never a ship’s company so spoiled since Noah put to sea.
Double grog was going on the least excuse; there was duff on odd days,
as, for instance, if the squire heard it was any man’s birthday, and
always a barrel of apples standing broached in the waist for anyone to
help himself that had a fancy.

“Never knew good come of it yet,” the captain said to Dr. Livesey.
“Spoil forecastle hands, make devils. That’s my belief.”

But good did come of the apple barrel, as you shall hear, for if it had
not been for that, we should have had no note of warning and might all
have perished by the hand of treachery.

This was how it came about.

We had run up the trades to get the wind of the island we were after--I
am not allowed to be more plain--and now we were running down for it
with a bright lookout day and night. It was about the last day of our
outward voyage by the largest computation; some time that night, or at
latest before noon of the morrow, we should sight the Treasure Island.
We were heading S.S.W. and had a steady breeze abeam and a quiet sea.
The HISPANIOLA rolled steadily, dipping her bowsprit now and then with
a whiff of spray. All was drawing alow and aloft; everyone was in the
bravest spirits because we were now so near an end of the first part of
our adventure.

Now, just after sundown, when all my work was over and I was on my way
to my berth, it occurred to me that I should like an apple. I ran on
deck. The watch was all forward looking out for the island. The man at
the helm was watching the luff of the sail and whistling away gently
to himself, and that was the only sound excepting the swish of the sea
against the bows and around the sides of the ship.

In I got bodily into the apple barrel, and found there was scarce an
apple left; but sitting down there in the dark, what with the sound of
the waters and the rocking movement of the ship, I had either fallen
asleep or was on the point of doing so when a heavy man sat down with
rather a clash close by. The barrel shook as he leaned his shoulders
against it, and I was just about to jump up when the man began to speak.
It was Silver’s voice, and before I had heard a dozen words, I would
not have shown myself for all the world, but lay there, trembling and
listening, in the extreme of fear and curiosity, for from these dozen
words I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended
upon me alone.

XI
What I Heard in the Apple-Barrel

“No, not I,” said Silver. “Flint was cap’n; I was quartermaster, along
of my timber leg. The same broadside I lost my leg, old Pew lost his
deadlights. It was a master surgeon, him that ampytated me--out of
college and all--Latin by the bucket, and what not; but he was hanged
like a dog, and sun-dried like the rest, at Corso Castle. That was
Roberts’ men, that was, and comed of changing names to their
ships--ROYAL FORTUNE and so on. Now, what a ship was christened, so let
her stay, I says. So it was with the CASSANDRA, as brought us all safe
home from Malabar, after England took the _Viceroy of the Indies;_ so
it was with the old WALRUS, Flint’s old ship, as I’ve seen amuck with
the red blood and fit to sink with gold.”

“Ah!” cried another voice, that of the youngest hand on board, and
evidently full of admiration. “He was the flower of the flock, was
Flint!”

“Davis was a man too, by all accounts,” said Silver. “I never sailed
along of him; first with England, then with Flint, that’s my story;
and now here on my own account, in a manner of speaking. I laid by nine
hundred safe, from England, and two thousand after Flint. That ain’t bad
for a man before the mast--all safe in bank. ’Tain’t earning now, it’s
saving does it, you may lay to that. Where’s all England’s men now? I
dunno. Where’s Flint’s? Why, most on ’em aboard here, and glad to get
the duff--been begging before that, some on ’em. Old Pew, as had lost
his sight, and might have thought shame, spends twelve hundred pound in
a year, like a lord in Parliament. Where is he now? Well, he’s dead now
and under hatches; but for two year before that, shiver my timbers,
the man was starving! He begged, and he stole, and he cut throats, and
starved at that, by the powers!”

“Well, it ain’t much use, after all,” said the young seaman.

“’Tain’t much use for fools, you may lay to it--that, nor nothing,”
cried Silver. “But now, you look here: you’re young, you are, but you’re
as smart as paint. I see that when I set my eyes on you, and I’ll talk
to you like a man.”

You may imagine how I felt when I heard this abominable old rogue
addressing another in the very same words of flattery as he had used
to myself. I think, if I had been able, that I would have killed
him through the barrel. Meantime, he ran on, little supposing he was
overheard.

