20
Silver’s Embassy
SURE enough, there were two men just outside the stockade, one of them waving a white cloth, the other, no less a person than Silver himself, standing placidly by.
It was still quite early, and the coldest morning that I think I ever was abroad in—a chill that pierced into the marrow. The sky was bright and cloudless overhead, and the tops of the trees shone rosily in the sun. But where Silver stood with his lieutenant, all was still in shadow, and they waded knee-deep in a low white vapour that had crawled during the night out of the morass. The chill and the vapour taken together told a poor tale of the island. It was plainly a damp, feverish, unhealthy spot.
“Keep indoors, men,” said the captain. “Ten to one this is a trick.”
Then he hailed the buccaneer.
“Who goes? Stand, or we fire.”
“Flag of truce,” cried Silver.
The captain was in the porch, keeping himself carefully out of the way of a treacherous shot, should any be intended. He turned and spoke to us, “Doctor’s watch on the lookout. Dr. Livesey take the north side, if you please; Jim, the east; Gray, west. The watch below, all hands to load muskets. Lively, men, and careful.”
And then he turned again to the mutineers.
“And what do you want with your flag of truce?” he cried.
This time it was the other man who replied.
“Cap’n Silver, sir, to come on board and make terms,” he shouted.
“Cap’n Silver! Don’t know him. Who’s he?” cried the captain. And we could hear him adding to himself, “Cap’n, is it? My heart, and here’s promotion!”
Long John answered for himself. “Me, sir. These poor lads have chosen me cap’n, after your desertion, sir” —laying a particular emphasis upon the word “desertion.” “We’re willing to submit, if we can come to terms, and no bones about it. All I ask is your word, Cap’n Smollett, to let me safe and sound out of this here stockade, and one minute to get out o’ shot before a gun is fired.”
“My man,” said Captain Smollett, “I have not the slightest desire to talk to you. If you wish to talk to me, you can come, that’s all. If there’s any treachery, it’ll be on your side, and the Lord help you.”
“That’s enough, cap’n,” shouted Long John cheerily. “A word from you’s enough. I know a gentleman, and you may lay to that.”
We could see the man who carried the flag of truce attempting to hold Silver back. Nor was that wonderful, seeing how cavalier had been the captain’s answer. But Silver laughed at him aloud and slapped him on the back as if the idea of alarm had been absurd. Then he advanced to the stockade, threw over his crutch, got a leg up, and with great vigour and skill succeeded in surmounting the fence and dropping safely to the other side.
I will confess that I was far too much taken up with what was going on to be of the slightest use as sentry; indeed, I had already deserted my eastern loophole and crept up behind the captain, who had now seated himself on the threshold, with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and his eyes fixed on the water as it bubbled out of the old iron kettle in the sand. He was whistling “Come, Lasses and Lads.”
Silver had terrible hard work getting up the knoll. What with the steepness of the incline, the thick tree stumps, and the soft sand, he and his crutch were as helpless as a ship in stays. But he stuck to it like a man in silence, and at last arrived before the captain, whom he saluted in the handsomest style. He was tricked out in his best; an immense blue coat, thick with brass buttons, hung as low as to his knees, and a fine laced hat was set on the back of his head.
“Here you are, my man,” said the captain, raising his head. “You had better sit down.”
“You ain’t a-going to let me inside, cap’n?” complained Long John. “It’s a main cold morning, to be sure, sir, to sit outside upon the sand.”
“Why, Silver,” said the captain, “if you had pleased to be an honest man, you might have been sitting in your galley. It’s your own doing. You’re either my ship’s cook—and then you were treated handsome—or Cap’n Silver, a common mutineer and pirate, and then you can go hang!”
“Well, well, cap’n,” returned the sea-cook, sitting down as he was bidden on the sand, “you’ll have to give me a hand up again, that’s all. A sweet pretty place you have of it here. Ah, there’s Jim! The top of the morning to you, Jim. Doctor, here’s my service. Why, there you all are together like a happy family, in a manner of speaking.”
“If you have anything to say, my man, better say it,” said the captain.
“Right you were, Cap’n Smollett,” replied Silver. “Dooty is dooty, to be sure. Well now, you look here, that was a good lay of yours last night. I don’t deny it was a good lay. Some of you pretty handy with a handspike-end. And I’ll not deny neither but what some of my people was shook—maybe all was shook; maybe I was shook myself; maybe that’s why I’m here for terms. But you mark me, cap’n, it won’t do twice, by thunder! We’ll have to do sentry-go and ease off a point or so on the rum. Maybe you think we were all a sheet in the wind’s eye. But I’ll tell you I was sober; I was on’y dog tired; and if I’d awoke a second sooner, I’d ’a caught you at the act, I would. He wasn’t dead when I got round to him, not he.”
