Squire 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
German
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.
Chapter II - Black Dog Appears and Disappears
It was not very long after this that there occurred the first of the mysterious events
that rid us at last of the captain, though not, as you will see, of his affairs. It was a
bitter cold winter, with long, hard frosts and heavy gales; and it was plain from the
first that my poor father was little likely to see the spring. He sank daily, and my
mother and I had all the inn upon our hands, and were kept busy enough without
paying much regard to our unpleasant guest.
It was one January morning, very early — a pinching, frosty morning — the cove all
grey with hoar-frost, the ripple lapping softly on the stones, the sun still low and
only touching the hilltops and shining far to seaward. The captain had risen earlier
than usual and set out down the beach, his cutlass swinging under the broad skirts
of the old blue coat, his brass telescope under his arm, his hat tilted back upon his
head. I remember his breath hanging like smoke in his wake as he strode off, and
the last sound I heard of him as he turned the big rock was a loud snort of
indignation, as though his mind was still running upon Dr. Livesey. Well, mother
was upstairs with father and I was laying the breakfast- table against the captain’s
return when the parlour door opened and a man stepped in on whom I had never set
my eyes before. He was a pale, tallowy creature, wanting two fingers of the left
hand, and though he wore a cutlass, he did not look much like a fighter. I had
always my eye open for seafaring men, with one leg or two, and I remember this one
puzzled me. He was not sailorly, and yet he had a smack of the sea about him too.
I asked him what was for his service, and he said he would take rum; but as I was
going out of the room to fetch it, he sat down upon a table and motioned me to draw
near. I paused where I was, with my napkin in my hand.
“Come here, sonny,” says he. “Come nearer here.” I took a step nearer. “Is this here
table for my mate Bill?” he asked with a kind of leer. I told him I did not know his
mate Bill, and this was for a person who stayed in our
house whom we called the captain. “Well,” said he, “my mate Bill would be called
the captain, as like as not. He has a cut
on one cheek and a mighty pleasant way with him, particularly in drink, has my
mate Bill. We’ll put it, for argument like, that your captain has a cut on one cheek
— and we’ll put it, if you like, that that cheek’s the right one. Ah, well! I told you.
Now, is my mate Bill in this here house?”
I told him he was out walking. “Which way, sonny? Which way is he gone?” And
when I had pointed out the rock and told him how the captain was likely to return,
and how soon, and answered a few other questions, “Ah,” said he, “this’ll be as good
as
German
drink to my mate Bill.” The expression of his face as he said these words was not at
all pleasant, and I had my own reasons for thinking that the stranger was mistaken, even supposing he meant
what he said. But it was no affair of mine, I thought; and besides, it was difficult to
know what to do. The stranger kept hanging about just inside the inn door, peering
round the corner like a cat waiting for a mouse. Once I stepped out myself into the
road, but he immediately called me back, and as I did not obey quick enough for his
fancy, a most horrible change came over his tallowy face, and he ordered me in with
an oath that made me jump. As soon as I was back again he returned to his former
manner, half fawning, half sneering, patted me on the shoulder, told me I was a
good boy and he had taken quite a fancy to me. “I have a son of my own,” said he,
“as like you as two blocks, and he’s all the pride of my ’art. But the great thing for
boys is discipline, sonny — discipline. Now, if you had sailed along of Bill, you
wouldn’t have stood there to be spoke to twice — not you. That was never Bill’s way,
nor the way of sich as sailed with him. And here, sure enough, is my mate Bill, with
a spy- glass under his arm, bless his old ’art, to be sure. You and me’ll just go back
into the parlour, sonny, and get behind the door, and we’ll give Bill a little surprise
— bless his ’art, I say again.”
So saying, the stranger backed along with me into the parlour and put me behind
him in the corner so that we were both hidden by the open door. I was very uneasy
and alarmed, as you may fancy, and it rather added to my fears to observe that the
stranger was certainly frightened himself. He cleared the hilt of his cutlass and
loosened the blade in the sheath; and all the time we were waiting there he kept
swallowing as if he felt what we used to call a lump in the throat.
At last in strode the captain, slammed the door behind him, without looking to the
right or left, and marched straight across the room to where his breakfast awaited
him.
“Bill,” said the stranger in a voice that I thought he had tried to make bold and big.
The captain spun round on his heel and fronted us; all the brown had gone out of his
face, and even his nose was blue; he had the look of a man who sees a ghost, or the
evil one, or something worse, if anything can be; and upon my word, I felt sorry to
see him all in a moment turn so old and sick.
“Come, Bill, you know me; you know an old shipmate, Bill, surely,” said the
stranger. The captain made a sort of gasp. “Black Dog!” said he. “And who else?”
returned the other, getting more at his ease. “Black Dog as ever was,
come for to see his old shipmate Billy, at the Admiral Benbow inn. Ah, Bill, Bill, we
have seen a sight of times, us two, since I lost them two talons,” holding up his
mutilated hand.
“Now, look here,” said the captain; “you’ve run me down; here I am; well, then,
speak up; what is it?”
“That’s you, Bill,” returned Black Dog, “you’re in the right of it, Billy. I’ll have a
glass of rum from this dear child here, as I’ve took such a liking to; and we’ll sit
down, if you please, and talk square, like old shipmates.”
