Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (13 page)

At that I once more stopped.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Ben Gunn,” he answered, and his voice sounded hoarse and awkward, like a rusty lock. “I’m poor Ben Gunn, I am; and I haven’t spoke with a Christian these three years.”

I could now see that he was a white man like myself, and that his features were even pleasing. His skin, wherever it was exposed, was burned by the sun; even his lips were black, and his fair eyes looked quite startling in so dark a face. Of all the beggar-men that I had seen or fancied, he was the chief for raggedness. He was clothed with tatters of old ships’ canvas and old sea-cloth, and this extraordinary patchwork was all held together by a system of the most various and incongruous fastenings, brass buttons, bits of stick, and loops of tarry gaskin. About his waist he wore an old brass-buckled leather belt, which was the one thing solid in his whole accouterment.

“Three years!” I cried. “Were you shipwrecked?”

“Nay, mate,” said he, “marooned.”

I had heard the word and I knew it stood for a horrible kind of punishment common enough among the buccaneers, in which the offender is put ashore with a little powder and shot and left behind on some desolate and distant island.

“Marooned three years agone,” he continued, “and lived on goats since then, and berries and oysters. Wherever a man is, says I, a man can do for himself. But, mate, my heart is sore for Christian diet. You mightn’t happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now? No? Well, many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese — toasted, mostly — and woke up again, and here I were.”

“If ever I can get aboard again,” said I, “you shall have cheese by the stone.”

All this time he had been feeling the stuff of my jacket, smoothing my hands, looking at my boots, and generally, in the intervals of his speech, showing a childish pleasure in the presence of a fellow-creature. But at my last words he perked up into a kind of startled slyness.

“If ever you get aboard again, says you?” he repeated. “Why, now, who’s to hinder you?”

“Not you, I know,” was my reply.

“And right you was,” he cried. “Now you — what do you call yourself, mate?”

“Jim,” I told him.

“Jim, Jim,” says he, quite pleased, apparently. “Well, now, Jim, I’ve lived that rough as you’d be ashamed to hear of. Now, for instance, you wouldn’t think I had had a pious mother — to look at me?” he asked.

“Why, no, not in particular,” I answered.

“Ah, well,” said he, “but I had — remarkable pious. And I was a civil, pious boy, and could rattle off my catechism that fast as you couldn’t tell one word from another. And here’s what it come to, Jim, and it begun with chuck-farthen on the blessed gravestones! That’s what it begun with, but it went further’n that, and so my mother told me, and predicked the whole, she did, the pious woman. But it were Providence that put me here. I’ve thought it all out in this here lonely island and I’m back on piety. You can’t catch me tasting rum so much, but just a thimbleful for luck, of course, the first chance I have. I’m bound I’ll be good, and I see the way to. And, Jim” — looking all round him and lowering his voice to a whisper — ”I’m rich.”

I now felt sure that the poor fellow had gone crazy in his solitude, and I suppose I must have shown the feeling in my face, for he repeated the statement hotly:

“Rich! rich! I says. And I’ll tell you what, I’ll make a man of you, Jim. Ah, Jim, you’ll bless your stars, you will, you was the first that found me!”

And at this there came suddenly a lowering shadow over his face and he tightened his grasp upon my hand and raised a forefinger threateningly before my eyes.

“Now, Jim, you tell me true; that ain’t Flint’s ship?” he asked.

At this I had a happy inspiration. I began to believe that I had found an ally and I answered him at once.

“It’s not Flint’s ship and Flint is dead, but I’ll tell you true, as you ask me — there are some of Flint’s hands aboard; worse luck for the rest of us.”

“Not a man — with one — leg?” he gasped.

“Silver?” I asked.

“Ah, Silver!” says he, “that were his name.”

“He’s the cook, and the ringleader, too.”

He was still holding me by the wrist, and at that he gave it quite a wring. “If you was sent by Long John,” he said, “I’m as good as pork and I know it. But where was you, do you suppose?”

I had made my mind up in a moment, and by way of answer told him the whole story of our voyage and the predicament in which we found ourselves. He heard me with the keenest interest, and when I had done he patted me on the head.

“You’re a good lad, Jim,” he said, “and you’re all in a 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.

“Ay, 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 had 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 a pickax. 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, may be, think upon a prayer (says you), and sometimes he would, may be, 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’lemen 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 toward the anchorage, my terrors all forgotten; while, close at my side, the marooned man in his goat-skins trotted easily and lightly.

“Left, left,” says he; “keep to your left hand, mate Jim! Under the trees with you! There’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 shorthanded — 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 IV
THE STOCKADE

CHAPTER 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 had 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 smelled 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 came on the stockade.

This was how it was: A spring of clear water arose at the top of a knoll. Well, on the knoll, and inclosing the spring, they had clapped a stout log house, fit to hold two-score people on a pinch, and loopholed for musketry on every side. All around 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 labor, and too open to shelter the besiegers. The people in the log house had them in every way; they stood quiet in the 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 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,” said Captain Smollett, nodding toward 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.