Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson (best ebook reader txt) 📗

came, we had

the jolly-boat loaded as much as we dared. Joyce and I

got out through the stern-port, and we made for shore

again as fast as oars could take us.

 

This second trip fairly aroused the watchers along

shore. “Lillibullero” was dropped again; and just

before we lost sight of them behind the little point,

one of them whipped ashore and disappeared. I had half

a mind to change my plan and destroy their boats, but I

feared that Silver and the others might be close at hand,

and all might very well be lost by trying for too much.

 

We had soon touched land in the same place as before and

set to provision the block house. All three made the

first journey, heavily laden, and tossed our stores over

the palisade. Then, leaving Joyce to guard them—one man,

to be sure, but with half a dozen muskets—Hunter and I

returned to the jolly-boat and loaded ourselves once more.

So we proceeded without pausing to take breath, till the

whole cargo was bestowed, when the two servants took up

their position in the block house, and I, with all my power,

sculled back to the HISPANIOLA.

 

That we should have risked a second boat load seems

more daring than it really was. They had the advantage

of numbers, of course, but we had the advantage of

arms. Not one of the men ashore had a musket, and

before they could get within range for pistol shooting,

we flattered ourselves we should be able to give a good

account of a half-dozen at least.

 

The squire was waiting for me at the stern window, all

his faintness gone from him. He caught the painter and

made it fast, and we fell to loading the boat for our

very lives. Pork, powder, and biscuit was the cargo,

with only a musket and a cutlass apiece for the squire

and me and Redruth and the captain. The rest of the

arms and powder we dropped overboard in two fathoms and a

half of water, so that we could see the bright steel shining

far below us in the sun, on the clean, sandy bottom.

 

By this time the tide was beginning to ebb, and the

ship was swinging round to her anchor. Voices were

heard faintly halloaing in the direction of the two

gigs; and though this reassured us for Joyce and

Hunter, who were well to the eastward, it warned our

party to be off.

 

Redruth retreated from his place in the gallery and

dropped into the boat, which we then brought round to

the ship’s counter, to be handier for Captain Smollett.

 

“Now, men,” said he, “do you hear me?”

 

There was no answer from the forecastle.

 

“It’s to you, Abraham Gray—it’s to you I am speaking.”

 

Still no reply.

 

“Gray,” resumed Mr. Smollett, a little louder, “I am

leaving this ship, and I order you to follow your

captain. I know you are a good man at bottom, and I

dare say not one of the lot of you’s as bad as he makes

out. I have my watch here in my hand; I give you

thirty seconds to join me in.”

 

There was a pause.

 

“Come, my fine fellow,” continued the captain; “don’t

hang so long in stays. I’m risking my life and the

lives of these good gentlemen every second.”

 

There was a sudden scuffle, a sound of blows, and out burst

Abraham Gray with a knife cut on the side of the cheek, and

came running to the captain like a dog to the whistle.

 

“I’m with you, sir,” said he.

 

And the next moment he and the captain had dropped

aboard of us, and we had shoved off and given way.

 

We were clear out of the ship, but not yet ashore in

our stockade.

 

17

 

Narrative Continued by the Doctor: The Jolly-boat’s

Last Trip

 

THIS fifth trip was quite different from any of the

others. In the first place, the little gallipot of a

boat that we were in was gravely overloaded. Five

grown men, and three of them—Trelawney, Redruth, and

the captain—over six feet high, was already more than

she was meant to carry. Add to that the powder, pork,

and bread-bags. The gunwale was lipping astern.

Several times we shipped a little water, and my

breeches and the tails of my coat were all soaking wet

before we had gone a hundred yards.

 

The captain made us trim the boat, and we got her

to lie a little more evenly. All the same, we were

afraid to breathe.

 

In the second place, the ebb was now making—a strong

rippling current running westward through the basin,

and then south’ard and seaward down the straits by

which we had entered in the morning. Even the ripples

were a danger to our overloaded craft, but the worst of

it was that we were swept out of our true course and

away from our proper landing-place behind the point.

If we let the current have its way we should come

ashore beside the gigs, where the pirates might appear

at any moment.

 

“I cannot keep her head for the stockade, sir,” said I

to the captain. I was steering, while he and Redruth,

two fresh men, were at the oars. “The tide keeps

washing her down. Could you pull a little stronger?”

 

“Not without swamping the boat,” said he. “You must

bear up, sir, if you please—bear up until you see

you’re gaining.”

 

I tried and found by experiment that the tide kept sweeping

us westward until I had laid her head due east, or just

about right angles to the way we ought to go.

 

“We’ll never get ashore at this rate,” said I.

