Part Two: The Sea-cook - Chapter 10: The Voyage

by Robert Louis Stevenson

　　All that night we were in a great bustle getting thingsstowed in their place, and boatfuls of the squire'sfriends, Mr. Blandly and the like, coming off to wishhim a good voyage and a safe return. We never had anight at the Admiral Benbow when I had half the work;and I was dog-tired when, a little before dawn, theboatswain sounded his pipe and the crew began to manthe capstan-bars. I might have been twice as weary,yet I would not have left the deck, all was so new andinteresting to me--the brief commands, the shrill noteof the whistle, the men bustling to their places in theglimmer of the ship's lanterns.

　　"Now, Barbecue, tip us a stave," cried one voice.

　　"The old one," cried another.

　　"Aye, aye, mates," said Long John, who was standing by,with his crutch under his arm, and at once broke out inthe air and words I knew so well:

　　"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--"And then the whole crew bore chorus:--

　　"Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"And at the third "Ho!" drove the bars before them witha will.

　　Even at that exciting moment it carried me back to the oldAdmiral Benbow in a second, and I seemed to hear the voiceof the captain piping in the chorus. But soon the anchorwas short up; soon it was hanging dripping at the bows;soon the sails began to draw, and the land and shippingto flit by on either side; and before I could lie down tosnatch an hour of slumber the Hispaniola had begun hervoyage to the Isle of Treasure.

　　I am not going to relate that voyage in detail. It wasfairly prosperous. The ship proved to be a good ship,the crew were capable seamen, and the captainthoroughly understood his business. But before we camethe length of Treasure Island, two or three things hadhappened which require to be known.

　　Mr. Arrow, first of all, turned out even worse than thecaptain had feared. He had no command among the men,and people did what they pleased with him. But thatwas by no means the worst of it, for after a day or twoat sea he began to appear on deck with hazy eye, redcheeks, stuttering tongue, and other marks ofdrunkenness. Time after time he was ordered below indisgrace. Sometimes he fell and cut himself; sometimeshe lay all day long in his little bunk at one side ofthe companion; sometimes for a day or two he would bealmost sober and attend to his work at least passably.

　　In the meantime, we could never make out where he gotthe drink. That was the ship's mystery. Watch him aswe pleased, we could do nothing to solve it; and whenwe asked him to his face, he would only laugh if hewere drunk, and if he were sober deny solemnly that heever tasted anything but water.

　　He was not only useless as an officer and a badinfluence amongst the men, but it was plain that at thisrate he must soon kill himself outright, so nobody wasmuch surprised, nor very sorry, when one dark night, witha head sea, he disappeared entirely and was seen no more.

　　"Overboard!" said the captain. "Well, gentlemen, thatsaves the trouble of putting him in irons."

　　But there we were, without a mate; and it wasnecessary, of course, to advance one of the men. Theboatswain, Job Anderson, was the likeliest man aboard,and though he kept his old title, he served in a way asmate. Mr. Trelawney had followed the sea, and hisknowledge made him very useful, for he often took a watchhimself in easy weather. And the coxswain, Israel Hands,was a careful, wily, old, experienced seaman who could betrusted at a pinch with almost anything.

　　He was a great confidant of Long John Silver, and sothe mention of his name leads me on to speak of ourship's cook, Barbecue, as the men called him.

　　Aboard ship he carried his crutch by a lanyard roundhis neck, to have both hands as free as possible. Itwas something to see him wedge the foot of the crutchagainst a bulkhead, and propped against it, yielding toevery movement of the ship, get on with his cookinglike someone safe ashore. Still more strange was it tosee him in the heaviest of weather cross the deck. Hehad a line or two rigged up to help him across thewidest spaces--Long John's earrings, they were called;and he would hand himself from one place to another,now using the crutch, now trailing it alongside by thelanyard, as quickly as another man could walk. Yetsome of the men who had sailed with him beforeexpressed their pity to see him so reduced.

　　"He's no common man, Barbecue," said the coxswain tome. "He had good schooling in his young days and canspeak like a book when so minded; and brave--a lion'snothing alongside of Long John! I seen him grapplefour and knock their heads together--him unarmed."

　　All the crew respected and even obeyed him. He had away of talking to each and doing everybody someparticular service. To me he was unweariedly kind, andalways glad to see me in the galley, which he kept asclean as a new pin, the dishes hanging up burnished andhis parrot in a cage in one corner.

