The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 6

I stole round by the eastern end, keeping close in shadow, and at a convenient place, where the darkness was thickest, crossed the palisade.

To make assurance surer, I got upon my hands and knees, and crawled, without a sound, towards the corner of the house. As I drew nearer, my heart was suddenly and greatly lightened. It is not a pleasant noise in itself, and I have often complained of it at other times; but just then it was like music to hear my friends snoring together so loud and peaceful in their sleep. The sea-cry of the watch, that beautiful “All’s well,” never fell more reassuringly on my ear.

In the meantime, there was no doubt of one thing: they kept an infamous bad watch. If it had been Silver and his lads that were now creeping in on them, not a soul would have seen daybreak. That was what it was, thought I, to have the captain wounded; and again I blamed myself sharply for leaving them in that danger with so few to mount guard.

By this time I had got to the door and stood up. All was dark within, so that I could distinguish nothing by the eye. As for sounds, there was the steady drone of the snorers, and a small occasional noise, a flickering or pecking that I could in no way account for.

With my arms before me I walked steadily in. I should lie down in my own place (I thought, with a silent chuckle) and enjoy their faces when they found me in the morning.

My foot struck something yielding – it was a sleeper’s leg; and he turned and groaned, but without awaking.

And then, all of a sudden, a shrill voice broke forth out of the darkness —

“Pieces of eight! pieces of eight! pieces of eight! pieces of eight! pieces of eight!” and so forth, without pause or change, like the clacking of a tiny mill.

Silver’s green parrot, Captain Flint! It was she whom I had heard pecking at a piece of bark; it was she, keeping better watch than any human being, who thus announced my arrival with her wearisome refrain.

I had no time left me to recover. At the sharp, clipping tone of the parrot, the sleepers awoke and sprang up; and with a mighty oath, the voice of Silver cried —

“Who goes?”

I turned to run, struck violently against one person, recoiled, and ran full into the arms of a second, who, for his part, closed upon and held me tight.

“Bring a torch, Dick,” said Silver, when my capture was thus assured.

And one of the men left the log-house and presently returned with a lighted brand.

PART VI

CAPTAIN SILVER

CHAPTER XXVIII

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 realised. 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 Dr. 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 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 that faked the chart from Billy Bones. First and last, we’ve split upon Jim Hawkins!”

“Then here goes!” said Morgan, with an oath.

And he sprang up, drawing his knife as if he had been twenty.

“Avast there!” cried Silver. “Who are you, Tom Morgan? Maybe you thought you was cap’n here, perhaps. By the powers, but I’ll teach you better! Cross me, and you’ll go where many a good man’s gone before you, first and last, these thirty year back – some to the yard-arm, shiver my sides! and some by the board, and all to feed the fishes. There’s never a man looked me between the eyes and seen a good day a’terwards, Tom Morgan, you may lay to that.”

Morgan paused; but a hoarse murmur rose from the others.