6

The Captain's Papers

WE rode hard all the way till we drew up before Dr.
Livesey's door. The house was all dark to the front.

Mr. Dance told me to jump down and knock, and Dogger
gave me a stirrup to descend by. The door was opened
almost at once by the maid.

"Is Dr. Livesey in?" I asked.

No, she said, he had come home in the afternoon but had gone
up to the hall to dine and pass the evening with the squire.

"So there we go, boys," said Mr. Dance.

This time, as the distance was short, I did not mount,
but ran with Dogger's stirrup-leather to the lodge
gates and up the long, leafless, moonlit avenue to
where the white line of the hall buildings looked on
either hand on great old gardens. Here Mr. Dance
dismounted, and taking me along with him, was admitted
at a word into the house.

The servant led us down a matted passage and showed us
at the end into a great library, all lined with
bookcases and busts upon the top of them, where the
squire and Dr. Livesey sat, pipe in hand, on either
side of a bright fire.

I had never seen the squire so near at hand. He was a
tall man, over six feet high, and broad in proportion,
and he had a bluff, rough-and-ready face, all roughened
and reddened and lined in his long travels. His
eyebrows were very black, and moved readily, and this
gave him a look of some temper, not bad, you would say,
but quick and high.

"Come in, Mr. Dance," says he, very stately and condescending.

"Good evening, Dance," says the doctor with a nod.
"And good evening to you, friend Jim. What good wind
brings you here?"

The supervisor stood up straight and stiff and told his
story like a lesson; and you should have seen how the
two gentlemen leaned forward and looked at each other,
and forgot to smoke in their surprise and interest.
When they heard how my mother went back to the inn, Dr.
Livesey fairly slapped his thigh, and the squire cried
"Bravo!" and broke his long pipe against the grate.
Long before it was done, Mr. Trelawney (that, you will
remember, was the squire's name) had got up from his
seat and was striding about the room, and the doctor,
as if to hear the better, had taken off his powdered
wig and sat there looking very strange indeed with his
own close-cropped black poll.

At last Mr. Dance finished the story.

"Mr. Dance," said the squire, "you are a very noble
fellow. And as for riding down that black, atrocious
miscreant, I regard it as an act of virtue, sir, like
stamping on a cockroach. This lad Hawkins is a trump,
I perceive. Hawkins, will you ring that bell? Mr.
Dance must have some ale."

"And so, Jim," said the doctor, "you have the thing
that they were after, have you?"

"Here it is, sir," said I, and gave him the oilskin packet.

The doctor looked it all over, as if his fingers were
itching to open it; but instead of doing that, he put
it quietly in the pocket of his coat.

"Squire," said he, "when Dance has had his ale he must,
of course, be off on his Majesty's service; but I mean
to keep Jim Hawkins here to sleep at my house, and with
your permission, I propose we should have up the cold
pie and let him sup."

"As you will, Livesey," said the squire; "Hawkins has
earned better than cold pie."

So a big pigeon pie was brought in and put on a
sidetable, and I made a hearty supper, for I was as
hungry as a hawk, while Mr. Dance was further
complimented and at last dismissed.

"And now, squire," said the doctor.

"And now, Livesey," said the squire in the same breath.

"One at a time, one at a time," laughed Dr. Livesey.
"You have heard of this Flint, I suppose?"

"Heard of him!" cried the squire. "Heard of him, you
say! He was the bloodthirstiest buccaneer that sailed.
Blackbeard was a child to Flint. The Spaniards were so
prodigiously afraid of him that, I tell you, sir, I was
sometimes proud he was an Englishman. I've seen his
top-sails with these eyes, off Trinidad, and the
cowardly son of a rum-puncheon that I sailed with put
back--put back, sir, into Port of Spain."

"Well, I've heard of him myself, in England," said the
doctor. "But the point is, had he money?"

"Money!" cried the squire. "Have you heard the story?
What were these villains after but money? What do they
care for but money? For what would they risk their
rascal carcasses but money?"

"That we shall soon know," replied the doctor. "But
you are so confoundedly hot-headed and exclamatory that
I cannot get a word in. What I want to know is this:
Supposing that I have here in my pocket some clue to
where Flint buried his treasure, will that treasure
amount to much?"

"Amount, sir!" cried the squire. "It will amount to
this: If we have the clue you talk about, I fit out a
ship in Bristol dock, and take you and Hawkins here
along, and I'll have that treasure if I search a year."

"Very well," said the doctor. "Now, then, if Jim is
agreeable, we'll open the packet"; and he laid it
before him on the table.

The bundle was sewn together, and the doctor had to get
out his instrument case and cut the stitches with his
medical scissors. It contained two things--a book and
a sealed paper.

"First of all we'll try the book," observed the doctor.

