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Treasure Island
Chapter 3. The Black Spot
About noon I stopped at the captain's door with some cooling drinks and medicines.
He was lying very much as we had left him, only a little higher, and he seemed both weak and excited.
"Jim," he said, "you're the only one here that's worth anything, and you know I've been always good to you."
"Never a month but I've given you a silver fourpenny for yourself."
"And now you see, mate, I'm pretty low and deserted by all, so Jim, you'll bring me one noggin of rum now, won't you, matey"?
"The doctor, " I began.
But he broke in cursing the doctor, in a weak voice but heartily.
"Doctors is all swabs," he said, "and that doctor there, why, what do he know about seafaring men"?
I've been in places hot as pitch.
I've seen mates dropping round with Yellow Jack.
The blessed land was a-heaving like the sea with earthquakes.
What does the doctor know of lands like that?
And I lived on rum, I tell you.
It's been meat and drink, and man and wife, to me.
If I'm not to have my rum now, I'm a poor old hulk on a lee shore.
My blood'll be on you, Jim, and that doctor swab.
He ran on again for a while with curses.
"Look, Jim, how my fingers fidges," he continued in the pleading tone.
"I can't keep 'em still, not I".
I haven't had a drop this blessed day.
That doctor's a fool, I tell you.
If I don't have a dram o' rum, Jim, I'll have the horrors, I seen some on 'em already.
I seen old Flint in the corner there behind you, as plain as print.
If I get the horrors, I'm a man that has lived rough, and I'll raise Cain.
Your doctor hisself said one glass wouldn't hurt me.
"I'll give you a golden guinea for a noggin, Jim."
He was growing more and more excited.
This alarmed me for my father, who was very low that day and needed quiet.
Besides, I was reassured by the doctor's words, now quoted to me.
I was rather offended by the offer of a bribe.
"I want none of your money," said I, "but what you owe my father. I'll get you one glass, and no more."
When I brought it to him, he seized it greedily and drank it out.
"Aye, aye," said he, "that's some better, sure enough. And now, matey, did that doctor say how long I was to lie here in this old berth?"
"A week at least," said I.
"Thunder!" he cried.
"A week!" he cried.
"I can't do that, they'd have the black spot on me by then," he cried.
"The lubbers is going about to get the wind of me this blessed moment," he said.
"They couldn't keep what they got and want to nail what's another's. I'm a saving soul and I'll trick 'em again, matey," he added.
As he was thus speaking, he rose from bed with difficulty, holding my shoulder with a grip that almost made me cry out.
He moved his legs like so much dead weight.
His words, spirited as they were in meaning, contrasted sadly with the weakness of the voice in which they were uttered.
He paused when he had got into a sitting position on the edge.
"That doctor's done me," he murmured.
"My ears is singing. Lay me back."
Before I could do much to help him he had fallen back again to his former place, where he lay for a while silent.
"Jim," he said at length, "you saw that seafaring man today?"
"Black Dog?" I asked.
"Ah! Black Dog," says he.
"He's a bad 'un, but there's worse that put him on."
"Now, if I can't get away nohow,"
"And they tip me the black spot, mind you, it's my old sea-chest they're after, you get on a horse, you can, can't you?"
"Get on a horse."
"Ride to that eternal doctor swab."
"Tell him to pipe all hands, magistrates, and such."
"He'll bring them aboard the Admiral Benbow."
"All of old Flint's crew, man and boy, all that's left."
"I was first mate, I was, old Flint's first mate, and I'm the on'y one as knows the place."
"He gave it me at Savannah, when he lay a-dying, like as if I was to now, you see."
But you won't peach unless they give me the black spot, or unless you see Black Dog again, or a onelegged seaman, Jim, him above all.
"But what's the black spot, captain?" I asked.
"That's a summons, mate. I'll tell you if they get that. But you keep your weather-eye open, Jim, and I'll share with you equals, upon my honour."
He wandered a little longer, his voice grew weaker.
I gave him his medicine, and he took it like a child.
He said, "If ever a seaman wanted drugs, it's me." He fell into a heavy, swoon-like sleep.
I left him there, What I should have done had all gone well I don't know.
Probably I should have told the whole story to the doctor.
I was in mortal fear lest the captain should repent of his confessions and make an end of me.
But as things fell out, my poor father died quite suddenly that evening, which put all other matters on one side.
Our natural distress kept me very busy.
The neighbours came to visit, I had to arrange the funeral.
All the work of the inn went on as usual.
I had little time to think of the captain, and even less to be afraid of him.
He got downstairs next morning and had his meals as usual.
He ate little and had more rum than usual, I'm afraid.
He helped himself out of the bar, scowling and blowing through his nose.
