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PART TWO--The Sea-cook
Chapter 7
I Go to Bristol
IT was longer than the squire imagined ere
we were ready for the sea, and none of our
first plans--not even Dr. Livesey's, of
keeping me beside him--could be carried out
as we intended.
The doctor had to go to London for a
physician to take charge of his practice;
the squire was hard at work at Bristol; and
I lived on at the hall under the charge of
old Redruth, the gamekeeper, almost a
prisoner, but full of sea-dreams and the
most charming anticipations of strange
islands and adventures.
I brooded by the hour together over the
map, all the details of which I well
remembered.
Sitting by the fire in the housekeeper's
room, I approached that island in my fancy
from every possible direction; I explored
every acre of its surface; I climbed a
thousand times to that tall hill they call
the Spy-glass, and from the top enjoyed the
most wonderful and changing prospects.
Sometimes the isle was thick with savages,
with whom we fought, sometimes full of
dangerous animals that hunted us, but in
all my fancies nothing occurred to me so
strange and tragic as our actual
adventures.
So the weeks passed on, till one fine day
there came a letter addressed to Dr.
Livesey, with this addition, "To be opened,
in the case of his absence, by Tom Redruth
or young Hawkins."
Obeying this order, we found, or rather I
found--for the gamekeeper was a poor hand
at reading anything but print--the
following important news:
Old Anchor Inn, Bristol, March 1, 17--
Dear Livesey--As I do not know whether you
are at the hall or still in London, I send
this in double to both places.
The ship is bought and fitted.
She lies at anchor, ready for sea.
You never imagined a sweeter schooner--a
child might sail her--two hundred tons;
name, HISPANIOLA.
I got her through my old friend, Blandly,
who has proved himself throughout the most
surprising trump.
The admirable fellow literally slaved in my
interest, and so, I may say, did everyone
in Bristol, as soon as they got wind of the
port we sailed for--treasure, I mean.
"Redruth," said I, interrupting the letter,
"Dr. Livesey will not like that.
The squire has been talking, after all."
"Well, who's a better right?" growled the
gamekeeper.
"A pretty rum go if squire ain't to talk
for Dr. Livesey, I should think."
At that I gave up all attempts at
commentary and read straight on:
Blandly himself found the HISPANIOLA, and
by the most admirable management got her
for the merest trifle.
There is a class of men in Bristol
monstrously prejudiced against Blandly.
They go the length of declaring that this
honest creature would do anything for
money, that the HISPANIOLA belonged to him,
and that he sold it me absurdly high--the
most transparent calumnies.
None of them dare, however, to deny the
merits of the ship.
So far there was not a hitch.
The workpeople, to be sure--riggers and
what not--were most annoyingly slow; but
time cured that.
It was the crew that troubled me.
I wished a round score of men--in case of
natives, buccaneers, or the odious French--
and I had the worry of the deuce itself to
find so much as half a dozen, till the most
remarkable stroke of fortune brought me the
very man that I required.
I was standing on the dock, when, by the
merest accident, I fell in talk with him.
I found he was an old sailor, kept a
public-house, knew all the seafaring men in
Bristol, had lost his health ashore, and
wanted a good berth as cook to get to sea
again.
He had hobbled down there that morning, he
said, to get a smell of the salt.
I was monstrously touched--so would you
have been--and, out of pure pity, I engaged
him on the spot to be ship's cook.
Long John Silver, he is called, and has
lost a leg; but that I regarded as a
recommendation, since he lost it in his
country's service, under the immortal
Hawke.
He has no pension, Livesey.
Imagine the abominable age we live in!
Well, sir, I thought I had only found a
cook, but it was a crew I had discovered.
Between Silver and myself we got together
in a few days a company of the toughest old
salts imaginable--not pretty to look at,
but fellows, by their faces, of the most
indomitable spirit.
I declare we could fight a frigate.
Long John even got rid of two out of the
six or seven I had already engaged.
He showed me in a moment that they were
just the sort of fresh-water swabs we had
to fear in an adventure of importance.
I am in the most magnificent health and
spirits, eating like a bull, sleeping like
a tree, yet I shall not enjoy a moment till
I hear my old tarpaulins tramping round the
capstan.
Seaward, ho!
Hang the treasure!
It's the glory of the sea that has turned
my head.
So now, Livesey, come post; do not lose an
hour, if you respect me.
Let young Hawkins go at once to see his
mother, with Redruth for a guard; and then
both come full speed to Bristol.
