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

out? I

dunno, but it’s pretty plain they wanted it. Third,

you wouldn’t let us go at them upon the march. Oh, we

see through you, John Silver; you want to play booty,

that’s what’s wrong with you. And then, fourth,

there’s this here boy.”

 

“Is that all?” asked Silver quietly.

 

“Enough, too,” retorted George. “We’ll all swing and

sun-dry for your bungling.”

 

“Well now, look here, I’ll answer these four p’ints;

one after another I’ll answer ‘em. I made a hash o’

this cruise, did I? Well now, you all know what I

wanted, and you all know if that had been done that

we’d ‘a been aboard the HISPANIOLA this night as

ever was, every man of us alive, and fit, and full of

good plum-duff, and the treasure in the hold of her, by

thunder! Well, who crossed me? Who forced my hand, as

was the lawful cap’n? Who tipped me the black spot the

day we landed and began this dance? Ah, it’s a fine

dance—I’m with you there—and looks mighty like a

hornpipe in a rope’s end at Execution Dock by London

town, it does. But who done it? Why, it was Anderson,

and Hands, and you, George Merry! And you’re the last

above board of that same meddling crew; and you have

the Davy Jones’s insolence to up and stand for cap’n

over me—you, that sank the lot of us! By the powers!

But this tops the stiffest yarn to nothing.”

 

Silver paused, and I could see by the faces of George

and his late comrades that these words had not been

said in vain.

 

“That’s for number one,” cried the accused, wiping the

sweat from his brow, for he had been talking with a

vehemence that shook the house. “Why, I give you my

word, I’m sick to speak to you. You’ve neither sense

nor memory, and I leave it to fancy where your mothers

was that let you come to sea. Sea! Gentlemen o’

fortune! I reckon tailors is your trade.”

 

“Go on, John,” said Morgan. “Speak up to the others.”

 

“Ah, the others!” returned John. “They’re a nice lot,

ain’t they? You say this cruise is bungled. Ah! By

gum, if you could understand how bad it’s bungled, you

would see! We’re that near the gibbet that my neck’s

stiff with thinking on it. You’ve seen ‘em, maybe,

hanged in chains, birds about ‘em, seamen p’inting ‘em

out as they go down with the tide. ‘Who’s that?’ says

one. ‘That! Why, that’s John Silver. I knowed him

well,’ says another. And you can hear the chains a-jangle as you go about and reach for the other buoy.

Now, that’s about where we are, every mother’s son of

us, thanks to him, and Hands, and Anderson, and other

ruination fools of you. And if you want to know about

number four, and that boy, why, shiver my timbers,

isn’t he a hostage? Are we a-going to waste a hostage?

No, not us; he might be our last chance, and I

shouldn’t wonder. Kill that boy? Not me, mates! And

number three? Ah, well, there’s a deal to say to

number three. Maybe you don’t count it nothing to have

a real college doctor to see you every day—you, John,

with your head broke—or you, George Merry, that had

the ague shakes upon you not six hours agone, and has

your eyes the colour of lemon peel to this same moment

on the clock? And maybe, perhaps, you didn’t know

there was a consort coming either? But there is, and

not so long till then; and we’ll see who’ll be glad to

have a hostage when it comes to that. And as for

number two, and why I made a bargain—well, you came

crawling on your knees to me to make it—on your knees

you came, you was that downhearted—and you’d have

starved too if I hadn’t—but that’s a trifle! You look

there—that’s why!”

 

And he cast down upon the floor a paper that I

instantly recognized—none other than the chart on

yellow paper, with the three red crosses, that I had

found in the oilcloth at the bottom of the captain’s

chest. Why the doctor had given it to him was more

than I could fancy.

 

But if it were inexplicable to me, the appearance of

the chart was incredible to the surviving mutineers.

They leaped upon it like cats upon a mouse. It went

from hand to hand, one tearing it from another; and by

the oaths and the cries and the childish laughter with

which they accompanied their examination, you would

have thought, not only they were fingering the very

gold, but were at sea with it, besides, in safety.

 

“Yes,” said one, “that’s Flint, sure enough. J. F., and

a score below, with a clove hitch to it; so he done ever.”

 

“Mighty pretty,” said George. “But how are we to get

away with it, and us no ship.”

 

Silver suddenly sprang up, and supporting himself with

a hand against the wall: “Now I give you warning,

George,” he cried. “One more word of your sauce, and

I’ll call you down and fight you. How? Why, how do I

know? You had ought to tell me that—you and the rest,

that lost me my schooner, with your interference, burn

you! But not you, you can’t; you hain’t got the

invention of a cockroach. But civil you can speak, and

shall, George Merry, you may lay to that.”

 

“That’s fair enow,” said the old man Morgan.

 

“Fair! I reckon so,” said the sea-cook. “You lost the

ship; I found the treasure. Who’s the better man at

that? And now I resign, by thunder! Elect whom you

please to be your cap’n now; I’m done with it.”

 

“Silver!” they cried. “Barbecue forever! Barbecue

for cap’n!”

