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Treasure Island
Chapter 26. Israel Hands
The wind, serving us well, now turned to the west.
We could run much more easily from the north-east corner of the island to the mouth of the North Inlet.
But we had no way to anchor and didn't dare beach her until the tide rose more, so we had time to kill.
The coxswain showed me how to hold the ship steady.
After many tries, I succeeded, and we both sat in silence over another meal.
"Captain," he said at last with that same uncomfortable smile, "here's my old shipmate O'Brien, suppose you were to throw him overboard?"
"I'm not particular as a rule, and I don't take no blame for finishing him off, but I don't think he looks very nice now, do you"?
"I'm not strong enough, and I don't like the job. He can stay where he's, for me," I said.
"This here's an unlucky ship, this Hispaniola, Jim," he went on, blinking.
"There's a lot of men been killed on this Hispaniola - a sight of poor seamen dead and gone since you and me took ship to Bristol."
"I never saw such bad luck, not I."
"There was this here O'Brien now - he's dead, isn't he?"
"Well now, I'm no scholar, and you're a lad who can read and figure."
"To put it straight, do you think a dead man is dead for good, or does he come alive again?"
"You can kill the body, Mr. Hands, but not the spirit. You must know that already," I replied.
"O'Brien there's in another world and may be watching us."
"Ah!" says he.
"Well, that's unfortunate - seems like killing people is a waste of time."
"However, spirits don't count for much, from what I've seen."
"I'll take my chances with the spirits, Jim."
"And now, you've spoken up freely, and I'd take it kindly if you'd step down into that cabin and get me a - well, a - shiver my timbers!"
"I can't think of the name of it."
"Well, you get me a bottle of wine, Jim - this here brandy's too strong for my head."
Now, the coxswain's hesitation seemed unnatural, and as for the idea of his preferring wine to brandy, I didn't believe it at all.
The whole story was a trick, he wanted me to leave the deck - that much was clear.
But I couldn't imagine why, his eyes never met mine.
They kept wandering back and forth, up and down, now looking at the sky, now glancing quickly at the dead O'Brien.
He kept smiling and sticking out his tongue in a guilty, embarrassed way, so even a child could see he planned a trick.
I answered quickly, though, because I saw where my advantage lay.
With someone so stupid, I could easily hide my suspicions to the end.
"Some wine?" I said.
"Far better. Will you have white or red?"
"Well, I reckon it's about the same to me, shipmate," he replied.
"So long as it's strong and there's plenty of it, what's the difference?"
"All right," I answered.
"I'll bring you port, Mr. Hands. But I'll have to dig for it."
With that, I hurried down the companionway with all the noise I could make.
I slipped off my shoes, ran quietly along the sparred gallery, climbed the forecastle ladder, and popped my head out of the fore companion.
I knew he wouldn't expect to see me there, yet I took every possible care.
And certainly the worst of my fears proved too true.
He had gotten up onto his hands and knees.
Though his leg obviously hurt him badly when he moved, I could hear him hold back a groan.
He still dragged himself across the deck at a good, fast pace.
In half a minute he reached the port scuppers and picked from a rope coil a long knife, or rather a short dagger.
It was stained to the handle with blood.
He looked at it, pushed out his lower jaw, tried the point on his hand, then quickly hid it in his jacket front.
Then he crawled back to his old place against the side of the ship.
That was all I needed to know.
Israel could move around, he was now armed.
And if he had gone to so much trouble to get rid of me, it was clear that I was meant to be the victim.
I couldn't say what he'd do afterwards.
He might try to crawl across the island from North Inlet to the camp among the swamps.
Or he might fire Long Tom, hoping his own men would come first to help him.
Yet I felt sure that I could trust him on one point, because our interests were the same there.
That was in the handling of the schooner.
We both wanted to get her safely aground in a sheltered place.
Then, when the time came, she could be gotten off again with as little work and danger as possible.
And until that was done, I believed my life would certainly be spared.
While I was thinking this over in my mind, I hadn't been idle with my body.
I had stolen back to the cabin, slipped back into my shoes, and grabbed a bottle of wine without looking.
Now, with this as an excuse, I came back onto the deck.
Hands lay as I had left him, fallen in a heap, his eyelids lowered as if too weak to bear the light.
He looked up, though, when I came.
