Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (free novels txt) đ
- Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
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âNow, Barbecue, tip us a stave,â cried one voice.
âThe old one,â cried another.
âAye, aye, mates,â said Long John, who was standing by, with his crutch under his arm, and at once broke out in the air and words I knew so well:
âFifteen men on the dead manâs chestââ
And then the whole crew bore chorus:â
âYo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!â
And at the third âHo!â drove the bars before them with a will.
Even at that exciting moment it carried me back to the old Admiral Benbow in a second, and I seemed to hear the voice of the captain piping in the chorus. But soon the anchor was short up; soon it was hanging dripping at the bows; soon the sails began to draw, and the land and shipping to flit by on either side; and before I could lie down to snatch an hour of slumber the Hispaniola had begun her voyage to the Isle of Treasure.
I am not going to relate that voyage in detail. It was fairly prosperous. The ship proved to be a good ship, the crew were capable seamen, and the captain thoroughly understood his business. But before we came the length of Treasure Island, two or three things had happened which require to be known.
Mr. Arrow, first of all, turned out even worse than the captain had feared. He had no command among the men, and people did what they pleased with him. But that was by no means the worst of it, for after a day or two at sea he began to appear on deck with hazy eye, red cheeks, stuttering tongue, and other marks of drunkenness. Time after time he was ordered below in disgrace. Sometimes he fell and cut himself; sometimes he lay all day long in his little bunk at one side of the companion; sometimes for a day or two he would be almost sober and attend to his work at least passably.
In the meantime, we could never make out where he got the drink. That was the shipâs mystery. Watch him as we pleased, we could 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 sober deny solemnly that he ever tasted anything but water.
He was not only useless as an officer and a bad influence amongst the men, but it was plain that at this rate he must soon kill himself outright, so nobody was much surprised, nor very sorry, when one dark night, with a head sea, he disappeared entirely and was seen no more.
âOverboard!â said the captain. âWell, gentlemen, that saves the trouble of putting him in irons.â
But there we were, without a mate; and it was necessary, of course, to advance one of the men. The boatswain, Job Anderson, was the likeliest man aboard, and though he kept his old title, he served in a way as mate. Mr. Trelawney had followed the sea, and his knowledge made him very useful, for he often took a watch himself in easy weather. And the coxswain, Israel Hands, was a careful, wily, old, experienced seaman who could be trusted at a pinch with almost anything.
He was a great confidant of Long John Silver, and so the mention of his name leads me on to speak of our shipâs cook, Barbecue, as the men called him.
Aboard ship he carried his crutch by a lanyard round his neck, to have both hands as free as possible. It was something to see him wedge the foot of the crutch against a bulkhead, and propped against it, yielding to every movement of the ship, get on with his cooking like someone safe ashore. Still more strange was it to see him in the heaviest of weather cross the deck. He had a line or two rigged up to help him across the widest spacesâLong Johnâs earrings, they were called; and he would hand himself from one place to another, now using the crutch, now trailing it alongside by the lanyard, as quickly as another man could walk. Yet some of the men who had sailed with him before expressed their pity to see him so reduced.
âHeâs no common man, Barbecue,â said the coxswain to me. âHe had good schooling in his young days and can speak like a book when so minded; and braveâa lionâs nothing alongside of Long John! I seen him grapple four and knock their heads togetherâhim unarmed.â
All the crew respected and even obeyed him. He had a way of talking to each and doing everybody some particular service. To me he was unweariedly kind, and always glad to see me in the galley, which he kept as clean as a new pin, the dishes hanging up burnished and his parrot in a cage in one corner.
âCome away, Hawkins,â he would say; âcome and have a yarn with John. Nobody more welcome than yourself, my son. Sit you down and hear the news. Hereâs Capân FlintâI calls my parrot Capân Flint, after the famous buccaneerâhereâs Capân Flint predicting success to our vâyage. Wasnât you, capân?â
And the parrot would say, with great rapidity, âPieces of eight! Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!â till you wondered that it was not out of breath, or till John threw his handkerchief over the cage.
âNow, that bird,â he would say, âis, maybe, two hundred years old, Hawkinsâthey live forever mostly; and if anybodyâs seen more wickedness, it must be the devil himself. Sheâs sailed with England, the great Capân England, the pirate. Sheâs been at Madagascar, and at Malabar, and Surinam, and Providence, and Portobello. She was at the fishing up of the wrecked plate ships. Itâs there she learned âPieces of eight,â and little wonder; three hundred and fifty thousand of âem, Hawkins! She was at the boarding of the viceroy of the Indies out of Goa, she was; and to look at her you would think she was a babby. But you smelt powderâdidnât you, capân?â
âStand by to go about,â the parrot would scream.
âAh, sheâs a handsome craft, she is,â the cook would say, and give her sugar from his pocket, and then the bird would peck at the bars and swear straight on, passing belief for wickedness. âThere,â John would add, âyou canât touch pitch and not be mucked, lad. Hereâs this poor old innocent bird oâ mine swearing blue fire, and none the wiser, you may lay to that. She would swear the same, in a manner of speaking, before chaplain.â And John would touch his forelock with a solemn way he had that made me think he was the best of men.
In the meantime, the squire and Captain Smollett were still on pretty distant terms with one another. The squire made no bones about the matter; he despised the captain. The captain, on his part, never spoke but when he was spoken to, and then sharp and short and dry, and not a word wasted. He owned, when driven into a corner, that he seemed to have been wrong about the crew, that some of them were as brisk as he wanted to see and all had behaved fairly well. As for the ship, he had taken a downright fancy to her. âSheâll lie a point nearer the wind than a man has a right to expect of his own married wife, sir. But,â he would add, âall I say is, weâre not home again, and
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