Treasure Island
The Voyage
ALL that night we were in a great in their place, and of the squire’s friends, Mr. Blandly and the like, off to wish him a good and a safe return. We had a night at the Admiral Benbow when I had the work; and I was dog-tired when, a little dawn, the his pipe and the to man the capstan-bars. I might have been twice as weary, yet I would not have left the deck, all was so new and to me—the commands, the note of the whistle, the men to their places in the of the ship’s lanterns.
“Now, Barbecue, us a stave,” one voice.
“The old one,” another.
“Aye, aye, mates,” said Long John, who was by, with his under his arm, and at once out in the air and I so well:
“Fifteen men on the man’s chest—”
And then the whole chorus:—
“Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
And at the third “Ho!” the them with a will.
Even at that moment it me to the old Admiral Benbow in a second, and I to the voice of the captain in the chorus. But soon the was up; soon it was at the bows; soon the to draw, and the land and to by on either side; and I to an hour of the Hispaniola had her to the Isle of Treasure.
I am not going to relate that in detail. It was prosperous. The ship proved to be a good ship, the were seamen, and the captain his business. But we came the length of Treasure Island, two or three had which to be known.
Mr. Arrow, of all, out than the captain had feared. He had no among the men, and people did what they pleased with him. But that was by no means the of it, for after a day or two at sea he to appear on with eye, red cheeks, tongue, and other marks of drunkenness. Time after time he was ordered in disgrace. Sometimes he and cut himself; sometimes he all day long in his little at one of the companion; sometimes for a day or two he would be almost and to his work at least passably.
In the meantime, we make out where he got the drink. That was the ship’s mystery. Watch him as we pleased, we do nothing to solve it; and when we asked him to his face, he would only laugh if he were drunk, and if he were that he anything but water.
He was not only as an officer and a the men, but it was plain that at this he must soon kill himself outright, so nobody was much surprised, very sorry, when one dark night, with a sea, he and was no more.
“Overboard!” said the captain. “Well, gentlemen, that saves the trouble of him in irons.”
But there we were, without a mate; and it was necessary, of course, to one of the men. The boatswain, Job Anderson, was the man aboard, and though he his old title, he in a way as mate. Mr. Trelawney had the sea, and his knowledge him very useful, for he often took a watch himself in easy weather. And the coxswain, Israel Hands, was a careful, wily, old, who be at a pinch with almost anything.
He was a great of Long John Silver, and so the mention of his name leads me on to speak of our ship’s cook, Barbecue, as the men called him.
Aboard ship he his by a his neck, to have hands as free as possible. It was something to see him the of the against a bulkhead, and against it, to every movement of the ship, on with his cooking like someone safe ashore. Still more was it to see him in the of weather the deck. He had a line or two rigged up to help him across the spaces—Long John’s earrings, they were called; and he would hand himself from one place to another, now using the crutch, now it alongside by the lanyard, as as another man walk. Yet some of the men who had with him their to see him so reduced.
“He’s no common man, Barbecue,” said the to me. “He had good in his days and can speak like a book when so minded; and brave—a lion’s nothing alongside of Long John! I him four and their together—him unarmed.”
All the and him. He had a way of talking to each and doing some particular service. To me he was kind, and always to see me in the galley, which he as clean as a new pin, the up and his in a in one corner.
“Come away, Hawkins,” he would say; “come and have a yarn with John. Nobody more welcome than yourself, my son. Sit you and the news. Here’s Cap’n Flint—I calls my Cap’n Flint, after the famous buccaneer—here’s Cap’n Flint success to our v’yage. Wasn’t you, cap’n?”
And the would say, with great rapidity, “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” till you that it was not out of breath, or till John his over the cage.
“Now, that bird,” he would say, “is, maybe, two hundred years old, Hawkins—they live mostly; and if anybody’s more wickedness, it must be the himself. She’s with England, the great Cap’n England, the pirate. She’s been at Madagascar, and at Malabar, and Surinam, and Providence, and Portobello. She was at the up of the plate ships. It’s there she learned ‘Pieces of eight,’ and little wonder; three hundred and fifty thousand of ’em, Hawkins! She was at the of the of the Indies out of Goa, she was; and to look at her you would think she was a babby. But you powder—didn’t you, cap’n?”
“Stand by to go about,” the would scream.
“Ah, she’s a craft, she is,” the cook would say, and give her sugar from his pocket, and then the bird would at the and on, for wickedness. “There,” John would add, “you can’t touch and not be mucked, lad. Here’s this old bird o’ mine fire, and none the wiser, you may to that. She would the same, in a manner of speaking, chaplain.” And John would touch his with a way he had that me think he was the best of men.
In the meantime, the and Captain Smollett were still on terms with one another. The no about the matter; he the captain. The captain, on his part, spoke but when he was spoken to, and then and and dry, and not a word wasted. He owned, when into a corner, that he to have been about the crew, that some of them were as as he wanted to see and all had well. As for the ship, he had taken a to her. “She’ll a point nearer the wind than a man has a right to of his own married wife, sir. But,” he would add, “all I say is, we’re not home again, and I don’t like the cruise.”
The squire, at this, would turn away and up and the deck, in air.
“A more of that man,” he would say, “and I shall explode.”
We had some weather, which only proved the of the Hispaniola. Every man on well content, and they must have been hard to if they had been otherwise, for it is my there was a ship’s company so since Noah put to sea. Double was going on the least excuse; there was on odd days, as, for instance, if the it was any man’s birthday, and always a of in the for anyone to help himself that had a fancy.
“Never good come of it yet,” the captain said to Dr. Livesey. “Spoil hands, make devils. That’s my belief.”
But good did come of the apple barrel, as you shall hear, for if it had not been for that, we should have had no note of and might all have by the hand of treachery.
This was how it came about.
We had up the to the wind of the we were after—I am not allowed to be more plain—and now we were for it with a day and night. It was about the last day of our by the largest computation; some time that night, or at latest of the morrow, we should the Treasure Island. We were S.S.W. and had a and a sea. The Hispaniola rolled steadily, her now and then with a of spray. All was and aloft; was in the we were now so near an end of the part of our adventure.
Now, just after sundown, when all my work was over and I was on my way to my berth, it to me that I should like an apple. I ran on deck. The watch was all looking out for the island. The man at the was the of the sail and away to himself, and that was the only the of the sea against the and around the of the ship.
In I got into the apple barrel, and there was an apple left; but there in the dark, what with the of the and the movement of the ship, I had either asleep or was on the point of doing so when a man sat with a close by. The as he his against it, and I was just about to jump up when the man to speak. It was Silver’s voice, and I had a dozen words, I would not have myself for all the world, but there, and listening, in the of and curiosity, for from these dozen I that the of all the men upon me alone.
