Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (the top 100 crime novels of all time TXT) 📖

were the shaft of a pick broken in two

and the boards of several packing-cases strewn around.

On one of these boards I saw, branded with a hot iron,

the name WALRUS—the name of Flint’s ship.

 

All was clear to probation. The CACHE had been found

and rifled; the seven hundred thousand pounds were gone!

 

33

 

The Fall of a Chieftain

 

THERE never was such an overturn in this world. Each

of these six men was as though he had been struck. But

with Silver the blow passed almost instantly. Every

thought of his soul had been set full-stretch, like a

racer, on that money; well, he was brought up, in a

single second, dead; and he kept his head, found his

temper, and changed his plan before the others had had

time to realize the disappointment.

 

“Jim,” he whispered, “take that, and stand by for trouble.”

 

And he passed me a double-barrelled pistol.

 

At the same time, he began quietly moving northward,

and in a few steps had put the hollow between us two

and the other five. Then he looked at me and nodded,

as much as to say, “Here is a narrow corner,” as,

indeed, I thought it was. His looks were not quite

friendly, and I was so revolted at these constant

changes that I could not forbear whispering, “So you’ve

changed sides again.”

 

There was no time left for him to answer in. The

buccaneers, with oaths and cries, began to leap, one

after another, into the pit and to dig with their fingers,

throwing the boards aside as they did so. Morgan found a

piece of gold. He held it up with a perfect spout of oaths.

It was a two-guinea piece, and it went from hand to hand

among them for a quarter of a minute.

 

“Two guineas!” roared Merry, shaking it at Silver.

“That’s your seven hundred thousand pounds, is it?

You’re the man for bargains, ain’t you? You’re him

that never bungled nothing, you wooden-headed lubber!”

 

“Dig away, boys,” said Silver with the coolest insolence;

“you’ll find some pig-nuts and I shouldn’t wonder.”

 

“Pig-nuts!” repeated Merry, in a scream. “Mates, do

you hear that? I tell you now, that man there knew it

all along. Look in the face of him and you’ll see it

wrote there.”

 

“Ah, Merry,” remarked Silver, “standing for cap’n

again? You’re a pushing lad, to be sure.”

 

But this time everyone was entirely in Merry’s favour.

They began to scramble out of the excavation, darting

furious glances behind them. One thing I observed,

which looked well for us: they all got out upon the

opposite side from Silver.

 

Well, there we stood, two on one side, five on the

other, the pit between us, and nobody screwed up high

enough to offer the first blow. Silver never moved; he

watched them, very upright on his crutch, and looked as

cool as ever I saw him. He was brave, and no mistake.

 

At last Merry seemed to think a speech might help matters.

 

“Mates,” says he, “there’s two of them alone there;

one’s the old cripple that brought us all here and

blundered us down to this; the other’s that cub that I

mean to have the heart of. Now, mates—”

 

He was raising his arm and his voice, and plainly meant

to lead a charge. But just then—crack! crack! crack!—

three musket-shots flashed out of the thicket. Merry

tumbled head foremost into the excavation; the man with

the bandage spun round like a teetotum and fell all his

length upon his side, where he lay dead, but still

twitching; and the other three turned and ran for it

with all their might.

 

Before you could wink, Long John had fired two barrels

of a pistol into the struggling Merry, and as the man

rolled up his eyes at him in the last agony, “George,”

said he, “I reckon I settled you.”

 

At the same moment, the doctor, Gray, and Ben Gunn joined

us, with smoking muskets, from among the nutmeg-trees.

 

“Forward!” cried the doctor. “Double quick, my lads.

We must head ‘em off the boats.”

 

And we set off at a great pace, sometimes plunging

through the bushes to the chest.

 

I tell you, but Silver was anxious to keep up with us.

The work that man went through, leaping on his crutch

till the muscles of his chest were fit to burst, was

work no sound man ever equalled; and so thinks the

doctor. As it was, he was already thirty yards behind

us and on the verge of strangling when we reached the

brow of the slope.

 

“Doctor,” he hailed, “see there! No hurry!”

 

Sure enough there was no hurry. In a more open part of

the plateau, we could see the three survivors still running

in the same direction as they had started, right for Mizzen-mast Hill. We were already between them and the boats; and

so we four sat down to breathe, while Long John, mopping his

face, came slowly up with us.

 

“Thank ye kindly, doctor,” says he. “You came in in

about the nick, I guess, for me and Hawkins. And so

it’s you, Ben Gunn!” he added. “Well, you’re a nice

one, to be sure.”

 

“I’m Ben Gunn, I am,” replied the maroon, wriggling

like an eel in his embarrassment. “And,” he added,

after a long pause, “how do, Mr. Silver? Pretty well,

I thank ye, says you.”

 

“Ben, Ben,” murmured Silver, “to think as you’ve done me!”

