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Treasure Island
Chapter 25. I Strike the Jolly Roger
I had hardly gotten a position on the bowsprit when the flying jib flapped and filled on the other side, with a sound like a gun.
The schooner shook to her keel under the change, but the next moment, the other sails still pulling, the jib flapped back again and hung still.
This nearly threw me off into the sea.
Now I wasted no time, I crawled back along the bowsprit and fell headfirst onto the deck.
I was on the sheltered side of the forecastle, and the mainsail, which was still pulling, hid a part of the after-deck from me.
Not a soul could be seen, the planks, which hadn't been washed since the mutiny, showed the marks of many feet.
An empty bottle, broken at the neck, rolled back and forth like a living thing in the scuppers.
Suddenly the HISPANIOLA turned straight into the wind.
The jibs behind me cracked loudly, the rudder slammed over, the whole ship gave a sickening shake and shudder.
At the same moment, the main-boom swung inboard, the sheet groaning in the blocks, and showed me the sheltered after-deck.
There were the two watchmen, sure enough.
Red-cap lay on his back, stiff as a handspike, arms stretched like a crucifix, teeth showing through open lips.
Israel Hands was propped against the bulwarks, his chin on his chest, his hands lying open before him on the deck.
His face, under its tan, was as white as a tallow candle.
For a while, the ship kept bucking and sidling like a wild horse.
The sails filled, now on one tack, now on another, and the boom swung back and forth until the mast groaned loudly under the strain.
Now and then, a cloud of light spray came over the bulwark and a heavy blow of the ship's bows against the swell.
This great rigged ship made much heavier weather of it than my home-made, lop-sided coracle, which was now at the bottom of the sea.
At every jump of the schooner, red-cap slipped back and forth.
But what was terrible to see, neither his position nor his fixed grin, with his teeth showing, was disturbed by this rough treatment.
At every jump too, Hands seemed to sink more into himself and settle down on the deck.
His feet slid farther out, and his whole body leaned toward the stern.
Little by little, his face became hidden from me.
At last, I could see nothing beyond his ear and the frayed ringlet of one whisker.
At the same time, I noticed splashes of dark blood on the planks around both of them.
I began to feel sure that they had killed each other in their drunken anger.
While I was looking and wondering, in a calm moment when the ship was still, Israel Hands turned partly around.
With a low moan, he twisted himself back to the position where I had first seen him.
The moan, which told of pain and deadly weakness, and the way his jaw hung open, went right to my heart.
But when I remembered the talk I had overheard from the apple barrel, all pity left me.
I walked aft until I reached the main-mast.
"Come aboard, Mr. Hands," I said ironically.
He rolled his eyes heavily, but he was too far gone to show surprise.
All he could do was say one word, "Brandy."
It occurred to me there was no time to lose.
Dodging the boom as it once more lurched across the deck, I slipped aft and down the companion stairs into the cabin.
It was such a scene of confusion as you can hardly imagine.
All the locked places had been broken open in search of the chart.
The floor was thick with mud where the ruffians had sat down to drink or talk after wading in the marshes around their camp.
The bulkheads, all painted clear white and decorated with gilt, bore a pattern of dirty hands.
Dozens of empty bottles clinked together in corners as the ship rolled.
One of the doctor's medical books lay open on the table, half of the pages torn out, I suppose, for pipe lights.
In the middle of all this, the lamp still cast a smoky glow, dark and brown as umber.
I went into the cellar, All the barrels were gone, and a surprising number of bottles had been drunk and thrown away.
Certainly, since the mutiny began, not a man of them could ever have been sober.
Looking around, I found a bottle with some brandy left for Hands.
For myself, I found some biscuit, some pickled fruits, a big bunch of raisins, and a piece of cheese.
With these, I came on deck, I put down my own stock behind the rudder head, well out of the coxswain's reach.
Then I went forward to the water-breaker and had a good deep drink of water.
Only then did I give Hands the brandy.
He must have drunk a gill before he took the bottle from his mouth.
"Aye," said he, "by thunder, but I wanted some of that!"
I had already sat down in my own corner and begun to eat.
"Much hurt?" I asked him.
He grunted, or rather, I might say, he barked.
"If that doctor was aboard,"
He said, "I'd be right enough in a couple of turns."
"But I don't have no manner of luck, you see, and that's what's the matter with me," he added.
"As for that swab, he's good and dead, he's," he added, pointing at the man with the red cap.
"He wasn't no seaman anyhow. And where might you have come from?"
"Well," said I, "I've come aboard to take possession of this ship, Mr. Hands. And you'll please regard me as your captain until further notice."
He looked at me sourly enough but said nothing.
Color had returned to his cheeks, though he looked sick and kept slipping and settling as the ship banged about.
"By the way," I continued, "I can't have these colors, Mr. Hands. And by your leave, I'll strike them. Better none than these."
Again dodging the boom, I ran to the color lines, handed down their cursed black flag, and threw it overboard.
"God save the king!" said I, waving my cap.
"And there's an end to Captain Silver!"
He watched me keenly and slyly, his chin all the while on his chest.
"I reckon," he said at last, "I reckon, Cap'n Hawkins, you'll kind of want to get ashore now. Suppose we talk."
"Why, yes," says I, "with all my heart, Mr. Hands. Say on." And I went back to my meal with a good appetite.
"This man," he began, nodding weakly at the corpse, "O'Brien was his name, a rank Irishman."
"This man and me got the canvas on her, meaning to sail her back."
"Well, he's dead now, he's as dead as bilge, and who's to sail this ship, I don't see."
"You gives me food, drink, and a scarf to tie my wound, and I'll tell you how to sail her, without a hint, you ain't that man".
"I'll tell you one thing," says I.
"I'm not going back to Captain Kidd's anchorage. I mean to get into North Inlet and beach her quietly there."
"To be sure you did," he cried.
"Why, I ain't such an infernal lubber after all. I can see, can't I, I've tried my fling and I've lost."
"And it's you has the wind of me. North Inlet? Why, I have no choice, not I. I'd help you sail her up to Execution Dock, thunder"!
Well, as it seemed to me, there was some sense in this.
We struck our bargain on the spot.
In three minutes, I had the HISPANIOLA sailing easily before the wind along the coast of Treasure Island.
I had good hopes of turning the northern point before noon and beating down again as far as North Inlet before high water.
Then we could beach her safely and wait until the falling tide let us land.
Then I tied the tiller and went below to my own chest, where I got a soft silk handkerchief of my mother's.
With this, and with my help, Hands bound up the big bleeding stab he had received in his thigh.
After he had eaten a little and had a swallow or two more of the brandy, he began to pick up visibly.
He sat straighter, spoke louder and clearer, and looked in every way like another man.
The breeze served us perfectly, we skimmed before it like a bird.
The coast of the island flashed by, and the view changed every minute.
Soon we were past the high lands and bowling beside low, sandy country, dotted here and there with dwarf pines.
Soon we were beyond that again and had turned the corner of the rocky hill that ends the island on the north.
I was greatly excited by my new command and pleased with the bright, sunny weather and these different views of the coast.
I now had plenty of water and good things to eat.
My conscience, which had hit me hard for my desertion, was quieted by the great conquest I had made.
I think I'd have had nothing left to wish for.
But I noticed the coxswain's eyes following me mockingly around the deck and his strange smile appearing continually on his face.
It was a smile that had in it something both of pain and weakness, an old man's tired smile.
Besides, there was mockery and a shadow of treachery in his face as he craftily watched me at my work.