Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Page 2

  At first I had supposed “the dead man’s chest” to be that identical big box of his upstairs in the front room, and the thought had been mingled in my nightmares with that of the one-legged seafaring man. But by this time we had all long ceased to pay any particular notice to the song; it was new, that night, to nobody but Doctor Livesey, and on him I observed it did not produce an agreeable effect, for he looked up for a moment quite angrily before he went on with his talk to old Taylor, the gardener, on a new cure for rheumatics. In the meantime the captain gradually brightened up at his own music, and at last flapped his hand upon the table before him in a way we all knew to mean — silence. The voices stopped at once, all but Doctor Livesey’s; he went on as before, speaking clear and kind, and drawing briskly at his pipe between every word or two. The captain glared at him for a while, flapped his hand again, glared still harder, and at last broke out with a villainous oath: “Silence, there, between decks!”

  “Were you addressing me, sir?” said the doctor; and when the ruffian had told him, with another oath, that this was so, replied, “I have only one thing to say to you, sir, that if you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!”

  The old fellow’s fury was awful. He sprang to his feet, drew and opened a sailor’s clasp-knife, and balancing it open on the palm of his hand, threatened to pin the doctor to the wall.

  The doctor never so much as moved. He spoke to him, as before, over his shoulder, and in the same tone of voice, rather high, so that all the room might hear, but perfectly calm and steady:

  “If you do not put that knife this instant into your pocket, I promise, upon my honor, you shall hang at the next assizes.”

  Then followed a battle of looks between them; but the captain soon knuckled under, put up his weapon, and resumed his seat, grumbling like a beaten dog.

  “And now, sir,” continued the doctor, “since I now know there’s such a fellow in my district, you may count I’ll have an eye upon you day and night. I’m not a doctor only, I’m a magistrate; and if I catch a breath of complaint against you, if it’s only for a piece of incivility like to-night’s, I’ll take effectual means to have you hunted down and routed out of this. Let that suffice.”

  Soon after Doctor Livesey’s horse came to the door and he rode away, but the captain held his peace that evening, and for many evenings to come.

  CHAPTER II

  BLACK DOG APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS

  It was not very long after this that there occurred the first of the mysterious events that rid us at last of the captain, though not, as you will see, of his affairs. It was a bitter cold winter, with long, hard frosts and heavy gales; and it was plain from the first that my poor father was little likely to see the spring. He sank daily, and my mother and I had all the inn upon our hands, and were kept busy enough without paying much regard to our unpleasant guest.

  It was one January morning, very early — a pinching, frosty morning — the cove all gray with hoar-frost, the ripple lapping softly on the stones, the sun still low, and only touching the hill-tops and shining far to seaward. The captain had risen earlier than usual, and set out down the beach, his cutlass swinging under the broad skirts of the old blue coat, his brass telescope under his arm, his hat tilted back upon his head. I remember his breath hanging like smoke in his wake as he strode off, and the last sound I heard of him, as he turned the big rock, was a loud snort of indignation, as though his mind was still running upon Doctor Livesey.

  Well, mother was upstairs with father, and I was laying the breakfast table against the captain’s return, when the parlor door opened and a man stepped in on whom I had never set my eyes before. He was a pale, tallowy creature, wanting two fingers of the left hand; and, though he wore a cutlass, he did not look much like a fighter. I had always my eyes open for seafaring men, with one leg or two, and I remember this one puzzled me. He was not sailorly, and yet he had a smack of the sea about him too.

  I asked him what was for his service, and he said he would take rum, but as I was going out of the room to fetch it he sat down upon a table and motioned to me to draw near. I paused where I was, with my napkin in my hand.

  “Come here, sonny,” said he. “Come nearer here.”

  I took a step nearer.

  “Is this here table for my mate Bill?” he asked, with a kind of leer.

  I told him I did not know his mate Bill, and this was for a person who stayed at our house, whom we called the captain.

  “Well,” said he, “my mate Bill would be called the captain, as like as not. He has a cut on one cheek, and a mighty pleasant way with him, particularly in drink, has my mate Bill. We’ll put it, for argument like, that your captain has a cut on one cheek — and we’ll put it, if you like, that that cheek’s the right one. Ah, well! I told you. Now, is my mate Bill in this here house?”

