“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.”