“Here it is about gentlemen of fortune. They lives rough, and they risk
swinging, but they eat and drink like fighting-cocks, and when a cruise
is done, why, it’s hundreds of pounds instead of hundreds of farthings
in their pockets. Now, the most goes for rum and a good fling, and to
sea again in their shirts. But that’s not the course I lay. I puts it
all away, some here, some there, and none too much anywheres, by reason
of suspicion. I’m fifty, mark you; once back from this cruise, I set up
gentleman in earnest. Time enough too, says you. Ah, but I’ve lived easy
in the meantime, never denied myself o’ nothing heart desires, and slep’
soft and ate dainty all my days but when at sea. And how did I begin?
Before the mast, like you!”

“Well,” said the other, “but all the other money’s gone now, ain’t it?
You daren’t show face in Bristol after this.”

“Why, where might you suppose it was?” asked Silver derisively.

“At Bristol, in banks and places,” answered his companion.

“It were,” said the cook; “it were when we weighed anchor. But my old
missis has it all by now. And the Spy-glass is sold, lease and goodwill
and rigging; and the old girl’s off to meet me. I would tell you where,
for I trust you, but it’d make jealousy among the mates.”

“And can you trust your missis?” asked the other.

“Gentlemen of fortune,” returned the cook, “usually trusts little among
themselves, and right they are, you may lay to it. But I have a way with
me, I have. When a mate brings a slip on his cable--one as knows me, I
mean--it won’t be in the same world with old John. There was some that
was feared of Pew, and some that was feared of Flint; but Flint his own
self was feared of me. Feared he was, and proud. They was the roughest
crew afloat, was Flint’s; the devil himself would have been feared to go
to sea with them. Well now, I tell you, I’m not a boasting man, and you
seen yourself how easy I keep company, but when I was quartermaster,
LAMBS wasn’t the word for Flint’s old buccaneers. Ah, you may be sure of
yourself in old John’s ship.”

“Well, I tell you now,” replied the lad, “I didn’t half a quarter like
the job till I had this talk with you, John; but there’s my hand on it
now.”

“And a brave lad you were, and smart too,” answered Silver, shaking
hands so heartily that all the barrel shook, “and a finer figurehead for
a gentleman of fortune I never clapped my eyes on.”

By this time I had begun to understand the meaning of their terms. By a
“gentleman of fortune” they plainly meant neither more nor less than a
common pirate, and the little scene that I had overheard was the last
act in the corruption of one of the honest hands--perhaps of the last
one left aboard. But on this point I was soon to be relieved, for Silver
giving a little whistle, a third man strolled up and sat down by the
party.

“Dick’s square,” said Silver.

“Oh, I know’d Dick was square,” returned the voice of the coxswain,
Israel Hands. “He’s no fool, is Dick.” And he turned his quid and spat.
“But look here,” he went on, “here’s what I want to know, Barbecue: how
long are we a-going to stand off and on like a blessed bumboat? I’ve had
a’most enough o’ Cap’n Smollett; he’s hazed me long enough, by thunder!
I want to go into that cabin, I do. I want their pickles and wines, and
that.”

“Israel,” said Silver, “your head ain’t much account, nor ever was. But
you’re able to hear, I reckon; leastways, your ears is big enough.
Now, here’s what I say: you’ll berth forward, and you’ll live hard, and
you’ll speak soft, and you’ll keep sober till I give the word; and you
may lay to that, my son.”

“Well, I don’t say no, do I?” growled the coxswain. “What I say is,
when? That’s what I say.”

“When! By the powers!” cried Silver. “Well now, if you want to know,
I’ll tell you when. The last moment I can manage, and that’s when.
Here’s a first-rate seaman, Cap’n Smollett, sails the blessed ship for
us. Here’s this squire and doctor with a map and such--I don’t know
where it is, do I? No more do you, says you. Well then, I mean this
squire and doctor shall find the stuff, and help us to get it aboard,
by the powers. Then we’ll see. If I was sure of you all, sons of double
Dutchmen, I’d have Cap’n Smollett navigate us half-way back again before
I struck.”

“Why, we’re all seamen aboard here, I should think,” said the lad Dick.

