We were now at the margin of the thicket.
“Huzza, mates, altogether!” shouted Merry, and the foremost broke into a run.
And suddenly, not ten yards farther, we beheld them stop. A low cry arose. Silver doubled his pace, digging away with the foot of his crutch like one possessed, and next moment he and I had come also to a dead halt.
Before us was a great excavation, not very recent, for the sides had fallen in and grass had sprouted on the bottom. In this were the shaft of a pick broken in two and the boards of several packing cases strewn around. On one of these boards I saw branded with a hot iron, the name Walrus — the name of Flint’s ship.
All was clear to probation. The cache had been found and rifled — the seven hundred thousand pounds were gone!
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE FALL OF A CHIEFTAIN
There never was such an overturn in this world. Each of these six men was as though he had been struck. But with Silver the blow passed almost instantly. Every thought of his soul had been set full-stretch, like a racer, on that money; well, he was brought up in a single second, dead; and he kept his head, found his temper, and changed his plan before the others had had time to realize the disappointment.
“Jim,” he whispered, “take that, and stand by for trouble.”
And he passed me a double-barreled pistol.
At the same time he began quietly moving northward, and in a few steps had put the hollow between us two and the other five. Then he looked at me and nodded, as much as to say: “Here is a narrow corner,” as, indeed, I thought it was. His looks were now quite friendly, and I was so revolted at these constant changes that I could not forbear whispering: “So you’ve changed sides again.”
There was no time left for him to answer in. The buccaneers, with oaths and cries, began to leap, one after another, into the pit, and to dig with their fingers, throwing the boards aside as they did so. Morgan found a piece of gold. He held it up with a perfect spout of oaths. It was a two-guinea piece, and it went from hand to hand among them for a quarter of a minute.
“Two guineas!” roared Merry, shaking it at Silver. “That’s your seven hundred thousand pounds, is it? You’re the man for bargains, ain’t you? You’re him that never bungled nothing, you wooden-headed lubber!”
“Dig away, boys,” said Silver, with the coolest insolence; “you’ll find some pig-nuts, and I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Pig-nuts!” repeated Merry, in a scream. “Mates, do you hear that? I tell you now, that man there knew it all along. Look in the face of him, and you’ll see it wrote there.”
“Ah, Merry,” remarked Silver, “standing for cap’n again? You’re a pushing lad, to be sure.”
But this time every one was entirely in Merry’s favor. They began to scramble out of the excavation, darting furious glances behind them. One thing I observed, which looked well for us; they all got out upon the opposite side from Silver.
Well, there we stood, two on one side, five on the other, the pit between us, and nobody screwed up high enough to offer the first blow. Silver never moved; he watched them, very upright on his crutch, and looked as cool as ever I saw him. He was brave, and no mistake.
At last, Merry seemed to think a speech might help matters.
“Mates,” says he, “there’s two of them alone there; one’s the old cripple that brought us all here and blundered us down to this; the other’s that cub that I mean to have the heart of. Now, mates—”
He was raising his arm and his voice, and plainly meant to lead a charge. But just then — crack! crack! crack! — three musket-shots flashed out of the thicket. Merry tumbled headforemost into the excavation; the man with the bandage spun round like a teetotum, and fell all his length upon his side, where he lay dead, but still twitching; and the other three turned and ran for it with all their might.
Before you could wink Long John had fired two barrels of a pistol into the struggling Merry; and as the man rolled up his eyes at him in the last agony, “George,” said he, “I reckon I settled you.”
At the same moment the doctor, Gray, and Ben Gunn joined us, with smoking muskets, from among the nutmeg-trees.
“Forward!” cried the doctor. “Double quick, my lads. We must head ’em off the boats.”
And we set off at a great pace, sometimes plunging through the bushes to the chest.
I tell you, but Silver was anxious to keep up with us. The work that man went through, leaping on his crutch till the muscles of his chest were fit to burst, was work no sound man ever equaled; and so thinks the doctor. As it was, he was already thirty yards behind us, and on the verge of strangling, when we reached the brow of the slope.
