Flint's Island Read online

  I soon gained the gig, to find it many yards from the water, the tide being on the ebb, and I spent some time hauling it down the sand closer to the edge. At the end of this, Mr. Arrow had still not appeared. The sun was now within a few degrees of the top of the ridge and in a short while the greater part of the bay would be in shadow. Still Mr. Arrow delayed. I did not know whether to leave the gig and go back for him, or stick to the letter of my orders and remain until he appeared. I was still debating what to do, with as much to be said on one side of the argument as on the other, when there came a sharp dry report of a pistol from the direction of the stockade. That decided me. Seizing my cutlass, I dashed up the ridge, down the other side, and through the stockade toward the fort.

  “Mr. Arrow,” I shouted. “Mr. Arrow.”

  There was not a sound in reply. I flung through the door and stopped, frozen in horror. Mr. Arrow was lying on the floor before me, face down, a pool of blood oozing from his chest.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE MATE WAS beyond all mortal aid. I guessed that even before I turned him over. There was but the last flicker of life in him as I did so; a look of anguish and astonishment which faded into death. A horrid flood of blood covered his chest. One pistol was still about his neck on its lanyard, but the other, which had been in his waistband, I could not find. Lying on the floor nearby was something of far greater significance for me than the missing pistol—the bottle of brandy. The cork was missing, most of the contents were gone, and the air of the fort reeked of spirits.

  While I was still gaping at the body of the mate, there came a tremendous whirring of wings, followed by several high-pitched and angry squawks, and a large bird flung through the door of the fort and, swooping across the room, settled on one end of the broken bench alongside the wall. There it commenced an abominable squawking, and through its diabolical screams, I could distinguish the words, “Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight.” Then a voice hailed me from outside, calling, “Ahoy the blockhouse. Ahoy the blockhouse. Hold your fire. I am a Christian man.”

  “Who are you?” I cried, rushing to the door. Not a soul was to be seen in the enclosure between the stockade and the fort itself.

  “Friend,” came back the answer from beyond the stockade. “Hold your fire.”

  I heard some grunting and shuffling from beyond the stockade and into the opening stepped a powerfully built man missing his right leg and leaning on a crutch. He was dressed in ragged clothes, which, for all that, had the unmistakable mark of the sea to them. His britches were canvas. He had a striped jersey under what was left of a frock coat of which the lower parts hung in tatters. On his head was a bandanna handkerchief placed foursquare on his skull for the sake of coolness, and over this was a three-cornered hat, with the cocks all gone, so that it was sadly out of shape.

  I have seen better clothing on scarecrows. The man, I without another word, came plowing up the sandy slope toward me, laboring very hard on his crutch, a garland of vines trailing from the end of it, such was his hurry.

  “Who are you?” I asked, stepping out of the doorway to meet him.

  “Name of Silver,” he said. “They call me Long John, and sometimes Barbecue, seeing as I’m a cook. A poor seaman shipwrecked four long years ago. I heard a shot…” He peered past me into the fort, and then his voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Hello,” he said. “What’s this?” And he started to back away from me, casting his eyes here and there as if looking for somewhere to run for shelter.

  “He’s dead,” I said. “I left him here, heard a shot, as you did, and when I came back he was lying face down on the floor, shot through the chest.”

  Silver stared at me for a while, then moved past me to go down on his one knee, supported by his crutch, beside the body of Mr. Arrow. “Ah,” he said, “he’s slipped his cable and no mistake. No one to help him now but the parson.” He sniffed the air and spotted the brandy bottle. “Well, now,” he said, “here’s a shift of wind and tide. Meaning no offense, but seems like he’d had a go at the brandy, as who wouldn’t, says you, dooty done and none to tell him no? And what’s this?” He reached beneath Mr. Arrow’s legs and produced the pistol which the mate had had in his waistband. He sniffed the barrel. “This here barker’s been fired,” he said. “Barrel’s still warm, you can see for yourself.” And he handed the pistol to me. The barrel was indeed still warm and the smell of burned powder came strongly from it.

  “Ah,” said Silver solemnly. “There’s a power of seamen died before their time from that.”