John Trelawney
Postscript--I did not tell you that
Blandly, who, by the way, is to send a
consort after us if we don't turn up by the
end of August, had found an admirable
fellow for sailing master--a stiff man,
which I regret, but in all other respects a
treasure.
Long John Silver unearthed a very competent
man for a mate, a man named Arrow.
I have a boatswain who pipes, Livesey; so
things shall go man-o'-war fashion on board
the good ship HISPANIOLA.
I forgot to tell you that Silver is a man
of substance; I know of my own knowledge
that he has a banker's account, which has
never been overdrawn.
He leaves his wife to manage the inn; and
as she is a woman of colour, a pair of old
bachelors like you and I may be excused for
guessing that it is the wife, quite as much
as the health, that sends him back to
roving.
J. T.
P.P.S.--Hawkins may stay one night with his
mother.
J. T.
You can fancy the excitement into which
that letter put me.
I was half beside myself with glee; and if
ever I despised a man, it was old Tom
Redruth, who could do nothing but grumble
and lament.
Any of the under-gamekeepers would gladly
have changed places with him; but such was
not the squire's pleasure, and the squire's
pleasure was like law among them all.
Nobody but old Redruth would have dared so
much as even to grumble.
The next morning he and I set out on foot
for the Admiral Benbow, and there I found
my mother in good health and spirits.
The captain, who had so long been a cause
of so much discomfort, was gone where the
wicked cease from troubling.
The squire had had everything repaired, and
the public rooms and the sign repainted,
and had added some furniture--above all a
beautiful armchair for mother in the bar.
He had found her a boy as an apprentice
also so that she should not want help while
I was gone.
It was on seeing that boy that I
understood, for the first time, my
situation.
I had thought up to that moment of the
adventures before me, not at all of the
home that I was leaving; and now, at sight
of this clumsy stranger, who was to stay
here in my place beside my mother, I had my
first attack of tears.
I am afraid I led that boy a dog's life,
for as he was new to the work, I had a
hundred opportunities of setting him right
and putting him down, and I was not slow to
profit by them.
The night passed, and the next day, after
dinner, Redruth and I were afoot again and
on the road.
I said good-bye to Mother and the cove
where I had lived since I was born, and the
dear old Admiral Benbow--since he was
repainted, no longer quite so dear.
One of my last thoughts was of the captain,
who had so often strode along the beach
with his cocked hat, his sabre-cut cheek,
and his old brass telescope.
Next moment we had turned the corner and my
home was out of sight.
The mail picked us up about dusk at the
Royal George on the heath.
I was wedged in between Redruth and a stout
old gentleman, and in spite of the swift
motion and the cold night air, I must have
dozed a great deal from the very first, and
then slept like a log up hill and down dale
through stage after stage, for when I was
awakened at last it was by a punch in the
ribs, and I opened my eyes to find that we
were standing still before a large building
in a city street and that the day had
already broken a long time.
"Where are we?"
I asked.
"Bristol," said Tom.
"Get down."
Mr. Trelawney had taken up his residence at
an inn far down the docks to superintend
the work upon the schooner.
Thither we had now to walk, and our way, to
my great delight, lay along the quays and
beside the great multitude of ships of all
sizes and rigs and nations.
In one, sailors were singing at their work,
in another there were men aloft, high over
my head, hanging to threads that seemed no
thicker than a spider's.
Though I had lived by the shore all my
life, I seemed never to have been near the
sea till then.
The smell of tar and salt was something
new.
I saw the most wonderful figureheads, that
had all been far over the ocean.
I saw, besides, many old sailors, with
rings in their ears, and whiskers curled in
ringlets, and tarry pigtails, and their
swaggering, clumsy sea-walk; and if I had
seen as many kings or archbishops I could
not have been more delighted.
And I was going to sea myself, to sea in a
schooner, with a piping boatswain and pig-
tailed singing ***, to sea, bound for an
unknown island, and to seek for buried
treasure!
While I was still in this delightful dream,
we came suddenly in front of a large inn
and met Squire Trelawney, all dressed out
like a sea-officer, in stout blue cloth,
coming out of the door with a smile on his
face and a capital imitation of a sailor's
walk.
"Here you are," he cried, "and the doctor
came last night from London.
Bravo!
The ship's company complete!"
"Oh, sir," cried I, "when do we sail?"
"Sail!" says he.
"We sail tomorrow!"