audio book is actually read by a real person, not just a machine. So if you really want to improve your listening and even speaking skills, you'd better get an audio book. You probably know how important the intonation is.
Listening is a natural way to learn a language. We offer a very easy way to learn English: Just Listen. Enjoy!
TREASURE ISLAND
1- The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral Benbow
SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having
asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from
the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the
island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I
take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when
my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the
sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.
I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the
inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow--a
tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the
shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with
black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid
white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself
as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so
often afterwards:
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and
broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of
stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared,
called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him,
he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste and still
looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.
"This is a handy cove," says he at length; "and a pleasant sittyated
grog-shop. Much company, mate?"
My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity.
"Well, then," said he, "this is the berth for me. Here you, matey," he
cried to the man who trundled the barrow; "bring up alongside and help
up my chest. I'll stay here a bit," he continued. "I'm a plain man; rum
and bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there for to watch
ships off. What you mought call me? You mought call me captain. Oh, I
see what you're at--there"; and he threw down three or four gold pieces
on the threshold. "You can tell me when I've worked through that," says
he, looking as fierce as a commander.
And indeed bad as his clothes were and coarsely as he spoke, he had none
of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast, but seemed like
a mate or skipper accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. The man who came
with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before at
the Royal George, that he had inquired what inns there were along the
coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and described as
lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place of residence. And
that was all we could learn of our guest.
He was a very silent man by custom. All day he hung round the cove or
upon the cliffs with a brass telescope; all evening he sat in a corner
of the parlour next the fire and drank rum and water very strong. Mostly
he would not speak when spoken to, only look up sudden and fierce and
blow through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the people who came
about our house soon learned to let him be. Every day when he came back
from his stroll he would ask if any seafaring men had gone by along the
road. At first we thought it was the want of company of his own kind
that made him ask this question, but at last we began to see he was
desirous to avoid them. When a seaman did put up at the Admiral Benbow
(as now and then some did, making by the coast road for Bristol) he
would look in at him through the curtained door before he entered the
parlour; and he was always sure to be as silent as a mouse when any such
was present. For me, at least, there was no secret about the matter, for
I was, in a way, a sharer in his alarms. He had taken me aside one day
and promised me a silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I
would only keep my "weather-eye open for a seafaring man with one leg"
and let him know the moment he appeared. Often enough when the first
of the month came round and I applied to him for my wage, he would only
blow through his nose at me and stare me down, but before the week was
out he was sure to think better of it, bring me my four-penny piece, and
repeat his orders to look out for "the seafaring man with one leg."
How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On
stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house and
the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a
thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg
would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous
kind of a creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in the
middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and
ditch was the worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for
my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.
But though I was so terrified by the idea of the seafaring man with one
leg, I was far less afraid of the captain himself than anybody else who
knew him. There were nights when he took a deal more rum and water
than his head would carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his
wicked, old, wild sea-songs, minding nobody; but sometimes he would call
for glasses round and force all the trembling company to listen to his
stories or bear a chorus to his singing. Often I have heard the house
shaking with "Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum," all the neighbours joining
in for dear life, with the fear of death upon them, and each singing
louder than the other to avoid remark. For in these fits he was the most
overriding companion ever known; he would slap his hand on the table for
silence all round; he would fly up in a passion of anger at a question,
or sometimes because none was put, and so he judged the company was not
following his story. Nor would he allow anyone to leave the inn till he
had drunk himself sleepy and reeled off to bed.
His stories were what frightened people worst of all. Dreadful stories
they were--about hanging, and walking the plank, and storms at sea, and
the Dry Tortugas, and wild deeds and places on the Spanish Main. By his
own account he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest men
that God ever allowed upon the sea, and the language in which he told
these stories shocked our plain country people almost as much as the
crimes that he described. My father was always saying the inn would be
ruined, for people would soon cease coming there to be tyrannized over
and put down, and sent shivering to their beds; but I really believe his
presence did us good. People were frightened at the time, but on looking
back they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country
life, and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to
admire him, calling him a "true sea-dog" and a "real old salt" and
such like names, and saying there was the sort of man that made England
terrible at sea.
In one way, indeed, he bade fair to ruin us, for he kept on staying week
after week, and at last month after month, so that all the money had
been long exhausted, and still my father never plucked up the heart to
insist on having more. If ever he mentioned it, the captain blew through
his nose so loudly that you might say he roared, and stared my poor
father out of the room. I have seen him wringing his hands after such a
rebuff, and I am sure the annoyance and the terror he lived in must have
greatly hastened his early and unhappy death.
