XIII
How I Began My Shore Adventure
The appearance of the island when I came on deck next morning was
altogether changed. Although the breeze had now utterly ceased, we had
made a great deal of way during the night and were now lying becalmed
about half a mile to the south-east of the low eastern coast.
Grey-coloured woods covered a large part of the surface. This even tint
was indeed broken up by streaks of yellow sand-break in the lower lands,
and by many tall trees of the pine family, out-topping the others--some
singly, some in clumps; but the general colouring was uniform and sad.
The hills ran up clear above the vegetation in spires of naked rock.
All were strangely shaped, and the Spy-glass, which was by three or four
hundred feet the tallest on the island, was likewise the strangest in
configuration, running up sheer from almost every side and then suddenly
cut off at the top like a pedestal to put a statue on.
The HISPANIOLA was rolling scuppers under in the ocean swell. The booms
were tearing at the blocks, the rudder was banging to and fro, and the
whole ship creaking, groaning, and jumping like a manufactory. I had
to cling tight to the backstay, and the world turned giddily before my
eyes, for though I was a good enough sailor when there was way on, this
standing still and being rolled about like a bottle was a thing I never
learned to stand without a qualm or so, above all in the morning, on an
empty stomach.
Perhaps it was this--perhaps it was the look of the island, with its
grey, melancholy woods, and wild stone spires, and the surf that we
could both see and hear foaming and thundering on the steep beach--at
least, although the sun shone bright and hot, and the shore birds were
fishing and crying all around us, and you would have thought anyone
would have been glad to get to land after being so long at sea, my heart
sank, as the saying is, into my boots; and from the first look onward, I
hated the very thought of Treasure Island.
We had a dreary morning’s work before us, for there was no sign of any
wind, and the boats had to be got out and manned, and the ship warped
three or four miles round the corner of the island and up the narrow
passage to the haven behind Skeleton Island. I volunteered for one of
the boats, where I had, of course, no business. The heat was sweltering,
and the men grumbled fiercely over their work. Anderson was in command
of my boat, and instead of keeping the crew in order, he grumbled as
loud as the worst.
“Well,” he said with an oath, “it’s not forever.”
I thought this was a very bad sign, for up to that day the men had gone
briskly and willingly about their business; but the very sight of the
island had relaxed the cords of discipline.
All the way in, Long John stood by the steersman and conned the ship.
He knew the passage like the palm of his hand, and though the man in the
chains got everywhere more water than was down in the chart, John never
hesitated once.
“There’s a strong scour with the ebb,” he said, “and this here passage
has been dug out, in a manner of speaking, with a spade.”
We brought up just where the anchor was in the chart, about a third of
a mile from each shore, the mainland on one side and Skeleton Island on
the other. The bottom was clean sand. The plunge of our anchor sent up
clouds of birds wheeling and crying over the woods, but in less than a
minute they were down again and all was once more silent.
The place was entirely land-locked, buried in woods, the trees coming
right down to high-water mark, the shores mostly flat, and the hilltops
standing round at a distance in a sort of amphitheatre, one here, one
there. Two little rivers, or rather two swamps, emptied out into this
pond, as you might call it; and the foliage round that part of the shore
had a kind of poisonous brightness. From the ship we could see nothing
of the house or stockade, for they were quite buried among trees; and if
it had not been for the chart on the companion, we might have been the
first that had ever anchored there since the island arose out of the
seas.
There was not a breath of air moving, nor a sound but that of the
surf booming half a mile away along the beaches and against the rocks
outside. A peculiar stagnant smell hung over the anchorage--a smell of
sodden leaves and rotting tree trunks. I observed the doctor sniffing
and sniffing, like someone tasting a bad egg.
“I don’t know about treasure,” he said, “but I’ll stake my wig there’s
fever here.”
If the conduct of the men had been alarming in the boat, it became truly
threatening when they had come aboard. They lay about the deck growling
together in talk. The slightest order was received with a black look and
grudgingly and carelessly obeyed. Even the honest hands must have caught
the infection, for there was not one man aboard to mend another. Mutiny,
it was plain, hung over us like a thunder-cloud.
And it was not only we of the cabin party who perceived the danger. Long
John was hard at work going from group to group, spending himself in
good advice, and as for example no man could have shown a better. He
fairly outstripped himself in willingness and civility; he was all
smiles to everyone. If an order were given, John would be on his crutch
in an instant, with the cheeriest “Aye, aye, sir!” in the world; and
when there was nothing else to do, he kept up one song after another, as
if to conceal the discontent of the rest.
Of all the gloomy features of that gloomy afternoon, this obvious
anxiety on the part of Long John appeared the worst.
