Latest / Classic Adventure Books Library / 02 - Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
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- Chapter three, 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 always been 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 does he know about seafaring men. I've been in places hot as pitch, and mate, dropping round with yellow jack, and the blessed land are heaving like the sea with earthquakes? What do the doctor know of lands like that? And I've lived on rum. I can 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 will be on you, Jim, and that doctor swab and he ran on again for a while with curses. Look, Jim, how my fingers fidgies, he continued, in the pleading tone. I can't keep him 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 of rum, Jim, I'll have the horrors. I seen some on em already. I seen old flint in the corner there behind you, plain as print. I've seen him. If I get the horrors, I'm a man that has lived rough, and I'll raise caine. Your doctor's self 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, 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. Ay, ay, said he that's some better, sure enough? And now Matie, 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? Aye, can't do that. They'd have the black spot on me by then. The lobbers is going to get the wind of me this blessed moment. Lobbers as couldn't keep what they got and what to nail? What is another's? Is that seemingly behavior? Now? I want to know. But I'm a saving soul. I never wasted good money of mine or lost it neither. And I'll trick em again. I'm not afraid on them. I'll shake out another reef mate and dandle them 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 bad. 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 seafery man today, black Dog? I asked, ah, Black Dog said he he's Abbaddon. But there's worse that put him on now far. I can't get away no how, and they tip me the black spot. Mind you, it's my old sea chest. Thereafter 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, magis, straits and sitch, and he will lay him aboard at the admiral benbow all Old Flint's crew man and boy all on them that's left. I was first mate. I was Old Flint's fir mate, and I'm the only one as knows the place he gave it me to Savannah when he lay a dine like as if I was to now. You see, but you won't peach unless they got 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 summon's mate. I'll tell you if they get that. But you'll keep your weather eye open, Jim, and I'll share with you equals upon my honor. 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. 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 neighbors, 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'm 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 his ugly old sea song. But weak as he was, we were all in 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 to regain his strength. He clambered up and down stairs, and went from the parlor to the bar and back again, and sometimes put his nose out of door 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 that he had as good as forgotten his confidences. But his temper was more flighty and allowing for his bodily weaknesses, 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 very different air, a kind 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 some one 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 earn, and raising his voice in an old 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 defense 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 Bembo Black. He'll 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 vice. I was so much startled that I struggled to withdraw, but the blind man pulled me close to him with a single action of his arm. Now, boy, he said, take me into the captain, Sir said, I, upon my word, I dare not. Ah. He sneered. That's it. Take me in straight, or I'll break your arm. 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 parlor where the 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. Leave me straight up to him, and when i'm in 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 by the blind beggar that I forgot my terror of the captain, And as I opened the parlor 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 parlor and into the road. Where as I 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 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 him 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 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. End of chapter three, Chapter four, the Sea Chest. I lost no time, of course, in telling my mother all that I knew, and perhaps should have told her long before. And we saw ourselves at once in a difficult and dangerous position. Some of the man's money, if he had any, was certainly due to us, But it was not likely that our captain's shipmates, above all the two specimens seen by me, black Dog and the Blind Beggar, would be inclined to give up their booty in payment of the dead man's debts. The captain's order to mount at once and ride for doctor Livesey would have left my mother alone and unprotected, which was not to be thought of. Indeed, it seemed impossible for either of us to remain much longer in the house. The fall of coals in the kitchen grate, the very ticking of the clock filled us with alarm. The neighborhood, to our ears seemed haunted by approaching footsteps, and what between the dead body of the captain on the parlor floor and the thought of that detestable blind beggar hovering near at hand and ready to return. There were moments when, as the saying goes, I jumped in my skin for terror. Something must speedily be resolved upon. And it occurred to me us at last to go forth together and seek help in the neighboring hamlet. No sooner said than done. Bareheaded as we were, we ran out at once in the gathering evening and the frosty fog. The hamlet lay not many hundred yards away, though out of view, on the other side of the next cove. And what greatly encouraged me it was in an opposite direction from that whence the old blind man had made his appearance, and whether he had presumably returned. We were not many minutes on the road, though We sometimes stopped to lay hold of each other and hearken, But there was no unusual sound, nothing but the low wash of the ripple and the croaking of the inmates of the wood. It was already candlelight when we reached the hamlet, and I shall never forget how much I was cheered to see the yellow shine in doors and windows. But that, as it proved, was the best help we were likely to get in that quarter. For you would have thought men would have been ashamed of themselves. No soul would consent to return with us to the Admiral Benbo. The more we told of our troubles, the more man, woman and child they clung to the shelter of their houses. The name of Captain Flint, though it was strange to me, was well enough known to some there, and carried a great weight of terror. Some of the men who had been to field work on the far side of the Admiral Benbo remembered, besides to have seen several strangers on the road, and taking them to be smugglers, to have bolted away, And one at least had seen a little lugger in what we called Kit's hole. For that matter, anyone who was a comrade of the captains, was enough to frighten them to death. And the short and the long of the matter was that while we could get several who were willing to ride to doctor Livesey's, which lay in another direction, not one would help us to defend the inn. They say cowardice as infectious, but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener. And so when each had said his say, my mother made them a speech she would not, she declared, lose money that belonged to her fatherless boy. If none of the rest