The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral
BenbowSQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and
the rest of these gentlemen having
asked me to write down the whole
particulars about Treasure Island,
from the beginning to the end,
keeping nothing back but the
bearings of the island, and that
only because there is still treasure
not yet lifted, I take up my pen in
the year of grace 17__ and go back
to the time when my father kept the
Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old
seaman with the sabre cut first took
up his lodging under our roof. I remember him as if it were
yesterday, as he came plodding to
the inn door, his sea-chest
following behind him in a
hand-barrow—a tall, strong, heavy,
nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail
falling over the shoulder of his
soiled blue coat, his hands ragged
and scarred, with black, broken
nails, and the sabre cut across one
cheek, a dirty, livid white. I
remember him looking round the cover
and whistling to himself as he did
so, and then breaking out in that
old sea-song that he sang so often
afterwards: "Fifteen men on the dead man's
chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" in the high, old tottering voice
that seemed to have been tuned and
broken at the capstan bars. Then he
rapped on the door with a bit of
stick like a handspike that he
carried, and when my father
appeared, called roughly for a glass
of rum. This, when it was brought to
him, he drank slowly, like a
connoisseur, lingering on the taste
and still looking about him at the
cliffs and up at our signboard. "This is a handy cove," says he at
length; "and a pleasant sittyated
grog-shop. Much company, mate?" My father told him no, very little
company, the more was the pity. "Well, then," said he, "this is the
berth for me. Here you, matey," he
cried to the man who trundled the
barrow; "bring up alongside and help
up my chest. I'll stay here a bit,"
he continued. "I'm a plain man; rum
and bacon and eggs is what I want,
and that head up there for to watch
ships off. What you mought call me?
You mought call me captain. Oh, I
see what you're at—there"; and he
threw down three or four gold pieces
on the threshold. "You can tell me
when I've worked through that," says
he, looking as fierce as a
commander. And indeed bad as his clothes were
and coarsely as he spoke, he had
none of the appearance of a man who
sailed before the mast, but seemed
like a mate or skipper accustomed to
be obeyed or to strike. The man who
came with the barrow told us the
mail had set him down the morning
before at the Royal George, that he
had inquired what inns there were
along the coast, and hearing ours
well spoken of, I suppose, and
described as lonely, had chosen it
from the others for his place of
residence. And that was all we could
learn of our guest. He was a very silent man by custom.
All day he hung round the cove or
upon the cliffs with a brass
telescope; all evening he sat in a
corner of the parlour next the fire
and drank rum and water very strong.
Mostly he would not speak when
spoken to, only look up sudden and
fierce and blow through his nose
like a fog-horn; and we and the
people who came about our house soon
learned to let him be. Every day
when he came back from his stroll he
would ask if any seafaring men had
gone by along the road. At first we
thought it was the want of company
of his own kind that made him ask
this question, but at last we began
to see he was desirous to avoid
them. When a seaman did put up at
the Admiral Benbow (as now and then
some did, making by the coast road
for Bristol) he would look in at him
through the curtained door before he
entered the parlour; and he was
always sure to be as silent as a
mouse when any such was present. For
me, at least, there was no secret
about the matter, for I was, in a
way, a sharer in his alarms. He had
taken me aside one day and promised
me a silver fourpenny on the first
of every month if I would only keep
my "weather-eye open for a seafaring
man with one leg" and let him know
the moment he appeared. Often enough
when the first of the month came
round and I applied to him for my
wage, he would only blow through his
nose at me and stare me down, but
before the week was out he was sure
to think better of it, bring me my
four-penny piece, and repeat his
orders to look out for "the
seafaring man with one leg." How that personage haunted my
dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On
stormy nights, when the wind shook
the four corners of the house and
the surf roared along the cove and
up the cliffs, I would see him in a
thousand forms, and with a thousand
diabolical expressions. Now the leg
would be cut off at the knee, now at
the hip; now he was a monstrous kind
of a creature who had never had but
the one leg, and that in the middle
of his body. To see him leap and run
and pursue me over hedge and ditch
was the worst of nightmares. And
altogether I paid pretty dear for my
monthly fourpenny piece, in the
shape of these abominable fancies.