  “From what?” I asked.

  “Spirits and gunpowder,” he said. “I never knew the two put together among seamen without somebody’s planks being stove. That rum, now. ’Tis nothing but a devil that men put in their mouths to steal away their brains, as the Good Book says.”

  I wasn’t at all sure that the Good Book said anything of the kind, but this was not the time to gainsay him.

  “What were his name?” he asked, looking at the mate sadly.

  “Arrow,” I said. “Mr. Arrow. Mate of the brig Jane over there in the bay. We’d come ashore for spars,” I added, though there was really no reason for volunteering this information.

  “Spars,” said Silver. “Spars. Well now, I’d call that fortunate.”

  “Why so?” I asked.

  “Well,” said Silver, “if you didn’t need spars, I’d be left on this island for many a year, and then again, spars ain’t what I would have thought would bring a ship to this island. Not spars, mate. No. Not spars. And what did you say was the name of your craft?”

  “Brig Jane, out of Salem, Captain Edward Samuels,” I replied.

  “Ah,” said Silver, seemingly relieved. “Trading voyage, I do suppose. Mixed cargo all the way from wool to salt cod. Well now, mate, maybe we ought not to stand here agamming but get back aboard and report, sailor-like, to Captain Samuels.”

  “Yes, indeed,” I said. “And the sooner the better.”

  “Now when the captain asks you how Mr.—what did you say his name was—?”

  “Arrow.”

  “—how Mr. Arrow came to be killed, it would be best to have everything shipshape. He wasn’t a hazing man, Mr. Arrow, was he?” The question was put with a measure of slyness.

  “No. He was a fine seaman, well liked by all,” I replied.

  “Ah,” said Silver. “That’s the way of it, isn’t it? The best ones is the ones that go first. But harking back to what you’re going to tell the captain. You’ll be sure to tell him that I come up to you unarmed, and from outside the fort, and that I hailed you when I heard that gunshot?”

  “I certainly will,” I said.

  “I been alone on this island for four years,” said Silver, “and it would be a hard thing indeed to be clapped in irons by the first ship that called.”

  “I’m sure nothing of the sort will happen,” I said.

  “Well, mate,” said Silver. “Being solitary has maybe affected my mind, for there’s little improvement that a man gets out of talking to himself for four years. I can tell you that after a while words themselves begin to sound peculiar, when you say them aloud. Like they didn’t have no sense. Now you take horses. You ever thought whether a horse looks like the way the word sounds?”

  I replied that such a thought had never occurred to me.

  “That’s the trouble about being alone,” said Silver. “You begin to loose your moorings. But coming right back to this here Mr. Arrow. There’s just three people could have killed him, see. There’s you. And there’s me. And there’s Mr. Arrow himself.

  “Now you: you’ve got friends aboard that would speak up for you. Not that I’m saying a word against you, mate. I found you here with the body and I take as Gospel everything you told me. And so must they. Then there’s me. Well now, Long John don’t have a friend in the world. Not on the brig, says you, and not on the island either. And if it wasn’t you that killed Mr. Arrow and Mr. Arrow didn’t have reason for killing hisself—why, t
here’s me.”

  “I don’t know what you are driving at,” I said, “but it seems quite clear to me that Mr. Arrow was killed with his own pistol and in an accident.”

  “Ah,” said Silver. “Now that’s a good piece you have on your shoulders.” He put his big head slightly to one side and said softly, as if he were afraid Mr. Arrow might hear, “Was he partial to a drop of rum maybe—just a nip against the cold and damp?”

  “On the contrary,” I said. “He was dead set against spirits himself, though he had no objections to others using them.”

  “Why now,” said Silver, eyeing the brandy bottle. “If that don’t beat all. Wouldn’t touch a drop, you say? And the bottle all but empty.”

  Just then, with a great whirring of wings and squawking, that same bird which before the appearance of Silver had flung into the fort and settled on the broken bench flew now straight to his shoulder. It was a parrot, a large bird, green, gray, and red in its feathering. It raised a gnarled claw to one hooded eye, as if in some kind of secret salute, and again cried out at the top of its devilish voice, “Pieces of eight, pieces of eight, pieces of eight,” very fast, and finished this exhibition with a series of noises very much like a cork being drawn from a bottle.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked.