He knocked the neck off the bottle like a man who had done it many times, and took a good drink, with his favorite toast of "Here's luck!"
Then he lay quiet for a little while.
Then he pulled out a stick of tobacco and asked me to cut him a piece to chew.
"Cut me a piece of that," says he.
"For I haven't got a knife and hardly enough strength even if I did."
"Ah, Jim, Jim, I reckon I've missed my chance!"
"Cut me a piece to chew, as'll likely be the last, lad, for I'm going to my long home, and no mistake."
"Well," said I, "I'll cut you some tobacco. But if I were you and thought myself so badly off, I'd say my prayers like a Christian man."
"Why?" said he.
"Now, you tell me why."
"Why?" I cried.
"You were asking me just now about the dead."
"You've broken your trust."
"You've lived in sin and lies and blood."
"There's a man you killed lying at your feet this moment, and you ask me why!"
"For God's mercy, Mr."
"Hands, that's why."
I spoke hotly, thinking of the bloody dagger he had hidden in his pocket and planned in his evil mind to kill me.
He, for his part, took a big drink of the wine and spoke with the most unusual seriousness.
"For thirty years,"
He said, "I've sailed the seas and seen all kinds of weather, shortages, fights, and worse."
He added, "Well, now I tell you, I never saw good come from goodness yet."
"The man who strikes first is my favorite," he said.
"Dead men don't bite. Those are my views - amen, so be it," he said.
"He added, "We've had enough of this foolishness. The tide's high, take my orders, Captain Hawkins, and we'll sail in.
All told, we had barely two miles to run, but the navigation was tricky.
The entrance to this northern anchorage wasn't only narrow and shallow.
But it lay east and west, so the schooner had to be handled carefully to get in.
I think I was a good, quick assistant, and I'm very sure that Hands was an excellent pilot.
We went about and about and dodged in, barely touching the banks, with a sureness and neatness that were a pleasure to see.
We had barely passed the headlands before the land closed around us.
The shores of North Inlet were as thickly wooded as those of the southern anchorage.
The inlet was longer and narrower, and it was truly the mouth of a river.
Right before us, at the southern end, we saw the wreck of a ship in the last stages of decay.
It had been a great vessel of three masts.
But it had lain so long exposed to the weather that it was covered with great webs of dripping seaweed.
On its deck, shore bushes had taken root and now grew thick with flowers.
It was a sad sight, but it showed us that the anchorage was calm.
"Now," said Hands.
Look there. There's a perfect spot to beach a ship, fine flat sand, no wind, trees all around, and flowers like a garden on that old ship.
"And once beached," I asked, "how will we get her off again?"
"Why, like this," he replied.
"You take a line ashore there on the other side at low water."
"Take a turn around one of those big pine trees."
"Bring it back, take a turn around the capstan, and wait for the tide."
"When high water comes, all hands pull on the line, and off she comes as easy as can be."
"And now, boy, you stand by."
"We're near the spot now, and she's moving too fast."
"Starboard a little - so - steady - starboard - larboard a little - steady - steady!"
So he gave his orders, which I obeyed breathlessly, until all of a sudden he cried, "Now, my hearty, turn into the wind!"
And I put the wheel hard over.
The Hispaniola swung around quickly and ran straight for the low, wooded shore.
The excitement of these last moves had somewhat interfered with the watch I had kept so far, sharply enough, on the coxswain.
Even then I was still so interested, waiting for the ship to touch, that I had quite forgotten the danger that hung over my head.
I stood leaning over the starboard side, watching the ripples spreading wide before the bows.
I might have fallen without a struggle for my life if a sudden uneasiness hadn't seized me and made me turn my head.
Perhaps I had heard a creak or seen his shadow moving from the corner of my eye.
Perhaps it was an instinct like a cat's.
But sure enough, when I looked around, there was Hands, already halfway toward me, with the dagger in his right hand.
We must both have cried out loud when our eyes met.
But mine was the sharp cry of terror, while his was a roar of fury like a charging bully's.
At the same moment, he threw himself forward, and I jumped sideways toward the bows.
As I did so, I let go of the tiller, which sprang sharply to the side.
I think this saved my life, for it struck Hands across the chest and stopped him dead for a moment.
Before he could recover, I was safe out of the corner where he had trapped me, with all the deck to dodge around.