“Doctor,” he hailed, “see there! no hurry!”
Sure enough there was no hurry. In a more open part of the plateau we could see the three survivors still running in the same direction as they had started, right for Mizzen-mast Hill. We were already between them and the boats, and so we four sat down to breathe, while Long John, mopping his face, came slowly up with us.
“Thank ye kindly, doctor,” says he. “You came in in about the nick, I guess, for me and Hawkins. And so it’s you, Ben Gunn!” he added. “Well, you’re a nice one, to be sure.”
“I’m Ben Gunn, I am,” replied the maroon, wriggling like an eel in his embarrassment. “And,” he added, after a long pause, “how do, Mr. Silver! Pretty well, I thank ye, says you.”
“Ben, Ben,” murmured Silver, “to think as you’ve done me!”
The doctor sent back Gray for one of the pickaxes deserted, in their flight, by the mutineers; and then as we proceeded leisurely downhill to where the boats were lying, related, in a few words, what had taken place. It was a story that profoundly interested Silver, and Ben Gunn, the half-idiot maroon, was the hero from beginning to end.
Ben, in his long, lonely wanderings about the island, had found the skeleton. It was he that had rifled it; he had found the treasure; he had dug it up (it was the haft of his pickax that lay broken in the excavation); he had carried it on his back, in many weary journeys, from the foot of the tall pine to a cave he had on the two-pointed hill at the northeast angle of the island, and there it had lain stored in safety since two months before the arrival of the Hispaniola.
When the doctor had wormed this secret from him, on the afternoon of the attack, and when, next morning, he saw the anchorage deserted, he had gone to Silver, given him the chart, which was now useless; given him the stores, for Ben Gunn’s cave was well supplied with goats’ meat salted by himself; given anything and everything to get a chance of moving in safety from the stockade to the two-pointed hill, there to be clear of malaria and keep a guard upon the money.
“As for you, Jim,” he said, “it went against my heart, but I did what I thought best for those who had stood by their duty; and if you were not one of these, whose fault was it?”
That morning, finding that I was to be involved in the horrid disappointment he had prepared for the mutineers, he had run all the way to the cave, and, leaving squire to guard the captain, had taken Gray and the maroon, and started, making the diagonal across the island, to be at hand beside the pine. Soon, however, he saw that our party had the start of him; and Ben Gunn, being fleet of foot, had been dispatched in front to do his best alone. Then it had occurred to him to work upon the superstitions of his former shipmates; and he was so far successful that Gray and the doctor had come up and were already ambushed before the arrival of the treasure-hunters.
“Ah,” said Silver, “it was fortunate for me that I had Hawkins here. You would have let old John be cut to bits, and never given it a thought, doctor.”
“Not a thought,” replied Doctor Livesey, cheerily.
And by this time we had reached the gigs. The doctor, with the pickax, demolished one of them, and then we all got aboard the other, and set out to go round by the sea for North Inlet.
This was a run of eight or nine miles. Silver, though he was almost killed already with fa
tigue, was set to an oar, like the rest of us, and we were soon skimming swiftly over a smooth sea. Soon we passed out of the straits and doubled the southeast corner of the island, round which, four days ago, we had towed the Hispaniola.
As we passed the two-pointed hill we could see the black mouth of Ben Gunn’s cave, and a figure standing by it, leaning on a musket. It was the squire, and we waved a handkerchief and gave him three cheers, in which the voice of Silver joined as heartily as any.
Three miles farther, just inside the mouth of North Inlet, what should we meet but the Hispaniola, cruising by herself! The last flood had lifted her, and had there been much wind, or a strong tide current, as in the southern anchorage, we should never have found her more, or found her stranded beyond help. As it was, there was little amiss, beyond the wreck of the mainsail. Another anchor was got ready, and dropped in a fathom and a half of water. We all pulled round again to Rum Cove, the nearest point for Ben Gunn’s treasure-house; and then Gray, single-handed, returned with the gig to the Hispaniola, where he was to pass the night on guard.
