Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson [books for 10th graders txt] 📗
- Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
- Performer: 0451527046
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clove hitch, ain’t you? Well, you just put your trust
in Ben Gunn—Ben Gunn’s the man to do it. Would you
think it likely, now, that your squire would prove a
liberal-minded one in case of help—him being in a
clove hitch, as you remark?”
I told him the squire was the most liberal of men.
“Aye, but you see,” returned Ben Gunn, “I didn’t mean
giving me a gate to keep, and a suit of livery clothes,
and such; that’s not my mark, Jim. What I mean is,
would he be likely to come down to the toon of, say one
thousand pounds out of money that’s as good as a man’s
own already?”
“I am sure he would,” said I. “As it was, all hands
were to share.”
“AND a passage home?” he added with a look of great
shrewdness.
“Why,” I cried, “the squire’s a gentleman. And
besides, if we got rid of the others, we should want
you to help work the vessel home.”
“Ah,” said he, “so you would.” And he seemed very much
relieved.
“Now, I’ll tell you what,” he went on. “So much I’ll
tell you, and no more. I were in Flint’s ship when he
buried the treasure; he and six along—six strong
seamen. They was ashore nigh on a week, and us
standing off and on in the old WALRUS. One fine
day up went the signal, and here come Flint by himself
in a little boat, and his head done up in a blue scarf.
The sun was getting up, and mortal white he looked
about the cutwater. But, there he was, you mind, and
the six all dead—dead and buried. How he done it, not
a man aboard us could make out. It was battle, murder,
and sudden death, leastways—him against six. Billy
Bones was the mate; Long John, he was quartermaster;
and they asked him where the treasure was. ‘Ah,’ says
he, ‘you can go ashore, if you like, and stay,’ he
says; ‘but as for the ship, she’ll beat up for more, by
thunder!’ That’s what he said.
“Well, I was in another ship three years back, and we
sighted this island. ‘Boys,’ said I, ‘here’s Flint’s
treasure; let’s land and find it.’ The cap’n was
displeased at that, but my messmates were all of a mind
and landed. Twelve days they looked for it, and every
day they had the worse word for me, until one fine
morning all hands went aboard. ‘As for you, Benjamin
Gunn,’ says they, ‘here’s a musket,’ they says, ‘and a
spade, and pick-axe. You can stay here and find
Flint’s money for yourself,’ they says.
“Well, Jim, three years have I been here, and not a bite
of Christian diet from that day to this. But now, you
look here; look at me. Do I look like a man before the
mast? No, says you. Nor I weren’t, neither, I says.”
And with that he winked and pinched me hard.
“Just you mention them words to your squire, Jim,” he went
on. “Nor he weren’t, neither—that’s the words. Three
years he were the man of this island, light and dark, fair
and rain; and sometimes he would maybe think upon a prayer
(says you), and sometimes he would maybe think of his old
mother, so be as she’s alive (you’ll say); but the most
part of Gunn’s time (this is what you’ll say)—the most
part of his time was took up with another matter. And
then you’ll give him a nip, like I do.”
And he pinched me again in the most confidential manner.
“Then,” he continued, “then you’ll up, and you’ll say
this: Gunn is a good man (you’ll say), and he puts a
precious sight more confidence—a precious sight, mind
that—in a gen’leman born than in these gen’leman of
fortune, having been one hisself.”
“Well,” I said, “I don’t understand one word that
you’ve been saying. But that’s neither here nor there;
for how am I to get on board?”
“Ah,” said he, “that’s the hitch, for sure. Well,
there’s my boat, that I made with my two hands. I keep
her under the white rock. If the worst come to the
worst, we might try that after dark. Hi!” he broke
out. “What’s that?”
For just then, although the sun had still an hour or
two to run, all the echoes of the island awoke and
bellowed to the thunder of a cannon.
“They have begun to fight!” I cried. “Follow me.”
And I began to run towards the anchorage, my terrors
all forgotten, while close at my side the marooned man
in his goatskins trotted easily and lightly.
“Left, left,” says he; “keep to your left hand, mate
Jim! Under the trees with you! Theer’s where I killed
my first goat. They don’t come down here now; they’re
all mastheaded on them mountings for the fear of
Benjamin Gunn. Ah! And there’s the cetemery”—
cemetery, he must have meant. “You see the mounds? I
come here and prayed, nows and thens, when I thought
maybe a Sunday would be about doo. It weren’t quite a
chapel, but it seemed more solemn like; and then, says
you, Ben Gunn was short-handed—no chapling, nor so
much as a Bible and a flag, you says.”
So he kept talking as I ran, neither expecting nor
receiving any answer.
The cannon-shot was followed after a considerable
interval by a volley of small arms.
