The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition. Volume 15

Gaunt. Child, child, you speak in ignorance; you touch upon griefs you cannot fathom.

Arethusa. No, dearest, no. She loved you, loved you and died of it. Why else do women live? What would I ask but just to love my Kit, and die for him, and look down from heaven, and see him keep my memory holy and live the nobler for my sake?

Gaunt. Ay, do you so love him?

Arethusa. Even as my mother loved my father.

Gaunt. Ay? Then we will see. What right have I – You are your mother’s child: better, tenderer, wiser than I. Let us seek guidance in prayer. Good-night, my little maid.

Arethusa. O father, I know you at last.

SCENE II

Gaunt and Arethusa go out L., carrying the candles. Stage dark. A distant clock chimes the quarters, and strikes one. Then the tap-tapping of Pew’s stick is heard without; the key is put into the lock; and enter Pew, C.; he pockets key, and is followed by Kit, with dark lantern

Pew. Quiet, you lubber! Can’t you foot it soft, you that has daylights and a glim?

Kit. All right, old boy. How the devil did we get through the door? Shall I knock him up?

Pew. Stow your gab (seizing his wrist). Under your breath!

Kit. Avast that! You’re a savage dog, aren’t you?

Pew. Turn on that glim.

Kit. It’s as right as a trivet, Pew. What next? By George, Pew, I’ll make your fortune.

Pew. Here, now, look round this room, and sharp. D’ye see a old sea-chest?

Kit. See it, Pew? why, d’ye think I’m blind?

Pew. Take me across, and let me feel of her. Mum; catch my hand. Ah, that’s her (feeling the chest), that’s the Golden Mary. Now, see here, my bo, if you’ve the pluck of a weevil in a biscuit, this girl is yours; if you hain’t, and think to sheer off, I’m blind, but I’m deadly.

Kit. You’ll keep a civil tongue in your head all the same. I’ll take threats from nobody, blind or not. Let’s knock up the Admiral and be done with it. What I want is to get rid of this dark lantern. It makes me feel like a housebreaker, by George.

Pew (seated on chest). You follow this. I’m sick of drinking bilge, when I might be rolling in my coach, and I’m dog-sick of Jack Gaunt. Who’s he to be wallowing in gold, when a better man is groping crusts in the gutter and spunging for rum? Now, here, in this blasted chest, is the gold to make men of us for life: gold, ay, gobs of it; and writin’s too – things that if I had the proof of ’em I’d hold Jack Gaunt to the grindstone till his face was flat. I’d have done it single-handed; but I’m blind, worse luck: I’m all in the damned dark here, poking with a stick – Lord, burn up with lime the eyes that saw it! That’s why I raked up you. Come, out with your iron, and prise the lid off. You shall touch your snack, and have the wench for nothing; ay, and fling her in the street, when done.

Kit. So you brought me here to steal, did you?

Pew. Ay did I; and you shall. I’m a biter: I bring blood.

Kit. Now, Pew, you came here on my promise, or I’d kill you like a rat. As it is, out of that door! One, two, three (drawing his cutlass), and off!

Pew (leaping at his throat and with a great voice). Help! murder! thieves!

SCENE III

To these, Arethusa, Gaunt, with lights. Stage light, Pew has Kit down, and is throttling him

Pew. I’ve got him, Cap’n. What, kill my old commander, and rob him of his blessed child? Not with old Pew!

Gaunt. Get up, David; can’t you see you’re killing him? Unhand, I say.

Arethusa. In heaven’s name, who is it?

Pew. It’s a damned villain, my pretty; and his name, to the best of my belief, is French.

Arethusa. Kit? Kit French? Never.

Kit (rising). He’s done for me. (Falls on chest.)

Pew. Don’t you take on about him, ducky; he ain’t worth it. Cap’n Gaunt, I took him and I give him up. You was ’ard on me this morning, Cap’n: this is my way – Pew’s way, this is – of paying of you out.

Arethusa. Father, this is the blind man that came while you were abroad. Sure you’ll not listen to him. And you, Kit, you, what is this?

