Part Two

The Sea-cook



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 seamen, 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!"