Treasure Island | Page 7

was thus speaking, he had risen from bed with great difficulty,
holding to my shoulder with a grip that almost made me cry out, and
moving his legs like so much dead weight. His words, spirited as they
were in meaning, contrasted sadly with the weakness of the voice in
which they were uttered. He paused when he had got into a sitting posi-
tion on the edge.
"That doctor's done me," he murmured. "My ears is singing. Lay me
back."
Before I could do much to help him he had fallen back again to his
former place, where he lay for a while silent.
"Jim," he said at length, "you saw that seafaring man today?"
"Black Dog?" I asked.
"Ah! Black Dog," says he. "He's a bad un; but there's worse that put
him on. Now, if I can't get away nohow, and they tip me the black spot,
mind you, it's my old sea-chest they're after; you get on a horse—you
can, can't you? Well, then, you get on a horse, and go to—well, yes, I
will!—to that eternal doctor swab, and tell him to pipe all
hands—magistrates and sich—and he'll lay 'em aboard at the Admiral
Benbow—all old Flint's crew, man and boy, all on 'em that's left. I was
first mate, I was, old Flint's first mate, and I'm the on'y one as knows the
place. He gave it me at Savannah, when he lay a-dying, like as if I was to
now, you see. But you won't peach unless they get the black spot on me,
or unless you see that Black Dog again or a seafaring man with one leg,
Jim—him above all."
"But what is the black spot, captain?" I asked.
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"That's a summons, mate. I'll tell you if they get that. But you keep
your weather-eye open, Jim, and I'll share with you equals, upon my
honour."
He wandered a little longer, his voice growing weaker; but soon after I
had given him his medicine, which he took like a child, with the remark,
"If ever a seaman wanted drugs, it's me," he fell at last into a heavy,
swoon-like sleep, in which I left him. What I should have done had all
gone well I do not know. Probably I should have told the whole story to
the doctor, for I was in mortal fear lest the captain should repent of his
confessions and make an end of me. But as things fell out, my poor fath-
er died quite suddenly that evening, which put all other matters on one
side. Our natural distress, the visits of the neighbours, the arranging of
the funeral, and all the work of the inn to be carried on in the meanwhile
kept me so busy that I had scarcely time to think of the captain, far less to
be afraid of him.
He got downstairs next morning, to be sure, and had his meals as usu-
al, though he ate little and had more, I am afraid, than his usual supply
of rum, for he helped himself out of the bar, scowling and blowing
through his nose, and no one dared to cross him. On the night before the
funeral he was as drunk as ever; and it was shocking, in that house of
mourning, to hear him singing away at his ugly old sea-song; but weak
as he was, we were all in the fear of death for him, and the doctor was
suddenly taken up with a case many miles away and was never near the
house after my father's death. I have said the captain was weak, and in-
deed he seemed rather to grow weaker than regain his strength. He
clambered up and down stairs, and went from the parlour to the bar and
back again, and sometimes put his nose out of doors to smell the sea,
holding on to the walls as he went for support and breathing hard and
fast like a man on a steep mountain. He never particularly addressed me,
and it is my belief he had as good as forgotten his confidences; but his
temper was more flighty, and allowing for his bodily weakness, more vi-
olent than ever. He had an alarming way now when he was drunk of
drawing his cutlass and laying it bare before him on the table. But with
all that, he minded people less and seemed shut up in his own thoughts
and rather wandering. Once, for instance, to our extreme wonder, he
piped up to a different air, a king of country love-song that he must have
learned in his youth before he had begun to follow the sea.
So things passed until, the day after the funeral, and about three
o'clock of a bitter, foggy, frosty afternoon, I was standing at the door for
a moment, full of sad thoughts about my father, when I saw someone
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drawing slowly near along the road. He was plainly blind, for he tapped
before him with a stick and wore a great green shade over his eyes and
nose; and he was hunched, as if with age or weakness, and wore a huge
old tattered sea-cloak with