“Well?” says Captain Smollett as cool as can be.
All that Silver said was a riddle to him, but you would never have guessed it from his tone. As for me, I began to have an inkling. Ben Gunn’s last words came back to my mind. I began to suppose that he had paid the buccaneers a visit while they all lay drunk together round their fire, and I reckoned up with glee that we had only fourteen enemies to deal with.
“Well, here it is,” said Silver. “We want that treasure, and we’ll have it—that’s our point! You would just as soon save your lives, I reckon; and that’s yours. You have a chart, haven’t you?”
“That’s as may be,” replied the captain.
“Oh, well, you have, I know that,” returned Long John. “You needn’t be so husky with a man; there ain’t a particle of service in that, and you may lay to it. What I mean is, we want your chart. Now, I never meant you no harm, myself.”
“That won’t do with me, my man,” interrupted the captain. “We know exactly what you meant to do, and we don’t care, for now, you see, you can’t do it.”
And the captain looked at him calmly and proceeded to fill a pipe.
“If Abe Gray—” Silver broke out.
“Avast there!” cried Mr. Smollett. “Gray told me nothing, and I asked him nothing; and what’s more, I would see you and him and this whole island blown clean out of the water into blazes first. So there’s my mind for you, my man, on that.”
This little whiff of temper seemed to cool Silver down. He had been growing nettled before, but now he pulled himself together.
“Like enough,” said he. “I would set no limits to what gentlemen might consider shipshape, or might not, as the case were. And seein’ as how you are about to take a pipe, cap’n, I’ll make so free as do likewise.”
And he filled a pipe and lighted it; and the two men sat silently smoking for quite a while, now looking each other in the face, now stopping their tobacco, now leaning forward to spit. It was as good as the play to see them.
“Now,” resumed Silver, “here it is. You give us the chart to get the treasure by, and drop shooting poor seamen and stoving of their heads in while asleep. You do that, and we’ll offer you a choice. Either you come aboard along of us, once the treasure shipped, and then I’ll give you my affy-davy, upon my word of honour, to clap you somewhere safe ashore. Or if that ain’t to your fancy, some of my hands being rough and having old scores on account of hazing, then you can stay here, you can. We’ll divide stores with you, man for man; and I’ll give my affy-davy, as before to speak the first ship I sight, and send ’em here to pick you up. Now, you’ll own that’s talking. Handsomer you couldn’t look to get, now you. And I hope” —raising his voice— “that all hands in this here block house will overhaul my words, for what is spoke to one is spoke to all.”
Captain Smollett rose from his seat and knocked out the ashes of his pipe in the palm of his left hand.
“Is that all?” he asked.
“Every last word, by thunder!” answered John. “Refuse that, and you’ve seen the last of me but musket-balls.”
“Very good,” said the captain. “Now you’ll hear me. If you’ll come up one by one, unarmed, I’ll engage to clap you all in irons and take you home to a fair trial in England. If you won’t, my name is Alexander Smollett, I’ve flown my sovereign’s colours, and I’ll see you all to Davy Jones. You can’t find the treasure. You can’t sail the ship—there’s not a man among you fit to sail the ship. You can’t fight us—Gray, there, got away from five of you. Your ship’s in irons, Master Silver; you’re on a lee shore, and so you’ll find. I stand here and tell you so; and they’re the last good words you’ll get from me, for in the name of heaven, I’ll put a bullet in your back when next I meet you. Tramp, my lad. Bundle out of this, please, hand over hand, and double quick.”
Silver’s face was a picture; his eyes started in his head with wrath. He shook the fire out of his pipe.
“Give me a hand up!” he cried.
“Not I,” returned the captain.
“Who’ll give me a hand up?” he roared.
Not a man among us moved. Growling the foulest imprecations, he crawled along the sand till he got hold of the porch and could hoist himself again upon his crutch. Then he spat into the spring.
“There!” he cried. “That’s what I think of ye. Before an hour’s out, I’ll stove in your old block house like a rum puncheon. Laugh, by thunder, laugh! Before an hour’s out, ye’ll laugh upon the other side. Them that die’ll be the lucky ones.”
And with a dreadful oath he stumbled off, ploughed down the sand, was helped across the stockade, after four or five failures, by the man with the flag of truce, and disappeared in an instant afterwards among the trees.