  I told him he was out walking.

  “Which way, sonny? Which way is he gone?”

  And when I had pointed out the rock and told him how the captain was likely to return, and how soon, and answered a few other questions, “Ah,” said he, “this’ll be as good as drink to my mate Bill.”

  The expression of his face as he said these words was not at all pleasant, and I had my own reasons for thinking that the stranger was mistaken, even supposing he meant what he said. But it was no affair of mine, I thought; and, besides, it was difficult to know what to do.

  The stranger kept hanging about just inside the inn door, peering round the corner like a cat waiting for a mouse. Once I stepped out myself into the road, but he immediately called me back, and, as I did not obey quick enough for his fancy, a most horrible change came over his tallowy face, and he ordered me in with an oath that made me jump. As soon as I was back again he returned to his former manner, half-fawning, half-sneering, patted me on the shoulder, told me I was a good boy, and he had taken quite a fancy to me. “I have a son of my own,” said he, “as like you as two blocks, and he’s all the pride of my ‘art. But the great thing for boys is discipline, sonny — discipline. Now, if you had sailed along of Bill, you wouldn’t have stood there to be spoke to twice — not you. That was never Bill’s way, nor the way of sich as sailed with him. And here, sure enough, is my mate Bill, with a spy-glass under his arm, bless his old ‘art, to be sure. You and me’ll just go back into the parlor, sonny, and get behind the door, and we’ll give Bill a little surprise — bless his ‘art, I say again.”

  So saying, the stranger backed along with me into the parlor, and put me behind him into the corner, so that we were both hidden by the open door. I was very uneasy and alarmed, as you may fancy, and it rather added to my fears to observe that the stranger was certainly frightened himself. He cleared the hilt of his cutlass and loosened the blade in the sheath, and all the time we were waiting there he kept swallowing as if he felt what we used to call a lump in the throat.

  At last in strode the captain, slammed the door behind him, without looking to the right or left, and marched straight across the room to where his breakfast awaited him.

  “Bill,” said the stranger, in a voice that I thought he had tried to make bold and big.

  The captain spun round on his heel and fronted us; all the brown had gone out of his face, and even his nose was blue; he had the look of a man who sees a ghost, or the Evil One, or something worse, if anything can be; and, upon my word, I felt sorry to see him, all in a moment, turn so old and sick.

  “Come, Bill, you know me; you know an old shipmate, Bill, surely,” said the stranger.

  The captain made a sort of gasp.

  “Black Dog!” said he.

  “And who else?” returned the other, getting more at his ease. “Black Dog as ever was, come for to see his old shipmate, Billy, at the ‘Admiral Benbow’ Inn. Ah, Bill, Bill, we have seen a sight of times, us two, since I lost them two talons,” holding up his mutilated hand.

  “Now, look here,” said the captain; “you’ve run me down; here I am; well, then, spe
ak up; what is it?”

  “That’s you, Bill,” returned Black Dog; “you’re in the right of it, Billy. I’ll have a glass of rum from this dear child here, as I’ve took such a liking to; and we’ll sit down, if you please, and talk square, like old shipmates.”

  When I returned with the rum they were already seated on either side of the captain’s breakfast table — Black Dog next to the door, and sitting sideways, so as to have one eye on his old shipmate and one, as I thought, on his retreat.

  He bade me go and leave the door wide open. “None of your keyholes for me, sonny,” he said, and I left them together and retired into the bar.

  For a long time, though I certainly did my best to listen, I could hear nothing but a low gabbling; but at last the voices began to grow higher, and I could pick up a word or two, mostly oaths, from the captain.

  “No, no, no, no; and an end of it!” he cried once. And again, “If it comes to swinging, swing all, say I.”