All the time he lived with us the captain made no change whatever in his
dress but to buy some stockings from a hawker. One of the cocks of his
hat having fallen down, he let it hang from that day forth, though it
was a great annoyance when it blew. I remember the appearance of his
coat, which he patched himself upstairs in his room, and which, before
the end, was nothing but patches. He never wrote or received a letter,
and he never spoke with any but the neighbours, and with these, for the
most part, only when drunk on rum. The great sea-chest none of us had
ever seen open.
He was only once crossed, and that was towards the end, when my poor
father was far gone in a decline that took him off. Dr. Livesey came
late one afternoon to see the patient, took a bit of dinner from my
mother, and went into the parlour to smoke a pipe until his horse should
come down from the hamlet, for we had no stabling at the old Benbow. I
followed him in, and I remember observing the contrast the neat, bright
doctor, with his powder as white as snow and his bright, black eyes and
pleasant manners, made with the coltish country folk, and above all,
with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours, sitting,
far gone in rum, with his arms on the table. Suddenly he--the captain,
that is--began to pipe up his eternal song:
"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, and a bottle of rum!"
At first I had supposed "the dead man's chest" to be that identical big
box of his upstairs in the front room, and the thought had been mingled
in my nightmares with that of the one-legged seafaring man. But by this
time we had all long ceased to pay any particular notice to the song; it
was new, that night, to nobody but Dr. Livesey, and on him I observed it
did not produce an agreeable effect, for he looked up for a moment quite
angrily before he went on with his talk to old Taylor, the gardener, on
a new cure for the rheumatics. In the meantime, the captain gradually
brightened up at his own music, and at last flapped his hand upon
the table before him in a way we all knew to mean silence. The voices
stopped at once, all but Dr. Livesey's; he went on as before speaking
clear and kind and drawing briskly at his pipe between every word or
two. The captain glared at him for a while, flapped his hand again,
glared still harder, and at last broke out with a villainous, low oath,
"Silence, there, between decks!"
"Were you addressing me, sir?" says the doctor; and when the ruffian had
told him, with another oath, that this was so, "I have only one thing to
say to you, sir," replies the doctor, "that if you keep on drinking rum,
the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!"
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 as before, over his
shoulder and in the same tone of voice, rather high, so that all the
room might hear, but perfectly calm and steady: "If you do not put that
knife this instant in your pocket, I promise, upon my honour, you shall
hang at the next assizes."
Then followed a battle of looks between them, but the captain soon
knuckled under, put up his weapon, and resumed his seat, grumbling like
a beaten dog.
"And now, sir," continued the doctor, "since I now know there's such a
fellow in my district, you may count I'll have an eye upon you day and
night. I'm not a doctor only; I'm a magistrate; and if I catch a breath
of complaint against you, if it's only for a piece of incivility like
tonight's, I'll take effectual means to have you hunted down and routed
out of this. Let that suffice."
Soon after, Dr. Livesey's horse came to the door and he rode away, but
the captain held his peace that evening, and for many evenings to come.
2- Black Dog Appears and Disappears
IT was not very long after this that there occurred the first of the
mysterious events that rid us at last of the captain, though not, as you
will see, of his affairs. It was a bitter cold winter, with long, hard
frosts and heavy gales; and it was plain from the first that my poor
father was little likely to see the spring. He sank daily, and my mother
and I had all the inn upon our hands, and were kept busy enough without
paying much regard to our unpleasant guest.
It was one January morning, very early--a pinching, frosty morning--the
cove all grey with hoar-frost, the ripple lapping softly on the stones,
the sun still low and only touching the hilltops and shining far to
seaward. The captain had risen earlier than usual and set out down the
beach, his cutlass swinging under the broad skirts of the old blue coat,
his brass telescope under his arm, his hat tilted back upon his head. I
remember his breath hanging like smoke in his wake as he strode off, and
the last sound I heard of him as he turned the big rock was a loud snort
of indignation, as though his mind was still running upon Dr. Livesey.
Well, mother was upstairs with father and I was laying the
breakfast-table against the captain's return when the parlour door
opened and a man stepped in on whom I had never set my eyes before. He
was a pale, tallowy creature, wanting two fingers of the left hand, and
though he wore a cutlass, he did not look much like a fighter. I
had always my eye open for seafaring men, with one leg or two, and I
remember this one puzzled me. He was not sailorly, and yet he had a
smack of the sea about him too.