We held a council in the cabin.
“Sir,” said the captain, “if I risk another order, the whole ship’ll
come about our ears by the run. You see, sir, here it is. I get a rough
answer, do I not? Well, if I speak back, pikes will be going in two
shakes; if I don’t, Silver will see there’s something under that, and
the game’s up. Now, we’ve only one man to rely on.”
“And who is that?” asked the squire.
“Silver, sir,” returned the captain; “he’s as anxious as you and I to
smother things up. This is a tiff; he’d soon talk ’em out of it if he
had the chance, and what I propose to do is to give him the chance.
Let’s allow the men an afternoon ashore. If they all go, why we’ll fight
the ship. If they none of them go, well then, we hold the cabin, and God
defend the right. If some go, you mark my words, sir, Silver’ll bring
’em aboard again as mild as lambs.”
It was so decided; loaded pistols were served out to all the sure men;
Hunter, Joyce, and Redruth were taken into our confidence and received
the news with less surprise and a better spirit than we had looked for,
and then the captain went on deck and addressed the crew.
“My lads,” said he, “we’ve had a hot day and are all tired and out of
sorts. A turn ashore’ll hurt nobody--the boats are still in the water;
you can take the gigs, and as many as please may go ashore for the
afternoon. I’ll fire a gun half an hour before sundown.”
I believe the silly fellows must have thought they would break their
shins over treasure as soon as they were landed, for they all came out
of their sulks in a moment and gave a cheer that started the echo in a
faraway hill and sent the birds once more flying and squalling round the
anchorage.
The captain was too bright to be in the way. He whipped out of sight
in a moment, leaving Silver to arrange the party, and I fancy it was as
well he did so. Had he been on deck, he could no longer so much as
have pretended not to understand the situation. It was as plain as day.
Silver was the captain, and a mighty rebellious crew he had of it. The
honest hands--and I was soon to see it proved that there were such on
board--must have been very stupid fellows. Or rather, I suppose the
truth was this, that all hands were disaffected by the example of the
ringleaders--only some more, some less; and a few, being good fellows in
the main, could neither be led nor driven any further. It is one thing
to be idle and skulk and quite another to take a ship and murder a
number of innocent men.
At last, however, the party was made up. Six fellows were to stay on
board, and the remaining thirteen, including Silver, began to embark.
Then it was that there came into my head the first of the mad notions
that contributed so much to save our lives. If six men were left by
Silver, it was plain our party could not take and fight the ship; and
since only six were left, it was equally plain that the cabin party
had no present need of my assistance. It occurred to me at once to go
ashore. In a jiffy I had slipped over the side and curled up in the
fore-sheets of the nearest boat, and almost at the same moment she
shoved off.
No one took notice of me, only the bow oar saying, “Is that you, Jim?
Keep your head down.” But Silver, from the other boat, looked sharply
over and called out to know if that were me; and from that moment I
began to regret what I had done.
The crews raced for the beach, but the boat I was in, having some start
and being at once the lighter and the better manned, shot far ahead of
her consort, and the bow had struck among the shore-side trees and I
had caught a branch and swung myself out and plunged into the nearest
thicket while Silver and the rest were still a hundred yards behind.
“Jim, Jim!” I heard him shouting.
But you may suppose I paid no heed; jumping, ducking, and breaking
through, I ran straight before my nose till I could run no longer.
XIV
The First Blow
I was so pleased at having given the slip to Long John that I began to
enjoy myself and look around me with some interest on the strange land
that I was in.
I had crossed a marshy tract full of willows, bulrushes, and odd,
outlandish, swampy trees; and I had now come out upon the skirts of an
open piece of undulating, sandy country, about a mile long, dotted with
a few pines and a great number of contorted trees, not unlike the oak
in growth, but pale in the foliage, like willows. On the far side of
the open stood one of the hills, with two quaint, craggy peaks shining
vividly in the sun.
I now felt for the first time the joy of exploration. The isle was
uninhabited; my shipmates I had left behind, and nothing lived in front
of me but dumb brutes and fowls. I turned hither and thither among the
trees. Here and there were flowering plants, unknown to me; here and
there I saw snakes, and one raised his head from a ledge of rock and
hissed at me with a noise not unlike the spinning of a top. Little did
I suppose that he was a deadly enemy and that the noise was the famous
rattle.
Then I came to a long thicket of these oaklike trees--live, or
evergreen, oaks, I heard afterwards they should be called--which grew
low along the sand like brambles, the boughs curiously twisted, the
foliage compact, like thatch. The thicket stretched down from the top of
one of the sandy knolls, spreading and growing taller as it went, until
it reached the margin of the broad, reedy fen, through which the nearest
of the little rivers soaked its way into the anchorage. The marsh was
steaming in the strong sun, and the outline of the Spy-glass trembled
through the haze.