 

“So that’s the toon, is it?” cried the cook. “George,

I reckon you’ll have to wait another turn, friend; and

lucky for you as I’m not a revengeful man. But that

was never my way. And now, shipmates, this black spot?

‘Tain’t much good now, is it? Dick’s crossed his luck

and spoiled his Bible, and that’s about all.”

 

“It’ll do to kiss the book on still, won’t it?” growled

Dick, who was evidently uneasy at the curse he had

brought upon himself.

 

“A Bible with a bit cut out!” returned Silver

derisively. “Not it. It don’t bind no more’n a

ballad-book.”

 

“Don’t it, though?” cried Dick with a sort of joy.

“Well, I reckon that’s worth having too.”

 

“Here, Jim—here’s a cur’osity for you,” said Silver,

and he tossed me the paper.

 

It was around about the size of a crown piece. One

side was blank, for it had been the last leaf; the

other contained a verse or two of Revelation—these

words among the rest, which struck sharply home upon my

mind: “Without are dogs and murderers.” The printed

side had been blackened with wood ash, which already

began to come off and soil my fingers; on the blank

side had been written with the same material the one

word “Depposed.” I have that curiosity beside me at

this moment, but not a trace of writing now remains

beyond a single scratch, such as a man might make with

his thumb-nail.

 

That was the end of the night’s business. Soon after,

with a drink all round, we lay down to sleep, and the

outside of Silver’s vengeance was to put George Merry

up for sentinel and threaten him with death if he

should prove unfaithful.

 

It was long ere I could close an eye, and heaven knows

I had matter enough for thought in the man whom I had

slain that afternoon, in my own most perilous position,

and above all, in the remarkable game that I saw Silver

now engaged upon—keeping the mutineers together with

one hand and grasping with the other after every means,

possible and impossible, to make his peace and save his

miserable life. He himself slept peacefully and snored

aloud, yet my heart was sore for him, wicked as he was,

to think on the dark perils that environed and the

shameful gibbet that awaited him.

 

30

 

On Parole

 

I WAS wakened—indeed, we were all wakened, for I could

see even the sentinel shake himself together from where

he had fallen against the door-post—by a clear, hearty

voice hailing us from the margin of the wood:

 

“Block house, ahoy!” it cried. “Here’s the doctor.”

 

And the doctor it was. Although I was glad to hear the

sound, yet my gladness was not without admixture. I

remembered with confusion my insubordinate and stealthy

conduct, and when I saw where it had brought me—among

what companions and surrounded by what dangers—I felt

ashamed to look him in the face.

 

He must have risen in the dark, for the day had hardly

come; and when I ran to a loophole and looked out, I

saw him standing, like Silver once before, up to the

mid-leg in creeping vapour.

 

“You, doctor! Top o’ the morning to you, sir!” cried

Silver, broad awake and beaming with good nature in a

moment. “Bright and early, to be sure; and it’s the

early bird, as the saying goes, that gets the rations.

George, shake up your timbers, son, and help Dr.

Livesey over the ship’s side. All a-doin’ well, your

patients was—all well and merry.”

 

So he pattered on, standing on the hilltop with his crutch

under his elbow and one hand upon the side of the log-house

—quite the old John in voice, manner, and expression.

 

“We’ve quite a surprise for you too, sir,” he

continued. “We’ve a little stranger here—he! he! A

noo boarder and lodger, sir, and looking fit and taut

as a fiddle; slep’ like a supercargo, he did, right

alongside of John—stem to stem we was, all night.”

 

Dr. Livesey was by this time across the stockade and

pretty near the cook, and I could hear the alteration

in his voice as he said, “Not Jim?”

 

“The very same Jim as ever was,” says Silver.

 

The doctor stopped outright, although he did not speak,

and it was some seconds before he seemed able to move on.

 

“Well, well,” he said at last, “duty first and pleasure

afterwards, as you might have said yourself, Silver.

Let us overhaul these patients of yours.”

 

A moment afterwards he had entered the block house and

with one grim nod to me proceeded with his work among

the sick. He seemed under no apprehension, though he

must have known that his life, among these treacherous

demons, depended on a hair; and he rattled on to his

patients as if he were paying an ordinary professional

visit in a quiet English family. His manner, I

suppose, reacted on the men, for they behaved to him as

if nothing had occurred, as if he were still ship’s

doctor and they still faithful hands before the mast.

 

“You’re doing well, my friend,” he said to the fellow

with the bandaged head, “and if ever any person had a

close shave, it was you; your head must be as hard as

iron. Well, George, how goes it? You’re a pretty

colour, certainly; why, your liver, man, is upside

down. Did you take that medicine? Did he take that

medicine, men?”

 

“Aye, aye, sir, he took it, sure enough,” returned Morgan.

 

“Because, you see, since I am mutineers’ doctor, or

prison doctor as I prefer to call it,” says Doctor

Livesey in his pleasantest way, “I make it a point of

honour not to lose a man for King George (God bless

him!) and the gallows.”

 

The rogues looked at each other but swallowed the home-thrust in silence.

 

“Dick