　　"Come away, Hawkins," he would say; "come and have ayarn with John. Nobody more welcome than yourself, myson. Sit you down and hear the news. Here's Cap'nFlint--I calls my parrot Cap'n Flint, after the famousbuccaneer--here's Cap'n Flint predicting success to ourv'yage. Wasn't you, cap'n?"

　　And the parrot would say, with great rapidity, "Piecesof eight! Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!" till youwondered that it was not out of breath, or till Johnthrew his handkerchief over the cage.

　　"Now, that bird," he would say, "is, maybe, two hundredyears old, Hawkins--they live forever mostly; and ifanybody's seen more wickedness, it must be the devilhimself. She's sailed with England, the great Cap'nEngland, the pirate. She's been at Madagascar, and atMalabar, and Surinam, and Providence, and Portobello.She was at the fishing up of the wrecked plate ships.It's there she learned 'Pieces of eight,' and littlewonder; three hundred and fifty thousand of 'em,Hawkins! She was at the boarding of the viceroy of theIndies out of Goa, she was; and to look at her youwould think she was a babby. But you smelt powder--didn't you, cap'n?"

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

　　"Ah, she's a handsome craft, she is," the cook would say,and give her sugar from his pocket, and then the birdwould peck at the bars and swear straight on, passingbelief for wickedness. "There," John would add, "youcan't touch pitch and not be mucked, lad. Here's thispoor old innocent bird o' mine swearing blue fire, andnone the wiser, you may lay to that. She would swear thesame, in a manner of speaking, before chaplain." And Johnwould touch his forelock with a solemn way he had that mademe think he was the best of men.

　　In the meantime, the squire and Captain Smollett werestill on pretty distant terms with one another. Thesquire made no bones about the matter; he despised thecaptain. The captain, on his part, never spoke but whenhe was spoken to, and then sharp and short and dry, andnot a word wasted. He owned, when driven into a corner,that he seemed to have been wrong about the crew, thatsome of them were as brisk as he wanted to see and allhad behaved fairly well. As for the ship, he had takena downright fancy to her. "She'll lie a point nearerthe wind than a man has a right to expect of his ownmarried wife, sir. But," he would add, "all I say is,we're not home again, and I don't like the cruise."

　　The squire, at this, would turn away and march up anddown the deck, chin in air.

　　"A trifle more of that man," he would say, "and Ishall explode."

　　We had some heavy weather, which only proved thequalities of the Hispaniola. Every man on boardseemed well content, and they must have been hard toplease if they had been otherwise, for it is my beliefthere was never a ship's company so spoiled since Noahput to sea. Double grog was going on the least excuse;there was duff on odd days, as, for instance, if thesquire heard it was any man's birthday, and always abarrel of apples standing broached in the waist foranyone to help himself that had a fancy.

　　"Never knew good come of it yet," the captain said toDr. Livesey. "Spoil forecastle hands, make devils.That's my belief."

　　But good did come of the apple barrel, as you shallhear, for if it had not been for that, we should havehad no note of warning and might all have perished bythe hand of treachery.

　　This was how it came about.

　　We had run up the trades to get the wind of the islandwe were after--I am not allowed to be more plain--andnow we were running down for it with a bright lookoutday and night. It was about the last day of ouroutward voyage by the largest computation; some timethat night, or at latest before noon of the morrow, weshould sight the Treasure Island. We were headingS.S.W. and had a steady breeze abeam and a quiet sea.The Hispaniola rolled steadily, dipping herbowsprit now and then with a whiff of spray. All wasdrawing alow and aloft; everyone was in the bravestspirits because we were now so near an end of the firstpart of our adventure.

　　Now, just after sundown, when all my work was over andI was on my way to my berth, it occurred to me that Ishould like an apple. I ran on deck. The watch wasall forward looking out for the island. The man at thehelm was watching the luff of the sail and whistlingaway gently to himself, and that was the only soundexcepting the swish of the sea against the bows andaround the sides of the ship.

　　In I got bodily into the apple barrel, and found therewas scarce an apple left; but sitting down there in thedark, what with the sound of the waters and the rockingmovement of the ship, I had either fallen asleep or wason the point of doing so when a heavy man sat down withrather a clash close by. The barrel shook as he leanedhis shoulders against it, and I was just about to jumpup when the man began to speak. It was Silver's voice,and before I had heard a dozen words, I would not haveshown myself for all the world, but lay there, tremblingand listening, in the extreme of fear and curiosity, forfrom these dozen words I understood that the lives of allthe honest men aboard depended upon me alone.