When I returned with the rum, they were already seated on either side of the
captain’s
breakfast-table — Black Dog next to the door and sitting sideways so as to have one
eye on his old shipmate and one, as I thought, on his retreat.
He bade me go and leave the door wide open. “None of your keyholes for me, sonny,”
he said; and I left them together and retired into the bar.
“For a long time, though I certainly did my best to listen, I could hear nothing but a
low gattling; but at last the voices began to grow higher, and I could pick up a word
or two, mostly oaths, from the captain.
“No, no, no, no; and an end of it!” he cried once. And again, “If it comes to swinging,
swing all, say I.”
Then all of a sudden there was a tremendous explosion of oaths and other noises —
the chair and table went over in a lump, a clash of steel followed, and then a cry of
pain, and the next instant I saw Black Dog in full flight, and the captain hotly
pursuing, both with drawn cutlasses, and the former streaming blood from the left
shoulder. Just at the door the captain aimed at the fugitive one last tremendous cut,
which would certainly have split him to the chine had it not been intercepted by our
big signboard of Admiral Benbow. You may see the notch on the lower side of the
frame to this day.
That blow was the last of the battle. Once out upon the road, Black Dog, in spite of
his wound, showed a wonderful clean pair of heels and disappeared over the edge of
the hill in half a minute. The captain, for his part, stood staring at the signboard
like a bewildered man. Then he passed his hand over his eyes several times and at
last turned back into the house.
“Jim,” says he, “rum”; and as he spoke, he reeled a little, and caught himself with
one hand against the wall.
“Are you hurt?” cried I. “Rum,” he repeated. “I must get away from here. Rum!
Rum!” I ran to fetch it, but I was quite unsteadied by all that had fallen out, and I
broke one
glass and fouled the tap, and while I was still getting in my own way, I heard a loud
fall in the parlour, and running in, beheld the captain lying full length upon the floor. At the same instant my mother, alarmed by the cries and fighting, came
running downstairs to help me. Between us we raised his head. He was breathing
very loud and hard, but his eyes were closed and his face a horrible colour.
“Dear, deary me,” cried my mother, “what a disgrace upon the house! And your poor
father sick!”
In the meantime, we had no idea what to do to help the captain, nor any other
thought but that he had got his death-hurt in the scuffle with the stranger. I got the
rum, to be sure, and tried to put it down his throat, but his teeth were tightly shut
and his jaws as strong as iron. It was a happy relief for us when the door opened
and Doctor Livesey came in, on his visit to my father.
“Oh, doctor,” we cried, “what shall we do? Where is he wounded?”
“Wounded? A fiddle-stick’s end!” said the doctor. “No more wounded than you or I.
The man has had a stroke, as I warned him. Now, Mrs. Hawkins, just you run
upstairs to your husband and tell him, if possible, nothing about it. For my part, I
must do my best to
save this fellow’s trebly worthless life; Jim, you get me a basin.” When I got back
with the basin, the doctor had already ripped up the captain’s sleeve
and exposed his great sinewy arm. It was tattooed in several places. “Here’s luck,”
“A fair wind,” and “Billy Bones his fancy,” were very neatly and clearly executed on
the forearm; and up near the shoulder there was a sketch of a gallows and a man
hanging from it — done, as I thought, with great spirit.
“Prophetic,” said the doctor, touching this picture with his finger. “And now, Master
Billy Bones, if that be your name, we’ll have a look at the colour of your blood. Jim,”
he said, “are you afraid of blood?”
“No, sir,” said I.
“Well, then,” said he, “you hold the basin”; and with that he took his lancet and
opened a vein.
A great deal of blood was taken before the captain opened his eyes and looked
mistily about him. First he recognized the doctor with an unmistakable frown; then
his glance fell upon me, and he looked relieved. But suddenly his colour changed,
and he tried to raise himself, crying, “Where’s Black Dog?”
“There is no Black Dog here,” said the doctor, “except what you have on your own
back. You have been drinking rum; you have had a stroke, precisely as I told you;
and I have just, very much against my own will, dragged you headforemost out of
the grave. Now, Mr. Bones —”
“That’s not my name,” he interrupted.
“Much I care,” returned the doctor. “It’s the name of a buccaneer of my
acquaintance; and I call you by it for the sake of shortness, and what I have to say
to you is this; one glass of rum won’t kill you, but if you take one you’ll take another
and another, and I stake my wig if you don’t break off short, you’ll die — do you
understand that?— die, and go to your own place, like the man in the Bible. Come,
now, make an effort. I’ll help you to your bed for once.”
Between us, with much trouble, we managed to hoist him upstairs, and laid him on
his bed, where his head fell back on the pillow as if he were almost fainting.
“Now, mind you,” said the doctor, “I clear my conscience — the name of rum for you
is death.”
And with that he went off to see my father, taking me with him by the arm.
“This is nothing,” he said as soon as he had closed the door. “I have drawn blood
enough to keep him quiet awhile; he should lie for a week where he is — that is the
best thing for him and you; but another stroke would settle him.”
Chapter III - The Black Spot
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.”
German
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 seachest 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 weathereye 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 seasong; 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
