Treasure Island

‘You have your hands on thousands, you fools, and you hang a leg! You’d be as rich as kings if you could find it, and you know it’s here, and you stand there malingering. There wasn’t one of you dared face Bill, and I did it – a blind man! And I’m to lose my chance for you! I’m to be a poor, crawling beggar, sponging for rum, when I might be rolling in a coach! If you had the pluck of a weevil in a biscuit you would catch them still.’

‘Hang it, Pew, we’ve got the doubloons!’ grumbled one. ‘They might have hid the blessed thing,’ said another. ‘Take the Georges, Pew, and don’t stand here squalling.’

Squalling was the word for it, Pew’s anger rose so high at these objections; till at last, his passion completely taking the upper hand, he struck at them right and left in his blindness, and his stick sounded heavily on more than one.

These, in their turn, cursed back at the blind miscreant, threatened him in horrid terms, and tried in vain to catch the stick and wrest it from his grasp.

This quarrel was the saving of us; for while it was still raging, another sound came from the top of the hill on the side of the hamlet – the tramp of horses galloping. Almost at the same time a pistol-shot, flash, and report, came from the hedge-side. And that was plainly the last signal of danger; for the buccaneers turned at once and ran, separating in every direction, one seaward along the cove, one slant across the hill, and so on, so that in half a minute not a sign of them remained but Pew. Him they had deserted, whether in sheer panic or out of revenge for his ill words and blows, I know not; but there he remained behind, tapping up and down the road in a frenzy, and groping and calling for his comrades. Finally he took the wrong turn, and ran a few steps past me, towards the hamlet, crying:

‘Johnny, Black Dog, Dirk,’ and other names, ‘you won’t leave old Pew, mates – not old Pew!’

Just then the noise of horses topping the rise, and four or five riders came in sight in the moonlight, and swept at full gallop down the slope.

At this Pew saw his error, turned with a scream, and ran straight for the ditch, into which he rolled. But he was on his feet again in a second, and made another dash, now utterly bewildered, right under the nearest of the coming horses.

The rider tried to save him, but in vain. Down went Pew with a cry that rang high into the night; and the four hoofs trampled and spurned him and passed by. He fell on his side, then gently collapsed upon his face, and moved no more.

I leaped to my feet and hailed the riders. They were pulling up, at any rate, horrified at the accident; and I soon saw what they were. One, tailing out behind the rest, was a lad that had gone from the hamlet to Dr Livesey’s; the rest were revenue officers, whom he had met by the way, and with whom he had had the intelligence to return at once. Some news of the lugger in Kitt’s Hole had found its way to Supervisor Dance, and set him forth that night in our direction, and to that circumstance my mother and I owed our preservation from death.

Pew was dead, stone dead. As for my mother, when we had carried her up to the hamlet, a little cold water and salts and that soon brought her back again, and she was none the worse for her terror, though she still continued to deplore the balance of the money. In the meantime the supervisor rode on, as fast as he could, to Kitt’s Hole; but his men had to dismount and grope down the dingle, leading, and sometimes supporting, their horses, and in continual fear of ambushes; so it was no great matter for surprise that when they got down to the Hole the lugger was already under way, though still close in. He hailed her. A voice replied, telling him to keep out of the moonlight, or he would get some lead in him, and at the same time a bullet whistled close by his arm. Soon after, the lugger doubled the point and disappeared. Mr Dance stood there, as he said, ‘like a fish out of water’, and all he could do was to despatch a man to B– to warn the cutter. ‘And that,’ said he, ‘is just about as good as nothing. They’ve got off clean, and there’s an end. Only,’ he added, ‘I’m glad I trod on Master Pew’s corns’; for by this time he had heard my story.

I went back with him to the ‘Admiral Benbow’, and you cannot imagine a house in such a state of smash; the very clock had been thrown down by these fellows in their furious hunt after my mother and myself; and though nothing had actually been taken away except the captain’s money-bag and a little silver from the till, I could see at once that we were ruined. Mr Dance could make nothing of the scene.

‘They got the money, you say? Well, then, Hawkins, what in fortune were they after? More money, I suppose?’

‘No, sir: not money, I think,’ replied I. ‘In fact, sir, I believe I have the thing in my breast-pocket; and, to tell you the truth, I should like to get it put in safety.’

‘To be sure, boy; quite right,’ said he. ‘I’ll take it, if you like.’

‘I thought, perhaps, Dr Livesey –’ I began.

‘Perfectly right,’ he interrupted, very cheerily, ‘perfectly right – a gentleman and a magistrate. And, now I come to think of it, I might as well ride round there myself and report to him or squire. Master Pew’s dead, when all’s done; not that I regret it, but he’s dead, you see, and people will make it out against an officer of his Majesty’s revenue, if make it out they can. Now, I’ll tell you, Hawkins: if you like, I’ll take you along.’

I thanked him heartily for the offer, and we walked back to the hamlet where the horses were. By the time I had told mother of my purpose they were all in the saddle.

‘Dogger,’ said Mr Dance, ‘you have a good horse; take up this lad behind you.’

