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Treasure Island
Chapter 10. The Voyage
All that night we were in a great bustle, getting things stored in their place.
Boatfuls of the squire's friends, Mr. Blandly and the like, came off to wish him a good voyage and a safe return.
We never had a night at the Admiral Benbow when I had half the work.
I was dog-tired when, a little before dawn, the boatswain sounded his pipe and the crew began to man the capstan-bars.
I might have been twice as weary, yet I wouldn't have left the deck.
Everything was new and exciting, the brief commands, the whistle's shrill note, men bustling to their places in the ship lanterns' glimmer.
"Now, Barbecue, tip us a stave," cried one voice.
"The old one," cried another.
"Aye, aye, mates," said Long John, who was standing by with his crutch under his arm.
At once he broke out in the air and words I knew so well,
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest, "
And then the whole crew joined in the chorus,
"Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
And at the third "Ho!" they 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.
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 flitted by on either side.
Before I could lie down to snatch an hour of sleep, the HISPANIOLA had begun her voyage to the Isle of Treasure.
I'm not going to tell that voyage in detail.
It was fairly successful, the ship proved to be a good ship.
The crew were capable seamen, and the captain thoroughly understood his business.
But before we came near Treasure Island, two or three things had happened which need 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.
After a day or two at sea, he began to appear on deck with hazy eyes, red cheeks, a stuttering tongue, and other signs 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'd be almost sober and attend to his work at least passably.
In the meantime, we could never figure out where he got the drink.
That was the ship's mystery, Watch him as we pleased, we could do nothing to solve it.
When we asked him to his face, he'd only laugh if he were drunk.
If he were sober, he'd deny solemnly that he ever tasted anything but water.
He wasn't only useless as an officer and a bad influence among the men.
But it was plain that at this rate he'd 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.
"Overboard!" said the captain.
"Well, gentlemen, that saves the trouble of putting him in irons."
But there we were, without a mate, and it was necessary, of course, to promote one of the men.
The boatswain, Job Anderson, was the likeliest man aboard.
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, so I must speak of our ship's cook, Barbecue.
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.
Propped against it, yielding to every movement of the ship, he got on with his cooking like someone safe ashore.
Still stranger was it to see him in the heaviest weather cross the deck.
He had a line or two rigged up to help him across the widest spaces, they were called Long John's earrings.
He'd 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.
"He's no common man, Barbecue," said the coxswain to me.
"He had good schooling in his young days and can speak like a book when so minded."
"And brave, a lion's nothing alongside of Long John!"
"I seen him grapple four and knock their heads together, him unarmed."
All the crew respected and even obeyed him.
He had a way of talking to each man and doing everybody some particular service.
To me he was unweariedly kind, and always glad to see me in the galley.
He kept it as clean as a new pin, the dishes hanging up burnished and his parrot in a cage in one corner.
"Come away, Hawkins," he'd say.
"Come and have a yarn with John."
"Nobody's more welcome than yourself, my son."
"Sit you down and hear the news."
"Here's Cap'n Flint."
"I calls my parrot Cap'n Flint, after the famous buccaneer."
"Here's Cap'n Flint predicting success to our voyage."
"Wasn't you, Cap'n?"
And the parrot would say, with great speed, "Pieces of eight!"
"Pieces of eight!"
"Pieces of eight!" Till you wondered that it wasn't out of breath, or till John threw his handkerchief over the cage.
"Now, that bird,"
"He'd say, "She's maybe two hundred years old, Hawkins, and they mostly live forever.
"And if anybody's seen more wickedness, it must be the devil himself."
"She's sailed with England, the great Cap'n England, the pirate, and was at Madagascar, Malabar, Surinam, Providence, and Portobello."
"She was at the fishing up of the wrecked plate ships, and at the boarding of the Viceroy out of Goa."
"And to look at her you'd think she was a baby, but you smelt powder, didn't you, Cap'n?"
"Stand by to go about," the parrot would scream.
"Ah, she's a handsome craft, she's," the cook would say, and give her sugar from his pocket.
Then the bird would peck at the bars and swear straight on, passing belief for wickedness.
"There," John would add, "you can't touch pitch and not be mucked, lad."
"Here's this poor old innocent bird of mine swearing blue fire, and none the wiser, you may lay to that."
"She'd swear the same, in a manner of speaking, before a chaplain." And John touched his forelock, it 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.
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.
"She'll lie a point nearer the wind than a man has a right to expect of his own married wife, sir. But,"
He'd add, "all I say is, we're not home again, and I don't like the cruise."
The squire, at this, would turn away and march up and down the deck, chin in air.
"A trifle more of that man," he'd say, "and I shall explode."
We had some heavy weather, which only proved the qualities of the HISPANIOLA.
Every man on board seemed well content.
They must have been hard to please. I believe there never was a ship's company so spoiled since Noah put to sea.
Double grog was going on the least excuse.
There was duff on odd days, as, for instance, if the squire heard it was any man's birthday.
And always a barrel of apples stood broached in the waist for anyone to help himself that had a fancy.
"Never knew good come of it yet," the captain said to Dr. Livesey.
"Spoil forecastle hands, make devils. That's my belief."
But good did come of the apple barrel, as you shall hear.
For if it hadn't been for that, we'd have had no note of warning and might all have perished by the hand of treachery.
This is how it came about, and the following night made everything plain.
We had run up the trades to get the wind of the island we were after.
I'm not allowed to be more plain.
And now we were running down for it with a bright lookout day and night.
It was about the last day of our outward voyage by the largest computation.
Some time that night, or at latest before noon of the morrow, we should sight the Treasure Island.
We were heading S.S.W. and had a steady breeze abeam and a quiet sea.
The HISPANIOLA rolled steadily, dipping her bowsprit now and then with a whiff of spray, All was drawing alow and aloft.
Everyone was in the bravest spirits because we were now so near an end of the first part of our adventure.
Now, just after sundown, when all my work was over.
I was on my way to my berth, it occurred to me that I'd like an apple.
I ran on deck, the watch was all forward looking out for the island.
The man at the helm was watching the luff of the sail and whistling away gently to himself.
That was the only sound except the swish of the sea against the bows and around the sides of the ship.
I got bodily into the apple barrel and found there was hardly an apple left.
I sat down there in the dark.
The sound of the waters and the rocking ship made me sleepy.
I either fell asleep or was about to.
Then a heavy man sat down close by with a loud clash.
The barrel shook as he leaned his shoulders against it.
I was just about to jump up when the man began to speak.
It was Silver's voice, Before I'd heard a dozen words, I wouldn't have shown myself for all the world.
I lay there, trembling and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiosity.
For from these dozen words I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended on me alone.