THE OLD BUCCANEER
YouHui Culture Publishing Company
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158
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PART I
CHAPTER I
THE OLD BUCCANEER
THE OLD SEA-DOG AT THE `ADMIRAL BENBOW'
SQUIRE TRELAWNEY,* Dr Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked
me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure island, from the beginning to
the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because
there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17 - , and go
back to the time when my father kept the `Admiral Benbow' inn, and the brown old
seaman, with the sabre cut, first took up his lodging under our roof.
I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his seachest
following behind him in a handbarrow; a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his
tarry pigtail falling over the shoulders of his soiled blue coat; his hands ragged and
scarred, with black, broken nails; and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid
white. * I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself as he did so,
and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:-
`Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!'*
in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the
capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a handspike that he
carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it
was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste, and
still looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.
`This is a handy cove,' says he, at length; `and a pleasant sittyated grog-shop. Much
company, mate?'
My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity.'
`Well, then,' said he, `this is the berth for me. Here you matey,' he cried to the man
who trundled the barrow; `bring up alongside and help up my chest. I'll stay here a
bit,' he continued. `I'm a plain man; rum and bacon and eggs is what I want, and that
head up there for to watch ships off. What you mought call me? You mought call me
captain. Oh, I see what you're at - there;' and he threw down three or four gold pieces
on the threshold. `You can tell me when I've worked through that,' says he, looking as
fierce as a commander.
And, indeed, bad as his clothes were, and coarsely as he spoke, he had none of the
appearance of a man who sailed before the mast; but seemed like a mate or skipper
accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. The man who came with the barrow told us the
mail had set him down this morning before at the `Royal George;' that he had inquired
what inns there were along the coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and
described as lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place of residence. And that
was all we could learn of our guest.
He was a very silent man by custom. All day he hung round the cove, or upon the
cliffs, with a brass telescope; all evening he sat in a corner of the parlour next the fire,
and drank run and water very strong. Mostly he would not speak when spoken to;
only look up sudden and fierce, and blow through his nose like a fog-horn; and we
and the people who cam about our house soon learned to let him be. Every day, when
he came back from his stroll, he would ask if any seafaring men had gone by along
the road. At first we thought it was the want of company of his own kind that made
him ask this question; but at last we began to see he was desirous to avoid them.
When a seaman put up at the `Admiral Benbow' (as now and then some did, making
by the coast road for Bristol) he would look in at him through the curtained door
before he entered the parlour; and he was always sure to be as silent as a mouse when
any such was present. For me, at least, there was no secret about the matter; for I was,
in a way, a sharer in his alarms. He had taken me aside one day, and promised me a
silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I would only keep my `weather-eye
open for a seafaring man with one leg,' and let him know the moment he appeared.
Often enough, when the first of the month came round, and I applied to him for my
wage, he would only blow through his nose at me, and stare me down; but before the
week was out he was sure to think better of it, bring me my fourpenny piece, and
repeat his orders to look out for `the seafaring man with one leg.'
How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On stormy nights,
when the wind shook the four corners of the house, and the surf roared along the cove
and up the cliffs, I would see him in a thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical
expressions. Now the leg would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a
monstrous kind of a creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in the
middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and ditch was
the worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny
piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.
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