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 to 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
drain 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
king of country love-song that he
must have learned in his youth
before he had begun to follow the
sea.
So things passed until, the day
after the funeral, and about three
o'clock of a bitter, foggy, frosty
afternoon, I was standing at the
door for a moment, full of sad
thoughts about my father, when I saw
someone drawing slowly near along
the road. He was plainly blind, for
he tapped before him with a stick
and wore a great green shade over
his eyes and nose; and he was
hunched, as if with age or weakness,
and wore a huge old tattered
sea-cloak with a hood that made him
appear positively deformed. I never
saw in my life a more
dreadful-looking figure. He stopped
a little from the inn, and raising
his voice in an odd sing-song,
addressed the air in front of him,
"Will any kind friend inform a poor
blind man, who has lost the precious
sight of his eyes in the gracious
defence of his native country,
England—and God bless King
George!—where or in what part of
this country he may now be?"
"You are at the Admiral Benbow,
Black Hill Cove, my good man," said
I.
"I hear a voice," said he, "a young
voice. Will you give me your hand,
my kind young friend, and lead me
in?"
I held out my hand, and the
horrible, soft-spoken, eyeless
creature gripped it in a moment like
a vise. I was so much startled that
I struggled to withdraw, but the
blind man pulled me close up to him
with a single action of his arm.
"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. |