 

The doctor sent back Gray for one of the pick-axes

deserted, in their flight, by the mutineers, and then

as we proceeded leisurely downhill to where the boats

were lying, related in a few words what had taken

place. It was a story that profoundly interested

Silver; and Ben Gunn, the half-idiot maroon, was the

hero from beginning to end.

 

Ben, in his long, lonely wanderings about the island,

had found the skeleton—it was he that had rifled it;

he had found the treasure; he had dug it up (it was the

haft of his pick-axe that lay broken in the

excavation); he had carried it on his back, in many

weary journeys, from the foot of the tall pine to a

cave he had on the two-pointed hill at the north-east

angle of the island, and there it had lain stored in

safety since two months before the arrival of the HISPANIOLA.

 

When the doctor had wormed this secret from him on the

afternoon of the attack, and when next morning he saw

the anchorage deserted, he had gone to Silver, given

him the chart, which was now useless—given him the

stores, for Ben Gunn’s cave was well supplied with

goats’ meat salted by himself—given anything and

everything to get a chance of moving in safety from the

stockade to the two-pointed hill, there to be clear of

malaria and keep a guard upon the money.

 

“As for you, Jim,” he said, “it went against my heart,

but I did what I thought best for those who had stood

by their duty; and if you were not one of these, whose

fault was it?”

 

That morning, finding that I was to be involved in the

horrid disappointment he had prepared for the

mutineers, he had run all the way to the cave, and

leaving the squire to guard the captain, had taken Gray

and the maroon and started, making the diagonal across

the island to be at hand beside the pine. Soon,

however, he saw that our party had the start of him;

and Ben Gunn, being fleet of foot, had been dispatched

in front to do his best alone. Then it had occurred to

him to work upon the superstitions of his former

shipmates, and he was so far successful that Gray and

the doctor had come up and were already ambushed before

the arrival of the treasure-hunters.

 

“Ah,” said Silver, “it were fortunate for me that I had

Hawkins here. You would have let old John be cut to

bits, and never given it a thought, doctor.”

 

“Not a thought,” replied Dr. Livesey cheerily.

 

And by this time we had reached the gigs. The doctor,

with the pick-axe, demolished one of them, and then we

all got aboard the other and set out to go round by sea

for North Inlet.

 

This was a run of eight or nine miles. Silver, though he

was almost killed already with fatigue, was set to an oar,

like the rest of us, and we were soon skimming swiftly over

a smooth sea. Soon we passed out of the straits and doubled

the south-east corner of the island, round which, four days

ago, we had towed the HISPANIOLA.

 

As we passed the two-pointed hill, we could see the

black mouth of Ben Gunn’s cave and a figure standing by

it, leaning on a musket. It was the squire, and we

waved a handkerchief and gave him three cheers, in

which the voice of Silver joined as heartily as any.

 

Three miles farther, just inside the mouth of North

Inlet, what should we meet but the HISPANIOLA,

cruising by herself? The last flood had lifted her,

and had there been much wind or a strong tide current,

as in the southern anchorage, we should never have

found her more, or found her stranded beyond help. As

it was, there was little amiss beyond the wreck of the

main-sail. Another anchor was got ready and dropped in

a fathom and a half of water. We all pulled round

again to Rum Cove, the nearest point for Ben Gunn’s

treasure-house; and then Gray, single-handed, returned

with the gig to the HISPANIOLA, where he was to

pass the night on guard.

 

A gentle slope ran up from the beach to the entrance of

the cave. At the top, the squire met us. To me he was

cordial and kind, saying nothing of my escapade either

in the way of blame or praise. At Silver’s polite

salute he somewhat flushed.

 

“John Silver,” he said, “you’re a prodigious villain

and imposter—a monstrous imposter, sir. I am told I

am not to prosecute you. Well, then, I will not. But

the dead men, sir, hang about your neck like mill-stones.”

 

“Thank you kindly, sir,” replied Long John, again saluting.

 

“I dare you to thank me!” cried the squire. “It is a

gross dereliction of my duty. Stand back.”

 

And thereupon we all entered the cave. It was a large,

airy place, with a little spring and a pool of clear

water, overhung with ferns. The floor was sand.

Before a big fire lay Captain Smollett; and in a far

corner, only duskily flickered over by the blaze, I

beheld great heaps of coin and quadrilaterals built of

bars of gold. That was Flint’s treasure that we had

come so far to seek and that had cost already the lives

of seventeen men from the HISPANIOLA. How many it

had cost in the amassing, what blood and sorrow, what

good ships scuttled on the deep, what brave men walking

the plank blindfold, what shot of cannon, what shame

and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell.

Yet there were still three upon that island—Silver,

and old Morgan, and Ben Gunn—who had each taken his

share in these crimes, as each had hoped in vain to

share in the reward.

 

“Come in, Jim,” said the captain. “You’re a good boy in

your line, Jim, but I don’t think you and me’ll go to sea

again. You’re too much of the born favourite for me. Is

that you, John Silver? What brings you here, man?”

 

“Come back to my dooty, sir,” returned Silver.

 

“Ah!”