My efforts brought little money but a great deal of pleasant conversation with the inhabitants of the quayside. I gave out that I was waiting for a ship-mate, my excuse for watching everything that passed over or under Bideford Bridge. I had no idea how help would arrive, by land or sea, but I confidently expected one day to see a crowd of my ship-mates come marching down the quay.
The winter days drew in and the fishermen spent more time ashore painting and mending. Christmas gusted in on a fine gale and was soon gone. I had written to Long John and now received a cheery letter in his bold hand bidding me wait a little longer and to write again should I need anything. The New Year too rode in on a wild storm.
One grey and windy afternoon, trying to keep the chill out of my bones, I walked across Bideford Bridge. The tide was out and the Torridge had shrunk to a dark runnel gurgling through the mud between the great piers. A blind beggar wrapped in a ragged grey coat came tapping towards me.
As he approached, he was whistling. I recall thinking how strange that such a creature, in such a place, should be whistling the Walrus’s old song ‘Fifteen Men’. Then I recognised him. It was Pew.
“Can you spare a ha’penny for a blind old man, young fellow? I can tell you’re a fine young man by the way you walk, you know. Spare a ha’penny for a poor old sailor that’s lost the very light from his eyes.” He came up to me and as I started to name him again he hissed, “Shut up, you young fool!” and started to whine again. “Help a poor old man, young sir.”
As I fumbled in my pocket, Pew whispered, “Start out on the Bude road at eight o’clock tomorrow, and I’ll wait for you on the road.” Then he set off again. “A whole penny. Thank’ee, young sir, you’re a fine young gentleman and no mistake. Thank’ee, sir.” And he tapped away. With difficulty I collected my wits and continued across the bridge. Long John had sent Blind Pew to help.
Next morning found me marching out on the Bude road, meeting carts and farmer’s wives with their pack-ponies coming to market, searching for the blind beggar. I walked a long way looking for Blind Pew and was on the point of turning back and looking again when I saw him ahead, climbing slowly up a hill.
“Well then, Dick,” he said as I came up to him. “Are you glad to see your old ship-mate? Are we steering the right course, boy? I’ve come to keelhaul Billy Bones, I have. Long John wants me to pass on our compliments to him.” Pew had been well accustomed to his own company, since he lost his sight, and often held long discussions with himself. Even in conversation he frequently managed both sides of a discussion single-handedly.
I wanted to know where the others were, and just what Long John thought two boys and a blind beggar might do to Billy while he was safely tucked away in the Admiral Benbow. Even if Pew had his eyes back, we could hardly wrest the map from him without bringing the whole countryside out against us. But those were not Pew’s orders at all.
“Oh yes,” he said, “Long John’s compliments to you, Billy, and would you be pleased to hand over that chart? Just hand it over nice and peaceful like, and he’ll forget all about the sorry dance you’ve led him. You can beach yourself here and no questions. But if it don’t please you to hand it over...”
Pew had set out with Black Dog to meet us. If Black Dog was the eyes and legs of the expedition, then Pew was the brain. He had sent Black Dog on to Bude to meet Caspar and return to Welcombe Mouth. If all went well, he would talk to Billy at the Admiral Benbow today. Long John had sent a message or, more exactly, a simple threat. If Billy parted with the chart peacefully, he might rest undisturbed in his retreat. If he tried to keep it, we would take it from his dead body.
Long John had written me a kind letter that started with compliments and went on to repeat Pew’s orders. If Billy tried to run again, we were to catch him in the open and take the map from him by force. If he stayed at the inn, we were to lie up and wait for Long John. The letter was quite clear; lie up somewhere near the inn, close enough for word of our presence to get to Billy. A few days of waiting for us to strike might scare him into volunteering the map.