All at once there began to go a sort of bustle among the bulrushes;
a wild duck flew up with a quack, another followed, and soon over the
whole surface of the marsh a great cloud of birds hung screaming and
circling in the air. I judged at once that some of my shipmates must be
drawing near along the borders of the fen. Nor was I deceived, for soon
I heard the very distant and low tones of a human voice, which, as I
continued to give ear, grew steadily louder and nearer.
This put me in a great fear, and I crawled under cover of the nearest
live-oak and squatted there, hearkening, as silent as a mouse.
Another voice answered, and then the first voice, which I now recognized
to be Silver’s, once more took up the story and ran on for a long while
in a stream, only now and again interrupted by the other. By the sound
they must have been talking earnestly, and almost fiercely; but no
distinct word came to my hearing.
At last the speakers seemed to have paused and perhaps to have sat down,
for not only did they cease to draw any nearer, but the birds themselves
began to grow more quiet and to settle again to their places in the
swamp.
And now I began to feel that I was neglecting my business, that since
I had been so foolhardy as to come ashore with these desperadoes, the
least I could do was to overhear them at their councils, and that my
plain and obvious duty was to draw as close as I could manage, under the
favourable ambush of the crouching trees.
I could tell the direction of the speakers pretty exactly, not only by
the sound of their voices but by the behaviour of the few birds that
still hung in alarm above the heads of the intruders.
Crawling on all fours, I made steadily but slowly towards them, till at
last, raising my head to an aperture among the leaves, I could see clear
down into a little green dell beside the marsh, and closely set about
with trees, where Long John Silver and another of the crew stood face to
face in conversation.
The sun beat full upon them. Silver had thrown his hat beside him on the
ground, and his great, smooth, blond face, all shining with heat, was
lifted to the other man’s in a kind of appeal.
“Mate,” he was saying, “it’s because I thinks gold dust of you--gold
dust, and you may lay to that! If I hadn’t took to you like pitch, do
you think I’d have been here a-warning of you? All’s up--you can’t make
nor mend; it’s to save your neck that I’m a-speaking, and if one of the
wild uns knew it, where’d I be, Tom--now, tell me, where’d I be?”
“Silver,” said the other man--and I observed he was not only red in the
face, but spoke as hoarse as a crow, and his voice shook too, like a
taut rope--“Silver,” says he, “you’re old, and you’re honest, or has the
name for it; and you’ve money too, which lots of poor sailors hasn’t;
and you’re brave, or I’m mistook. And will you tell me you’ll let
yourself be led away with that kind of a mess of swabs? Not you! As sure
as God sees me, I’d sooner lose my hand. If I turn agin my dooty--”
And then all of a sudden he was interrupted by a noise. I had found
one of the honest hands--well, here, at that same moment, came news of
another. Far away out in the marsh there arose, all of a sudden, a sound
like the cry of anger, then another on the back of it; and then one
horrid, long-drawn scream. The rocks of the Spy-glass re-echoed it a
score of times; the whole troop of marsh-birds rose again, darkening
heaven, with a simultaneous whirr; and long after that death yell was
still ringing in my brain, silence had re-established its empire, and
only the rustle of the redescending birds and the boom of the distant
surges disturbed the languor of the afternoon.
Tom had leaped at the sound, like a horse at the spur, but Silver had
not winked an eye. He stood where he was, resting lightly on his crutch,
watching his companion like a snake about to spring.
“John!” said the sailor, stretching out his hand.
“Hands off!” cried Silver, leaping back a yard, as it seemed to me, with
the speed and security of a trained gymnast.
“Hands off, if you like, John Silver,” said the other. “It’s a black
conscience that can make you feared of me. But in heaven’s name, tell
me, what was that?”
“That?” returned Silver, smiling away, but warier than ever, his eye
a mere pin-point in his big face, but gleaming like a crumb of glass.
“That? Oh, I reckon that’ll be Alan.”
And at this point Tom flashed out like a hero.
“Alan!” he cried. “Then rest his soul for a true seaman! And as for you,
John Silver, long you’ve been a mate of mine, but you’re mate of mine
no more. If I die like a dog, I’ll die in my dooty. You’ve killed Alan,
have you? Kill me too, if you can. But I defies you.”
And with that, this brave fellow turned his back directly on the cook
and set off walking for the beach. But he was not destined to go far.
With a cry John seized the branch of a tree, whipped the crutch out of
his armpit, and sent that uncouth missile hurtling through the air.