  “This here bird and I been shipmates for twenty years,” said Silver. “Him and me’s the only two that survived the wreck of the Hope—that’s the ship I was aboard as cook, out of Bristol with a cargo of finished goods and bound for Port of Spain when we struck. But that’s a long story, mate. And, as I said, we’d best be getting back aboard.”

  Off we went then, with just enough sunlight to get to the top of the ridge. It was gone entirely when we passed the crest, and the twilight itself was fading into night when we reached the side of the Jane.

  You may be sure, remembering the armed watch we kept aboard, that I hailed the brig when some distance off, and identified myself. When I reached the deck, Mr. Hogan, who was on duty, asked where was Mr. Arrow and what was the shot they heard. I told him that Mr. Arrow was dead on the island, that I had found the man Silver there, and was taken immediately to Captain Samuels to relate the whole story to him in the privacy of his cabin. Captain Samuels was a man impatient of trifles, but where weighty matters were concerned he could sit in silence until all pertinent information had been laid before him. He listened then, his face a mask, while I gave him every detail of the tragedy. Silver, leaning on his crutch, stood respectfully by the door, as if excusing himself for being present at all, and did not interrupt with a single word until my tale was done. When I had related all the details, the captain turned to Silver.

  “And what do you know of this, my man?” he asked.

  Silver, without any of that disposition to ramble which he had shown ashore, said that he had seen the Jane approaching the island on the previous day but had been unable to start a fire to signal us in the time that the ship was in view. He had then set out to come to the south part of the island at first light, hoping that we had anchored there, and with his crutch it had taken him all day to reach as far as the stockade. He made first for the stockade, thinking that if we came ashore we were sure to find it, and heard a shot as he neared it.

  “There’s a power of men been killed on that there island,” he added. “I think it must be one of the wickedest places on the face of the earth. I can take you to four sets of bones picked clean by ants and birds, and all of them seamen, to judge by the clothing. Well now, when I heard that shot, I thought there was more of them come ashore, and I would have turned tail except that four years is a mortal long time for a man to be solitary with nothing but an old parrot for company.”

  “More of them?” said Captain Samuels. “What do you mean, more of them?”

  “Why, more of Flint’s old crew,” said Long John. “You’ll have heard of Flint. Well, this here island was where Flint buried his hoard, Captain. And them seamen that’s lying around, unburied, do you see, I reckon was some of Flint’s crew that he’d taken ashore to bury the treasure. ‘Dead men tell no tales’—you’ve heard that saying. Those that went ashore with Flint never got to sea again. Why, he used one of them as a marker to point the way to one cache. Makes you shudder to think of it. Laid out with a compass, the bones were.”

  “And how do you know that it was Flint that was here—and not Dampier, or Kidd, or Morgan?” asked Captain Samuels.

  “Why now, that’s easy answered,” said Long John. There’s a big hole up toward Spyglass there, at the foot of a tall tree, where the treasure was buried. And in the bottom of it there’s an old board, lying there to this day, with the word Walrus burned into it. And Walrus was Flint’s ship, as every seaman knows.”

  Captain Samuels considered this for a while. “Spyglass,” he repeated. “And how did you come to know that that was the name given to that mountain, Mr. Silver?”

  “Why, sir,” said Silver. “I found a chart right in that same fort, in Flint’s own fist, leastways it’s signed J. Flint, and very pretty writ too, and the names of all the principal points of the island, with bays and soundings, is all writ in. That there”—pointing out of the cabin window to the left side of the ship—“that there is Skeleton Island, and this here’s called Captain Kidd’s Anchorage. And that same place where I found the board with the word Walrus written on it was the place where Flint buried his treasure. It’s marked clear on the chart that I will gladly show you as soon as I get ashore again.”

  “The treasure’s gone, then,” said Captain Samuels, and he sounded distinctly relieved.

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Silver.

  “And what do you mean by that?” asked Captain Samuels.