 

“If it’s the only course that we can lie, sir, we must

even lie it,” returned the captain. “We must keep

upstream. You see, sir,” he went on, “if once we dropped

to leeward of the landing-place, it’s hard to say where we

should get ashore, besides the chance of being boarded by

the gigs; whereas, the way we go the current must slacken,

and then we can dodge back along the shore.”

 

“The current’s less a’ready, sir,” said the man Gray,

who was sitting in the fore-sheets; “you can ease her

off a bit.”

 

“Thank you, my man,” said I, quite as if nothing had

happened, for we had all quietly made up our minds to

treat him like one of ourselves.

 

Suddenly the captain spoke up again, and I thought his

voice was a little changed.

 

“The gun!” said he.

 

“I have thought of that,” said I, for I made sure he

was thinking of a bombardment of the fort. “They could

never get the gun ashore, and if they did, they could

never haul it through the woods.”

 

“Look astern, doctor,” replied the captain.

 

We had entirely forgotten the long nine; and there, to

our horror, were the five rogues busy about her,

getting off her jacket, as they called the stout

tarpaulin cover under which she sailed. Not only that,

but it flashed into my mind at the same moment that the

round-shot and the powder for the gun had been left

behind, and a stroke with an axe would put it all into

the possession of the evil ones abroad.

 

“Israel was Flint’s gunner,” said Gray hoarsely.

 

At any risk, we put the boat’s head direct for the

landing-place. By this time we had got so far out of

the run of the current that we kept steerage way even

at our necessarily gentle rate of rowing, and I could

keep her steady for the goal. But the worst of it was

that with the course I now held we turned our broadside

instead of our stern to the HISPANIOLA and offered

a target like a barn door.

 

I could hear as well as see that brandy-faced rascal

Israel Hands plumping down a round-shot on the deck.

 

“Who’s the best shot?” asked the captain.

 

“Mr. Trelawney, out and away,” said I.

 

“Mr. Trelawney, will you please pick me off one of

these men, sir? Hands, if possible,” said the captain.

 

Trelawney was as cool as steel. He looked to the

priming of his gun.

 

“Now,” cried the captain, “easy with that gun, sir, or

you’ll swamp the boat. All hands stand by to trim her

when he aims.”

 

The squire raised his gun, the rowing ceased, and we leaned

over to the other side to keep the balance, and all was so

nicely contrived that we did not ship a drop.

 

They had the gun, by this time, slewed round upon the

swivel, and Hands, who was at the muzzle with the

rammer, was in consequence the most exposed. However,

we had no luck, for just as Trelawney fired, down he

stooped, the ball whistled over him, and it was one of

the other four who fell.

 

The cry he gave was echoed not only by his companions

on board but by a great number of voices from the

shore, and looking in that direction I saw the other

pirates trooping out from among the trees and tumbling

into their places in the boats.

 

“Here come the gigs, sir,” said I.

 

“Give way, then,” cried the captain. “We mustn’t mind

if we swamp her now. If we can’t get ashore, all’s up.”

 

“Only one of the gigs is being manned, sir,” I added;

“the crew of the other most likely going round by shore

to cut us off.”

 

“They’ll have a hot run, sir,” returned the captain.

“Jack ashore, you know. It’s not them I mind; it’s the

round-shot. Carpet bowls! My lady’s maid couldn’t

miss. Tell us, squire, when you see the match, and

we’ll hold water.”

 

In the meanwhile we had been making headway at a good

pace for a boat so overloaded, and we had shipped but

little water in the process. We were now close in;

thirty or forty strokes and we should beach her, for

the ebb had already disclosed a narrow belt of sand

below the clustering trees. The gig was no longer to

be feared; the little point had already concealed it

from our eyes. The ebb-tide, which had so cruelly

delayed us, was now making reparation and delaying our

assailants. The one source of danger was the gun.

 

“If I durst,” said the captain, “I’d stop and pick

off another man.”

 

But it was plain that they meant nothing should delay

their shot. They had never so much as looked at their

fallen comrade, though he was not dead, and I could see

him trying to crawl away.

 

“Ready!” cried the squire.

 

“Hold!” cried the captain, quick as an echo.

 

And he and Redruth backed with a great heave that sent

her stern bodily under water. The report fell in at the

same instant of time. This was the first that Jim heard,

the sound of the squire’s shot not having reached him.

Where the ball passed, not one of us precisely knew, but

I fancy it must have been over our heads and that the wind

of it may have contributed to our disaster.

 

At any rate, the boat sank by the stern, quite gently, in

three feet of water, leaving the captain and myself, facing

each other, on our feet. The other three took complete

headers, and came up again drenched and bubbling.

 

So far there was no great harm. No lives were lost,

and we could wade ashore in safety. But there were all

our stores at the bottom, and to make things worse,

only two