No one dared to cross him, On the night before the funeral he was as drunk as ever.
It was shocking, in that house of mourning, to hear him singing his ugly old sea-song.
But weak as he was, we were all in fear of death for him.
The doctor was suddenly taken up with a case many miles away.
He was never near the house after my father's death.
I have said the captain was weak, and indeed he seemed rather to grow weaker than regain his strength.
He clambered up and down stairs, he went from the parlour to the bar and back again.
Sometimes he put his nose out of doors to smell the sea.
He held on to the walls for support, breathing hard and fast like a man on a steep mountain.
He never particularly addressed me, and I believe he had as good as forgotten his confidences.
His temper was more flighty, and, allowing for his bodily weakness, it was more violent than ever.
He had an alarming way now when he was drunk of drawing his cutlass and laying it bare before him on the table.
But with all that, he minded people less and seemed shut up in his own thoughts and rather wandering.
Once, to our extreme wonder, he piped up a different air.
He sang a country love-song he must have learned in his youth before he began to follow the sea.
The day after the funeral, a bitter, foggy, frosty afternoon came.
Around three o'clock, I stood at the door for a moment, full of sad thoughts about my father.
Then I saw someone drawing slowly near along the road.
He was plainly blind, he tapped before him with a stick and wore a great green shade over his eyes and nose.
He was hunched, as if with age or weakness.
He wore a huge old tattered sea-cloak with a hood that made him appear positively deformed.
I never saw in my life a more dreadful-looking figure.
He stopped a little way from the inn.
He raised his voice in an odd sing-song.
He addressed the air in front of him.
"Will any kind friend inform a poor blind man?"
"I lost my precious sight defending my native country, England."
"God bless King George!"
"Where in this country am I now?"
"You're at the Admiral Benbow, Black Hill Cove, my good man," said I.
"I hear a voice," said he, "a young voice. Will you give me your hand, my kind young friend, and lead me in?"
I held out my hand, and the horrible, soft-spoken, eyeless creature gripped it in a moment like a vise.
I was startled that I struggled to withdraw, but the blind man pulled me to him with one motion of his arm.
"Now, boy," he said, "take me in to the captain."
"Sir," said I, "upon my word I dare not."
"Oh," he sneered, "that's it! Take me in straight or I'll break your arm."
And he gave it, as he spoke, a wrench that made me cry out.
"Sir," said I, "it's for yourself I mean. The captain isn't what he used to be. He sits with a drawn cutlass. Another gentleman, "
"Come, now, march," interrupted he, and I never heard a voice so cruel, and cold, and ugly as that blind man's.
It cowed me more than the pain.
I obeyed him at once, walked through the door, and toward the parlour, where our sick old buccaneer sat, dazed with rum.
The blind man clung close to me, holding me in one iron fist and leaning almost more of his weight on me than I could carry.
"Lead me straight up to him, and when I'm in view, cry out, 'Here's a friend for you, Bill.' If you don't, I'll do this,"
And with that he gave me a twitch that I thought would have made me faint.
I was utterly terrified of the blind beggar.
I forgot my terror of the captain as I opened the parlour door.
I cried out the words he had ordered in a trembling voice.
The poor captain raised his eyes, and at one look the rum went out of him and left him staring sober.
The expression of his face wasn't so much of terror as of mortal sickness.
He made a movement to rise, but I don't believe he had enough force left in his body.
"Now, Bill, sit where you're," said the beggar.
"If I can't see, I can hear a finger stirring."
"Business is business."
"Hold out your left hand."
"Boy, take his left hand by the wrist and bring it near to my right."
We both obeyed him to the letter.
I saw him slip something from the hollow of the hand that held his stick into the captain's palm, which closed instantly.
"And now that's done," said the blind man.
He suddenly let go of me, With incredible accuracy and nimbleness, he skipped out of the parlour.
He went into the road, I still stood motionless.
I could hear his stick go tap-tap-tapping into the distance.
I released the captain's wrist, which I was still holding.
He drew in his hand and looked sharply into the palm.
It was some time before either of us seemed to gather our senses.
"Ten o'clock!" he cried.
"Six hours. We'll do them yet," and he sprang to his feet.
Even as he did so, he reeled, put his hand to his throat, and stood swaying for a moment.
Then, with a peculiar sound, he fell from his whole height, face foremost to the floor.
I ran to him at once, calling to my mother.
But haste was all in vain, the captain had been struck dead by thundering apoplexy.
It's a curious thing to understand, I had certainly never liked the man, though of late I had begun to pity him.
But as soon as I saw that he was dead, I burst into a flood of tears.
It was the second death I had known, and the sorrow of the first was still fresh in my heart.