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Treasure Island - The Fall of a Chieftain

1. Dedicated

2. The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral Benbow

3. Black Dog Appears and Disappears

4. The Black Spot

5. The Sea-chest

6. The Last of the Blind Man

7. The Captain's Papers

8. I Go to Bristol

9. At the Sign of the Spy-glass

10. Powder and Arms

11. The Voyage

12. What I Heard in the Apple Barrel

13. Council of War

14. How My Shore Adventure Began

15. The First Blow

16. The Man of the Island

17. Narrative Continued by the Doctor: How the Ship Was Abandoned

18. Narrative Continued by the Doctor: The Jolly-boat's Last Trip

19. Narrative Continued by the Doctor: End of the First Day's Fighting

20. Narrative Resumed by Jim Hawkins: The Garrison in the Stockade

21. Silver's Embassy

22. The Attack

23. How My Sea Adventure Began

24. The Ebb-tide Runs

25. The Cruise of the Coracle

26. I Strike the Jolly Roger

27. Israel Hands

28. "Pieces of Eight"

29. In the Enemy's Camp

30. The Black Spot Again

31. On Parole

32. The Treasure-hunt--Flint's Pointer

33. The Treasure-hunt--The Voice Among the Trees

34. The Fall of a Chieftain

35. And Last







33

The Fall of a Chieftain

THERE never was such an overturn in this world. Each
of these six men was as though he had been struck. But
with Silver the blow passed almost instantly. Every
thought of his soul had been set full-stretch, like a
racer, on that money; well, he was brought up, in a
single second, dead; and he kept his head, found his
temper, and changed his plan before the others had had
time to realize the disappointment.

"Jim," he whispered, "take that, and stand by for trouble."

And he passed me a double-barrelled pistol.

At the same time, he began quietly moving northward,
and in a few steps had put the hollow between us two
and the other five. Then he looked at me and nodded,
as much as to say, "Here is a narrow corner," as,
indeed, I thought it was. His looks were not quite
friendly, and I was so revolted at these constant
changes that I could not forbear whispering, "So you've
changed sides again."

There was no time left for him to answer in. The
buccaneers, with oaths and cries, began to leap, one
after another, into the pit and to dig with their fingers,
throwing the boards aside as they did so. Morgan found a
piece of gold. He held it up with a perfect spout of oaths.
It was a two-guinea piece, and it went from hand to hand
among them for a quarter of a minute.

"Two guineas!" roared Merry, shaking it at Silver.
"That's your seven hundred thousand pounds, is it?
You're the man for bargains, ain't you? You're him
that never bungled nothing, you wooden-headed lubber!"

"Dig away, boys," said Silver with the coolest insolence;
"you'll find some pig-nuts and I shouldn't wonder."

"Pig-nuts!" repeated Merry, in a scream. "Mates, do
you hear that? I tell you now, that man there knew it
all along. Look in the face of him and you'll see it
wrote there."

"Ah, Merry," remarked Silver, "standing for cap'n
again? You're a pushing lad, to be sure."

But this time everyone was entirely in Merry's favour.
They began to scramble out of the excavation, darting
furious glances behind them. One thing I observed,
which looked well for us: they all got out upon the
opposite side from Silver.

Well, there we stood, two on one side, five on the
other, the pit between us, and nobody screwed up high
enough to offer the first blow. Silver never moved; he
watched them, very upright on his crutch, and looked as
cool as ever I saw him. He was brave, and no mistake.

At last Merry seemed to think a speech might help matters.

"Mates," says he, "there's two of them alone there;
one's the old cripple that brought us all here and
blundered us down to this; the other's that cub that I
mean to have the heart of. Now, mates--"

He was raising his arm and his voice, and plainly meant
to lead a charge. But just then--crack! crack! crack!--
three musket-shots flashed out of the thicket. Merry
tumbled head foremost into the excavation; the man with
the bandage spun round like a teetotum and fell all his
length upon his side, where he lay dead, but still
twitching; and the other three turned and ran for it
with all their might.

Before you could wink, Long John had fired two barrels
of a pistol into the struggling Merry, and as the man
rolled up his eyes at him in the last agony, "George,"
said he, "I reckon I settled you."

At the same moment, the doctor, Gray, and Ben Gunn joined
us, with smoking muskets, from among the nutmeg-trees.

"Forward!" cried the doctor. "Double quick, my lads.
We must head 'em off the boats."

And we set off at a great pace, sometimes plunging
through the bushes to the chest.

I tell you, but Silver was anxious to keep up with us.
The work that man went through, leaping on his crutch
till the muscles of his chest were fit to burst, was
work no sound man ever equalled; and so thinks the
doctor. As it was, he was already thirty yards behind
us and on the verge of strangling when we reached the
brow of the slope.

"Doctor," he hailed, "see there! No hurry!"

Sure enough there was no hurry. In a more open part of
the plateau, we could see the three survivors still running
in the same direction as they had started, right for Mizzen-
mast Hill. We were already between them and the boats; and
so we four sat down to breathe, while Long John, mopping his
face, came slowly up with us.

"Thank ye kindly, doctor," says he. "You came in in
about the nick, I guess, for me and Hawkins. And so
it's you, Ben Gunn!" he added. "Well, you're a nice
one, to be sure."

"I'm Ben Gunn, I am," replied the maroon, wriggling
like an eel in his embarrassment. "And," he added,
after a long pause, "how do, Mr. Silver? Pretty well,
I thank ye, says you."