I asked him what was for his service, and he said he would take rum; but
as I was going out of the room to fetch it, he sat down upon a table
and motioned me to draw near. I paused where I was, with my napkin in my
hand.
"Come here, sonny," says he. "Come nearer here."
I took a step nearer.
"Is this here table for my mate Bill?" he asked with a kind of leer.
I told him I did not know his mate Bill, and this was for a person who
stayed in our house whom we called the captain.
"Well," said he, "my mate Bill would be called the captain, as like
as not. He has a cut on one cheek and a mighty pleasant way with him,
particularly in drink, has my mate Bill. We'll put it, for argument
like, that your captain has a cut on one cheek--and we'll put it, if you
like, that that cheek's the right one. Ah, well! I told you. Now, is my
mate Bill in this here house?"
I told him he was out walking.
"Which way, sonny? Which way is he gone?"
And when I had pointed out the rock and told him how the captain was
likely to return, and how soon, and answered a few other questions,
"Ah," said he, "this'll be as good as drink to my mate Bill."
The expression of his face as he said these words was not at all
pleasant, and I had my own reasons for thinking that the stranger was
mistaken, even supposing he meant what he said. But it was no affair of
mine, I thought; and besides, it was difficult to know what to do. The
stranger kept hanging about just inside the inn door, peering round the
corner like a cat waiting for a mouse. Once I stepped out myself into
the road, but he immediately called me back, and as I did not obey quick
enough for his fancy, a most horrible change came over his tallowy face,
and he ordered me in with an oath that made me jump. As soon as I
was back again he returned to his former manner, half fawning, half
sneering, patted me on the shoulder, told me I was a good boy and he had
taken quite a fancy to me. "I have a son of my own," said he, "as like
you as two blocks, and he's all the pride of my 'art. But the great
thing for boys is discipline, sonny--discipline. Now, if you had sailed
along of Bill, you wouldn't have stood there to be spoke to twice--not
you. That was never Bill's way, nor the way of sich as sailed with him.
And here, sure enough, is my mate Bill, with a spy-glass under his arm,
bless his old 'art, to be sure. You and me'll just go back into the
parlour, sonny, and get behind the door, and we'll give Bill a little
surprise--bless his 'art, I say again."
So saying, the stranger backed along with me into the parlour and put me
behind him in the corner so that we were both hidden by the open door. I
was very uneasy and alarmed, as you may fancy, and it rather added to my
fears to observe that the stranger was certainly frightened himself. He
cleared the hilt of his cutlass and loosened the blade in the sheath;
and all the time we were waiting there he kept swallowing as if he felt
what we used to call a lump in the throat.
At last in strode the captain, slammed the door behind him, without
looking to the right or left, and marched straight across the room to
where his breakfast awaited him.
"Bill," said the stranger in a voice that I thought he had tried to make
bold and big.
The captain spun round on his heel and fronted us; all the brown had
gone out of his face, and even his nose was blue; he had the look of a
man who sees a ghost, or the evil one, or something worse, if anything
can be; and upon my word, I felt sorry to see him all in a moment turn
so old and sick.
"Come, Bill, you know me; you know an old shipmate, Bill, surely," said
the stranger.
The captain made a sort of gasp.
"Black Dog!" said he.
"And who else?" returned the other, getting more at his ease. "Black
Dog as ever was, come for to see his old shipmate Billy, at the Admiral
Benbow inn. Ah, Bill, Bill, we have seen a sight of times, us two, since
I lost them two talons," holding up his mutilated hand.
"Now, look here," said the captain; "you've run me down; here I am;
well, then, speak up; what is it?"
"That's you, Bill," returned Black Dog, "you're in the right of it,
Billy. I'll have a glass of rum from this dear child here, as I've took
such a liking to; and we'll sit down, if you please, and talk square,
like old shipmates."
When I returned with the rum, they were already seated on either side
of the captain's breakfast-table--Black Dog next to the door and
sitting sideways so as to have one eye on his old shipmate and one, as I
thought, on his retreat.
He bade me go and leave the door wide open. "None of your keyholes for
me, sonny," he said; and I left them together and retired into the bar.
For a long time, though I certainly did my best to listen, I could hear
nothing but a low gattling; but at last the voices began to grow higher,
and I could pick up a word or two, mostly oaths, from the captain.
