THE FALL OF A CHIEFTAIN
There never was such an overturn in this world. Each of these six men
was as though he had been struck. But with Silver the blow passed almost
instantly. Every thought of his soul had been set full-stretch, like a
racer, on that money; well, he was brought up in a single second, dead;
and he kept his head, found his temper, and changed his plan before the
others had had time to realize the disappointment.
"Jim," he whispered, "take that, and stand by for trouble."
And he passed me a double-barreled pistol.
At the same time he began quietly moving northward, and in a few steps
had put the hollow between us two and the other five. Then he looked at
me and nodded, as much as to say: "Here is a narrow corner," as, indeed,
I thought it was. His looks were now quite friendly, and I was so
revolted at these constant changes that I could not forbear whispering:
"So you've changed sides again."
There was no time left for him to answer in. The buccaneers, with oaths
and cries, began to leap, one after another, into the pit, and to dig
with their fingers, throwing the boards aside as they did so. Morgan
found a piece of gold. He held it up with a perfect spout of oaths. It
was a two-guinea piece, and it went from hand to hand among them for a
quarter of a minute.
"Two guineas!" roared Merry, shaking it at Silver. "That's your seven
hundred thousand pounds, is it? You're the man for bargains, ain't you?
You're him that never bungled nothing, you wooden-headed lubber!"
"Dig away, boys," said Silver, with the coolest insolence; "you'll find
some pig-nuts, and I shouldn't wonder."
"Pig-nuts!" repeated Merry, in a scream. "Mates, do you hear that? I
tell you now, that man there knew it all along. Look in the face of him,
and you'll see it wrote there."
"Ah, Merry," remarked Silver, "standing for cap'n again? You're a
pushing lad, to be sure."
But this time every one was entirely in Merry's favor. They began to
scramble out of the excavation, darting furious glances behind them. One
thing I observed, which looked well for us; they all got out upon the
opposite side from Silver.
Well, there we stood, two on one side, five on the other, the pit
between us, and nobody screwed up high enough to offer the first blow.
Silver never moved; he watched them, very upright on his crutch, and
looked as cool as ever I saw him. He was brave, and no mistake.
At last, Merry seemed to think a speech might help matters.
"Mates," says he, "there's two of them alone there; one's the old
cripple that brought us all here and blundered us down to this; the
other's that cub that I mean to have the heart of. Now, mates--"
He was raising his arm and his voice, and plainly meant to lead a
charge. But just then--crack! crack! crack!--three musket-shots flashed
out of the thicket. Merry tumbled headforemost into the excavation; the
man with the bandage spun round like a teetotum, and fell all his length
upon his side, where he lay dead, but still twitching; and the other
three turned and ran for it with all their might.
Before you could wink Long John had fired two barrels of a pistol into
the struggling Merry; and as the man rolled up his eyes at him in the
last agony, "George," said he, "I reckon I settled you."
At the same moment the doctor, Gray, and Ben Gunn joined us, with
smoking muskets, from among the nutmeg-trees.
"Forward!" cried the doctor. "Double quick, my lads. We must head 'em
off the boats."
And we set off at a great pace, sometimes plunging through the bushes to
the chest.
I tell you, but Silver was anxious to keep up with us. The work that man
went through, leaping on his crutch till the muscles of his chest were
fit to burst, was work no sound man ever equaled; and so thinks the
doctor. As it was, he was already thirty yards behind us, and on the
verge of strangling, when we reached the brow of the slope.
"Doctor," he hailed, "see there! no hurry!"
Sure enough there was no hurry. In a more open part of the plateau we
could see the three survivors still running in the same direction as
they had started, right for Mizzen-mast Hill. We were already between
them and the boats, and so we four sat down to breathe, while Long John,
mopping his face, came slowly up with us.
"Thank ye kindly, doctor," says he. "You came in in about the nick, I
guess, for me and Hawkins. And so it's you, Ben Gunn!" he added. "Well,
you're a nice one, to be sure."
"I'm Ben Gunn, I am," replied the maroon, wriggling like an eel in his
embarrassment. "And," he added, after a long pause, "how do, Mr. Silver!
Pretty well, I thank ye, says you."
"Ben, Ben," murmured Silver, "to think as you've done me!"
The doctor sent back Gray for one of the pickaxes deserted, in their
flight, by the mutineers; and then as we proceeded leisurely downhill to
where the boats were lying, related, in a few words, what had taken
place. It was a story that profoundly interested Silver, and Ben Gunn,
the half-idiot maroon, was the hero from beginning to end.
Ben, in his long, lonely wanderings about the island, had found the
skeleton. It was he that had rifled it; he had found the treasure; he
had dug it up (it was the haft of his pickax that lay broken in the
excavation); he had carried it on his back, in many weary journeys, from
the foot of the tall pine to a cave he had on the two-pointed hill at
the northeast angle of the island, and there it had lain stored in
safety since two months before the arrival of the _Hispaniola_.
