Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson (good books to read for teens .txt) 📗

Now, to tell you the truth, from the very first mention of Long John in Squire Trelawney’s letter, I had taken a fear in my mind that he might prove to be the very one-legged sailor whom I had watched for so long at the old Benbow. But one look at the man before me was enough. I had seen the captain, and Black Dog, and the blind man Pew, and I thought I knew what a buccaneer was like⁠—a very different creature, according to me, from this clean and pleasant-tempered landlord.

I plucked up courage at once, crossed the threshold, and walked right up to the man where he stood, propped on his crutch, talking to a customer.

“Mr. Silver, sir?” I asked, holding out the note.

“Yes, my lad,” said he; “such is my name, to be sure. And who may you be?” And when he saw the squire’s letter he seemed to me to give something almost like a start.

“Oh!” said he, quite aloud, and offering his hand, “I see. You are our new cabin-boy; pleased I am to see you.”

And he took my hand in his large firm grasp.

Just then one of the customers at the far side rose suddenly and made for the door. It was close by him, and he was out in the street in a moment. But his hurry had attracted my notice, and I recognized him at a glance. It was the tallow-faced man, wanting two fingers, who had come first to the Admiral Benbow.

“Oh,” I cried, “stop him! it’s Black Dog!”

“I don’t care two coppers who he is,” cried Silver, “but he hasn’t paid his score. Harry, run and catch him.”

One of the others who was nearest the door leaped up and started in pursuit.

“If he were Admiral Hawke he shall pay his score,” cried Silver; and then, relinquishing my hand, “Who did you say he was?” he asked. “Black what?”

“Dog, sir,” said I. “Has Mr. Trelawney not told you of the buccaneers? He was one of them.”

“So?” cried Silver. “In my house! Ben, run and help Harry. One of those swabs, was he? Was that you drinking with him, Morgan? Step up here.”

The man whom he called Morgan⁠—an old, gray-haired, mahogany-faced sailor⁠—came forward pretty sheepishly, rolling his quid.

“Now, Morgan,” said Long John, very sternly, “you never clapped your eyes on that Black⁠—Black Dog before, did you, now?”

“Not I, sir,” said Morgan, with a salute.

“You didn’t know his name, did you?”

“No, sir.”

“By the powers, Tom Morgan, it’s as good for you!” exclaimed the landlord. “If you had been mixed up with the like of that, you would never have put another foot in my house, you may lay to that. And what was he saying to you?”

“I don’t rightly know, sir,” answered Morgan.

“Do you call that a head on your shoulders, or a blessed deadeye?” cried Long John. “Don’t rightly know, don’t you? Perhaps you don’t happen to rightly know who you was speaking to, perhaps? Come, now, what was he jawing⁠—v’yages, cap’ns, ships? Pipe up! What was it?”

“We was a-talkin’ of keelhauling,” answered Morgan.

“Keelhauling, was you? and a mighty suitable thing, too, and you may lay to that. Get back to your place for a lubber, Tom.”

And then, as Morgan rolled back to his seat, Silver added to me, in a confidential whisper, that was very flattering, as I thought:

“He’s quite an honest man, Tom Morgan, on’y stupid. And now,” he ran on again, aloud, “let’s see⁠—Black Dog? No, I don’t know the name, not I. Yet I kind of think I’ve⁠—yes, I’ve seen the swab. He used to come here with a blind beggar, he used.”

“That he did, you may be sure,” said I. “I knew that blind man, too. His name was Pew.”

“It was!” cried Silver, now quite excited. “Pew! That were his name for certain. Ah, he looked a shark, he did! If we run down this Black Dog now, there’ll be news for Cap’n Trelawney! Ben’s a good runner; few seamen run better than Ben. He should run him down, hand over hand, by the powers! He talked o’ keelhauling, did he? I’ll keelhaul him!”

All the time he was jerking out these phrases he was stumping up and down the tavern on his crutch, slapping tables with his hand, and giving such a show of excitement as would have convinced an Old Bailey judge or a Bow Street runner. My suspicions had been thoroughly reawakened on finding Black Dog at the Spy-glass, and I watched the cook narrowly. But he was too deep, and too ready, and too clever for me, and by the time the two men had come back out of breath, and confessed that they had lost the track in a crowd, and been scolded like thieves, I would have gone bail for the innocence of Long John Silver.

“See here, now, Hawkins,” said he, “here’s a blessed hard thing on a man like me, now, ain’t it? There’s Cap’n Trelawney⁠—what’s he to think? Here I have this confounded son of a Dutchman sitting in my own house, drinking of my own rum! Here you comes and tells me of it plain; and here I let him give us all the slip before my blessed deadlights! Now, Hawkins, you do me justice with the cap’n. You’re a lad, you are, but you’re as smart as paint. I see that when you first came in. Now, here it is: What could I do, with this old timber I hobble on? When I was an A B master mariner I’d have come up alongside of him, hand over hand, and broached him to in a brace of old shakes, I would; and now⁠—”

And then, all of a sudden, he stopped, and his jaw dropped as though he had remembered something.

“The score!” he burst out. “Three goes o’ rum! Why, shiver my timbers, if I hadn’t forgotten my score!”

And, falling on a bench, he laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. I could