"No, no, no, no; and an end of it!" he cried once. And again, "If it
comes to swinging, swing all, say I."
Then all of a sudden there was a tremendous explosion of oaths and
other noises--the chair and table went over in a lump, a clash of steel
followed, and then a cry of pain, and the next instant I saw Black
Dog in full flight, and the captain hotly pursuing, both with drawn
cutlasses, and the former streaming blood from the left shoulder. Just
at the door the captain aimed at the fugitive one last tremendous
cut, which would certainly have split him to the chine had it not been
intercepted by our big signboard of Admiral Benbow. You may see the
notch on the lower side of the frame to this day.
That blow was the last of the battle. Once out upon the road, Black
Dog, in spite of his wound, showed a wonderful clean pair of heels and
disappeared over the edge of the hill in half a minute. The captain, for
his part, stood staring at the signboard like a bewildered man. Then he
passed his hand over his eyes several times and at last turned back into
the house.
"Jim," says he, "rum"; and as he spoke, he reeled a little, and caught
himself with one hand against the wall.
"Are you hurt?" cried I.
"Rum," he repeated. "I must get away from here. Rum! Rum!"
I ran to fetch it, but I was quite unsteadied by all that had fallen
out, and I broke one glass and fouled the tap, and while I was still
getting in my own way, I heard a loud fall in the parlour, and running
in, beheld the captain lying full length upon the floor. At the same
instant my mother, alarmed by the cries and fighting, came running
downstairs to help me. Between us we raised his head. He was breathing
very loud and hard, but his eyes were closed and his face a horrible
colour.
"Dear, deary me," cried my mother, "what a disgrace upon the house! And
your poor father sick!"
In the meantime, we had no idea what to do to help the captain, nor any
other thought but that he had got his death-hurt in the scuffle with
the stranger. I got the rum, to be sure, and tried to put it down his
throat, but his teeth were tightly shut and his jaws as strong as iron.
It was a happy relief for us when the door opened and Doctor Livesey
came in, on his visit to my father.
"Oh, doctor," we cried, "what shall we do? Where is he wounded?"
"Wounded? A fiddle-stick's end!" said the doctor. "No more wounded than
you or I. The man has had a stroke, as I warned him. Now, Mrs. Hawkins,
just you run upstairs to your husband and tell him, if possible, nothing
about it. For my part, I must do my best to save this fellow's trebly
worthless life; Jim, you get me a basin."
When I got back with the basin, the doctor had already ripped up the
captain's sleeve and exposed his great sinewy arm. It was tattooed
in several places. "Here's luck," "A fair wind," and "Billy Bones his
fancy," were very neatly and clearly executed on the forearm; and up
near the shoulder there was a sketch of a gallows and a man hanging from
it--done, as I thought, with great spirit.
"Prophetic," said the doctor, touching this picture with his finger.
"And now, Master Billy Bones, if that be your name, we'll have a look at
the colour of your blood. Jim," he said, "are you afraid of blood?"
"No, sir," said I.
"Well, then," said he, "you hold the basin"; and with that he took his
lancet and opened a vein.
A great deal of blood was taken before the captain opened his eyes
and looked mistily about him. First he recognized the doctor with
an unmistakable frown; then his glance fell upon me, and he looked
relieved. But suddenly his colour changed, and he tried to raise
himself, crying, "Where's Black Dog?"
"There is no Black Dog here," said the doctor, "except what you have
on your own back. You have been drinking rum; you have had a stroke,
precisely as I told you; and I have just, very much against my own will,
dragged you headforemost out of the grave. Now, Mr. Bones--"
"That's not my name," he interrupted.
"Much I care," returned the doctor. "It's the name of a buccaneer of my
acquaintance; and I call you by it for the sake of shortness, and what I
have to say to you is this; one glass of rum won't kill you, but if
you take one you'll take another and another, and I stake my wig if you
don't break off short, you'll die--do you understand that?--die, and go
to your own place, like the man in the Bible. Come, now, make an effort.
I'll help you to your bed for once."
Between us, with much trouble, we managed to hoist him upstairs, and
laid him on his bed, where his head fell back on the pillow as if he
were almost fainting.
"Now, mind you," said the doctor, "I clear my conscience--the name of
rum for you is death."
And with that he went off to see my father, taking me with him by the
arm.
"This is nothing," he said as soon as he had closed the door. "I have
drawn blood enough to keep him quiet awhile; he should lie for a week
where he is--that is the best thing for him and you; but another stroke
would settle him."