Just in front of the mainmast, I stopped.
I drew a pistol, took careful aim, though he had already turned and was coming straight at me, and pulled the trigger.
The hammer fell, but there was neither flash nor sound.
The powder was useless from the sea water.
I cursed myself for my carelessness, Why hadn't I, long before, reloaded and reprimed my only weapons?
Then I wouldn't have been, as now, a mere fleeing sheep before this butcher.
Wounded as he was, it was amazing how fast he could move.
His gray hair tumbled over his face, and his face itself was as red as a red flag with his haste and fury.
I had no time to try my other pistol, nor much desire, for I was sure it would be useless.
One thing I saw clearly, I mustn't simply run away from him.
He would soon trap me in the bows, as he had nearly trapped me in the stern a moment before.
Once caught like that, nine or ten inches of the blood-stained dagger would be my last experience on this side of eternity.
I placed my hands against the mainmast, which was fairly thick, and waited, every nerve stretched tight.
Seeing that I meant to dodge, he also paused.
A moment or two passed with feints on his part and matching movements on mine.
It was a game I had often played at home around the rocks of Black Hill Cove.
But never before had I played it with such a wildly beating heart as now.
Still, as I say, it was a boy's game.
And I thought I could hold my own against an old seaman with a wounded leg.
In fact, my courage had begun to rise so high that I allowed myself a few quick thoughts about how this would end.
And while I saw that I could certainly stretch it out for a long time, I saw no hope of any final escape.
Well, while things stood like this, suddenly the Hispaniola struck.
She staggered and scraped for a moment in the sand.
Then, quick as a blow, she tipped to the port side until the deck reached a forty-five degree angle.
About a barrel of water splashed into the scupper holes and lay in a pool between the deck and the side.
We were both thrown over in a second, and both of us rolled, almost together, into the scuppers.
The dead red-cap, with his arms still spread out, tumbled stiffly after us.
We were so close, in fact, that my head hit the coxswain's foot with a crack that made my teeth rattle.
Despite the blow, I was the first on my feet again, because Hands had gotten tangled with the dead body.
The sudden tipping of the ship had made the deck no place for running.
I had to find some new way to escape, and that right away, because my enemy was almost touching me.
Quick as thought, I jumped into the mizzen rigging, climbed up hand over hand, and didn't take a breath until I was sitting on the cross-trees.
I had been saved by being quick.
The dagger had struck less than half a foot below me as I climbed upward.
And there stood Israel Hands with his mouth open and his face turned up to mine, a perfect statue of surprise and disappointment.
Now that I had a moment to myself, I lost no time in changing the powder in my pistol.
Then, having one ready for use, and to make doubly sure, I also emptied the other and reloaded it from the beginning.
My new activity struck Hands all of a heap.
He began to see the dice going against him.
After a clear hesitation, he also pulled himself heavily into the rigging and, with the dagger in his teeth, began slowly and painfully to climb.
It cost him no end of time and groans to drag his wounded leg behind him.
I had quietly finished my preparations before he was much more than a third of the way up.
Then, with a pistol in each hand, I spoke to him.
"One more step, Mr. Hands," said I, "and I'll blow your brains out! Dead men don't bite, you know," I added with a chuckle.
He stopped instantly, I could see by the movement of his face that he was trying to think.
The process was so slow and laborious that, in my new-found safety, I laughed out loud.
At last, after swallowing a couple of times, he spoke.
His face still wore the same expression of extreme confusion.
To speak, he had to take the dagger from his mouth, but in all else he remained still.
"Jim," says he.
"I reckon we're stuck, you and me, and we'll have to sign an agreement."
"I'd have gotten you but for that lurch."
"But I don't have no luck, not I."
"And I reckon I'll have to give up, which comes hard, you see, for a master mariner to a ship's boy like you, Jim."
I drank in his words, smiling like a cock on a wall, when suddenly his right hand went over his shoulder.
Something sang like an arrow through the air.
I felt a blow and then a sharp pain, and there I was pinned by the shoulder to the mast.
In the horrible pain and surprise of the moment, both my pistols went off.
I can hardly say it was by my own will.
I'm sure it was without a conscious aim.
Both pistols fell out of my hands.
They didn't fall alone, With a choked cry, the coxswain let go of the rigging and plunged head first into the water.