Part 1 (1/2)
Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson
PART ONE
The Old Buccaneer
1
The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral Benbow
SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr Livesey, and the rest of these gentle asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, fro back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up o back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old sea under our roof
I re to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind hi, heavy, nut-brownover the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white I re to hi that he sang so often afterwards: ”Fifteen men on the dead h, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the capstan bars Then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a handspike that he carried, and when lass of ruht to hi on the taste and still looking about hinboard
”This is a handy cove,” says he at length; ”and a pleasant sittyated grog-shop Much company, mate?”
My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity
”Well, then,” said he, ”this is the berth for me Here you,up alongside and help up my chest I'll stay here a bit,” he continued ”I's is what I want, and that head up there for to watch shi+ps off What you ht call me captain Oh, I see what you're at-- there”; and he thren three or four gold pieces on the threshold ”You can tellas fierce as a commander
And indeed bad as his clothes were and coarsely as he spoke, he had none of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast, but seemed like a mate or skipper accustomed to be obeyed or to strike The man who came with the barrow told us the e, that he had inquired what inns there were along the coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and described as lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place of residence And that was all we could learn of our guest
He was a very silentround the cove or upon the cliffs with a brass telescope; all evening he sat in a corner of the parlour next the fire and drank ru Mostly he would not speak when spoken to, only look up sudden and fierce and blow through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the people who came about our house soon learned to let him be Every day when he ca ht it was the want of company of his own kind that an to see he was desirous to avoid them When a seaman did put up at the Ad by the coast road for Bristol) he would look in at hih the curtained door before he entered the parlour; and he was always sure to be as silent as a mouse when any such was present For me, at least, there was no secret about the matter, for I was, in a way, a sharer in his alarms He had taken me aside one day and promised me a silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I would only keep ” and let hih when the first of the e, he would only blow through his nose at me and stare me down, but before the as out he was sure to think better of it, bring me my four-penny piece, and repeat his orders to look out for ”the seafaring e haunted hts, when the wind shook the four corners of the house and the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a thousand for would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; noas a , and that in the middle of his body To see hie and ditch was the worst of nightether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these aboh I was so terrified by the idea of the seafaring , I was far less afraid of the captain hihts when he took a deal more rum and water than his head would carry; and then he would so nobody; but solasses round and force all the tre co Often I have heard the house shaking with ”Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of ru in for dear life, with the fear of death upon the louder than the other to avoid re companion ever known; he would slap his hand on the table for silence all round; he would fly up in a passion of anger at a question, or soed the co his story Nor would he allow anyone to leave the inn till he had drunk himself sleepy and reeled off to bed
His stories hat frightened people worst of all Dreadful stories they were--about hanging, and walking the plank, and storas, and wild deeds and places on the Spanish Main By his own account hesome of the wickedest e in which he told these stories shocked our plain country people almost as much as the cri the inn would be ruined, for people would soon cease co there to be tyrannized over and put down, and sent shi+vering to their beds; but I really believe his presence did us good People were frightened at the ti back they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country life, and there was even a party of the younger ” and a ”real old salt” and such like naland terrible at sea
In one way, indeed, he bade fair to ruin us, for he kept on staying week after week, and at lastexhausted, and stillh his nose so loudly that you ht say he roared, and staredhis hands after such a rebuff, and I areatly hastened his early and unhappy death
All the tie whatever in his dress but to buy sos fro fallen down, he let it hang froreat annoyance when it blew I remember the appearance of his coat, which he patched himself upstairs in his roo but patches He never wrote or received a letter, and he never spoke with any but the neighbours, and with these, for the reat sea-chest none of us had ever seen open
He was only once crossed, and that was towards the end, when one in a decline that took him off Dr Livesey came late one afternoon to see the patient, took a bit of dinner from my mother, and went into the parlour to smoke a pipe until his horse should co at the old Benbow I followed hiht doctor, with his powder as white as snow and his bright, black eyes and pleasant manners, made with the coltish country folk, and above all, with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours, sitting, far gone in rum, with his aran to pipe up his eternal song: ”Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest-- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
At first I had supposed ”the deadbox of his upstairs in the front roohtceased to pay any particular notice to the song; it was new, that night, to nobody but Dr Livesey, and on hireeable effect, for he looked up for a rily before he went on with his talk to old Taylor, the gardener, on a new cure for the rheuhtened up at his own music, and at last flapped his hand upon the table before him in a e all knew to mean silence The voices stopped at once, all but Dr Livesey's; he went on as before speaking clear and kind and drawing briskly at his pipe between every word or two The captain glared at hilared still harder, and at last broke out with a villainous, low oath, ”Silence, there, between decks!”