  Then all of a sudden there was a tremendous explosion of oaths and other noises; the chair and table went over in a lump, a clash of steel followed, and then a cry of pain, and the next instant I saw Black Dog in full flight, and the captain hotly pursuing, both with drawn cutlasses, and the former streaming blood from the left shoulder. Just at the door the captain aimed at the fugitive one last tremendous cut, which would certainly have split him to the chin had it not been intercepted by our big signboard of “Admiral Benbow.” You may see the notch on the lower side of the frame to this day.

  That blow was the last of the battle. Once out upon the road, Black Dog, in spite of his wound, showed a wonderful clean pair of heels, and disappeared over the edge of the hill in half a minute. The captain, for his part, stood staring at the signboard like a bewildered man. Then he passed his hand over his eyes several times, and at last turned back into the house.

  “Jim,” says he, “rum”; and as he spoke he reeled a little, and caught himself with one hand against the wall.

  “Are you hurt?” cried I.

  “Rum,” he repeated. “I must get away from here. Rum! rum!”

  I ran to fetch it, but I was quite unsteadied by all that had fallen out, and I broke one glass and fouled the tap, and while I was still getting in my own way, I heard a loud fall in the parlor, and, running in, beheld the captain lying full length upon the floor. At the same instant my mother, alarmed by the cries and fighting, came running downstairs to help me. Between us we raised his head. He was breathing very loud and hard, but his eyes were closed and his face was a horrible color.

  “Dear, deary me!” cried my mother, “what a disgrace upon the house! And your poor father sick!”

  In the meantime we had no idea what to do to help the captain, nor any other thought but that he had got his death-hurt in the scuffle with the stranger. I got the rum, to be sure, and tried to put it down his throat, but his teeth were tightly shut, and his jaws as strong as iron. It was a happy relief for us when the door opened and Doctor Livesey came in, on his visit to my father.

  “Oh, doctor,” we cried, “what shall we do? Where is he wounded?”

  “Wounded? A fiddlestick’s end!” said the doctor. “No more wounded than you or I. The man has had a stroke, as I warned him. Now, Mrs. Hawkins, just you run upstairs to your husband and tell him, if possible, nothing about it. For my part, I must do my best to save this fellow’s trebly worthless life; and, Jim, you get me a basin.”

  When I got back with the basin the doctor had already ripped up the captain’s sleeve and exposed his great sinewy arm. It was tattooed in several places. “Here’s luck,” “A fair wind,” and “Billy Bones, his fancy,” were very neatly and clearly executed on the forearm; and up near the shoulder there was a sketch of a gallows and a man hanging from it — done, as I thought, with great spirit.

  “Prophetic,” said the doctor, touching this picture with his finger. “And now, Master Billy Bones, if that be your name, we’ll have a look at the color of your blood. Jim,” he said, “are you afraid of blood?”

  “No, sir,” said I.

  “Well, then,” said he, “you hold the basin,” and with that he took his lancet and opened a vein.

  A great deal of blood was taken before the captain opened his eyes and looked mistily about him. First he recognized the doctor with an unmistakable frown; then his glance fell upon me, and he looked relieved. But suddenly his color changed, and he tried to raise himself, crying:

  “Where’s Black Dog?”

  “There is no Black Dog here,” said the doctor, “except what you have on your own back. You have been drinking rum; you have had a stroke precisely as I told you; and I have just, very much against my own will, dragged you headforemost out of the grave. Now, Mr. Bones—”

  “That’s not my name,” he interrupted.

  “Much I care,” returned the doctor. “It’s the name of a buccaneer of my acquaintance, and I call you by it for the sake of shortness, and what I have to say to you is this: One glass of rum won’t kill you, but if you take one you’ll take another and another, and I stake my wig if you don’t break off short, you’ll die — do you understand that? — die, and go to your own place, like the man in the Bible. Come, now, make an effort. I’ll help you to your bed for once.”

  Between us, with much trouble, we managed to hoist him upstairs, and laid him on his bed, where his head fell back on the pillow, as if he were almost fainting.

  “Now, mind you,” said the doctor, “I clear my conscience — the name of rum for you is death.”

  And with that he went off to see my father, taking me with him by the arm.

  “This is nothing,” he said, as soon as he had closed the door. “I have drawn blood enough to keep him quiet awhile; he should lie for a week where he is — that is the best thing for him and you, but another stroke would settle him.”

