“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.
PART FOUR--The Stockade
XVI 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 loghouse 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.