As soon as I was mounted, holding on to Dogger’s belt, the supervisor gave the word, and the party struck out at a bouncing trot on the road to Dr Livesey’s house.

CHAPTER 6 The Captain’s Papers (#ulink_33c6e09c-5f70-5532-95e1-d2b8eb4c4472)

We rode hard all the way, till we drew up before Dr Livesey’s door. The house was all dark to the front.

Mr Dance told me to jump down and knock, and Dogger gave me a stirrup to descend by. The door was opened almost at once by a maid.

‘Is Dr Livesey in?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said; he had come home in the afternoon, but had gone up to the Hall to dine and pass the evening with the squire.

‘So there we go, boys,’ said Mr Dance.

This time, as the distance was short, I did not mount, but ran with Dogger’s stirrup-leather to the lodge gates, and up the long, leafless, moonlit avenue to where the white line of the Hall buildings looked on either hand on great old gardens. Here Mr Dance dismounted, and, taking me along with him, was admitted at a word into the house.

The servant led us down a matted passage, and showed us at the end into a great library, all lined with bookcases and busts upon the top of them, where the squire and Dr Livesey sat, pipe in hand, on either side of a bright fire.

I had never seen the squire so near at hand. He was a tall man, over six feet high, and broad in proportion, and he had a bluff, rough-and-ready face, all roughened and reddened and lined in his long travels. His eyebrows were very black, and moved readily, and this gave him a look of some temper, not bad, you would say, but quick and high.

‘Come in, Mr Dance,’ says he, very stately and condescending.

‘Good evening, Dance,’ says the doctor, with a nod. ‘And good evening to you, friend Jim. What good wind brings you here?’

The supervisor stood up straight and stiff, and told his story like a lesson; and you should have seen how the two gentlemen leaned forward and looked at each other, and forgot to smoke in their surprise and interest. When they heard how my mother went back to the inn, Dr Livesey fairly slapped his thigh, and the squire cried ‘Bravo!’ and broke his long pipe against the grate. Long before it was done, Mr Trelawney (that, you will remember, was the squire’s name) had got up from his seat, and was striding about the room, and the doctor, as if to hear the better, had taken off his powdered wig, and sat there, looking very strange indeed with his own close-cropped, black poll.

At last Mr Dance finished the story.

‘Mr Dance,’ said the squire, ‘you are a very noble fellow. And as for riding down that black, atrocious miscreant, I regard it as an act of virtue, sir, like stamping on a cockroach. This lad Hawkins is a trump, I perceive. Hawkins, will you ring that bell? Mr Dance must have some ale.’

‘And so, Jim,’ said the doctor, ‘you have the thing that they were after, have you?’

‘Here it is, sir,’ said I, and gave him the oilskin packet.

The doctor looked it all over, as if his fingers were itching to open it; but, instead of doing that, he put it quietly in the pocket of his coat.

‘Squire,’ said he, ‘when Dance has had his ale he must, of course, be off on his Majesty’s service; but I mean to keep Jim Hawkins here to sleep at my house, and, with your permission, I propose we should have up the cold pie, and let him sup.’

‘As you will, Livesey,’ said the squire; ‘Hawkins has earned better than cold pie.’

So a big pigeon pie was brought in and put on a side-table, and I made a hearty supper, for I was as hungry as a hawk, while Mr Dance was further complimented, and at last dismissed.

‘And now, squire,’ said the doctor.

‘And now, Livesey,’ said the squire, in the same breath.

‘One at a time, one at a time,’ laughed Dr Livesey. ‘You have heard of this Flint, I suppose?’

‘Heard of him!’ cried the squire. ‘Heard of him, you say! He was the bloodthirstiest buccaneer that sailed. Black-beard was a child to Flint. The Spaniards were so prodigiously afraid of him, that, I tell you, sir, I was sometimes proud he was an Englishman. I’ve seen his top-sails with these eyes, off Trinidad, and the cowardly son of a rumpuncheon that I sailed with put back – put back, sir, into Port of Spain.’

‘Well, I’ve heard of him myself, in England,’ said the doctor. ‘But the point is, had he money?’

‘Money!’ cried the squire. ‘Have you heard the story? What were these villains after but money? What do they care for but money? For what would they risk their rascal carcases but money?’

‘That we shall soon know,’ replied the doctor. ‘But you are so confoundedly hot-headed and exclamatory that I cannot get a word in. What I want to know is this: supposing that I have here in my pocket some clue to where Flint buried his treasure, will that treasure amount to much?’

‘Amount, sir!’ cried the squire. ‘It will amount to this; if we have the clue you talk about, I fit out a ship in Bristol dock, and take you and Hawkins here along, and I’ll have that treasure if I search a year.’

‘Very well,’ said the doctor. ‘Now, then, if Jim is agreeable, we’ll open the packet’; and he laid it before him on the table.

The bundle was sewn together, and the doctor had to get out his instrument-case, and cut the stitches with his medical scissors. It contained two things – a book and a sealed paper.