But though I was so terrified by the
idea of the seafaring man with one
leg, I was far less afraid of the
captain himself than anybody else
who knew him. There were nights when
he took a deal more rum and water
than his head would carry; and then
he would sometimes sit and sing his
wicked, old, wild sea-songs, minding
nobody; but sometimes he would call
for glasses round and force all the
trembling company to listen to his
stories or bear a chorus to his
singing. Often I have heard the
house shaking with "Yo-ho-ho, and a
bottle of rum," all the neighbours
joining in for dear life, with the
fear of death upon them, and each
singing louder than the other to
avoid remark. For in these fits he
was the most overriding companion
ever known; he would slap his hand
on the table for silence all round;
he would fly up in a passion of
anger at a question, or sometimes
because none was put, and so he
judged the company was not following
his story. Nor would he allow anyone
to leave the inn till he had drunk
himself sleepy and reeled off to
bed. His stories were what frightened
people worst of all. Dreadful
stories they were—about hanging, and
walking the plank, and storms at
sea, and the Dry Tortugas, and wild
deeds and places on the Spanish
Main. By his own account he must
have lived his life among some of
the wickedest men that God ever
allowed upon the sea, and the
language in which he told these
stories shocked our plain country
people almost as much as the crimes
that he described. My father was
always saying the inn would be
ruined, for people would soon cease
coming there to be tyrannized over
and put down, and sent shivering to
their beds; but I really believe his
presence did us good. People were
frightened at the time, but on
looking back they rather liked it;
it was a fine excitement in a quiet
country life, and there was even a
party of the younger men who
pretended to admire him, calling him
a "true sea-dog" and a "real old
salt" and such like names, and
saying there was the sort of man
that made England terrible at sea.
In one way, indeed, he bade fair to
ruin us, for he kept on staying week
after week, and at last month after
month, so that all the money had
been long exhausted, and still my
father never plucked up the heart to
insist on having more. If ever he
mentioned it, the captain blew
through his nose so loudly that you
might say he roared, and stared my
poor father out of the room. I have
seen him wringing his hands after
such a rebuff, and I am sure the
annoyance and the terror he lived in
must have greatly hastened his early
and unhappy death. All the time he lived with us the
captain made no change whatever in
his dress but to buy some stockings
from a hawker. One of the cocks of
his hat having fallen down, he let
it hang from that day forth, though
it was a great annoyance when it
blew. I remember the appearance of
his coat, which he patched himself
upstairs in his room, and which,
before the end, was nothing but
patches. He never wrote or received
a letter, and he never spoke with
any but the neighbours, and with
these, for the most part, only when
drunk on rum. The great sea-chest
none of us had ever seen open. He was only once crossed, and that
was towards the end, when my poor
father was far gone in a decline
that took him off. Dr. Livesey came
late one afternoon to see the
patient, took a bit of dinner from
my mother, and went into the parlour
to smoke a pipe until his horse
should come down from the hamlet,
for we had no stabling at the old
Benbow. I followed him in, and I
remember observing the contrast the
neat, bright doctor, with his powder
as white as snow and his bright,
black eyes and pleasant manners,
made with the coltish country folk,
and above all, with that filthy,
heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate
of ours, sitting, far gone in rum,
with his arms on the table. Suddenly
he—the captain, that is—began to
pipe up his eternal song: "Fifteen men on the dead man's
chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the
rest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" At first I had supposed "the dead
man's chest" to be that identical
big box of his upstairs in the front
room, and the thought had been
mingled in my nightmares with that
of the one-legged seafaring man. But
by this time we had all long ceased
to pay any particular notice to the
song; it was new, that night, to
nobody but Dr. Livesey, and on him I
observed it did not produce an
agreeable effect, for he looked up
for a moment quite angrily before he
went on with his talk to old Taylor,
the gardener, on a new cure for the
rheumatics. In the meantime, the
captain gradually brightened up at
his own music, and at last flapped
his hand upon the table before him
in a way we all knew to mean
silence. The voices stopped at once,
all but Dr. Livesey's; he went on as
before speaking clear and kind and
drawing briskly at his pipe between
every word or two. The captain
glared at him for a while, flapped
his hand again, glared still harder,
and at last broke out with a
villainous, low oath, "Silence,
there, between decks!" "Were you addressing me, sir?" says
the doctor; and when the ruffian had
told him, with another oath, that
this was so, "I have only one thing
to say to you, sir," replies the
doctor, "that if you keep on
drinking rum, the world will soon be
quit of a very dirty scoundrel!" The old fellow's fury was awful. He
sprang to his feet, drew and opened
a sailor's clasp-knife, and
balancing it open on the palm of his
hand, threatened to pin the doctor
to the wall. The doctor never so much as moved.
He spoke to him as before, over his
shoulder and in the same tone of
voice, rather high, so that all the
room might hear, but perfectly calm
and steady: "If you do not put that
knife this instant in your pocket, I
promise, upon my honour, you shall
hang at the next assizes." Then followed a battle of looks
between them, but the captain soon
knuckled under, put up his weapon,
and resumed his seat, grumbling like
a beaten dog. "And now, sir," continued the
doctor, "since I now know there's
such a fellow in my district, you
may count I'll have an eye upon you
day and night. I'm not a doctor
only; I'm a magistrate; and if I
catch a breath of complaint against
you, if it's only for a piece of
incivility like tonight's, I'll take
effectual means to have you hunted
down and routed out of this. Let
that suffice." Soon after, Dr. Livesey's horse came
to the door and he rode away, but
the captain held his peace that
evening, and for many evenings to
come. |
