Treasure Island
64 | 65 |SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having 66 | asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from 67 | the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the 68 | island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I 69 | take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when 70 | my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the 71 | sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.
72 |I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the 73 | inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow—a 74 | tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the 75 | shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with 76 | black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid 77 | white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself 78 | as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so 79 | often afterwards:
80 |in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and 81 | broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of 82 | stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared, 83 | called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him, 84 | he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste and still 85 | looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.
86 |"This is a handy cove," says he at length; "and a pleasant sittyated 87 | grog-shop. Much company, mate?"
88 |My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity.
89 |"Well, then," said he, "this is the berth for me. Here you, matey," he 90 | cried to the man who trundled the barrow; "bring up alongside and help 91 | up my chest. I'll stay here a bit," he continued. "I'm a plain man; rum 92 | and bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there for to watch 93 | ships off. What you mought call me? You mought call me captain. Oh, I 94 | see what you're at—there"; and he threw down three or four gold pieces 95 | on the threshold. "You can tell me when I've worked through that," says 96 | he, looking as fierce as a commander.
97 |And indeed bad as his clothes were and coarsely as he spoke, he had none 98 | of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast, but seemed like 99 | a mate or skipper accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. The man who came 100 | with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before at 101 | the Royal George, that he had inquired what inns there were along the 102 | coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and described as 103 | lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place of residence. And 104 | that was all we could learn of our guest.
105 |He was a very silent man by custom. All day he hung round the cove or 106 | upon the cliffs with a brass telescope; all evening he sat in a corner 107 | of the parlour next the fire and drank rum and water very strong. Mostly 108 | he would not speak when spoken to, only look up sudden and fierce and 109 | blow through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the people who came 110 | about our house soon learned to let him be. Every day when he came back 111 | from his stroll he would ask if any seafaring men had gone by along the 112 | road. At first we thought it was the want of company of his own kind 113 | that made him ask this question, but at last we began to see he was 114 | desirous to avoid them. When a seaman did put up at the Admiral Benbow 115 | (as now and then some did, making by the coast road for Bristol) he 116 | would look in at him through the curtained door before he entered the 117 | parlour; and he was always sure to be as silent as a mouse when any such 118 | was present. For me, at least, there was no secret about the matter, for 119 | I was, in a way, a sharer in his alarms. He had taken me aside one day 120 | and promised me a silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I 121 | would only keep my "weather-eye open for a seafaring man with one leg" 122 | and let him know the moment he appeared. Often enough when the first 123 | of the month came round and I applied to him for my wage, he would only 124 | blow through his nose at me and stare me down, but before the week was 125 | out he was sure to think better of it, bring me my four-penny piece, and 126 | repeat his orders to look out for "the seafaring man with one leg."
127 |How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On 128 | stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house and 129 | the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a 130 | thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg 131 | would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous 132 | kind of a creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in the 133 | middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and 134 | ditch was the worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for 135 | my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.
136 |But though I was so terrified by the idea of the seafaring man with one 137 | leg, I was far less afraid of the captain himself than anybody else who 138 | knew him. There were nights when he took a deal more rum and water 139 | than his head would carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his 140 | wicked, old, wild sea-songs, minding nobody; but sometimes he would call 141 | for glasses round and force all the trembling company to listen to his 142 | stories or bear a chorus to his singing. Often I have heard the house 143 | shaking with "Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum," all the neighbours joining 144 | in for dear life, with the fear of death upon them, and each singing 145 | louder than the other to avoid remark. For in these fits he was the most 146 | overriding companion ever known; he would slap his hand on the table for 147 | silence all round; he would fly up in a passion of anger at a question, 148 | or sometimes because none was put, and so he judged the company was not 149 | following his story. Nor would he allow anyone to leave the inn till he 150 | had drunk himself sleepy and reeled off to bed.
151 |His stories were what frightened people worst of all. Dreadful stories 152 | they were—about hanging, and walking the plank, and storms at sea, and 153 | the Dry Tortugas, and wild deeds and places on the Spanish Main. By his 154 | own account he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest men 155 | that God ever allowed upon the sea, and the language in which he told 156 | these stories shocked our plain country people almost as much as the 157 | crimes that he described. My father was always saying the inn would be 158 | ruined, for people would soon cease coming there to be tyrannized over 159 | and put down, and sent shivering to their beds; but I really believe his 160 | presence did us good. People were frightened at the time, but on looking 161 | back they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country 162 | life, and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to 163 | admire him, calling him a "true sea-dog" and a "real old salt" and 164 | such like names, and saying there was the sort of man that made England 165 | terrible at sea.