When the doctor had wormed this secret from him, on the afternoon of the
attack, and when, next morning, he saw the anchorage deserted, he had
gone to Silver, given him the chart, which was now useless; given him
the stores, for Ben Gunn's cave was well supplied with goats' meat
salted by himself; given anything and everything to get a chance of
moving in safety from the stockade to the two-pointed hill, there to be
clear of malaria and keep a guard upon the money.
"As for you, Jim," he said, "it went against my heart, but I did what I
thought best for those who had stood by their duty; and if you were not
one of these, whose fault was it?"
That morning, finding that I was to be involved in the horrid
disappointment he had prepared for the mutineers, he had run all the way
to the cave, and, leaving squire to guard the captain, had taken Gray
and the maroon, and started, making the diagonal across the island, to
be at hand beside the pine. Soon, however, he saw that our party had the
start of him; and Ben Gunn, being fleet of foot, had been dispatched in
front to do his best alone. Then it had occurred to him to work upon the
superstitions of his former shipmates; and he was so far successful that
Gray and the doctor had come up and were already ambushed before the
arrival of the treasure-hunters.
"Ah," said Silver, "it was fortunate for me that I had Hawkins here. You
would have let old John be cut to bits, and never given it a thought,
doctor."
"Not a thought," replied Doctor Livesey, cheerily.
And by this time we had reached the gigs. The doctor, with the pickax,
demolished one of them, and then we all got aboard the other, and set
out to go round by the sea for North Inlet.
This was a run of eight or nine miles. Silver, though he was almost
killed already with fatigue, was set to an oar, like the rest of us, and
we were soon skimming swiftly over a smooth sea. Soon we passed out of
the straits and doubled the southeast corner of the island, round which,
four days ago, we had towed the _Hispaniola_.
As we passed the two-pointed hill we could see the black mouth of Ben
Gunn's cave, and a figure standing by it, leaning on a musket. It was
the squire, and we waved a handkerchief and gave him three cheers, in
which the voice of Silver joined as heartily as any.
Three miles farther, just inside the mouth of North Inlet, what should
we meet but the _Hispaniola_, cruising by herself! The last flood had
lifted her, and had there been much wind, or a strong tide current, as
in the southern anchorage, we should never have found her more, or found
her stranded beyond help. As it was, there was little amiss, beyond the
wreck of the mainsail. Another anchor was got ready, and dropped in a
fathom and a half of water. We all pulled round again to Rum Cove, the
nearest point for Ben Gunn's treasure-house; and then Gray,
single-handed, returned with the gig to the _Hispaniola_, where he was
to pass the night on guard.
A gentle slope ran up from the beach to the entrance of the cave. At the
top, the squire met us. To me he was cordial and kind, saying nothing of
my escapade, either in the way of blame or praise. At Silver's polite
salute he somewhat flushed.
"John Silver," he said, "you're a prodigious villain and impostor--a
monstrous impostor, sir. I am told I am not to prosecute you. Well,
then, I will not. But the dead men, sir, hang about your neck like
millstones."
"Thank you kindly, sir," replied Long John, again saluting.
"I dare you to thank me!" cried the squire. "It is a gross dereliction
of my duty. Stand back!"
And thereupon we all entered the cave. It was a large, airy place, with
a little spring and a pool of clear water, overhung with ferns. The
floor was sand. Before a big fire lay Captain Smollett; and in a far
corner, only duskily flickered over by the blaze, I beheld great heaps
of coin and quadrilaterals built of bars of gold. That was Flint's
treasure that we had come so far to seek, and that had cost already the
lives of seventeen men from the _Hispaniola_. How many it had cost in
the amassing, what blood and sorrow, what good ships scuttled on the
deep, what brave men walking the plank blindfold, what shot of cannon,
what shame and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell. Yet
there were still three upon that island--Silver, and old Morgan, and Ben
Gunn--who had each taken his share in these crimes, as each had hoped in
vain to share in the reward.
"Come in, Jim," said the captain. "You're a good boy in your line, Jim;
but I don't think you and me'll go to sea again. You're too much of the
born favorite for me. Is that you, John Silver? What brings you here,
man?"
"Come back to my dooty, sir," returned Silver.
"Ah!" said the captain, and that was all he said.
What a supper I had of it that night, with all my friends around me; and
what a meal it was, with Ben Gunn's salted goat, and some delicacies and
a bottle of old wine from the _Hispaniola_. Never, I am sure, were
people gayer or happier. And there was Silver, sitting back almost out
of the firelight, but eating heartily, prompt to spring forward when
anything was wanted, even joining quietly in our laughter--the same
bland, polite, obsequious seaman of the voyage out.