AT THE ADMIRAL BENBOW INN

Chapter 1

Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole story of Treasure Island, keeping nothing back but the location of the island, and that only because there is still treasure, I take up my pen in the year 17, and go back to the time when my father kept the ‘Admiral Benbow Inn’.
Our lodger at that time was a brown old seaman. I remember the day he came plodding to the inn door, pulling his sea chest behind him in a small wheelbarrow. He appeared tall and heavy. His skin was nut brown and his hair hung in a pigtail down his back. His hands were ragged and scarred with black, broken nails. There was a saber cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. He stood by the cove and whistling to himself, would break out into a song:
Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Then he rapped on the door with a stick and when my father appeared, he called roughly for a glass of rum. He drank it slowly, lingering on the taste, and all the while looking out at the cliffs.
“This is a handy cove,” says he, “Do you have much company?”
My father told him no, very little company.

“Well then,” said the old seaman, “this is the place for me, my dear.” He called to the man to bring up his old sea chest. “I’m a plain man. Just rum, bacon and eggs is what I want.” He put a pile of gold pieces on the table and added, “You can tell me when I’ve worked my way through that, if you will,” looking fierce and ugly.
As the days passed we found him to be a very silent man. All day he hung around the cove, or on the cliffs, with a brass telescope. In the evening, he sat in a corner next to the fire, and drank rum and water. Mostly he would not speak when spoken to by anyone. He would look up sudden and fierce, and blow through his nose like a fog horn. We learnt to let him be.
Every day when he came back from his walk in the cove he asked if any seafaring man had gone by along the road. If a seaman had put up at the inn while he was out, he would look at him from behind the curtains before he entered the parlour.
For me at least there was no secret about this, for he had taken me aside one day, and promised me a silver four-penny on the first of every month if I would keep my “weather-eye open for a seafaring man with one leg,” and let him know the moment I saw him.
When I went to him for my wage, he would blow through his nose and stare me down but he always gave me my four-penny piece.
How that seaman with one leg did haunt me! On stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the inn, and the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a thousand terrible forms!
Sometimes he was a creature who never had but one leg and that right in the middle of his body. To see him leap and run and chase me over the hills was the worst of nightmares. Indeed, I earned my four-penny piece at the end of every month.
I was far less afraid of the captain than anybody else who knew him. There were nights when he would drink far more rum and water than his head would carry and he would sit and sing wicked, old, wild sea songs.
Sometimes the neighbours would join him in “Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum,” with the fear of death upon them if they refused to sing. For in these fits he would fly up in a passion of anger and wouldn’t allow anyone to leave until he fell asleep.
Then everyone would rush off.
His stories were what frightened people the worst of all. Dreadful stories, about hanging, and walking the plank, and storms at sea.
My father and mother thought the inn would he ruined, for people were shocked by his terrible stories which sent them home to shiver in their beds.
However, he did add excitement to our quiet life and the younger men, who pretended to admire him called him a ‘true sea dog’.
In one way he did threaten to ruin us, for he stayed week after week without paying my father any more money; and still my father, who was in such poor health, did not have the courage to ask for it. I am sure the captain’s fierce temper greatly hastened my father’s early and unhappy death. The captain did not seem to notice that my father was not well, and would roar loudly at him if he had a mind to do so.
All the time he lived with us, he made no change of clothes. He never wrote or received a letter and he never spoke with anyone except the neighbours who came in to drink rum with him. The great sea chest, none of us had ever seen open. It stood in his room, gathering dust.
Dr. Livesey came late one afternoon to see my father. He stayed to have dinner with my mother and went into the parlour to smoke a pipe until his horse was brought around, for we had no stabling at the old ‘Benbow’. I followed him in and I remember noticing the difference in the neat, bright doctor, and the filthy, heavy bearded scarecrow of a pirate singing:
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, anti a bottle of rum!
Dr. Livesey listened to the song and began at once to tell the captain that if he didn’t stop drinking so much rum he would soon be dead.
The old fellow’s fury was awful. He sprang to his feet, drew and opened a 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 in the same calm voice as before.
“If you do not put that knife in your pocket this instant, I promise, upon my honour, that you shall be hanged.”
There followed a battle of looks between them, but the captain soon looked away and put his weapon back in his pocket. He grumbled like a beaten dog, listening to the doctor.
“Remember, I shall keep my eye on you. I am not just a doctor but also a man of law, and I hadn’t better hear of one complaint or I shall see to it that you are arrested at once!”
Soon after, Dr. Livesey’s horse was ready and he rode away. The captain held his peace that evening and for many evenings to come.
It wasn’t long after this that the first of the mysteries occurred. It was a bitter cold winter, with long, hard frosts and heavy gales. My father did not get strong and it was up to my mother and me to care for the inn.

One January morning while I was setting the breakfast table, the door opened and a pale creature, missing two fingers on his left hand, walked in. I asked him what he wanted and he motioned for me to come closer to him.
“Come here, dear,” he said. “Come nearer.”
I took a step nearer, frightened to be sure.
“Is this table for my mate Bill?” he asked, with a kind of threat in his voice.
I told him I did not know his mate Bill, but that our guest was called captain.
“Well,” said he, “does your captain have a cut on one side of his check and a pleasant way with him when he drinks rum?”
I told him that he was out walking.
He waited in the parlour for the captain to return. It seemed to me a long time, for the man was very restless and kept looking out of the window.
As the captain entered, the man called, “Come, Bill, you know me. You know your old shipmate, don’t you?”
The captain gasped, “Black Dog!”
They sat down to talk and as I have never made a habit of listening at key holes I left them, so I am not sure just what happened.
Suddenly there was a tremendous noise. I rushed in to find both men with drawn cutlasses, and Black Dog making for the open door. The captain was bleeding from the shoulder and calling for me to get him rum, at once.
At that instant, my mother rushed in, just in time to see the captain fall to the floor. His face was a deep blue and he was breathing very hard.
My poor mother, worried about my father, rushed to find the doctor. Once again, the doctor warned the captain to change his ways, for even bleeding him would not help very much.
A day or so later, my father died. I was busy comforting my mother and making arrangements for the funeral. It kept me busy and I had almost forgotten about the captain, when he called to me. “Dear,” he said, “if I can’t get away and they tip me the black spot, it’s my old sea chest they’re after. I was Flint’s first mate and I’m the one who knows the place. You get the doctor to arrest them, but don’t tell unless the Black Dog comes back or the man with one leg.”
“But what is the black spot,” I asked, not caring much, with such grief on my mind.
“That’s a summons, mate. Keep awake and I’ll share with you, upon my honour.”
The day after my father’s funeral I stood at the door of the inn. I heard the tap, tap of a stick on the hard road. Soon I saw a sight I shall never forget! He was plainly blind, was this creature, making his way towards me. I tried to walk away.
“Lead me to the captain,” he sneered.
I showed him to the parlour and as I left them I saw the blind man put something in the captain’s hand. The captain fell to the floor.

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