Kit. Captain Gaunt, that blind devil has half-throttled me. He brought me here – I can’t speak – he has almost killed me – and I’d been drinking too.

Gaunt. And you, David Pew, what do you say?

Pew. Cap’n, the rights of it is this. Me and that young man there was partaking in a friendly drop of rum at the “Admiral Benbow” inn; and I’d just proposed his blessed Majesty, when the young man he ups and says to me: “Pew,” he says, “I like you, Pew: you’re a true seaman,” he says; “and I’m one as sticks at nothing; and damme, Pew,” he says, “I’ll make your fortune.” (Can he deny as them was his words? Look at him, you as has eyes: no, he cannot. “Come along of me,” he says, “and, damme, I’ll make your fortune.”) Well, Cap’n, he lights a dark lantern (which you’ll find it somewhere on the floor, I reckon), and out we goes, me follerin’ his lead, as I thought was ’art-of-oak and a true-blue mariner; and the next I knows is, here we was in here, and him a-askin’ me to ’old the glim, while he prised the lid off of your old sea-chest with his cutlass.

Gaunt. The chest? (He leaps, R., and examines chest.) Ah!

Pew. Leastways, I was to ’elp him, by his account of it, while he nailed the rhino, and then took and carried off that lovely maid of yours; for a lovely maid she is, and one as touched old Pew’s ’art. Cap’n, when I ’eard that, my blood biled. “Young man,” I says, “you don’t know David Pew,” I says; and with that I ups and does my dooty by him, cutlass and all, like a lion-’arted seaman, though blind. (And then in comes you, and I gives him up: as you know for a fack is true, and I’ll subscribe at the Assizes. And that, if you was to cut me into junks, is the truth, the ’ole truth, and nothing but the truth, world without end, so help me, amen; and if you’ll ’and me over the ’oly Bible, me not having such a thing about me at the moment, why, I’ll put a oath upon it like a man.)

Arethusa. Father, have you heard?

Gaunt. I know this man, Arethusa, and the truth is not in him.

Arethusa. Well, and why do we wait? We know Kit, do we not?

Kit. Ay, Captain, you know the pair of us, and you can see his face and mine.

Gaunt. Christopher, the facts are all against you. I find you here in my house at midnight: you who at least had eyes to see, and must have known whither you were going. It was this man, not you, who called me up: and when I came in, it was he who was uppermost and who gave you up to justice. This unsheathed cutlass is yours; there hangs the scabbard, empty; and as for the dark lantern, of what use is light to the blind? and who could have trimmed and lighted it but you?

Pew. Ah, Cap’n, what a ’ed for argyment!

Kit. And now, sir, now that you have spoken, I claim the liberty to speak on my side.

Gaunt. Not so. I will first have done with this man. David Pew, it were too simple to believe your story as you tell it; but I can find no testimony against you. From whatever reason, assuredly you have done me service. Here are five guineas to set you on your way. Begone at once; and while it is yet time, think upon your repentance.

Pew. Cap’n, here’s my respecks. You’ve turned a pious man, Cap’n; it does my ’art good to ’ear you. But you ain’t the only one. O no! I came about and paid off on the other tack before you, I reckon: you ask the Chaplain of the Fleet else, as called me on the quarter-deck before old Admiral ’Awke himself (touching his hat), my old commander. (“David Pew,” he says, “five-and-thirty year have I been in this trade, man and boy,” that chaplain says, “and damme, Pew,” says he, “if ever I seen the seaman that could rattle off his catechism within fifty mile of you. Here’s five guineas out of my own pocket,” he says; “and what’s more to the p’int,” he says, “I’ll speak to my reverend brother-in-law, the Bishop of Dover,” he says; “and if ever you leave the sea, and wants a place as beadle, why, damme,” says he, “you go to him, for you’re the man for him and him for you.”)

Gaunt. David Pew, you never set your foot on a King’s ship in all your life. There lies the road.

Pew. Ah, you was always a ’ard man, Cap’n, and a ’ard man to believe, like Didymus the ’Ebrew prophet. But it’s time for me to go, and I’ll be going. My service to you, Cap’n: and I kiss my ’and to that lovely female. (Singing) —

“Time for us to go,