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Treasure Island
Chapter 17. Narrative Continued by the Doctor, The Jolly-boat's Last Trip
This fifth trip was quite different from any of the others.
In the first place, the little boat that we were in was seriously overloaded.
Five grown men, and three of them.
Trelawney, Redruth, and the captain, over six feet tall, was already more than she was meant to carry.
Add to that the powder, pork, and bread-bags.
The side of the boat was almost underwater at the back.
Several times we took in water, and my trousers and coat tails were soaking wet before we had gone a hundred yards.
The captain made us balance the boat, and we got her to sit a little more evenly.
All the same, we were afraid to breathe.
The tide was now going out, a strong rippling current ran westward through the basin.
It then turned south and flowed out to sea down the straits we had entered that morning.
Even the ripples were a danger to our overloaded boat.
But the worst was that the current swept us off our true course and away from our proper landing-place behind the point.
If we let the current have its way, we'd come ashore beside the small boats, where the pirates might appear at any moment.
"I can't keep her heading for the stockade, sir," I said to the captain.
I was steering, while he and Redruth, two fresh men, were at the oars.
"The tide keeps pushing her down. Could you pull a little stronger?"
"Not without sinking the boat," he said.
"You must hold your course, sir, if you please, hold your course until you see you're gaining."
I tried and found the tide kept sweeping us westward.
I had to point her head due east, almost at right angles to the way we ought to go.
"We'll never get ashore at this rate," I said.
"If it's the only course we can take, sir, we must take it," replied the captain.
"We must keep upstream. You see, sir,"
He went on, "If we once drop to the wrong side of the landing-place, it's hard to say where we'd get ashore."
He went on, "There is also the chance of being attacked by the small boats."
"He went on, "But the way we're going, the current must slow down, and then we can turn back along the shore.
"The current's already weaker, sir," said Gray, who was sitting in the front of the boat.
"You can turn her a bit."
"Thank you, my man," I said, as if nothing had happened, for we had all quietly decided to treat him like one of ourselves.
Suddenly the captain spoke up again, and I thought his voice was a little changed.
"The gun!" he said.
"I've thought of that," I said, for I was sure he was thinking of an attack on the fort.
"They could never get the gun ashore, and if they did, they could never drag it through the woods."
"Look behind us, doctor," replied the captain.
We had completely forgotten the long nine.
And there, to our horror, were the five rogues busy around it, taking off its cover, as they called the thick tarpaulin under which it sailed.
The round-shot and powder for the gun had been left behind.
A stroke with an axe would put it all into the hands of the evil ones on the ship.
"Israel was Flint's gunner," said Gray hoarsely.
At any risk, we pointed the boat's head directly for the landing-place.
By this time we had gotten so far out of the main current that we could steer even at our necessarily slow rate of rowing.
And I could keep her steady for the goal.
But worst was that with the course I now held we turned our side instead of our back to the HISPANIOLA.
We thus offered a target as big as a barn door.
I could hear as well as see that brandy-faced rascal Israel Hands dropping a round-shot onto the deck.
"Who's the best shot?" asked the captain.
"Mr. Trelawney, without a doubt," I said.
"Mr. Trelawney, will you please pick off one of these men for me, sir? Hands, if possible," said the captain.
Trelawney was as cool as steel, he checked the powder in his gun.
"Now," cried the captain, "easy with that gun, sir, or you'll sink the boat. Everyone get ready to balance her when he aims."
The squire raised his gun, the rowing stopped, and we leaned over to the other side to keep the balance.
Everything was so well arranged that we didn't take in a drop.
They had the gun, by this time, turned around on its swivel, and Hands, who was at the front with the rammer, was the most exposed.
However, we had no luck, for just as Trelawney fired, he bent down, the ball whistled over him.
And it was one of the other four who fell.
The cry he gave was echoed not only by his companions on board but by a great number of voices from the shore.
Looking in that direction, I saw the other pirates coming out from among the trees and jumping into their places in the boats.
"Here come the small boats, sir," I said.
"Row hard, then," cried the captain.
"We mustn't mind if we sink her now. If we can't get ashore, everything is lost."
"Only one of the small boats is being manned, sir," I added.
"The crew of the other is most likely going around by shore to cut us off."
"They'll have a hot run, sir," replied the captain.
Jack ashore. It's not them I mind, it's the round-shot. Carpet bowls! Lady's maid couldn't miss. Tell us, squire, when you see match and we'll stop rowing.
In the meantime, we had been making good progress for a boat so overloaded.
And we had taken in only a little water in the process.
We were close in, thirty or forty strokes from beaching her, as ebb tide had uncovered a narrow strip of sand below trees.
The small boat was no longer to be feared, the little point had already hidden it from our eyes.
The ebb tide, which had so cruelly delayed us, was now making up for it and delaying our attackers.
The one source of danger was the gun.
"If I dared," said the captain, "I'd stop and pick off another man."
But it was clear that they meant nothing to delay their shot.
They hadn't even looked at their fallen comrade, though he wasn't dead, and I could see him trying to crawl away.
"Ready!" cried the squire.
"Hold!" cried the captain, quick as an echo.
And he and Redruth pulled backward with a great heave that sent her stern completely underwater.
The gun's report came at the same moment.
This was the first that Jim heard, the sound of the squire's shot not having reached him.
Where the ball passed, none of us knew exactly.
But I think it must have gone over our heads and that the wind of it may have added to our disaster.
The boat sank by the stern, gently, in three feet of water, leaving the captain and me facing each other on our feet.
The other three went completely under and came up again soaked and gasping.
So far there was no great harm.
No lives were lost, and we could wade ashore safely.
But there were all our supplies at the bottom, and to make things worse, only two guns out of five were still usable.
Mine I had grabbed from my knees and held over my head, by instinct.
As for the captain, he had carried his over his shoulder by a strap, and like a wise man, with the lock facing up.
The other three had gone down with the boat.
To add to our worry, we heard voices already coming closer to us in the woods along the shore.
We faced the danger of being cut off from the stockade in our half-crippled state.
We also feared whether Hunter and Joyce would stand firm if attacked by half a dozen men, Hunter was steady, that we knew.
Joyce was a doubtful case, a pleasant, polite man for a valet and to brush one's clothes, but not entirely suited for a man of war.
With this in mind, we waded ashore as fast as we could, leaving the jolly-boat and about half our powder and provisions.