Listening is a natural way to learn a language. We offer a very easy way to learn English: Just Listen. Enjoy!
Repeat
TREASURE ISLAND
1- The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral Benbow
SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having
asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from
the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the
island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I
take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when
my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the
sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.
I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the
inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow--a
tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the
shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with
black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid
white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself
as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so
often afterwards:
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and
broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of
stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared,
called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him,
he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste and still
looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.
"This is a handy cove," says he at length; "and a pleasant sittyated
grog-shop. Much company, mate?"
My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity.
"Well, then," said he, "this is the berth for me. Here you, matey," he
cried to the man who trundled the barrow; "bring up alongside and help
up my chest. I'll stay here a bit," he continued. "I'm a plain man; rum
and bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there for to watch
ships off. What you mought call me? You mought call me captain. Oh, I
see what you're at--there"; and he threw down three or four gold pieces
on the threshold. "You can tell me when I've worked through that," says
he, looking as fierce as a commander.
And indeed bad as his clothes were and coarsely as he spoke, he had none
of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast, but seemed like
a mate or skipper accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. The man who came
with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before at
the Royal George, that he had inquired what inns there were along the
coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and described as
lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place of residence. And
that was all we could learn of our guest.
He was a very silent man by custom. All day he hung round the cove or
upon the cliffs with a brass telescope; all evening he sat in a corner
of the parlour next the fire and drank rum and water very strong. Mostly
he would not speak when spoken to, only look up sudden and fierce and
blow through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the people who came
about our house soon learned to let him be. Every day when he came back
from his stroll he would ask if any seafaring men had gone by along the
road. At first we thought it was the want of company of his own kind
that made him ask this question, but at last we began to see he was
desirous to avoid them. When a seaman did put up at the Admiral Benbow
(as now and then some did, making by the coast road for Bristol) he
would look in at him through the curtained door before he entered the
parlour; and he was always sure to be as silent as a mouse when any such
was present. For me, at least, there was no secret about the matter, for
I was, in a way, a sharer in his alarms. He had taken me aside one day
and promised me a silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I
would only keep my "weather-eye open for a seafaring man with one leg"
and let him know the moment he appeared. Often enough when the first
of the month came round and I applied to him for my wage, he would only
blow through his nose at me and stare me down, but before the week was
out he was sure to think better of it, bring me my four-penny piece, and
repeat his orders to look out for "the seafaring man with one leg."
How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On
stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house and
the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a
thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg
would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous
kind of a creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in the
middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and
ditch was the worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for
my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.
But though I was so terrified by the idea of the seafaring man with one
leg, I was far less afraid of the captain himself than anybody else who
knew him. There were nights when he took a deal more rum and water
than his head would carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his
wicked, old, wild sea-songs, minding nobody; but sometimes he would call
for glasses round and force all the trembling company to listen to his
stories or bear a chorus to his singing. Often I have heard the house
shaking with "Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum," all the neighbours joining
in for dear life, with the fear of death upon them, and each singing
louder than the other to avoid remark. For in these fits he was the most
overriding companion ever known; he would slap his hand on the table for
silence all round; he would fly up in a passion of anger at a question,
or sometimes because none was put, and so he judged the company was not
following his story. Nor would he allow anyone to leave the inn till he
had drunk himself sleepy and reeled off to bed.
His stories were what frightened people worst of all. Dreadful stories
they were--about hanging, and walking the plank, and storms at sea, and
the Dry Tortugas, and wild deeds and places on the Spanish Main. By his
own account he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest men
that God ever allowed upon the sea, and the language in which he told
these stories shocked our plain country people almost as much as the
crimes that he described. My father was always saying the inn would be
ruined, for people would soon cease coming there to be tyrannized over
and put down, and sent shivering to their beds; but I really believe his
presence did us good. People were frightened at the time, but on looking
back they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country
life, and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to
admire him, calling him a "true sea-dog" and a "real old salt" and
such like names, and saying there was the sort of man that made England
terrible at sea.
In one way, indeed, he bade fair to ruin us, for he kept on staying week
after week, and at last month after month, so that all the money had
been long exhausted, and still my father never plucked up the heart to
insist on having more. If ever he mentioned it, the captain blew through
his nose so loudly that you might say he roared, and stared my poor
father out of the room. I have seen him wringing his hands after such a
rebuff, and I am sure the annoyance and the terror he lived in must have
greatly hastened his early and unhappy death.