By the time Pew and I arrived on the deep road running towards the village, Black Dog had already met Billy. He was waiting for us beside the road, looking pale and angry. For a little time all we could only get oaths and imprecations from him, but eventually the tale of the meeting emerged much as Livesey has told it. Billy and Black Dog sat down to drink together, and Black Dog questioned Billy about the chart. At first he denied any knowledge of it and would talk only of his old ship-mates and his voyages with Flint. Then, dreaming aloud, he talked of fitting out a fishing boat or a coaster and going back to search for Flint’s treasure. In his wandering, he let slip that he knew the latitude and longitude of the island, and realised he had given himself away. Straight away, he lost his temper and attacked Black Dog. “Chased me right out of the inn, he did,” complained Black Dog. “Near split me in two with his cutlass, and me not able to stand and spit him, or we’d have lost the chart for good.”
Black Dog led us up the side of the valley to where Caspar was watching the inn. Here, with our backs to an old thorn, we could peep over the dead bracken and brambles at the Admiral Benbow and the village. A pretty place in summer, no doubt, but in January the dead grass on the bank was wet and there was mud underfoot. The thorn gave no shelter from the west wind with its driving rain. We grew heartily sick of the view from that hill-side over the following wintry days.
We set up camp in a steep coppice a short way up the valley from the village. We had company. A couple of gypsy families were also camped there. Pew sent Caspar back to Bude for a tarpaulin next day, and we lay on the brush wood the gypsies gave us.
They led a bleak existence in winter. A local farmer had rented the coppice to them, and they were engaged in making thatching spars and clothes pegs. Not every day, of course. There is hardly a market for spars at that time of year. When the weather was too bad, they just sat crowded in one of the tents, talking and telling stories. They spoke their own language amongst themselves, but when we visited they swapped stories with us in English.
I own to sharing the popular prejudices against gypsies. Chickens and worse are stolen where they pass by. They are a dirty lot, living close to the ground, and it is true that the men in particular will go a long way to avoid doing a hard day’s work. But set against that, they are wonderfully good company with a fund of talk and sayings that lodge in your memory for years. I cannot say that we stole any babies. Nor did we eat any hedgehogs (there being none around in winter.) We did dine several times on hare and pheasant that were not legally purchased, and I will not deny there were stolen turnips along with them.
The young children, boys and girls, were very forward in an innocent sort of way, and it was through one of them, called Lizzy, that I had my fortune read. She was, I suppose, about ten years of age, a nut-brown complexion kept passably clean, and had long black wavy hair. She wore gold rings in her ears and had black eyes that promised to be the ruin of men in a few years time. She drew me to her grandmother, the most respected member of the band, to have my fortune told.
If Grandmother had looked like her granddaughter, it must have been many years before. Now she looked little, very small in fact, and rather bent. Her white hair was wrapped within a patterned brown headscarf. She had no rings in her ears but a gold cross hung about her neck, an incongruous ornament for a fortune-teller. Her face was much creased, with a fierce nose jutting out of the wrinkles. Only in her eyes could you recognise her granddaughter, bright, black and piercing.
She insisted on silver in the traditional way, saying that a free fortune was no fortune at all. I gave her a penny that she hid beneath her shawl. Then she led me to the tent door-way, needing light by which to see my palm. She sat on a stool and I was forced to kneel at her feet. My friend stood at her shoulder where she could see all that passed and look into my face.
First the old lady took both my hands in hers and examined the backs of them. Then she turned
them over and drawing them closer to her face studied them closely. Gruffly she told me to look into her eyes. She stared straight at me. She was looking, so it seemed, deep down inside me. Then closing her eyes, her fingers traced my palms one after the other.
“You’re a sailor man, a travelling man. You’ve travelled early, you’ll travel soon, and you’ll travel late. You’ll have silver in your hands early and be a poor man. You’ll have little in them late and be a rich one.”
“There’s a black-haired lady early,” (here the girl sighed), “but not late. And another, black-haired girl late, but not early.”