It struck poor Tom, point foremost, and with stunning violence, right
between the shoulders in the middle of his back. His hands flew up, he
gave a sort of gasp, and fell.
Whether he were injured much or little, none could ever tell. Like
enough, to judge from the sound, his back was broken on the spot. But he
had no time given him to recover. Silver, agile as a monkey even without
leg or crutch, was on the top of him next moment and had twice buried
his knife up to the hilt in that defenceless body. From my place of
ambush, I could hear him pant aloud as he struck the blows.
I do not know what it rightly is to faint, but I do know that for the
next little while the whole world swam away from before me in a whirling
mist; Silver and the birds, and the tall Spy-glass hilltop, going
round and round and topsy-turvy before my eyes, and all manner of bells
ringing and distant voices shouting in my ear.
When I came again to myself the monster had pulled himself together,
his crutch under his arm, his hat upon his head. Just before him Tom
lay motionless upon the sward; but the murderer minded him not a whit,
cleansing his blood-stained knife the while upon a wisp of grass.
Everything else was unchanged, the sun still shining mercilessly on the
steaming marsh and the tall pinnacle of the mountain, and I could scarce
persuade myself that murder had been actually done and a human life
cruelly cut short a moment since before my eyes.
But now John put his hand into his pocket, brought out a whistle, and
blew upon it several modulated blasts that rang far across the heated
air. I could not tell, of course, the meaning of the signal, but
it instantly awoke my fears. More men would be coming. I might be
discovered. They had already slain two of the honest people; after Tom
and Alan, might not I come next?
Instantly I began to extricate myself and crawl back again, with what
speed and silence I could manage, to the more open portion of the
wood. As I did so, I could hear hails coming and going between the old
buccaneer and his comrades, and this sound of danger lent me wings. As
soon as I was clear of the thicket, I ran as I never ran before, scarce
minding the direction of my flight, so long as it led me from the
murderers; and as I ran, fear grew and grew upon me until it turned into
a kind of frenzy.
Indeed, could anyone be more entirely lost than I? When the gun fired,
how should I dare to go down to the boats among those fiends, still
smoking from their crime? Would not the first of them who saw me wring
my neck like a snipe’s? Would not my absence itself be an evidence to
them of my alarm, and therefore of my fatal knowledge? It was all over,
I thought. Good-bye to the HISPANIOLA; good-bye to the squire, the
doctor, and the captain! There was nothing left for me but death by
starvation or death by the hands of the mutineers.
All this while, as I say, I was still running, and without taking any
notice, I had drawn near to the foot of the little hill with the two
peaks and had got into a part of the island where the live-oaks grew
more widely apart and seemed more like forest trees in their bearing and
dimensions. Mingled with these were a few scattered pines, some fifty,
some nearer seventy, feet high. The air too smelt more freshly than down
beside the marsh.
And here a fresh alarm brought me to a standstill with a thumping heart.
XV
The Man of the Island
From the side of the hill, which was here steep and stony, a spout of
gravel was dislodged and fell rattling and bounding through the trees.
My eyes turned instinctively in that direction, and I saw a figure leap
with great rapidity behind the trunk of a pine. What it was, whether
bear or man or monkey, I could in no wise tell. It seemed dark and
shaggy; more I knew not. But the terror of this new apparition brought
me to a stand.
I was now, it seemed, cut off upon both sides; behind me the murderers,
before me this lurking nondescript. And immediately I began to prefer
the dangers that I knew to those I knew not. Silver himself appeared
less terrible in contrast with this creature of the woods, and I turned
on my heel, and looking sharply behind me over my shoulder, began to
retrace my steps in the direction of the boats.
Instantly the figure reappeared, and making a wide circuit, began to
head me off. I was tired, at any rate; but had I been as fresh as when I
rose, I could see it was in vain for me to contend in speed with such an
adversary. From trunk to trunk the creature flitted like a deer, running
manlike on two legs, but unlike any man that I had ever seen, stooping
almost double as it ran. Yet a man it was, I could no longer be in doubt
about that.
I began to recall what I had heard of cannibals. I was within an ace of
calling for help. But the mere fact that he was a man, however wild,
had somewhat reassured me, and my fear of Silver began to revive in
proportion. I stood still, therefore, and cast about for some method of
escape; and as I was so thinking, the recollection of my pistol flashed
into my mind. As soon as I remembered I was not defenceless, courage
glowed again in my heart and I set my face resolutely for this man of
the island and walked briskly towards him.
He was concealed by this time behind another tree trunk; but he must
have been watching me closely, for as soon as I began to move in his
direction he reappeared and took a step to meet me. Then he hesitated,
drew back, came forward again, and at last, to my wonder and
confusion, threw himself on his knees and held out his clasped hands in
supplication.