The squire and I were both peering over his shoulder as
he opened it, for Dr. Livesey had kindly motioned me to
come round from the side-table, where I had been
eating, to enjoy the sport of the search. On the first
page there were only some scraps of writing, such as a
man with a pen in his hand might make for idleness or
practice. One was the same as the tattoo mark, "Billy
Bones his fancy"; then there was "Mr. W. Bones, mate,"
"No more rum," "Off Palm Key he got itt," and some
other snatches, mostly single words and unintelligible.
I could not help wondering who it was that had "got
itt," and what "itt" was that he got. A knife in his
back as like as not.

"Not much instruction there," said Dr. Livesey as he
passed on.

The next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious
series of entries. There was a date at one end of the
line and at the other a sum of money, as in common
account-books, but instead of explanatory writing, only
a varying number of crosses between the two. On the
12th of June, 1745, for instance, a sum of seventy
pounds had plainly become due to someone, and there was
nothing but six crosses to explain the cause. In a few
cases, to be sure, the name of a place would be added,
as "Offe Caraccas," or a mere entry of latitude and
longitude, as "62o 17' 20", 19o 2' 40"."

The record lasted over nearly twenty years, the amount
of the separate entries growing larger as time went on,
and at the end a grand total had been made out after
five or six wrong additions, and these words appended,
"Bones, his pile."

"I can't make head or tail of this," said Dr. Livesey.

"The thing is as clear as noonday," cried the squire.
"This is the black-hearted hound's account-book. These
crosses stand for the names of ships or towns that they
sank or plundered. The sums are the scoundrel's share,
and where he feared an ambiguity, you see he added
something clearer. 'Offe Caraccas,' now; you see, here
was some unhappy vessel boarded off that coast. God
help the poor souls that manned her--coral long ago."

"Right!" said the doctor. "See what it is to be a
traveller. Right! And the amounts increase, you see,
as he rose in rank."

There was little else in the volume but a few bearings
of places noted in the blank leaves towards the end and
a table for reducing French, English, and Spanish
moneys to a common value.

"Thrifty man!" cried the doctor. "He wasn't the one to
be cheated."

"And now," said the squire, "for the other."

The paper had been sealed in several places with a
thimble by way of seal; the very thimble, perhaps, that
I had found in the captain's pocket. The doctor opened
the seals with great care, and there fell out the map
of an island, with latitude and longitude, soundings,
names of hills and bays and inlets, and every
particular that would be needed to bring a ship to a
safe anchorage upon its shores. It was about nine
miles long and five across, shaped, you might say, like
a fat dragon standing up, and had two fine land-locked
harbours, and a hill in the centre part marked "The
Spy-glass." There were several additions of a later
date, but above all, three crosses of red ink--two on
the north part of the island, one in the southwest--and
beside this last, in the same red ink, and in a small,
neat hand, very different from the captain's tottery
characters, these words: "Bulk of treasure here."

Over on the back the same hand had written this further
information:

Tall tree, Spy-glass shoulder, bearing a point to
the N. of N.N.E.

Skeleton Island E.S.E. and by E.

Ten feet.

The bar silver is in the north cache; you can find
it by the trend of the east hummock, ten fathoms
south of the black crag with the face on it.

The arms are easy found, in the sand-hill, N.
point of north inlet cape, bearing E. and a
quarter N.
J.F.

That was all; but brief as it was, and to me
incomprehensible, it filled the squire and Dr. Livesey
with delight.

"Livesey," said the squire, "you will give up this
wretched practice at once. Tomorrow I start for
Bristol. In three weeks' time--three weeks!--two
weeks--ten days--we'll have the best ship, sir, and the
choicest crew in England. Hawkins shall come as cabin-
boy. You'll make a famous cabin-boy, Hawkins. You,
Livesey, are ship's doctor; I am admiral. We'll take
Redruth, Joyce, and Hunter. We'll have favourable
winds, a quick passage, and not the least difficulty in
finding the spot, and money to eat, to roll in, to play
duck and drake with ever after."

"Trelawney," said the doctor, "I'll go with you; and
I'll go bail for it, so will Jim, and be a credit to
the undertaking. There's only one man I'm afraid of."

"And who's that?" cried the squire. "Name the dog, sir!"

"You," replied the doctor; "for you cannot hold your
tongue. We are not the only men who know of this
paper. These fellows who attacked the inn tonight--
bold, desperate blades, for sure--and the rest who
stayed aboard that lugger, and more, I dare say, not
far off, are, one and all, through thick and thin,
bound that they'll get that money. We must none of us
go alone till we get to sea. Jim and I shall stick
together in the meanwhile; you'll take Joyce and Hunter
when you ride to Bristol, and from first to last, not
one of us must breathe a word of what we've found."

"Livesey," returned the squire, "you are always in the
right of it. I'll be as silent as the grave."