Treasure Island | Page 6

the neighbours, and with these, for the most part, only when drunk on rum.
The great sea-chest none of us had ever seen open.
He was only once crossed, and that was towards the end, when my poor father was far
gone in a decline that took him off. Dr. Livesey came late one afternoon to see the patient,
took a bit of dinner from my mother, and went into the parlour to smoke a pipe until his
horse should come down from the hamlet, for we had no stabling at the old Benbow. I
followed him in, and I remember observing the contrast the neat, bright doctor, with his
powder as white as snow and his bright, black eyes and pleasant manners, made with the
coltish country folk, and above all, with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate
of ours, sitting, far gone in rum, with his arms on the table. Suddenly he--the captain, that
is--began to pipe up his eternal song:
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the
devil had done for the rest-- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
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 Dr. 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 the
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 Dr. 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, low oath, "Silence, there, between decks!"
"Were you addressing me, sir?" says the doctor; and when the ruffian had told him, with
another oath, that this was so, "I have only one thing to say to you, sir," replies the doctor,
"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 in your pocket, I promise, upon my
honour, 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 tonight's, I'll take effectual means to have you hunted down and routed out
of this. Let that suffice."
Soon after, Dr. 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.

2
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 grey
with hoar-frost, the ripple lapping softly on the stones, the sun still low and only touching
the hilltops and shining far to seaward. The captain