At that I once more stopped.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Ben Gunn,” he answered, and his voice sounded hoarse and awkward,
like a rusty lock. “I’m poor Ben Gunn, I am; and I haven’t spoke with a
Christian these three years.”
I could now see that he was a white man like myself and that his
features were even pleasing. His skin, wherever it was exposed, was
burnt by the sun; even his lips were black, and his fair eyes looked
quite startling in so dark a face. Of all the beggar-men that I had seen
or fancied, he was the chief for raggedness. He was clothed with tatters
of old ship’s canvas and old sea-cloth, and this extraordinary patchwork
was all held together by a system of the most various and incongruous
fastenings, brass buttons, bits of stick, and loops of tarry gaskin.
About his waist he wore an old brass-buckled leather belt, which was the
one thing solid in his whole accoutrement.
“Three years!” I cried. “Were you shipwrecked?”
“Nay, mate,” said he; “marooned.”
I had heard the word, and I knew it stood for a horrible kind of
punishment common enough among the buccaneers, in which the offender
is put ashore with a little powder and shot and left behind on some
desolate and distant island.
“Marooned three years agone,” he continued, “and lived on goats since
then, and berries, and oysters. Wherever a man is, says I, a man can
do for himself. But, mate, my heart is sore for Christian diet. You
mightn’t happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now? No? Well,
many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese--toasted, mostly--and woke
up again, and here I were.”
“If ever I can get aboard again,” said I, “you shall have cheese by the
stone.”
All this time he had been feeling the stuff of my jacket, smoothing
my hands, looking at my boots, and generally, in the intervals of
his speech, showing a childish pleasure in the presence of a fellow
creature. But at my last words he perked up into a kind of startled
slyness.
“If ever you can get aboard again, says you?” he repeated. “Why, now,
who’s to hinder you?”
“Not you, I know,” was my reply.
“And right you was,” he cried. “Now you--what do you call yourself,
mate?”
“Jim,” I told him.
“Jim, Jim,” says he, quite pleased apparently. “Well, now, Jim, I’ve
lived that rough as you’d be ashamed to hear of. Now, for instance, you
wouldn’t think I had had a pious mother--to look at me?” he asked.
“Why, no, not in particular,” I answered.
“Ah, well,” said he, “but I had--_re_markable pious. And I was a civil,
pious boy, and could rattle off my catechism that fast, as you couldn’t
tell one word from another. And here’s what it come to, Jim, and it
begun with chuck-farthen on the blessed grave-stones! That’s what it
begun with, but it went further’n that; and so my mother told me, and
predicked the whole, she did, the pious woman! But it were Providence
that put me here. I’ve thought it all out in this here lonely island,
and I’m back on piety. You don’t catch me tasting rum so much, but just
a thimbleful for luck, of course, the first chance I have. I’m bound
I’ll be good, and I see the way to. And, Jim”--looking all round him and
lowering his voice to a whisper--“I’m rich.”
I now felt sure that the poor fellow had gone crazy in his solitude, and
I suppose I must have shown the feeling in my face, for he repeated the
statement hotly: “Rich! Rich! I says. And I’ll tell you what: I’ll make
a man of you, Jim. Ah, Jim, you’ll bless your stars, you will, you was
the first that found me!”
And at this there came suddenly a lowering shadow over his face, and he
tightened his grasp upon my hand and raised a forefinger threateningly
before my eyes.
“Now, Jim, you tell me true: that ain’t Flint’s ship?” he asked.
At this I had a happy inspiration. I began to believe that I had found
an ally, and I answered him at once.
“It’s not Flint’s ship, and Flint is dead; but I’ll tell you true, as
you ask me--there are some of Flint’s hands aboard; worse luck for the
rest of us.”
“Not a man--with one--leg?” he gasped.
“Silver?” I asked.
“Ah, Silver!” says he. “That were his name.”
“He’s the cook, and the ringleader too.”
He was still holding me by the wrist, and at that he give it quite a
wring.
“If you was sent by Long John,” he said, “I’m as good as pork, and I
know it. But where was you, do you suppose?”
I had made my mind up in a moment, and by way of answer told him
the whole story of our voyage and the predicament in which we found
ourselves. He heard me with the keenest interest, and when I had done he
patted me on the head.
“You’re a good lad, Jim,” he said; “and you’re all in a clove hitch,
ain’t you? Well, you just put your trust in Ben Gunn--Ben Gunn’s the man
to do it. Would you think it likely, now, that your squire would prove
a liberal-minded one in case of help--him being in a clove hitch, as you
remark?”