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

PART SIX

Captain Silver

 

28

 

In the Enemy’s Camp

 

THE red glare of the torch, lighting up the interior of

the block house, showed me the worst of my

apprehensions realized. The pirates were in possession

of the house and stores: there was the cask of cognac,

there were the pork and bread, as before, and what

tenfold increased my horror, not a sign of any

prisoner. I could only judge that all had perished,

and my heart smote me sorely that I had not been there

to perish with them.

 

There were six of the buccaneers, all told; not another

man was left alive. Five of them were on their feet,

flushed and swollen, suddenly called out of the first

sleep of drunkenness. The sixth had only risen upon

his elbow; he was deadly pale, and the blood-stained

bandage round his head told that he had recently been

wounded, and still more recently dressed. I remembered

the man who had been shot and had run back among the woods

in the great attack, and doubted not that this was he.

 

The parrot sat, preening her plumage, on Long John’s

shoulder. He himself, I thought, looked somewhat paler

and more stern than I was used to. He still wore the

fine broadcloth suit in which he had fulfilled his

mission, but it was bitterly the worse for wear, daubed

with clay and torn with the sharp briers of the wood.

 

“So,” said he, “here’s Jim Hawkins, shiver my timbers!

Dropped in, like, eh? Well, come, I take that friendly.”

 

And thereupon he sat down across the brandy cask and

began to fill a pipe.

 

“Give me a loan of the link, Dick,” said he; and then,

when he had a good light, “That’ll do, lad,” he added;

“stick the glim in the wood heap; and you, gentlemen,

bring yourselves to! You needn’t stand up for Mr.

Hawkins; HE’LL excuse you, you may lay to that.

And so, Jim”—stopping the tobacco—“here you were, and

quite a pleasant surprise for poor old John. I see you

were smart when first I set my eyes on you, but this

here gets away from me clean, it do.”

 

To all this, as may be well supposed, I made no answer.

They had set me with my back against the wall, and I

stood there, looking Silver in the face, pluckily

enough, I hope, to all outward appearance, but with

black despair in my heart.

 

Silver took a whiff or two of his pipe with great

composure and then ran on again.

 

“Now, you see, Jim, so be as you ARE here,” says

he, “I’ll give you a piece of my mind. I’ve always

liked you, I have, for a lad of spirit, and the picter

of my own self when I was young and handsome. I always

wanted you to jine and take your share, and die a

gentleman, and now, my cock, you’ve got to. Cap’n

Smollett’s a fine seaman, as I’ll own up to any day,

but stiff on discipline. ‘Dooty is dooty,’ says he,

and right he is. Just you keep clear of the cap’n.

The doctor himself is gone dead again you—‘ungrateful

scamp’ was what he said; and the short and the long of

the whole story is about here: you can’t go back to

your own lot, for they won’t have you; and without you

start a third ship’s company all by yourself, which

might be lonely, you’ll have to jine with Cap’n Silver.”

 

So far so good. My friends, then, were still alive,

and though I partly believed the truth of Silver’s

statement, that the cabin party were incensed at me for

my desertion, I was more relieved than distressed by

what I heard.

 

“I don’t say nothing as to your being in our hands,”

continued Silver, “though there you are, and you may

lay to it. I’m all for argyment; I never seen good

come out o’ threatening. If you like the service,

well, you’ll jine; and if you don’t, Jim, why, you’re

free to answer no—free and welcome, shipmate; and if

fairer can be said by mortal seaman, shiver my sides!”

 

“Am I to answer, then?” I asked with a very tremulous

voice. Through all this sneering talk, I was made to

feel the threat of death that overhung me, and my

cheeks burned and my heart beat painfully in my breast.

 

“Lad,” said Silver, “no one’s a-pressing of you. Take

your bearings. None of us won’t hurry you, mate; time

goes so pleasant in your company, you see.”

 

“Well,” says I, growing a bit bolder, “if I’m to

choose, I declare I have a right to know what’s what,

and why you’re here, and where my friends are.”

 

“Wot’s wot?” repeated one of the buccaneers in a deep

growl. “Ah, he’d be a lucky one as knowed that!”

 

“You’ll perhaps batten down your hatches till you’re

spoke to, my friend,” cried Silver truculently to this

speaker. And then, in his first gracious tones, he

replied to me, “Yesterday morning, Mr. Hawkins,” said

he, “in the dog-watch, down came Doctor Livesey with a

flag of truce. Says he, ‘Cap’n Silver, you’re sold

out. Ship’s gone.’ Well, maybe we’d been taking a

glass, and a song to help it round. I won’t say no.

Leastways, none of us had looked out. We looked out,

and by thunder, the old ship was gone! I never seen a

pack o’ fools look fishier; and you may lay to that, if

I tells you that looked the fishiest. ‘Well,’ says the

doctor, ‘let’s bargain.’ We bargained, him and I, and

here we are: stores, brandy, block house, the firewood

you was thoughtful enough to cut, and in a manner of

speaking, the whole blessed boat, from cross-trees to

kelson. As for them, they’ve tramped; I don’t know

where’s they are.”

 

He drew again quietly at his pipe.

 

“And lest you should take it into that head of yours,”

he went on, “that you was included in the treaty,

here’s the last word that was said: ‘How many are you,’

says I, ‘to leave?’ ‘Four,’ says he; ‘four, and one of

us wounded. As for that boy, I don’t know where he is,

confound him,’ says he, ‘nor I don’t much care. We’re

about sick of him.’ These was his words.

 

“Is that all?” I asked.

 

“Well, it’s all that you’re to hear, my son,”

returned Silver.

 

“And now I am to choose?”

 

“And now you are to choose, and you may lay to

that,” said Silver.

 

“Well,” said I, “I am not such a fool but I know pretty

well what I have to look for. Let the worst come to

the worst, it’s little I care. I’ve seen too many die

since I fell in with you. But there’s a thing or two I

have to tell you,” I said, and by this time I was quite

excited; “and the first is this: here you are, in a bad

way—ship lost, treasure lost, men lost, your whole

business gone to wreck; and if you want to know who did

it—it was I! I was in the apple barrel the night we

sighted land, and I heard you, John, and you, Dick

Johnson, and Hands, who is now at the bottom of the

sea, and told every word you said before the hour was

out. And as for the schooner, it was I who cut her

cable, and it was I that killed the men you had aboard

of her, and it was I who brought her where you’ll never

see her more, not one of you. The laugh’s on my side;

I’ve had the top of this business from the first; I no

more fear you than I fear a fly. Kill me, if you

please, or spare me. But one thing I’ll say, and no

more; if you spare me, bygones are bygones, and when

you fellows are in court for piracy, I’ll save you all

I can. It is for you to choose. Kill another and do

yourselves no good, or spare me and keep a witness to

save you from the gallows.”

 

I stopped, for, I tell you, I was out of breath, and to

my wonder, not a man of them moved, but all sat staring

at me like as many sheep. And while they were still

staring, I broke out again, “And now, Mr. Silver,” I

said, “I believe you’re the best man here, and if

things go to the worst, I’ll take it kind of you to let

the doctor know the way I took it.”

 

“I’ll bear it in mind,” said Silver with an accent so

curious that I could not, for the life of me, decide

whether he were laughing at my request or had been

favourably affected by my courage.

 

“I’ll put one to that,” cried the old mahogany-faced

seaman—Morgan by name—whom I had seen in Long John’s

public-house upon the quays of Bristol. “It was him

that knowed Black Dog.”

 

“Well, and see here,” added the sea-cook. “I’ll put

another again to that, by thunder! For it was this

same boy