  “Why, sir,” said Silver. There was more buried than was took away. And I found it.”

  “How much more?” asked the captain.

  For answer Silver reached in his ragged coat and took out a gold ring with a green stone set in it. “What do you reckon that might be worth?” he asked.

  The captain examined it closely, holding it up to the light of the lantern and polishing the stone with his sleeve. “Why,” he said after his inspection, “I believe you might get a hundred dollars for that on any street in Boston.”

  “Ah,” said Silver, pocketing the ring and settling back on his crutch, “then the rest of what I found, I reckon, might buy the whole town.”

  CHAPTER 6

  CAPTAIN SAMUELS MADE NO immediate comment on Silver’s statement. He stared at the sea cook, then at the table before him, and then rising, still without a word, stared through the ports of the cabin at the reflection of the ship’s stern lantern in the water below, his broad back to the two of us.

  When at last he turned, his face was a mask. “Enough to buy the city of Boston,” he said. “That would be a very considerable treasure indeed, Mr. Silver. More, I think, than I could fetch away in this ship.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” said Silver, “but depending upon what the treasure might be. Now there’s bar silver in pigs weighing close on sixty pounds a piece maybe, and there’s enough of them to ballast this here ship, and she carrying topsails. And then there’s other things on top of that.”

  “Such as?” asked Captain Samuels.

  “Well now,” said Silver, “I’ve been open and square and aboveboard with you. But we’re coming to short tacks here, and there’s the matter of whose treasure it might be when we get it ashore. Like here on this island I reckon ’tis mine, since I found it and finders keepers was always a good rule. Ah, but how are you going to get it away, Long John Silver, you says? And what good is it to you here on this island? And you’ve got the wind of me there and no mistake. Now I’m just a plain seaman with no head for figures, nor for business neither. But it seems to me that now is the time to divide this here treasure and get it writ down on paper who has what share—all spelled out fair and proper.”

  “Well,” said Captain Samuels, cool as could be, “aren’t you pres
uming that I’m prepared to take the treasure off in the first instance?”

  That really bowled Silver over for the moment. But he came back quick enough with a reply. “Why, so I were,” he said. “But then I don’t know many ship’s captains that can explain to their owners that they’d come on a treasure on an island and left it there—trade being what it’s like in these times, with cargoes hard to find and hardly a ha’porth of profit in ten tons carried.”

  “Why,” said Captain Samuels, “there’s nothing to prevent me taking you to the nearest port and coming back for the treasure, is there? I’ve the latitude of the island now and have only to run east or west along that line to find it again.”

  But Silver, though shaken, had an answer to that. “Begging your pardon and meaning no offense, but talking up plain as between one gentleman and another,” he said, “you’d have sheep for a crew, and not seamen, if they’d sail from this island and leave the treasure behind. And I’d tell everyone of them, down to the cook’s boy, what’s on that island and what riches he was sailing away from—riches he’d never get his hands on again if he were to live ten lives and nine of them ashore.”

  “Mutiny, eh?” said the captain. “You’re a bold man, Master Silver, to hint of that in this affair.”

  “Begging your pardon again,” said Silver, “but I made no mention of mutiny but just took the liberty of pointing out that you was arguing against nature. Now let’s get to the point, for I never found it served a useful purpose to make four tacks where one hard on the wind would do.”

  There was a good deal more of this kind of sparring while these two men took the measure of each other, and it was as good as a play to watch them—the captain solid, grave, and authoritative, and Silver good-humored, persuasive, and sly by turns. I think Captain Samuels got the upper hand of it. The division was settled at a quarter share of the treasure clear for Silver, five-eighths for the owners, a quarter for the captain, and three-eighths to be shared among the crew. Silver, you may be sure, objected that the captain should have as much share of the treasure as he who had found it. But Captain Samuels pointed out that though Silver had found the treasure, he had found Silver, which gave him equal claims, and so at last it was all agreed. Captain Samuels wrote the whole thing up in the ship’s log, signed it, and Silver signed after, in a very neat hand, I thought. A final clause read that the captain was to deposit Silver with his share of the treasure at Caracas, or the nearest port on the American main.