Chapter VIII- At the sign of the ‘Spy-Glass’ 31
Chapter IX- Powder and Arms 35
Chapter X – The Voyage 39
Chapter XI- What I Heard in the Apple Barrel 43
Chapter XII- Council of War 47
Part Three. My Shore Adventure 51
Chapter XIII – How My Shore Adventure Began 51
Chapter XIV – The First Blow 55
Chapter XV – The Man of the Island 59
Part Four. The Log Cabin 63
Chapter XVI – Narrative Continued by the Doctor: How the
Ship was Abandoned 63
Chapter XVII – Narrative Continued by the Doctor: The Jolly-
boat’s Last Trip 67
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Chapter XVIII – Narrative Continued by the Doctor: End of the
First Day’s Fighting 70
Chapter XIX – Narrative Resumed by Jim Hawkins: The Garrison
in the Stockade 73
Chapter XX – Silver’s Embassy 77
Chapter XXI- The Attack 81
Part V. My Sea Adventure 86
Chapter XXII – How My Sea Adventure Began 86
Chapter XXIII – The Ebb-tide Runs 90
Chapter XXIV – The Cruise of the Coracle 93
Chapter XXV – I Strike the Jolly Roger 97
Chapter XXVI – Israel Hands 101
Chapter XXVII – ‘Pieces of Eight’ 106
Part Six. Captain Silver 111
Chapter XXVIII – n the Enemy’s Camp 111
Chapter XXIX – The Black Spot Again 116
Chapter XXX – On Parole 121
Chapter XXXI – The Treasure Hunt- Flint’s Pointer 126
Chapter XXXII – The Treasure Hunt- The Voice Among the
Trees 130
Chapter XXXIII- The Fall of a Chieftain 134
Chapter XXXIV – And Last 139
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Part One. The Old Buccaneer
Chapter 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 o the end, keeping nothing back but the bearing of the Island, and that
only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen I the year of
grace 17_ and go
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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 I 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
check, a as he did so, and then breaking out in the old sea- song that he sang so
often afterwards:
“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest- Yo-ho-ho, and 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, 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 hm 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 egg is what I
want, and that head up there for to watch ships off. What you mought call me?
You mought call m 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
German
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. An 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 drunk 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
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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 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.
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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:
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“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.
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Chapter 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,
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and how soon, and answered a few other questions, “Ah,” said he, “this’ll be as
good as
German
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 will 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.
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“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 gatling; 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.
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“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;
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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 quite a while; he should lie for a week where he is — that is
the best thing for him and you; but another stroke would settle him.
Chapter 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 does 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 to the doctor
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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 will be on you, Jim, and that doctor swab”; and he ran
on again for a while with curses. “Look, Jim, how my fingers fidgets,” 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 drain o’ rum, Jim, I’ll have the horrors; I seen some on ’em already. I see
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 are 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
sea manly 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.”
German
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.
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“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
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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 king 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.
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
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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,
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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.
Chapter 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,
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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
German
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 doctors 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.
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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
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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
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several footsteps running came already to our ears, and as we looked back in their
direction, a light tossing to and for 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.
Chapter 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.
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