All the time he lived with us the captain made no change whatever in his
dress but to buy some stockings from a hawker. One of the cocks of his
hat having fallen down, he let it hang from that day forth, though it
was a great annoyance when it blew. I remember the appearance of his
coat, which he patched himself upstairs in his room, and which, before
the end, was nothing but patches. He never wrote or received a letter,
and he never spoke with any but the neighbours, and with these, for the
most part, only when drunk on rum. The great sea-chest none of us had
ever seen open.
He was only once crossed, and that was towards the end, when my poor
father was far gone in a decline that took him off. Dr. Livesey came
late one afternoon to see the patient, took a bit of dinner from my
mother, and went into the parlour to smoke a pipe until his horse should
come down from the hamlet, for we had no stabling at the old Benbow. I
followed him in, and I remember observing the contrast the neat, bright
doctor, with his powder as white as snow and his bright, black eyes and
pleasant manners, made with the coltish country folk, and above all,
with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours, sitting,
far gone in rum, with his arms on the table. Suddenly he--the captain,
that is--began to pipe up his eternal song:
"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, and a bottle of rum!"
At first I had supposed "the dead man's chest" to be that identical big
box of his upstairs in the front room, and the thought had been mingled
in my nightmares with that of the one-legged seafaring man. But by this
time we had all long ceased to pay any particular notice to the song; it
was new, that night, to nobody but Dr. Livesey, and on him I observed it
did not produce an agreeable effect, for he looked up for a moment quite
angrily before he went on with his talk to old Taylor, the gardener, on
a new cure for the rheumatics. In the meantime, the captain gradually
brightened up at his own music, and at last flapped his hand upon
the table before him in a way we all knew to mean silence. The voices
stopped at once, all but Dr. Livesey's; he went on as before speaking
clear and kind and drawing briskly at his pipe between every word or
two. The captain glared at him for a while, flapped his hand again,
glared still harder, and at last broke out with a villainous, low oath,
"Silence, there, between decks!"
"Were you addressing me, sir?" says the doctor; and when the ruffian had
told him, with another oath, that this was so, "I have only one thing to
say to you, sir," replies the doctor, "that if you keep on drinking rum,
the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!"
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 as before, over his
shoulder and in the same tone of voice, rather high, so that all the
room might hear, but perfectly calm and steady: "If you do not put that
knife this instant in your pocket, I promise, upon my honour, you shall
hang at the next assizes."
Then followed a battle of looks between them, but the captain soon
knuckled under, put up his weapon, and resumed his seat, grumbling like
a beaten dog.
"And now, sir," continued the doctor, "since I now know there's such a
fellow in my district, you may count I'll have an eye upon you day and
night. I'm not a doctor only; I'm a magistrate; and if I catch a breath
of complaint against you, if it's only for a piece of incivility like
tonight's, I'll take effectual means to have you hunted down and routed
out of this. Let that suffice."
Soon after, Dr. Livesey's horse came to the door and he rode away, but
the captain held his peace that evening, and for many evenings to come.
2- Black Dog Appears and Disappears
IT was not very long after this that there occurred the first of the
mysterious events that rid us at last of the captain, though not, as you
will see, of his affairs. It was a bitter cold winter, with long, hard
frosts and heavy gales; and it was plain from the first that my poor
father was little likely to see the spring. He sank daily, and my mother
and I had all the inn upon our hands, and were kept busy enough without
paying much regard to our unpleasant guest.
It was one January morning, very early--a pinching, frosty morning--the
cove all grey with hoar-frost, the ripple lapping softly on the stones,
the sun still low and only touching the hilltops and shining far to
seaward. The captain had risen earlier than usual and set out down the
beach, his cutlass swinging under the broad skirts of the old blue coat,
his brass telescope under his arm, his hat tilted back upon his head. I
remember his breath hanging like smoke in his wake as he strode off, and
the last sound I heard of him as he turned the big rock was a loud snort
of indignation, as though his mind was still running upon Dr. Livesey.
Well, mother was upstairs with father and I was laying the
breakfast-table against the captain's return when the parlour door
opened and a man stepped in on whom I had never set my eyes before. He
was a pale, tallowy creature, wanting two fingers of the left hand, and
though he wore a cutlass, he did not look much like a fighter. I
had always my eye open for seafaring men, with one leg or two, and I
remember this one puzzled me. He was not sailorly, and yet he had a
smack of the sea about him too.