of you dare, she said, Jim and I dare back, we will go the way we came. And small thanks to you, big, hulking, chicken hearted men. We'll have that chest open if we die for it. And I'll thank you for that bag, missus Crossley, to bring back our lawful money. In of course, I said I would go with my mother, and of course they all cried out at our foolhardiness. But even there not a man would go along with us. All they would do was to give me a loaded pistol lest we were attacked, and to promise to have horses ready saddled in case we were pursued on our return, while one lad was to ride forward to the doctors in search of armed assistance. My heart was beating fiercely when we two set forth in the whole night upon this dangerous venture, a full moon was beginning to rise, and peered redly through the upper edges of the fog. And this increased our haste, for it was plain before we came forth again that all would be bright as day, and our departure exposed to the eyes of any watchers. We slipped along the hedges, noiseless and swift, nor did we see anything to increase our terrors, till to our huge relief, the door of the admiral Benbow had closed behind us. I slipped the bolt at once, and we stood and panted for a moment in the dark, alone in the house with the dead captain's body. Then my mother got a candle in the bar, and holding each other's hands, we advanced into the parlor. He lay as we had left him, on his back, with his eyes open and one arm stretched out draw down the blind Jim whispered my mother, they might come and watch outside, And now said she, when I had done so, we have to get the key off that, and who's to touch it? I should like to know? And she gave a kind of sob as she said the words. I went down on my knees at once. On the floor, close to his hand, there was a little round of paper blackened on one side. I could not doubt that this was the black spot. And taking it up I found written on the other side, in a very good clear hand, this short message you have till ten to night. He had till ten, mother, said I, And just as I said it, our old clock began striking. This sudden noise startled us shockingly, but the news was good, for it was only six now, Jim. She said that key. I felt in his pockets one after another, a few small coins, a thimble and some threadned big needles, a piece of pigtail tobacco bitten away at the end his gully with the crooked hair, A pocket compass, and a tinder box were all that they contained. And I began to despair. Perhaps it's round his neck, suggested my mother. Overcoming a strong repugnance, I tore open his shirt at the neck, and there, sure enough hanging to a bit of tarry string, which I cut with his own gully. We found the key. At this triumph, we were filled with hope, and hurried downstairs without delay to the little room where he had slept so long, and where his box had stood since the day of his arrival. It was like any other seaman's chest. On the outside, the initial b burned on top of it with a hot iron, and the corners somewhat smashed and broken, as by long rough usage. Give me the key, said my mother, And though the lock was very stiff, she had turned it and thrown back the lid in a twinkling. A strong smell of tobacco and tar arose from the interior, but nothing was to be seen on the top except a suit of very good clothes, carefully brushed and folded. They had never been worn. My mother said under that the miscellany began a quadrant, a tin cannikin, several sticks of tobacco, two brace of very handsome pistols, a piece of bar silver, an old Spanish watch, and some other trinkets of little value and mostly foreign. Make a pair of compasses mounted with brass, and five or six curious West Indian shells. I have often wondered since why he should have carried about those shells with him in his wandering, guilty and hunted life. In the meantime we found nothing of any value but the silver and the trinkets, and neither of these were in our way. Underneath there was an old boat cloak whitened with sea salt on many a harbor bar. My mother pulled it up with impatience, and there lay before us the last things in the chest, a bundle tied up in oil cloth and looking like papers, and a canvas bag that gave forth at a touch the jingle of gold. I'll show these rogues that I am an honest woman, said my mother. I'll have my dew and not a farthing over hold missus Crusty's bag. And she began to count over the amount of the captain's score from the sailor's bag into the one that I was holding. It was a long difficult business, for the coins were of all countries and sizes, to bloons and louisd'or, and guineas and pieces of eight, and I know not what besides, all shaken together at random. The guineas, too were about the scarcest. And it was with these only that my mother knew how to make her count. When we were about half way through, I suddenly put my hand under her arm, for I had heard in the silent, frosty air a sound that brought my heart into my mouth, the tip tapping of the blind man's stick upon the fozen road. It drew nearer and nearer while we sat holding our breath. Then it struck sharp at the inn door, and then we could hear the handle being turned and the bolt rattling as the wretched being tried to enter. And then there was a long time of silence, both within and without. At last the tapping recommenced, and, to our indescribable joy and gratitude, died slowly away again till it ceased to be heard. Mother said, I take the hole and let's be going, for I was sure the bolted door must have seemed suspicious and would bring the whole hornet's nest about our ears. Though how thankful I was that I had bolted it, none could tell who had never met that terrible blind man. But my mother, frightened as she was, would not consent to take a fraction more than it was her due, and was obstinately unwilling to be content with less. It was not yet seven, she said, by a long way. She knew her rights, and she would have them. And she was still arguing with me when a little low whistle sounded a good way off upon the hill. That was enough and more than enough for both of us. I'll take what I have, she said, jumping to her feet, And I'll take this to square, the count said, I picking up the oilskin packet. Next moment we were both groping downstairs, leaving the candle by the empty chest, and the next we had opened the door and were in full retreat. We had not started a moment too soon. The fog was rapidly dispersing. Already the moon shone quite clear on the high ground on either side, and it was only in the exact bottom of the dell and round the tavern door, that a thin veil still hung, unbroken to conceal the first steps of our escape. Far less than half way to the hamlet, very little beyond the bottom of the hill we must come forth into the moonlight. Nor was this all, for the sound of several footsteps running came already to our ears, and as we looked back in their direction, a light tossing to and fro, and still rapidly advancing, showed that one of the newcomers carried a lantern. My dear said, my mother, suddenly take the money and run on. I am going to faint. This was certainly the end for both of us. I thought, how I cursed the cowardice of the neighbors. How I blamed my poor mother for her honesty and her greed, for her past full hardiness and present weakness. We were just at the little bridge by a good fortune, and I helped her, tottering as she was, to the edge of the bank, where sure enough she gave a sigh and fell on my shoulder. I do not know how I found the strength to do it all, and I am afraid it was roughly done, but I managed to drag her down the bank and a little way under the arch. Father. I could not move her, for the bridge was too low to let me do more than crawl below it. So there we had to stay, my mother almost entirely exposed, and both of us within ear shot of the inn. End of chapter four