ALL that night we were in a great
bustle getting things stowed in
their place, and boatfuls of the
squire's friends, Mr. Blandly and
the like, coming off to wish him a
good voyage and a safe return. We
never had a night at the Admiral
Benbow when I had half the work; and
I was dog-tired when, a little
before dawn, the boatswain sounded
his pipe and the crew began to man
the capstan-bars. I might have been
twice as weary, yet I would not have
left the deck, all was so new and
interesting to me—the brief
commands, the shrill note of the
whistle, the men bustling to their
places in the glimmer of the ship's
lanterns.
"Now, Barbecue, tip us a stave,"
cried one voice.
"The old one," cried another.
"Aye, aye, mates," said Long John,
who was standing by, with his crutch
under his arm, and at once broke out
in the air and words I knew so well:
"Fifteen men on the dead man's
chest—"
And then the whole crew bore
chorus:—
"Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
And at the third "Ho!" drove the
bars before them with a will.
Even at that exciting moment it
carried me back to the old Admiral
Benbow in a second, and I seemed to
hear the voice of the captain piping
in the chorus. But soon the anchor
was short up; soon it was hanging
dripping at the bows; soon the sails
began to draw, and the land and
shipping to flit by on either side;
and before I could lie down to
snatch an hour of slumber the
HISPANIOLA had begun her voyage to
the Isle of Treasure.
I am not going to relate that voyage
in detail. It was fairly prosperous.
The ship proved to be a good ship,
the crew were capable seamen, and
the captain thoroughly understood
his business. But before we came the
length of Treasure Island, two or
three things had happened which
require to be known.
Mr. Arrow, first of all, turned out
even worse than the captain had
feared. He had no command among the
men, and people did what they
pleased with him. But that was by no
means the worst of it, for after a
day or two at sea he began to appear
on deck with hazy eye, red cheeks,
stuttering tongue, and other marks
of drunkenness. Time after time he
was ordered below in disgrace.
Sometimes he fell and cut himself;
sometimes he lay all day long in his
little bunk at one side of the
companion; sometimes for a day or
two he would be almost sober and
attend to his work at least
passably.
In the meantime, we could never make
out where he got the drink. That was
the ship's mystery. Watch him as we
pleased, we could do nothing to
solve it; and when we asked him to
his face, he would only laugh if he
were drunk, and if he were sober
deny solemnly that he ever tasted
anything but water.
He was not only useless as an
officer and a bad influence amongst
the men, but it was plain that at
this rate he must soon kill himself
outright, so nobody was much
surprised, nor very sorry, when one
dark night, with a head sea, he
disappeared entirely and was seen no
more.
"Overboard!" said the captain.
"Well, gentlemen, that saves the
trouble of putting him in irons."
But there we were, without a mate;
and it was necessary, of course, to
advance one of the men. The
boatswain, Job Anderson, was the
likeliest man aboard, and though he
kept his old title, he served in a
way as mate. Mr. Trelawney had
followed the sea, and his knowledge
made him very useful, for he often
took a watch himself in easy
weather. And the coxswain, Israel
Hands, was a careful, wily, old,
experienced seaman who could be
trusted at a pinch with almost
anything.
He was a great confidant of Long
John Silver, and so the mention of
his name leads me on to speak of our
ship's cook, Barbecue, as the men
called him.
Aboard ship he carried his crutch by
a lanyard round his neck, to have
both hands as free as possible. It
was something to see him wedge the
foot of the crutch against a
bulkhead, and propped against it,
yielding to every movement of the
ship, get on with his cooking like
someone safe ashore. Still more
strange was it to see him in the
heaviest of weather cross the deck.
He had a line or two rigged up to
help him across the widest
spaces—Long John's earrings, they
were called; and he would hand
himself from one place to another,
now using the crutch, now trailing
it alongside by the lanyard, as
quickly as another man could walk.
Yet some of the men who had sailed
with him before expressed their pity
to see him so reduced.
"He's no common man, Barbecue," said
the coxswain to me. "He had good
schooling in his young days and can
speak like a book when so minded;
and brave—a lion's nothing alongside
of Long John! I seen him grapple
four and knock their heads
together—him unarmed."
All the crew respected and even
obeyed him. He had a way of talking
to each and doing everybody some
particular service. To me he was
unweariedly kind, and always glad to
see me in the galley, which he kept
as clean as a new pin, the dishes
hanging up burnished and his parrot
in a cage in one corner.
"Come away, Hawkins," he would say;
"come and have a yarn with John.