A gentle slope ran up from the beach to the entrance of the cave. At the top, the squire met us. To me he was cordial and kind, saying nothing of my escapade, either in the way of blame or praise. At Silver’s polite salute he somewhat flushed.
“John Silver,” he said, “you’re a prodigious villain and impostor — a monstrous impostor, sir. I am told I am not to prosecute you. Well, then, I will not. But the dead men, sir, hang about your neck like millstones.”
“Thank you kindly, sir,” replied Long John, again saluting.
“I dare you to thank me!” cried the squire. “It is a gross dereliction of my duty. Stand back!”
And thereupon we all entered the cave. It was a large, airy place, with a little spring and a pool of clear water, overhung with ferns. The floor was sand. Before a big fire lay Captain Smollett; and in a far corner, only duskily flickered over by the blaze, I beheld great heaps of coin and quadrilaterals built of bars of gold. That was Flint’s treasure that we had come so far to seek, and that had cost already the lives of seventeen men from the Hispaniola. How many it had cost in the amassing, what blood and sorrow, what good ships scuttled on the deep, what brave men walking the plank blindfold, what shot of cannon, what shame and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell. Yet there were still three upon that island — Silver, and old Morgan, and Ben Gunn — who had each taken his share in these crimes, as each had hoped in vain to share in the reward.
“Come in, Jim,” said the captain. “You’re a good boy in your line, Jim; but I don’t think you and me’ll go to sea again. You’re too much of the born favorite for me. Is that you, John Silver? What brings you here, man?”
“Come back to my dooty, sir,” returned Silver.
“Ah!” said the captain, and that was all he said.
What a supper I had of it that night, with all my friends around me; and what a meal it was, with Ben Gunn’s salted goat, and some delicacies and a bottle of old wine from the Hispaniola. Never, I am sure, were people gayer or happier. And there was Silver, sitting back almost out of the firelight, but eating heartily, prompt to spring forward when anything was wanted, even joining quietly in our laughter — the same bland, polite, obsequious seaman of the voyage out.
CHAPTER XXXIV
AND LAST
The next morning we fell early to work, for the transportation of this great mass of gold near a mile by land to the beach, and thence three miles by boat to the Hispaniola, was a considerable task for so small a number of workmen. The three fellows still abroad upon the island did not greatly trouble us; a single sentry on the shoulder of the hill was sufficient to insure us against any sudden onslaught, and we thought, besides, they had had more than enough of fighting.
Therefore the work was pushed on briskly. Gray and Ben Gunn came and went with the boat, while the rest during their absences piled treasure on the beach. Two of the bars, slung in a rope’s end, made a good load for a grown man — one that he was glad to walk slowly with. For my part, as I was not much use at carrying, I was kept busy all day in the cave, packing the minted money into bread-bags.
It was a strange collection, like Billy Bones’s hoard for the diversity of coinage, but so much larger and so much more varied that I think I never had more pleasure than in sorting them. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Georges, and Louises, doubloons and double guineas and moidores and sequins, the pictures of all the kings of Europe for the last hundred years, strange oriental pieces stamped with what looked like wisps of string or bits of spider’s web, round pieces and square pieces, and pieces bored through the middle, as if to wear them round your neck — nearly every variety of money in the world must, I think, have found a place in that collection; and for number, I am sure they were like autumn leaves, so that my back ached with stooping and my fingers with sorting them out.
Nearly every variety of money in the world must have found a place in that collection
Day after day this work went on; by every evening a fortune had been stowed aboard, but there was another fortune waiting for the morrow; and all this time we heard nothing of the three surviving mutineers.
