Treasure Island

1
The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral Benbow
SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having
asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island,
from
the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the
island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted,
I
take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when
my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with
the
sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.
I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the
inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow--a
tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the
shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with
black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty,
livid
white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself
as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang
so
often afterwards:
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and
broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of
stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared,
called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him,
he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste and still
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Treasure Island
looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.
"This is a handy cove," says he at length; "and a pleasant sittyated
grog-shop. Much company, mate?"
My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity.
"Well, then," said he, "this is the berth for me. Here you, matey," he
cried to the man who trundled the barrow; "bring up alongside and help
up my chest. I'll stay here a bit," he continued. "I'm a plain man;
rum
and bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there for to watch
ships off. What you mought call me? You mought call me captain. Oh, I
see what you're at--there"; and he threw down three or four gold
pieces
on the threshold. "You can tell me when I've worked through that,"
says
he, looking as fierce as a commander.
And indeed bad as his clothes were and coarsely as he spoke, he had
none
of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast, but seemed like
a mate or skipper accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. The man who
came
with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before
at
the Royal George, that he had inquired what inns there were along the
coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and described as
lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place of residence. And
that was all we could learn of our guest.
He was a very silent man by custom. All day he hung round the cove or
upon the cliffs with a brass telescope; all evening he sat in a corner
of the parlour next the fire and drank rum and water very strong.
Mostly
he would not speak when spoken to, only look up sudden and fierce and
blow through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the people who came
about our house soon learned to let him be. Every day when he came
back
from his stroll he would ask if any seafaring men had gone by along
the
road. At first we thought it was the want of company of his own kind
that made him ask this question, but at last we began to see he was
desirous to avoid them. When a seaman did put up at the Admiral Benbow
(as now and then some did, making by the coast road for Bristol) he
would look in at him through the curtained door before he entered the
parlour; and he was always sure to be as silent as a mouse when any
such
was present. For me, at least, there was no secret about the matter,
for
I was, in a way, a sharer in his alarms. He had taken me aside one day
and promised me a silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I
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Treasure Island
would only keep my "weather-eye open for a seafaring man with one leg"
and let him know the moment he appeared. Often enough when the first
of the month came round and I applied to him for my wage, he would
only
blow through his nose at me and stare me down, but before the week was
out he was sure to think better of it, bring me my four-penny piece,
and
repeat his orders to look out for "the seafaring man with one leg."
How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On
stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house and
the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a
thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the
leg would...