“We’re all forecastle hands, you mean,” snapped Silver. “We can steer
a course, but who’s to set one? That’s what all you gentlemen split on,
first and last. If I had my way, I’d have Cap’n Smollett work us back
into the trades at least; then we’d have no blessed miscalculations and
a spoonful of water a day. But I know the sort you are. I’ll finish with
’em at the island, as soon’s the blunt’s on board, and a pity it is. But
you’re never happy till you’re drunk. Split my sides, I’ve a sick heart
to sail with the likes of you!”

“Easy all, Long John,” cried Israel. “Who’s a-crossin’ of you?”

“Why, how many tall ships, think ye, now, have I seen laid aboard? And
how many brisk lads drying in the sun at Execution Dock?” cried Silver.
“And all for this same hurry and hurry and hurry. You hear me? I seen
a thing or two at sea, I have. If you would on’y lay your course, and a
p’int to windward, you would ride in carriages, you would. But not you!
I know you. You’ll have your mouthful of rum tomorrow, and go hang.”

“Everybody knowed you was a kind of a chapling, John; but there’s others
as could hand and steer as well as you,” said Israel. “They liked a bit
o’ fun, they did. They wasn’t so high and dry, nohow, but took their
fling, like jolly companions every one.”

“So?” says Silver. “Well, and where are they now? Pew was that sort,
and he died a beggar-man. Flint was, and he died of rum at Savannah. Ah,
they was a sweet crew, they was! On’y, where are they?”

“But,” asked Dick, “when we do lay ’em athwart, what are we to do with
’em, anyhow?”

“There’s the man for me!” cried the cook admiringly. “That’s what I call
business. Well, what would you think? Put ’em ashore like maroons? That
would have been England’s way. Or cut ’em down like that much pork? That
would have been Flint’s, or Billy Bones’s.”

“Billy was the man for that,” said Israel. “‘Dead men don’t bite,’ says
he. Well, he’s dead now hisself; he knows the long and short on it now;
and if ever a rough hand come to port, it was Billy.”

“Right you are,” said Silver; “rough and ready. But mark you here,
I’m an easy man--I’m quite the gentleman, says you; but this time it’s
serious. Dooty is dooty, mates. I give my vote--death. When I’m in
Parlyment and riding in my coach, I don’t want none of these sea-lawyers
in the cabin a-coming home, unlooked for, like the devil at prayers.
Wait is what I say; but when the time comes, why, let her rip!”

“John,” cries the coxswain, “you’re a man!”

“You’ll say so, Israel when you see,” said Silver. “Only one thing I
claim--I claim Trelawney. I’ll wring his calf’s head off his body with
these hands, Dick!” he added, breaking off. “You just jump up, like a
sweet lad, and get me an apple, to wet my pipe like.”

You may fancy the terror I was in! I should have leaped out and run for
it if I had found the strength, but my limbs and heart alike misgave me.
I heard Dick begin to rise, and then someone seemingly stopped him, and
the voice of Hands exclaimed, “Oh, stow that! Don’t you get sucking of
that bilge, John. Let’s have a go of the rum.”

“Dick,” said Silver, “I trust you. I’ve a gauge on the keg, mind.
There’s the key; you fill a pannikin and bring it up.”

Terrified as I was, I could not help thinking to myself that this must
have been how Mr. Arrow got the strong waters that destroyed him.

Dick was gone but a little while, and during his absence Israel spoke
straight on in the cook’s ear. It was but a word or two that I could
catch, and yet I gathered some important news, for besides other scraps
that tended to the same purpose, this whole clause was audible: “Not
another man of them’ll jine.” Hence there were still faithful men on
board.

When Dick returned, one after another of the trio took the pannikin and
drank--one “To luck,” another with a “Here’s to old Flint,” and Silver
himself saying, in a kind of song, “Here’s to ourselves, and hold your
luff, plenty of prizes and plenty of duff.”

Just then a sort of brightness fell upon me in the barrel, and looking
up, I found the moon had risen and was silvering the mizzen-top and
shining white on the luff of the fore-sail; and almost at the same time
the voice of the lookout shouted, “Land ho!”

XII
Council of War

There was a great rush of feet across the deck. I could hear people
tumbling up from the cabin and the forecastle, and slipping in an
instant outside my barrel, I dived behind the fore-sail, made a double
towards the stern, and came out upon the open deck in time to join
Hunter and Dr. Livesey in the rush for the weather bow.