"Ben, Ben," murmured Silver, "to think as you've done me!"

The doctor sent back Gray for one of the pick-axes
deserted, in their flight, by the mutineers, and then
as we proceeded leisurely downhill to where the boats
were lying, related in a few words what had taken
place. It was a story that profoundly interested
Silver; and Ben Gunn, the half-idiot maroon, was the
hero from beginning to end.

Ben, in his long, lonely wanderings about the island,
had found the skeleton--it was he that had rifled it;
he had found the treasure; he had dug it up (it was the
haft of his pick-axe that lay broken in the
excavation); he had carried it on his back, in many
weary journeys, from the foot of the tall pine to a
cave he had on the two-pointed hill at the north-east
angle of the island, and there it had lain stored in
safety since two months before the arrival of the HISPANIOLA.

When the doctor had wormed this secret from him on the
afternoon of the attack, and when next morning he saw
the anchorage deserted, he had gone to Silver, given
him the chart, which was now useless--given him the
stores, for Ben Gunn's cave was well supplied with
goats' meat salted by himself--given anything and
everything to get a chance of moving in safety from the
stockade to the two-pointed hill, there to be clear of
malaria and keep a guard upon the money.

"As for you, Jim," he said, "it went against my heart,
but I did what I thought best for those who had stood
by their duty; and if you were not one of these, whose
fault was it?"

That morning, finding that I was to be involved in the
horrid disappointment he had prepared for the
mutineers, he had run all the way to the cave, and
leaving the squire to guard the captain, had taken Gray
and the maroon and started, making the diagonal across
the island to be at hand beside the pine. Soon,
however, he saw that our party had the start of him;
and Ben Gunn, being fleet of foot, had been dispatched
in front to do his best alone. Then it had occurred to
him to work upon the superstitions of his former
shipmates, and he was so far successful that Gray and
the doctor had come up and were already ambushed before
the arrival of the treasure-hunters.

"Ah," said Silver, "it were fortunate for me that I had
Hawkins here. You would have let old John be cut to
bits, and never given it a thought, doctor."

"Not a thought," replied Dr. Livesey cheerily.

And by this time we had reached the gigs. The doctor,
with the pick-axe, demolished one of them, and then we
all got aboard the other and set out to go round by sea
for North Inlet.

This was a run of eight or nine miles. Silver, though he
was almost killed already with fatigue, was set to an oar,
like the rest of us, and we were soon skimming swiftly over
a smooth sea. Soon we passed out of the straits and doubled
the south-east corner of the island, round which, four days
ago, we had towed the HISPANIOLA.

As we passed the two-pointed hill, we could see the
black mouth of Ben Gunn's cave and a figure standing by
it, leaning on a musket. It was the squire, and we
waved a handkerchief and gave him three cheers, in
which the voice of Silver joined as heartily as any.

Three miles farther, just inside the mouth of North
Inlet, what should we meet but the HISPANIOLA,
cruising by herself? The last flood had lifted her,
and had there been much wind or a strong tide current,
as in the southern anchorage, we should never have
found her more, or found her stranded beyond help. As
it was, there was little amiss beyond the wreck of the
main-sail. Another anchor was got ready and dropped in
a fathom and a half of water. We all pulled round
again to Rum Cove, the nearest point for Ben Gunn's
treasure-house; and then Gray, single-handed, returned
with the gig to the HISPANIOLA, where he was to
pass the night on guard.

A gentle slope ran up from the beach to the entrance of
the cave. At the top, the squire met us. To me he was
cordial and kind, saying nothing of my escapade either
in the way of blame or praise. At Silver's polite
salute he somewhat flushed.

"John Silver," he said, "you're a prodigious villain
and imposter--a monstrous imposter, sir. I am told I
am not to prosecute you. Well, then, I will not. But
the dead men, sir, hang about your neck like mill-stones."

"Thank you kindly, sir," replied Long John, again saluting.

"I dare you to thank me!" cried the squire. "It is a
gross dereliction of my duty. Stand back."

And thereupon we all entered the cave. It was a large,
airy place, with a little spring and a pool of clear
water, overhung with ferns. The floor was sand.
Before a big fire lay Captain Smollett; and in a far
corner, only duskily flickered over by the blaze, I
beheld great heaps of coin and quadrilaterals built of
bars of gold. That was Flint's treasure that we had
come so far to seek and that had cost already the lives
of seventeen men from the HISPANIOLA. How many it
had cost in the amassing, what blood and sorrow, what
good ships scuttled on the deep, what brave men walking
the plank blindfold, what shot of cannon, what shame
and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell.
Yet there were still three upon that island--Silver,
and old Morgan, and Ben Gunn--who had each taken his
share in these crimes, as each had hoped in vain to
share in the reward.

"Come in, Jim," said the captain. "You're a good boy in
your line, Jim, but I don't think you and me'll go to sea
again. You're too much of the born favourite for me. Is
that you, John Silver? What brings you here, man?"

"Come back to my dooty, sir," returned Silver.

"Ah!" said the captain, and that was all he said.

What a supper I had of it that night, with all my
friends around me; and what a meal it was, with Ben
Gunn's salted goat and some delicacies and a bottle of
old wine from the HISPANIOLA. Never, I am sure,
were people gayer or happier. And there was Silver,
sitting back almost out of the firelight, but eating
heartily, prompt to spring forward when anything was
wanted, even joining quietly in our laughter--the same
bland, polite, obsequious seaman of the voyage out.




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