  CHAPTER III

  THE BLACK SPOT

  About noon I stopped at the captain’s door with some cooling drinks and medicines. He was lying very much as we had left him, only a little higher, and he seemed both weak and excited.

  “Jim,” he said, “you’re the only one here that’s worth anything; and you know I’ve always been good to you. Never a month but I’ve given you a silver fourpenny for yourself. And now you see, mate, I’m pretty low, and deserted by all; and, Jim, you’ll bring me one noggin of rum, now, won’t you, matey?”

  “The doctor—” I began.

  But he broke in, cursing the doctor in a feeble voice, but heartily. “Doctors is all swabs,” he said; “and that doctor there, why, what do he know about seafaring men? I been in places hot as pitch, and mates dropping round with yellow jack, and the blessed land a-heaving like the sea with earthquakes — what do the doctor know of lands like that? — and I lived on rum, I tell you. It’s been meat and drink, and man and wife, to me; and if I am not to have my rum now I’m a poor old hulk on a lee shore. My blood’ll be on you, Jim, and that doctor swab,” and he ran on again for a while with curses. “Look, Jim, how my fingers fidges,” he continued in the pleading tone. “I can’t keep ’em still, not I. I haven’t had a drop this blessed day. That doctor’s a fool, I tell you. If I don’t have a drain o’ rum, Jim, I’ll have the horrors; I seen some on ’em already. I seen old Flint in the corner there, behind you; as plain as print, I seen him; and if I get the horrors, I’m a man that has lived rough, and I’ll raise Cain. Your doctor hisself said one glass wouldn’t hurt me. I’ll give you a golden guinea for a noggin, Jim.”

  He was growing more and more excited, and this alarmed me, for my father, who was very low that day, needed quiet; besides, I was reassured by the doctor’s words, now quoted to me, and rather offended by the offer of a bribe.

  “I want none of your money,” said I, “but what you owe my father. I’ll get you one glass and no more.”

  When I brought it to him he seized it greedily and drank it out.

  “Ay, ay,” said he, “that’s some better, sure enough. And now, matey, d
id that doctor say how long I was to lie here in this old berth?”

  “A week at least,” said I.

  “Thunder!” he cried. “A week! I can’t do that; they’d have the black spot on me by then. The lubbers is going about to get the wind of me this blessed moment; lubbers as couldn’t keep what they got, and want to nail what is another’s. Is that seamanly behavior, now, I want to know? But I’m a saving soul. I never wasted good money of mine, nor lost it neither; and I’ll trick ’em again. I’m not afraid on ‘em. I’ll shake out another reef, matey, and daddle ’em again.”

  As he was thus speaking, he had risen from bed with great difficulty, holding to my shoulder with a grip that almost made me cry out, and moving his legs like so much dead weight. His words, spirited as they were in meaning, contrasted sadly with the weakness of the voice in which they were uttered. He paused when he had got into a sitting position on the edge.

  “That doctor’s done me,” he murmured. “My ears is singing. Lay me back.”

  Before I could do much to help him he had fallen back again to his former place, where he lay for a while silent.

  “Jim,” he said, at length, “you saw that seafaring man to-day?”

  “Black Dog?” I asked.

  “Ah! Black Dog,” said he. “He’s a bad ‘un; but there’s worse that put him on. Now, if I can’t get away nohow, and they tip me the black spot, mind you, it’s my old sea-chest they’re after; you get on a horse — you can, can’t you? Well, then, you get on a horse and go to — well, yes, I will! — to that eternal doctor swab, and tell him to pipe all hands — magistrates and sich — and he’ll lay ’em aboard at the ‘Admiral Benbow’ — all old Flint’s crew, man and boy, all on ’em that’s left. I was first mate, I was, old Flint’s first mate, and I’m the on’y one as knows the place. He gave it me at Savannah, when he lay a-dying, like as if I was to now, you see. But you won’t peach unless they get the black spot on me, or unless you see that Black Dog again, or a seafaring man with one leg, Jim — him above all.”