Ten

THE VOYAGE

I was tired out when, a little before dawn, the ship made ready to sail. I might have been twice as weary, yet I would not have gone to bed; all was so new and interesting to me—the quick commands, the sound of the whistle, the men running to their places in the glimmer of the ship's lamps.

"Now, Barbecue, let's have a song," cried one voice.

"The old one," cried another.

"Here you are," said Long John, who was standing by, with his stick, and at once began to sing the words I knew so well:

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest—"

And then the whole crew joined in:

"Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

Soon the sails began to fill, and the land and the other ships to slip by on either side; and, before I could lie down to get an hour of sleep the Hispaniola had begun her voyage to the Island of Treasure.

I am not going to describe that voyage. The ship proved to be a good ship, the crew were good seamen, and the captain thoroughly understood his business. But before we came to Treasure Island, two or three things had happened which require to be known.

Mr. Arrow, first of all, turned out even worse than the captain had feared. He had no command among the men, and people did what they pleased with him. But that was not the worst of it; for after a day or two at sea, he began to appear with wandering eyes, red cheeks, a foolish tongue, and other marks of having drunk too much. Sometimes he fell and cut himself; sometimes he lay all day long in bed; sometimes for a day or two he would be all right and attend to his work.

During all this time we could never make out where he got the drink. Watch him as we pleased, we could not discover the answer to this question.

He was not only useless as an officer, and a bad example to the men, but it was plain that, if he went on in this way, he must soon kill himself; so nobody was much surprised, nor very sorry, when one dark night with a rough sea, he disappeared entirely and was seen no more.

"Gone!" said the captain. "Well, gentlemen, that saves us trouble."

But there we were, without an officer in his place; and it was necessary, of course, to advance one of the men. Job Anderson was the best man on board. Mr. Trelawney had followed the sea, and his knowledge made him very useful. And Israel Hands was a careful, old, experienced seaman, who could be trusted with almost anything.

He was a great friend of Long John Silver, and so the mention of his name leads me on to speak of Silver, our ship's cook (Barbecue, as the men called him).

"He's no common man, Barbecue," said Israel Hands to me. "He had good schooling in his young days, and can speak like a book; and brave—a lion's nothing beside Long John! I've seen him fight four men, and knock their heads together—him unarmed."

All the crew respected and even obeyed him. He had a way of talking to each, and doing everybody some particular service. To me he was very kind; and always glad to see me in the kitchen, which he kept as clean as a new pin; the dishes hanging up polished, and his parrot in a cage in one corner.

"Come away, Hawkins," he would say; "come and have a talk with John. Nobody more welcome than yourself, my son. Sit you down and hear the news. Here's Cap'n Flint—I call my parrot Cap'n Flint, after the famous pirate—here's Cap'n Flint, saying that our voyage will be successful. Weren't you, Cap'n?"

And the parrot would say, very rapidly, "Pieces of eight! pieces of eight! pieces of eight!" till you wondered that it was not out of breath, or till John threw his handkerchief over the cage.

"Now, that bird," he would say, "is, may be, two hundred years old, Hawkins—they live for ever; and if anybody's seen more evil, it must be the devil himself. She's sailed with England, the great Captain England, the pirate. She's been at Madagascar, and at Malabar, and Surinam, and Providence, and Portobello. She was at the getting up of the wrecked Plate ships. It's there she learned 'Pieces of eight,' and little wonder; three hundred and fifty thousand of 'em, Hawkins! She was at the attack on the Viceroy of the Indies near Goa, she was; and to look at her you would think she was a baby. But you know the smell of powder, don't you, Cap'n?"

"Stand by to go about," the parrot would call.

"Ah, she's a fine fellow, she is," the cook would say and give her sugar from his pocket, and then the bird would peck at the bars and utter curses, passing all believing for foulness. "There," John would add, "that's what comes of being in bad company. Here's this poor old pure-hearted bird o' mine cursing blue fire, and she doesn't know what she is saying; she doesn't. She'd say the same if she was in church." All this was said so solemnly and in such a charming manner that it made me think him the best of men.

Mr. Trelawney and Captain Smollett were still far from friendly to each other. Mr. Trelawney did not even pretend to like or respect the captain. The captain, on his part, never spoke but when he was spoken to, and then sharp and short and dry, and not a word wasted.

We had some heavy weather, which only proved what a fine ship the Hispaniola was. Every man on board seemed well content, and they must have been hard to please if they had not been; for I believe there was never a ship's company so well treated. The food was good, and plenty of it. There was a barrel of apples open, for anyone to take one. If it was any man's birthday and Mr. Trelawney heard of it, a feast would be provided.

"I never knew good come of it yet," the captain said to Dr. Livesey. "If you treat' em too well, you make devils. That's my experience."

But good did come of the apple barrel, as you shall hear; for if it had not been for that, we should have had no warning, and might all have been murdered.

This was how it happened.

It was about the last day of our outward voyage; some time that night, or, at latest, before noon of the next day, we should come in sight of the Treasure Island.

Now, just after sundown, when all my work was over, I thought that I should like an apple. So I went up to get one.

In I got, right into the apple barrel, and found there was scarcely an apple left; but, sitting down there in the dark, what with the sound of the waters and the movement of the ship, I had either fallen asleep, or was on the point of doing so, when a heavy man sat down close by. The barrel shook as he leaned his shoulders against it, and I was just about to jump up when the man began to speak. It was Silver's voice, and, before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for all the world, but lay there, shaking with fear and listening with all my power; for from these dozen words, I understood that the lives of all the honest men on board depended upon me alone.