The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson

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 pint,’ 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.

‘Time for us to go,
Time for us to go,
And when we’d clapped the hatches on,
’Twas time for us to go.’

SCENE IV

Kit, Arethusa, Gaunt

Arethusa. Now, Kit?

Kit. Well, sir, and now?

Gaunt. I find you here in my house at this untimely and unseemly hour; I find you there in company with one who, to my assured knowledge, should long since have swung in the wind at Execution Dock. What brought you? Why did you open my door while I slept to such a companion? Christopher French, I have two treasures. One (laying his hand on Arethusa’s shoulder) I know you covet. Christopher, is this your love?

Kit. Sir, I have been fooled and trapped. That man declared he knew you, declared he could make you change your mind about our marriage. I was drunk, sir, and I believed him: heaven knows I am sober now, and can see my folly; but I believed him then, and followed him. He brought me here, he told me your chest was full of gold that would make men of us for life. At that I saw my fault, sir, and drew my cutlass; and he, in the wink of an eye, roared out for help, leaped at my throat like a weasel and had me rolling on the floor. He was quick, and I, as I tell you, sir, was off my balance.

Gaunt. Is this man, Pew, your enemy?

Kit. No sir; I never saw him till to-night.

Gaunt. Then, if you must stand the justice of your country, come to the proof with a better plea. What? lantern and cutlass yours; you the one that knew the house; you the one that saw; you the one overtaken and denounced; and you spin me a galley yarn like that? If that is all your defence, you’ll hang, sir, hang.

Arethusa. Ah! Father, I give him up: I will never see him, never speak to him, never think of him again; I take him from my heart; I give myself wholly up to you and to my mother; I will obey you in every point – O, not at a word merely – at a finger raised! I will do all this; I will do anything – anything you bid me; I swear it in the face of heaven. Only – Kit! I love him, father, I love him. Let him go.

[Gaunt. Go?

Arethusa. You let the other. Open the door again – for my sake, father – in my mother’s name – O, open the door and let him go.]

Kit. Let me go? My girl, if you had cast me out is morning, good and well: I would have left you, though it broke my heart. But it’s a changed story now; now I’m down on my luck, and you come and stab me from behind. I ask no favour, and I’ll take none; I stand here on my innocence, and God helping me I’ll clear my good name, and get your love again, if it’s love worth having. [Now, Captain Gaunt, I’ve said my say, and you may do your pleasure. I am my father’s son, and I never feared to face the truth.

Gaunt. You have spoken like a man, French, and you may go. I leave you free.

Kit. Nay, sir, not so: not with my will. I’m accused and counted guilty; the proofs are against me; the girl I love has turned upon me. I’ll accept no mercy at your hands.] Captain Gaunt, I am your prisoner.