There all hands were already congregated. A belt of fog had lifted
almost simultaneously with the appearance of the moon. Away to the
south-west of us we saw two low hills, about a couple of miles apart,
and rising behind one of them a third and higher hill, whose peak was
still buried in the fog. All three seemed sharp and conical in figure.

So much I saw, almost in a dream, for I had not yet recovered from my
horrid fear of a minute or two before. And then I heard the voice of
Captain Smollett issuing orders. The HISPANIOLA was laid a couple of
points nearer the wind and now sailed a course that would just clear the
island on the east.

“And now, men,” said the captain, when all was sheeted home, “has any
one of you ever seen that land ahead?”

“I have, sir,” said Silver. “I’ve watered there with a trader I was cook
in.”

“The anchorage is on the south, behind an islet, I fancy?” asked the
captain.

“Yes, sir; Skeleton Island they calls it. It were a main place for
pirates once, and a hand we had on board knowed all their names for it.
That hill to the nor’ard they calls the Foremast Hill; there are three
hills in a row running south’ard--fore, main, and mizzen, sir. But the
main--that’s the big un, with the cloud on it--they usually calls
the Spy-glass, by reason of a lookout they kept when they was in the
anchorage cleaning, for it’s there they cleaned their ships, sir, asking
your pardon.”

“I have a chart here,” says Captain Smollett. “See if that’s the place.”

Long John’s eyes burned in his head as he took the chart, but by the
fresh look of the paper I knew he was doomed to disappointment. This
was not the map we found in Billy Bones’s chest, but an accurate copy,
complete in all things--names and heights and soundings--with the single
exception of the red crosses and the written notes. Sharp as must have
been his annoyance, Silver had the strength of mind to hide it.

“Yes, sir,” said he, “this is the spot, to be sure, and very prettily
drawed out. Who might have done that, I wonder? The pirates were too
ignorant, I reckon. Aye, here it is: ‘Capt. Kidd’s Anchorage’--just
the name my shipmate called it. There’s a strong current runs along the
south, and then away nor’ard up the west coast. Right you was, sir,”
says he, “to haul your wind and keep the weather of the island.
Leastways, if such was your intention as to enter and careen, and there
ain’t no better place for that in these waters.”

“Thank you, my man,” says Captain Smollett. “I’ll ask you later on to
give us a help. You may go.”

I was surprised at the coolness with which John avowed his knowledge
of the island, and I own I was half-frightened when I saw him drawing
nearer to myself. He did not know, to be sure, that I had overheard his
council from the apple barrel, and yet I had by this time taken such a
horror of his cruelty, duplicity, and power that I could scarce conceal
a shudder when he laid his hand upon my arm.

“Ah,” says he, “this here is a sweet spot, this island--a sweet spot for
a lad to get ashore on. You’ll bathe, and you’ll climb trees, and you’ll
hunt goats, you will; and you’ll get aloft on them hills like a goat
yourself. Why, it makes me young again. I was going to forget my timber
leg, I was. It’s a pleasant thing to be young and have ten toes, and you
may lay to that. When you want to go a bit of exploring, you just ask
old John, and he’ll put up a snack for you to take along.”

And clapping me in the friendliest way upon the shoulder, he hobbled off
forward and went below.

Captain Smollett, the squire, and Dr. Livesey were talking together on
the quarter-deck, and anxious as I was to tell them my story, I durst
not interrupt them openly. While I was still casting about in my
thoughts to find some probable excuse, Dr. Livesey called me to his
side. He had left his pipe below, and being a slave to tobacco, had
meant that I should fetch it; but as soon as I was near enough to speak
and not to be overheard, I broke immediately, “Doctor, let me speak. Get
the captain and squire down to the cabin, and then make some pretence to
send for me. I have terrible news.”

The doctor changed countenance a little, but next moment he was master
of himself.

“Thank you, Jim,” said he quite loudly, “that was all I wanted to know,”
as if he had asked me a question.

And with that he turned on his heel and rejoined the other two. They
spoke together for a little, and though none of them started, or raised
his voice, or so much as whistled, it was plain enough that Dr. Livesey
had communicated my request, for the next thing that I heard was the
captain giving an order to Job Anderson, and all hands were piped on
deck.