166 |In one way, indeed, he bade fair to ruin us, for he kept on staying week 167 | after week, and at last month after month, so that all the money had 168 | been long exhausted, and still my father never plucked up the heart to 169 | insist on having more. If ever he mentioned it, the captain blew through 170 | his nose so loudly that you might say he roared, and stared my poor 171 | father out of the room. I have seen him wringing his hands after such a 172 | rebuff, and I am sure the annoyance and the terror he lived in must have 173 | greatly hastened his early and unhappy death.
174 |All the time he lived with us the captain made no change whatever in his 175 | dress but to buy some stockings from a hawker. One of the cocks of his 176 | hat having fallen down, he let it hang from that day forth, though it 177 | was a great annoyance when it blew. I remember the appearance of his 178 | coat, which he patched himself upstairs in his room, and which, before 179 | the end, was nothing but patches. He never wrote or received a letter, 180 | and he never spoke with any but the neighbours, and with these, for the 181 | most part, only when drunk on rum. The great sea-chest none of us had 182 | ever seen open.
183 |He was only once crossed, and that was towards the end, when my poor 184 | father was far gone in a decline that took him off. Dr. Livesey came 185 | late one afternoon to see the patient, took a bit of dinner from my 186 | mother, and went into the parlour to smoke a pipe until his horse should 187 | come down from the hamlet, for we had no stabling at the old Benbow. I 188 | followed him in, and I remember observing the contrast the neat, bright 189 | doctor, with his powder as white as snow and his bright, black eyes and 190 | pleasant manners, made with the coltish country folk, and above all, 191 | with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours, sitting, 192 | far gone in rum, with his arms on the table. Suddenly he—the captain, 193 | that is—began to pipe up his eternal song:
194 |At first I had supposed "the dead man's chest" to be that identical big 195 | box of his upstairs in the front room, and the thought had been mingled 196 | in my nightmares with that of the one-legged seafaring man. But by this 197 | time we had all long ceased to pay any particular notice to the song; it 198 | was new, that night, to nobody but Dr. Livesey, and on him I observed it 199 | did not produce an agreeable effect, for he looked up for a moment quite 200 | angrily before he went on with his talk to old Taylor, the gardener, on 201 | a new cure for the rheumatics. In the meantime, the captain gradually 202 | brightened up at his own music, and at last flapped his hand upon 203 | the table before him in a way we all knew to mean silence. The voices 204 | stopped at once, all but Dr. Livesey's; he went on as before speaking 205 | clear and kind and drawing briskly at his pipe between every word or 206 | two. The captain glared at him for a while, flapped his hand again, 207 | glared still harder, and at last broke out with a villainous, low oath, 208 | "Silence, there, between decks!"
209 |"Were you addressing me, sir?" says the doctor; and when the ruffian had 210 | told him, with another oath, that this was so, "I have only one thing to 211 | say to you, sir," replies the doctor, "that if you keep on drinking rum, 212 | the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!"
213 |The old fellow's fury was awful. He sprang to his feet, drew and opened 214 | a sailor's clasp-knife, and balancing it open on the palm of his hand, 215 | threatened to pin the doctor to the wall.
216 |The doctor never so much as moved. He spoke to him as before, over his 217 | shoulder and in the same tone of voice, rather high, so that all the 218 | room might hear, but perfectly calm and steady: "If you do not put that 219 | knife this instant in your pocket, I promise, upon my honour, you shall 220 | hang at the next assizes."
221 |Then followed a battle of looks between them, but the captain soon 222 | knuckled under, put up his weapon, and resumed his seat, grumbling like 223 | a beaten dog.
224 |"And now, sir," continued the doctor, "since I now know there's such a 225 | fellow in my district, you may count I'll have an eye upon you day and 226 | night. I'm not a doctor only; I'm a magistrate; and if I catch a breath 227 | of complaint against you, if it's only for a piece of incivility like 228 | tonight's, I'll take effectual means to have you hunted down and routed 229 | out of this. Let that suffice."
230 |Soon after, Dr. Livesey's horse came to the door and he rode away, but 231 | the captain held his peace that evening, and for many evenings to come.
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