Nobody more welcome than yourself,
my son. Sit you down and hear the
news. Here's Cap'n Flint—I calls my
parrot Cap'n Flint, after the famous
buccaneer—here's Cap'n Flint
predicting success to our v'yage.
Wasn't you, cap'n?"
And the parrot would say, with great
rapidity, "Pieces of eight! Pieces
of eight! Pieces of eight!" till you
wondered that it was not out of
breath, or till John threw his
handkerchief over the cage.
"Now, that bird," he would say, "is,
maybe, two hundred years old,
Hawkins—they live forever mostly;
and if anybody's seen more
wickedness, it must be the devil
himself. She's sailed with England,
the great Cap'n England, the pirate.
She's been at Madagascar, and at
Malabar, and Surinam, and
Providence, and Portobello. She was
at the fishing up of the wrecked
plate ships. It's there she learned
'Pieces of eight,' and little
wonder; three hundred and fifty
thousand of 'em, Hawkins! She was at
the boarding of the viceroy of the
Indies out of Goa, she was; and to
look at her you would think she was
a babby. But you smelt powder—didn't
you, cap'n?"
"Stand by to go about," the parrot
would scream.
"Ah, she's a handsome craft, she
is," the cook would say, and give
her sugar from his pocket, and then
the bird would peck at the bars and
swear straight on, passing belief
for wickedness. "There," John would
add, "you can't touch pitch and not
be mucked, lad. Here's this poor old
innocent bird o' mine swearing blue
fire, and none the wiser, you may
lay to that. She would swear the
same, in a manner of speaking,
before chaplain." And John would
touch his forelock with a solemn way
he had that made me think he was the
best of men.
In the meantime, the squire and
Captain Smollett were still on
pretty distant terms with one
another. The squire made no bones
about the matter; he despised the
captain. The captain, on his part,
never spoke but when he was spoken
to, and then sharp and short and
dry, and not a word wasted. He
owned, when driven into a corner,
that he seemed to have been wrong
about the crew, that some of them
were as brisk as he wanted to see
and all had behaved fairly well. As
for the ship, he had taken a
downright fancy to her. "She'll lie
a point nearer the wind than a man
has a right to expect of his own
married wife, sir. But," he would
add, "all I say is, we're not home
again, and I don't like the cruise."
The squire, at this, would turn away
and march up and down the deck, chin
in air.
"A trifle more of that man," he
would say, "and I shall explode."
We had some heavy weather, which
only proved the qualities of the
HISPANIOLA. Every man on board
seemed well content, and they must
have been hard to please if they had
been otherwise, for it is my belief
there was never a ship's company so
spoiled since Noah put to sea.
Double grog was going on the least
excuse; there was duff on odd days,
as, for instance, if the squire
heard it was any man's birthday, and
always a barrel of apples standing
broached in the waist for anyone to
help himself that had a fancy.
"Never knew good come of it yet,"
the captain said to Dr. Livesey.
"Spoil forecastle hands, make
devils. That's my belief."
But good did come of the apple
barrel, as you shall hear, for if it
had not been for that, we should
have had no note of warning and
might all have perished by the hand
of treachery.
This was how it came about.
We had run up the trades to get the
wind of the island we were after—I
am not allowed to be more plain—and
now we were running down for it with
a bright lookout day and night. It
was about the last day of our
outward voyage by the largest
computation; some time that night,
or at latest before noon of the
morrow, we should sight the Treasure
Island. We were heading S.S.W. and
had a steady breeze abeam and a
quiet sea. The HISPANIOLA rolled
steadily, dipping her bowsprit now
and then with a whiff of spray. All
was drawing alow and aloft; everyone
was in the bravest spirits because
we were now so near an end of the
first part of our adventure.
Now, just after sundown, when all my
work was over and I was on my way to
my berth, it occurred to me that I
should like an apple. I ran on deck.
The watch was all forward looking
out for the island. The man at the
helm was watching the luff of the
sail and whistling away gently to
himself, and that was the only sound
excepting the swish of the sea
against the bows and around the
sides of the ship.
In I got bodily into the apple
barrel, and found there was scarce
an apple left; but sitting down
there in the dark, what with the
sound of the waters and the rocking
movement of the ship, I had either
fallen asleep or was on the point of
doing so when a heavy man sat down
with rather a clash close by. The
barrel shook as he leaned his
shoulders against it, and I was just
about to jump up when the man began
to speak. It was Silver's voice, and
before I had heard a dozen words, I
would not have shown myself for all
the world, but lay there, trembling
and listening, in the extreme of
fear and curiosity, for from these
dozen words I understood that the
lives of all the honest men aboard
depended upon me alone. |
