Squire Trelawney, Doctor Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen havingasked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, fromthe beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of theisland, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, Itake up my pen in the year of grace 17--, and go back to the time whenmy father kept the "Admiral Benbow" Inn, and the brown old seaman, withthe saber cut, first took up his lodging under our roof.

[Illustration: _I remember him as if it were yesterday as he cameplodding to the inn door_ (Page 3)]

I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inndoor, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow; a tall,strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his tarry pig-tail falling over theshoulders of his soiled blue coat; his hands ragged and scarred, withblack, broken nails, and the saber cut across one cheek, a dirty, lividwhite. I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself ashe did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang sooften 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 andbroken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit ofstick 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, hedrank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste, and stilllooking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.

"This is a handy cove," says he, at length; "and a pleasant sittyatedgrog-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," hecried to the man who trundled the barrow; "bring up alongside and helpup my chest. I'll stay here a bit," he continued. "I'm a plain man; rumand bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there for to watchships off. What you mought call me? You mought call me captain. Oh, Isee what you're at--there"; and he threw down three or four gold pieceson the threshold. "You can tell me when I've worked through that," saidhe, looking as fierce as a commander.

And, indeed, bad as his clothes were, and coarsely as he spoke, he hadnone of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast, but seemedlike a mate or skipper, accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. The manwho came with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morningbefore at the "Royal George"; that he had inquired what inns there werealong the coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, anddescribed as lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place ofresidence. 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, orupon the cliffs, with a brass telescope; all evening he sat in a cornerof the parlor next the fire, and drank rum and water very strong. Mostlyhe would not speak when spoken to; only look up sudden and fierce, andblow through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the people who cameabout our house soon learned to let him be. Every day, when he came backfrom his stroll, he would ask if any seafaring men had gone by along theroad. At first we thought it was the want of company of his own kindthat made him ask this question; but at last we began to see he wasdesirous to avoid them. When a seaman put up at the "Admiral Benbow" (asnow and then some did, making by the coast road for Bristol), he wouldlook in at him through the curtained door before he entered the parlor;and he was always sure to be as silent as a mouse when any such waspresent. For me, at least, there was no secret about the matter; for Iwas, in a way, a sharer in his alarms.

He had taken me aside one day and promised me a silver fourpenny on thefirst of every month if I would only keep my "weather eye open for aseafaring 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 tohim for my wage, he would only blow through his nose at me, and stare medown; 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 "theseafaring man with one leg."

How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. Onstormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house, andthe surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in athousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the legwould be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrouskind of a creature who had never had but one leg, and that in the middleof 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 mymonthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.

But though I was so terrified by the idea of the seafaring man with oneleg, I was far less afraid of the captain himself than anybody else whoknew him. There were nights when he took a deal more rum and water thanhis head would carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing hiswicked, old, wild sea-songs, minding nobody; but sometimes he would callfor glasses round, and force all the trembling company to listen to hisstories or bear a chorus to his singing. Often I have heard the houseshaking with "Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum," all the neighbors joiningin for dear life, with the fear of death upon them, and each singinglouder than the other to avoid remark. For in these fits he was the mostoverriding companion ever known; he would slap his hand on the table forsilence all around; he would fly up in a passion of anger at a question,or sometimes because none was put, and so he judged the company was notfollowing his story. Nor would he allow anyone to leave the inn till hehad drunk himself sleepy and reeled off to bed.

His stories were what frightened people worst of all. Dreadful storiesthey were; about hanging, and walking the plank, and storms at sea, andthe Dry Tortugas, and wild deeds and places on the Spanish Main. By hisown account, he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest menthat God ever allowed upon the sea; and the language in which he toldthese stories shocked our plain country people almost as much as thecrimes that he described. My father was always saying the inn would beruined, for people would soon cease coming there to be tyrannized overand put down and sent shivering to their beds; but I really believe hispresence did us good. People were frightened at the time, but on lookingback they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet countrylife; and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended toadmire him, calling him a "true sea-dog," and a "real old salt," andsuch like names, and saying there was the sort of man that made Englandterrible at sea.

In one way, indeed, he bade fair to ruin us; for he kept on staying weekafter week, and at last month after month, so that all the money hadbeen long exhausted, and still my father never plucked up the heart toinsist on having more. If ever he mentioned it, the captain blew throughhis nose so loudly that you might say he roared, and stared my poorfather out of the room. I have seen him wringing his hands after such arebuff, and I am sure the annoyance and the terror he lived in must havegreatly hastened his early and unhappy death.

All the time he lived with us the captain made no change whatever in hisdress but to buy some stockings from a hawker. One of the cocks of hishat having fallen down, he let it hang from that day forth, though itwas a great annoyance when it blew. I remember the appearance of hiscoat, which he patched himself upstairs in his room, and which, beforethe end, was nothing but patches. He never wrote or received a letter,and he never spoke with any but the neighbors, and with these, for themost part, only when drunk on rum. The great sea-chest none of us hadever seen open.

He was only once crossed, and that was toward the end, when my poorfather was far gone in a decline that took him off. Doctor Livesey camelate one afternoon to see the patient, took a bit of dinner from mymother, and went into the parlor to smoke a pipe until his horse shouldcome down from the hamlet, for we had no stabling at the old "Benbow." Ifollowed him in, and I remember observing the contrast the neat, brightdoctor, with his powder as white as snow, and his bright, black eyes andpleasant manners, made with the coltish country folk, and above all,with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours, sittingfar 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 bigbox of his upstairs in the front room, and the thought had been mingledin my nightmares with that of the one-legged seafaring man. But by thistime we had all long ceased to pay any particular notice to the song; itwas new, that night, to nobody but Doctor Livesey, and on him I observedit did not produce an agreeable effect, for he looked up for a momentquite angrily before he went on with his talk to old Taylor, thegardener, on a new cure for rheumatics. In the meantime the captaingradually brightened up at his own music, and at last flapped his handupon the table before him in a way we all knew to mean--silence. Thevoices stopped at once, all but Doctor Livesey's; he went on as before,speaking clear and kind, and drawing briskly at his pipe between everyword or two. The captain glared at him for a while, flapped his handagain, glared still harder, and at last broke out with a villainousoath: "Silence, there, between decks!"

"Were you addressing me, sir?" said the doctor; and when the ruffian hadtold him, with another oath, that this was so, replied, "I have only onething to say to you, sir, that if you keep on drinking rum, the worldwill soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!"

The old fellow's fury was awful. He sprang to his feet, drew and openeda 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 hisshoulder, and in the same tone of voice, rather high, so that all theroom might hear, but perfectly calm and steady:

"If you do not put that knife this instant into your pocket, I promise,upon my honor, you shall hang at the next assizes."

Then followed a battle of looks between them; but the captain soonknuckled under, put up his weapon, and resumed his seat, grumbling likea beaten dog.

"And now, sir," continued the doctor, "since I now know there's such afellow in my district, you may count I'll have an eye upon you day andnight. I'm not a doctor only, I'm a magistrate; and if I catch a breathof complaint against you, if it's only for a piece of incivility liketo-night's, I'll take effectual means to have you hunted down and routedout of this. Let that suffice."

Soon after Doctor Livesey's horse came to the door and he rode away, butthe captain held his peace that evening, and for many evenings to come.

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