“My lads,” said Captain Smollett, “I’ve a word to say to you. This
land that we have sighted is the place we have been sailing for. Mr.
Trelawney, being a very open-handed gentleman, as we all know, has just
asked me a word or two, and as I was able to tell him that every man on
board had done his duty, alow and aloft, as I never ask to see it done
better, why, he and I and the doctor are going below to the cabin to
drink YOUR health and luck, and you’ll have grog served out for you to
drink OUR health and luck. I’ll tell you what I think of this: I think
it handsome. And if you think as I do, you’ll give a good sea-cheer for
the gentleman that does it.”

The cheer followed--that was a matter of course; but it rang out so full
and hearty that I confess I could hardly believe these same men were
plotting for our blood.

“One more cheer for Cap’n Smollett,” cried Long John when the first had
subsided.

And this also was given with a will.

On the top of that the three gentlemen went below, and not long after,
word was sent forward that Jim Hawkins was wanted in the cabin.

I found them all three seated round the table, a bottle of Spanish wine
and some raisins before them, and the doctor smoking away, with his wig
on his lap, and that, I knew, was a sign that he was agitated. The stern
window was open, for it was a warm night, and you could see the moon
shining behind on the ship’s wake.

“Now, Hawkins,” said the squire, “you have something to say. Speak up.”

I did as I was bid, and as short as I could make it, told the whole
details of Silver’s conversation. Nobody interrupted me till I was done,
nor did any one of the three of them make so much as a movement, but
they kept their eyes upon my face from first to last.

“Jim,” said Dr. Livesey, “take a seat.”

And they made me sit down at table beside them, poured me out a glass of
wine, filled my hands with raisins, and all three, one after the other,
and each with a bow, drank my good health, and their service to me, for
my luck and courage.

“Now, captain,” said the squire, “you were right, and I was wrong. I own
myself an ass, and I await your orders.”

“No more an ass than I, sir,” returned the captain. “I never heard of a
crew that meant to mutiny but what showed signs before, for any man that
had an eye in his head to see the mischief and take steps according. But
this crew,” he added, “beats me.”

“Captain,” said the doctor, “with your permission, that’s Silver. A very
remarkable man.”

“He’d look remarkably well from a yard-arm, sir,” returned the captain.
“But this is talk; this don’t lead to anything. I see three or four
points, and with Mr. Trelawney’s permission, I’ll name them.”

“You, sir, are the captain. It is for you to speak,” says Mr. Trelawney
grandly.

“First point,” began Mr. Smollett. “We must go on, because we can’t turn
back. If I gave the word to go about, they would rise at once. Second
point, we have time before us--at least until this treasure’s found.
Third point, there are faithful hands. Now, sir, it’s got to come
to blows sooner or later, and what I propose is to take time by the
forelock, as the saying is, and come to blows some fine day when they
least expect it. We can count, I take it, on your own home servants, Mr.
Trelawney?”

“As upon myself,” declared the squire.

“Three,” reckoned the captain; “ourselves make seven, counting Hawkins
here. Now, about the honest hands?”

“Most likely Trelawney’s own men,” said the doctor; “those he had picked
up for himself before he lit on Silver.”

“Nay,” replied the squire. “Hands was one of mine.”

“I did think I could have trusted Hands,” added the captain.

“And to think that they’re all Englishmen!” broke out the squire. “Sir,
I could find it in my heart to blow the ship up.”

“Well, gentlemen,” said the captain, “the best that I can say is not
much. We must lay to, if you please, and keep a bright lookout. It’s
trying on a man, I know. It would be pleasanter to come to blows. But
there’s no help for it till we know our men. Lay to, and whistle for a
wind, that’s my view.”

“Jim here,” said the doctor, “can help us more than anyone. The men are
not shy with him, and Jim is a noticing lad.”

“Hawkins, I put prodigious faith in you,” added the squire.

I began to feel pretty desperate at this, for I felt altogether
helpless; and yet, by an odd train of circumstances, it was indeed
through me that safety came. In the meantime, talk as we pleased, there
were only seven out of the twenty-six on whom we knew we could rely; and
out of these seven one was a boy, so that the grown men on our side were
six to their nineteen.

PART THREE--My Shore Adventure

XIII
How I Began My Shore Adventure