At last — I think it was on the third night — the doctor and I were strolling on the shoulder of the hill where it overlooks the lowlands of the isle, when, from out the thick darkness below, the wind brought us a noise between shrieking and singing. It was only a snatch that reached our ears, followed by the former silence.
“Heaven forgive them,” said the doctor; “’tis the mutineers!”
“All drunk, sir,” struck in the voice of Silver from behind us.
Silver, I should say, was allowed his entire liberty, and, in spite of daily rebuffs, seemed to regard himself once more as quite a privileged and friendly dependent. Indeed, it was remarkable how well he bore these slights, and with what unwearying politeness he kept at trying to ingratiate himself with all. Yet, I think, none treated him better than a dog, unless it was Ben Gunn, who was still terribly afraid of his old quartermaster, or myself, who had really something to thank him for; although for that matter, I suppose, I had reason to think even worse of him than anybody else, for I had seen him meditating a fresh treachery upon the plateau. Accordingly, it was pretty gruffly that the doctor answered him.
“Drunk or raving,” said he.
“Right you were, sir,” replied Silver; “and precious little odds which, to you and me.”
“I suppose you would hardly ask me to call you a humane man,” returned the doctor, with a sneer, “and so my feelings may surprise you, Master Silver. But if I were sure they were raving — as I am morally certain one, at least, of them is down with fever — I should leave this camp, and, at whatever risk to my own carcass, take them the assistance of my skill.”
“Ask your pardon, sir, you would be very wrong,” quoth Silver. “You would lose your precious life, and you may lay to that. I’m on your side now, hand and glove; and I shouldn’t wish for to see the party weakened, let alone yourself, seeing as I know what I owes you. But these men down there, they couldn’t keep their word — no, not supposing they wished to — and what’s more, they couldn’t believe as you could.”
“No,” said the doctor. “You’re the man to keep your word, we know that.”
Well, that was about the last news we had of the three pirates. Only once we heard a gunshot a great way off, and supposed them to be hunting. A council was held and it was decided that we must desert them on the island — to the huge glee, I must say, of Ben Gunn, and with the strong approval of Gray. We left a good stock of powder and shot, the bulk of the salt goat, a few medicines and some other necessaries, tools, clothing, a spare sail, a fathom or two of rope, and, by the particular desire of the doctor, a handsome present of tobacco.
That was about our last doing on the island. Before that we had got the treasure stowed and had shipped enough water and the remainder of the goat meat, in case of any distress; and at
last, one fine morning, we weighed anchor, which was about all that we could manage, and stood out of North Inlet, the same colors flying that the captain had flown and fought under at the palisade.
The three fellows must have been watching us closer than we thought for, as we soon had proved. For, coming through the narrows we had to lie very near the southern point, and there we saw all three of them kneeling together on a spit of sand with their arms raised in supplication. It went to all our hearts, I think, to leave them in that wretched state, but we could not risk another mutiny, and to take them home for the gibbet would have been a cruel sort of kindness. The doctor hailed them and told them of the stores we had left, and where they were to find them, but they continued to call us by name and appeal to us for God’s sake to be merciful and not leave them to die in such a place.
At last, seeing the ship still bore on her course, and was now swiftly drawing out of earshot, one of them — I know not which it was — leaped to his feet with a hoarse cry, whipped his musket to his shoulder, and sent a shot whistling over Silver’s head and through the mainsail.
After that we kept under cover of the bulwarks, and when next I looked out they had disappeared from the spit, and the spit itself had almost melted out of sight in the growing distance. That was, at least, the end of that; and before noon, to my inexpressible joy, the highest rock of Treasure Island had sunk into the blue round of sea.
We were so short of men that everyone on board had to bear a hand — only the captain lying on a mattress in the stern and giving his orders, for though greatly recovered he was still in want of quiet. We laid her head for the nearest port in Spanish America, for we could not risk the voyage home without fresh hands; and as it was, what with baffling winds and a couple of fresh gales, we were all worn out before we reached it.
Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson Page 20