She stopped and started to hum to herself; and in a more normal voice, “There’s black work ahead, very black. So black that you’ll be wearing black for many a year. ‘Tis strange that a young man should meddle with such things. It wouldn’t serve, but that’s what the voices say. You’ll find a treasure you haven’t looked to find.” She started to hum again.
“A treasure, for sure. I hope you’ll recognise it when it comes. For you’ll lose it, certain as anything. You’ll find it and lose it. ‘Tis strange...”
Still with eyes closed, she reached up to my head—a hand on either side, with a horny thumb pressed into each temple. “Hold still,” she hissed as I started to pull away, “Put your hands on mine, girl, and feel what you feel. You won’t find a fortune like this every day.” The girl moved behind me and I could feel her against my back as she added a light pressure to her grandmother’s hands. “What do you feel, girl? Do you see the break? Do you see the change in his life?”
Her voice went back to the sing-song tone, “What you are now, you’ll not be then. What you will be then, you couldn’t be now. You’re a black man in a white shirt now, but you’ll be a white man in a black shirt then.”
Suddenly she opened her eyes and let me free. The girl put her hands on my shoulders as the old lady looked at me again. “A rare fate, young man,” she whispered. “But follow it, boy. There’s nothing you can do to change it now. Follow it, and at least you’ll live through it. But you’ll be a very different man the next time you pass this way.” She rose and went back into the tent. Just then Pew called me and I made my way up to our eyrie with a long watch to ponder on what had passed.
The three of us with eyes took turn and turn about out on the hillside while Pew waited in the damp and miserable coppice for us. Sometimes he would walk out to beg, although not from the village, and in this way we heard what was happening at the inn. We heard of Billy’s seizure after Black Dog’s visit, and of Hawkins’s father’s illness, as well as a lot of village gossip about people we never knew.
Black Dog, in charge of our party, had a man on watch all the day-light hours. Caspar and I would have left it alone once Pew had word of Billy’s state of health, but Black Dog said that Long John would hang us all if he came and found no one on watch.
We became familiar with the sight of all the village people and knew who was married to whom, who owned the children and chickens. We had no sight of Billy but the Doctor (that was Livesey, whom we were to know better) came and went several times. Eventually the priest came late one afternoon and we heartily wished his concern was with Hawkins’s father and not with our quarry.
The next day came sunny and warm, with a promise of primroses to join the snowdrops in our coppice. There was a great to-do at the inn with many people coming and going, and late in the morning Hawkins’s father was carried out in his coffin and laid on a farm cart. The whole village followed the bier up the valley towards the church.
I was just wondering whether to leave my post and tell Black Dog that the inn was probably deserted when dropping down from the cliff path into the valley came three figures, indisputably sailors. Israel Hands, O’Brien and George Merry. They strolled past the front of the inn, looking at first this sight then another, as if they were walking out after Sunday lunch. They made their way up the valley towards our coppice. I admit to an error here. If I had had the wit to rush down now and lead the others to the inn, we could have taken the chart and been gone before the village returned. However, it was not to be and you may be sure I thought bitterly of it afterwards. In the end, everything turned out for the best for the finding of the chart was the making of Hawkins.
My time dragged on and on. I wanted to go down below and greet my ship-mates but duty of a sort kept me at my station. People started to come back from the church, and Hawkins with his mother returned to the Admiral Benbow. The village came back to life and human noises mingled with those of the animals. I fretted beneath the thorn bush. It was long past the hour for my relief.
Suddenly a black shadow appeared through the bushes beside the road below. I made out Pew, tapping his way slowly through the village towards the inn. As he passed its door, he seemed to sense where he was and turned and spoke to someone unseen. He disappeared inside. After a minute or maybe two, he flew out again. His rags flying about him and with his staff under his arm, he tumbled down the steps and ran a few steps into the road. Stretching his staff far out in front of him, he ran as fast as he dared away from the inn, slowing to a walk only when he reached the houses of the village.