I asked him what was for his service, and he said he would take rum; but
as I was going out of the room to fetch it, he sat down upon a table
and motioned me to draw near. I paused where I was, with my napkin in my
hand.
"Come here, sonny," says he. "Come nearer here."
I took a step nearer.
"Is this here table for my mate Bill?" he asked with a kind of leer.
I told him I did not know his mate Bill, and this was for a person who
stayed in our house whom we called the captain.
"Well," said he, "my mate Bill would be called the captain, as like
as not. He has a cut on one cheek and a mighty pleasant way with him,
particularly in drink, has my mate Bill. We'll put it, for argument
like, that your captain has a cut on one cheek--and we'll put it, if you
like, that that cheek's the right one. Ah, well! I told you. Now, is my
mate Bill in this here house?"
I told him he was out walking.
"Which way, sonny? Which way is he gone?"
And when I had pointed out the rock and told him how the captain was
likely to return, and how soon, and answered a few other questions,
"Ah," said he, "this'll be as good as drink to my mate Bill."
The expression of his face as he said these words was not at all
pleasant, and I had my own reasons for thinking that the stranger was
mistaken, even supposing he meant what he said. But it was no affair of
mine, I thought; and besides, it was difficult to know what to do. The
stranger kept hanging about just inside the inn door, peering round the
corner like a cat waiting for a mouse. Once I stepped out myself into
the road, but he immediately called me back, and as I did not obey quick
enough for his fancy, a most horrible change came over his tallowy face,
and he ordered me in with an oath that made me jump. As soon as I
was back again he returned to his former manner, half fawning, half
sneering, patted me on the shoulder, told me I was a good boy and he had
taken quite a fancy to me. "I have a son of my own," said he, "as like
you as two blocks, and he's all the pride of my 'art. But the great
thing for boys is discipline, sonny--discipline. Now, if you had sailed
along of Bill, you wouldn't have stood there to be spoke to twice--not
you. That was never Bill's way, nor the way of sich as sailed with him.
And here, sure enough, is my mate Bill, with a spy-glass under his arm,
bless his old 'art, to be sure. You and me'll just go back into the
parlour, sonny, and get behind the door, and we'll give Bill a little
surprise--bless his 'art, I say again."
So saying, the stranger backed along with me into the parlour and put me
behind him in the corner so that we were both hidden by the open door. I
was very uneasy and alarmed, as you may fancy, and it rather added to my
fears to observe that the stranger was certainly frightened himself. He
cleared the hilt of his cutlass and loosened the blade in the sheath;
and all the time we were waiting there he kept swallowing as if he felt
what we used to call a lump in the throat.
At last in strode the captain, slammed the door behind him, without
looking to the right or left, and marched straight across the room to
where his breakfast awaited him.
"Bill," said the stranger in a voice that I thought he had tried to make
bold and big.
The captain spun round on his heel and fronted us; all the brown had
gone out of his face, and even his nose was blue; he had the look of a
man who sees a ghost, or the evil one, or something worse, if anything
can be; and upon my word, I felt sorry to see him all in a moment turn
so old and sick.
"Come, Bill, you know me; you know an old shipmate, Bill, surely," said
the stranger.
The captain made a sort of gasp.
"Black Dog!" said he.
"And who else?" returned the other, getting more at his ease. "Black
Dog as ever was, come for to see his old shipmate Billy, at the Admiral
Benbow inn. Ah, Bill, Bill, we have seen a sight of times, us two, since
I lost them two talons," holding up his mutilated hand.
"Now, look here," said the captain; "you've run me down; here I am;
well, then, speak up; what is it?"
"That's you, Bill," returned Black Dog, "you're in the right of it,
Billy. I'll have a glass of rum from this dear child here, as I've took
such a liking to; and we'll sit down, if you please, and talk square,
like old shipmates."
When I returned with the rum, they were already seated on either side
of the captain's breakfast-table--Black Dog next to the door and
sitting sideways so as to have one eye on his old shipmate and one, as I
thought, on his retreat.
He bade me go and leave the door wide open. "None of your keyholes for
me, sonny," he said; and I left them together and retired into the bar.
For a long time, though I certainly did my best to listen, I could hear
nothing but a low gattling; but at last the voices began to grow higher,
and I could pick up a word or two, mostly oaths, from the captain.
"No, no, no, no; and an end of it!" he cried once. And again, "If it
comes to swinging, swing all, say I."