”Were you addressing me, sir?” says the doctor; and when the ruffian had told hi to say to you, sir,” replies the doctor, ”that if you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!”
The old fellow's fury ful He sprang to his feet, drew and opened a sailor's clasp-knife, and balancing it open on the palm of his hand, threatened to pin the doctor to the wall
The doctor never so much as moved He spoke to him as before, over his shoulder and in the saht hear, but perfectly calm and steady: ”If you do not put that knife this instant in your pocket, I pro at the next assizes”
Then followed a battle of looks between them, but the captain soon knuckled under, put up his weapon, and resu
”And now, sir,” continued the doctor, ”since I no there's such a fellow in my district, you ht I'istrate; and if I catch a breath of coainst you, if it's only for a piece of incivility like tonight's, I'll take effectual means to have you hunted down and routed out of this Let that suffice”
Soon after, Dr Livesey's horse came to the door and he rode away, but the captain held his peace that evening, and forAppears and Disappears
IT was not very long after this that there occurred the first of the h not, as you will see, of his affairs It was a bitter cold winter, with long, hard frosts and heavy gales; and it was plain from the first thatHe sank daily, and my mother and I had all the inn upon our hands, and were kept busy enough without paying uest
It was one January --the cove all grey with hoar-frost, the ripple lapping softly on the stones, the sun still low and only touching the hilltops and shi+ning far to seaward The captain had risen earlier than usual and set out down the beach, his cutlass swinging under the broad skirts of the old blue coat, his brass telescope under his arm, his hat tilted back upon his head I re like smoke in his wake as he strode off, and the last sound I heard of hination, as though hisupon Dr Livesey
Well,the breakfast-table against the captain's return when the parlour door opened and a man stepped in on whom I had never settwo fingers of the left hand, and though he wore a cutlass, he did not lookor two, and I remember this one puzzled me He was not sailorly, and yet he had a smack of the sea about him too
I asked him as for his service, and he said he would take ru out of the room to fetch it, he sat down upon a table and motioned me to draw near I paused where I ith my napkin in my hand
”Come here, sonny,” says he ”Come nearer here”
I took a step nearer
”Is this here table for my mate Bill?” he asked with a kind of leer
I told him I did not know his mate Bill, and this was for a person who stayed in our house e called the captain
”Well,” said he, ”my mate Bill would be called the captain, as like as not He has a cut on one cheek and a hty pleasant ith him, particularly in drink, has ument like, that your captain has a cut on one cheek--and we'll put it, if you like, that that cheek's the right one Ah, well! I told you Now, is my mate Bill in this here house?”
I told hi
”Which way, sonny? Which way is he gone?”
And when I had pointed out the rock and told him how the captain was likely to return, and how soon, and answered a few other questions, ”Ah,” said he, ”this'll be as good as drink to my mate Bill”
The expression of his face as he said these words was not at all pleasant, and I had er washe ht; and besides, it was difficult to knohat to do The stranger kept hanging about just inside the inn door, peering round the corner like a cat waiting for a mouse Once I stepped out myself into the road, but he ih for his fancy, a e came over his tallowy face, and he ordered ain he returned to his for, patted ood boy and he had taken quite a fancy to me ”I have a son of my own,” said he, ”as like you as two blocks, and he's all the pride offor boys is discipline, sonny--discipline Now, if you had sailed along of Bill, you wouldn't have stood there to be spoke to twice--not you That was never Bill's way, nor the way of sich as sailed with hilass under his aro back into the parlour, sonny, and get behind the door, and we'll give Bill a little surprise--bless his 'art, I say again”