Israel and Caspar came up soon afterwards and I learnt the meaning of what I had seen. Pew had carried the Black Spot to Billy, and Billy still had enough power in him to make his displeasure felt. (The Black Spot is a rather grand name for a sort of round-robin but, pirates having little learning, the spot in the middle has more significance to them than their names around the edge.)
Bread and broth waited for me in the coppice, and a welcome from George and O’Brien. The older men were arguing over what should be done next. Their main difficulty was Long John, waiting aboard a lugger in Kitts Hole nearby. He could not wait there long for the weather would surely turn that wicked coast into a lee shore soon. Black Dog was all for facing up to Billy that afternoon.
“Let’s go in and cut him out,” he said. “I’m sick of this place. Let’s do something and get out of this d----d wood.”
Pew sneered. “That’s all you can offer, is it? You know there’s revenue men hereabouts. We’d have King George himself chasing us if we break in there. We’ll have to smoke him out. Once he’s on the open road, nobody’ll care a wink for him, nor us neither.”
“Well, that’s fine and dandy,” said Israel, “but how are we going to go about it? Billy ain’t half mad enough to set sail with us waiting just over the bar. And Long John can’t wait forever where he is. We’ll have to get to Billy fast, before the weather turns.”
So it was we agreed to wager all on the events of that night. If we could get the chart, we would make our fortunes. If not, our attempt would raise such commotion that we no longer be able to stay. Caspar and I were greatly relieved to hear that. Come what may, we had just spent our last day in that cold and windy valley.
We used the remaining day-light to sharpen our knives and get ready to leave. George Merry went off to warn Long John and came back as the light failed. All along we did not know that Pew’s little scrap of paper, the Black Spot, had finally carried off Billy Bones, doing what cutlass and cannon had failed to do for so long.
Darkness came and the frost crept through our clothes as we huddled around the fire. The quiet of the grave settled on the village and our coppice.
The moon rose and we moved out of our cover. A white mist had filled the valley bottom and blanketed the village. For a while it swirled about our legs then it swallowed us up. A small piece of the world a few yards across travelled with us down the road. Beyond that we could see and hear nothing. The damp and piercing cold had driven even the dogs inside and the houses passed by in unnatural silence. As we left the village, we stopped and I went on alone.
The road felt strange and empty. Long after I had expected it, there was still no sign of the inn. Doubts and fears crept around me in the mist and I was near to turning back when I came first to an outhouse and then the inn itself, silent and dark. I tried the latch of the front
door. It was locked.
What a hand Providence chose to take in our affairs at this moment. In the few minutes it took for me to hurry back to the others, Hawkins and his mother slipped away. And instead of walking straight into our oncoming band, the same hand led them to hide in a culvert a stone’s throw from the inn. How the Good Lord protects the innocent!
Pew stood back in the road while we rushed the inn front and back. We found the front door unlocked, and I was cursed for a fool and a coward. We blundered in, scattering the benches. Our lantern showed an empty tap-room and the shrunken figure of Billy Bones stretched out on the floor. “He’s been done. He’s dead,” someone shouted to Pew outside.
“Search him,” shouted Pew. “Look in his boots, his hat. And find his chest.”
“It’s no good, Pew,” called Black Dog, even as he was struggling with Billy’s boots. “He’s been done already. His pockets is out and his coat’s been gone through.”
I picked up his hat that lay in a corner. Empty, but I put it on all the same. His cutlass lay beneath the table half out of its scabbard. I took that too, and started up stairs. A lantern burned in Billy’s room. His chest had been dragged out and the contents scattered about. There was not much—a little clothing, a worn pistol wrapped in an oily cloth. Billy’s spy-glass lay thrown aside with his oil-skin jacket. His best hat had been trodden on. It too was empty.
We peered into the chest. There was nowhere the chart could be concealed. George smashed the window and called down to Pew. “It’s gone, Pew. Someone’s been through the chest. It must be that boy or his mother. There’s nothing here.”
Where Gold Lies Page 6