Another pause, and then, not a quarter of a mile in
front of me, I beheld the Union Jack flutter in the air
above a wood.
The Stockade
16
Narrative Continued by the Doctor: How the
Ship Was Abandoned
IT was about half past one—three bells in the sea
phrase—that the two boats went ashore from the
HISPANIOLA. The captain, the squire, and I were
talking matters over in the cabin. Had there been a
breath of wind, we should have fallen on the six
mutineers who were left aboard with us, slipped our
cable, and away to sea. But the wind was wanting; and
to complete our helplessness, down came Hunter with the
news that Jim Hawkins had slipped into a boat and was
gone ashore with the rest.
It never occurred to us to doubt Jim Hawkins, but we
were alarmed for his safety. With the men in the
temper they were in, it seemed an even chance if we
should see the lad again. We ran on deck. The pitch
was bubbling in the seams; the nasty stench of the
place turned me sick; if ever a man smelt fever and
dysentery, it was in that abominable anchorage. The
six scoundrels were sitting grumbling under a sail in
the forecastle; ashore we could see the gigs made fast
and a man sitting in each, hard by where the river runs
in. One of them was whistling “Lillibullero.”
Waiting was a strain, and it was decided that Hunter
and I should go ashore with the jolly-boat in quest
of information.
The gigs had leaned to their right, but Hunter and I
pulled straight in, in the direction of the stockade
upon the chart. The two who were left guarding their
boats seemed in a bustle at our appearance; “Lillibullero”
stopped off, and I could see the pair discussing what
they ought to do. Had they gone and told Silver, all
might have turned out differently; but they had their
orders, I suppose, and decided to sit quietly where
they were and hark back again to “Lillibullero.”
There was a slight bend in the coast, and I steered so
as to put it between us; even before we landed we had
thus lost sight of the gigs. I jumped out and came as
near running as I durst, with a big silk handkerchief
under my hat for coolness’ sake and a brace of pistols
ready primed for safety.
I had not gone a hundred yards when I reached the stockade.
This was how it was: a spring of clear water rose
almost at the top of a knoll. Well, on the knoll, and
enclosing the spring, they had clapped a stout log-house fit to hold two score of people on a pinch and
loopholed for musketry on either side. All round this
they had cleared a wide space, and then the thing was
completed by a paling six feet high, without door or
opening, too strong to pull down without time and
labour and too open to shelter the besiegers. The
people in the log-house had them in every way; they
stood quiet in shelter and shot the others like
partridges. All they wanted was a good watch and food;
for, short of a complete surprise, they might have held
the place against a regiment.
What particularly took my fancy was the spring. For
though we had a good enough place of it in the cabin of
the HISPANIOLA, with plenty of arms and ammunition,
and things to eat, and excellent wines, there had been
one thing overlooked—we had no water. I was thinking
this over when there came ringing over the island the
cry of a man at the point of death. I was not new to
violent death—I have served his Royal Highness the
Duke of Cumberland, and got a wound myself at Fontenoy—
but I know my pulse went dot and carry one. “Jim
Hawkins is gone,” was my first thought.
It is something to have been an old soldier, but more
still to have been a doctor. There is no time to
dilly-dally in our work. And so now I made up my mind
instantly, and with no time lost returned to the shore
and jumped on board the jolly-boat.
By good fortune Hunter pulled a good oar. We made the
water fly, and the boat was soon alongside and I aboard
the schooner.
I found them all shaken, as was natural. The squire
was sitting down, as white as a sheet, thinking of the
harm he had led us to, the good soul! And one of the
six forecastle hands was little better.
“There’s a man,” says Captain Smollett, nodding towards
him, “new to this work. He came nigh-hand fainting,
doctor, when he heard the cry. Another touch of the
rudder and that man would join us.”
I told my plan to the captain, and between us we
settled on the details of its accomplishment.
We put old Redruth in the gallery between the cabin and
the forecastle, with three or four loaded muskets and a
mattress for protection. Hunter brought the boat round
under the stern-port, and Joyce and I set to work
loading her with powder tins, muskets, bags of
biscuits, kegs of pork, a cask of cognac, and my
invaluable medicine chest.
In the meantime, the squire and the captain stayed on
deck, and the latter hailed the coxswain, who was the
principal man aboard.
“Mr. Hands,” he said, “here are two of us with a brace
of pistols each. If any one of you six make a signal
of any description, that man’s dead.”
They were a good deal taken aback, and after a little
consultation one and all tumbled down the fore
companion, thinking no doubt to take us on the rear.
But when they saw Redruth waiting for them in the
sparred galley, they went about ship at once, and a
head popped out again on deck.
“Down, dog!” cries the captain.
And the head popped back again; and we heard no more,
for the time, of these six very faint-hearted seamen.
By this time, tumbling things in as they
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