Then all of a sudden there was a tremendous explosion of oaths and
other noises--the chair and table went over in a lump, a clash of steel
followed, and then a cry of pain, and the next instant I saw Black
Dog in full flight, and the captain hotly pursuing, both with drawn
cutlasses, and the former streaming blood from the left shoulder. Just
at the door the captain aimed at the fugitive one last tremendous
cut, which would certainly have split him to the chine had it not been
intercepted by our big signboard of Admiral Benbow. You may see the
notch on the lower side of the frame to this day.
That blow was the last of the battle. Once out upon the road, Black
Dog, in spite of his wound, showed a wonderful clean pair of heels and
disappeared over the edge of the hill in half a minute. The captain, for
his part, stood staring at the signboard like a bewildered man. Then he
passed his hand over his eyes several times and at last turned back into
the house.
"Jim," says he, "rum"; and as he spoke, he reeled a little, and caught
himself with one hand against the wall.
"Are you hurt?" cried I.
"Rum," he repeated. "I must get away from here. Rum! Rum!"
I ran to fetch it, but I was quite unsteadied by all that had fallen
out, and I broke one glass and fouled the tap, and while I was still
getting in my own way, I heard a loud fall in the parlour, and running
in, beheld the captain lying full length upon the floor. At the same
instant my mother, alarmed by the cries and fighting, came running
downstairs to help me. Between us we raised his head. He was breathing
very loud and hard, but his eyes were closed and his face a horrible
colour.
"Dear, deary me," cried my mother, "what a disgrace upon the house! And
your poor father sick!"
In the meantime, we had no idea what to do to help the captain, nor any
other thought but that he had got his death-hurt in the scuffle with
the stranger. I got the rum, to be sure, and tried to put it down his
throat, but his teeth were tightly shut and his jaws as strong as iron.
It was a happy relief for us when the door opened and Doctor Livesey
came in, on his visit to my father.
"Oh, doctor," we cried, "what shall we do? Where is he wounded?"
"Wounded? A fiddle-stick's end!" said the doctor. "No more wounded than
you or I. The man has had a stroke, as I warned him. Now, Mrs. Hawkins,
just you run upstairs to your husband and tell him, if possible, nothing
about it. For my part, I must do my best to save this fellow's trebly
worthless life; Jim, you get me a basin."
When I got back with the basin, the doctor had already ripped up the
captain's sleeve and exposed his great sinewy arm. It was tattooed
in several places. "Here's luck," "A fair wind," and "Billy Bones his
fancy," were very neatly and clearly executed on the forearm; and up
near the shoulder there was a sketch of a gallows and a man hanging from
it--done, as I thought, with great spirit.
"Prophetic," said the doctor, touching this picture with his finger.
"And now, Master Billy Bones, if that be your name, we'll have a look at
the colour of your blood. Jim," he said, "are you afraid of blood?"
"No, sir," said I.
"Well, then," said he, "you hold the basin"; and with that he took his
lancet and opened a vein.
A great deal of blood was taken before the captain opened his eyes
and looked mistily about him. First he recognized the doctor with
an unmistakable frown; then his glance fell upon me, and he looked
relieved. But suddenly his colour changed, and he tried to raise
himself, crying, "Where's Black Dog?"
"There is no Black Dog here," said the doctor, "except what you have
on your own back. You have been drinking rum; you have had a stroke,
precisely as I told you; and I have just, very much against my own will,
dragged you headforemost out of the grave. Now, Mr. Bones--"
"That's not my name," he interrupted.
"Much I care," returned the doctor. "It's the name of a buccaneer of my
acquaintance; and I call you by it for the sake of shortness, and what I
have to say to you is this; one glass of rum won't kill you, but if
you take one you'll take another and another, and I stake my wig if you
don't break off short, you'll die--do you understand that?--die, and go
to your own place, like the man in the Bible. Come, now, make an effort.
I'll help you to your bed for once."
Between us, with much trouble, we managed to hoist him upstairs, and
laid him on his bed, where his head fell back on the pillow as if he
were almost fainting.
"Now, mind you," said the doctor, "I clear my conscience--the name of
rum for you is death."
And with that he went off to see my father, taking me with him by the
arm.
"This is nothing," he said as soon as he had closed the door. "I have
drawn blood enough to keep him quiet awhile; he should lie for a week
where he is--that is the best thing for him and you; but another stroke
would settle him."