Chapter: THE CAPTAIN'S PAPERS


We rode hard all the way, till we drew up before Doctor 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 Doctor 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 top of them,
where the squire and Doctor 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," said he, very stately and condescending.

"Good evening, Dance," said 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, Doctor
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 side-table, 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 Doctor Livesey. "You have heard
of this Flint, I suppose?"

"Heard of him!" cried the squire. "Heard of him, you say! He was the
blood-thirstiest 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 topsails 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'll 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 Doctor 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 Doctor 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 "62 
deg. 17' 20", 19 deg. 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 Doctor 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 traveler. 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 toward 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 landlocked harbors, and a hill in the
center 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 sandhill, 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 Doctor Livesey with delight.

"Livesey," said the squire, "you will give up this wretched practice at
once. To-morrow 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 favorable
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
to-night--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."




PART II

THE SEA-COOK

 On reaching Dr. Liveseys house, they are informed that he has gone to the Hall with Squire Trelawney. They finally track him down, and when Dr. Livesey inquired about Captain Flint, the Squire tells them that he was the blood-thirstiest buccaneer that ever sailed who was feared by one and all. The Captain, he said, had amassed a great deal of wealth that they would require a whole ship to collect it. They open the oil skin packet that was found in the sea chest and find a book and sealed paper. The book listed information found in account books with latitudes and longitudes and an account of the number of ships they had plundered; information gathered over some twenty years. This does not help them much. But the sealed paper gives them valuable details about a nine-mile long island, Skeleton Island, with names of hills and the location of the bulk of the buried treasure. This suddenly brings light in the eyes of the Squire and Dr. Livesey. The Squire decides to unearth the hidden treasure and makes his way to Bristol to get the best ship and crew without wasting any time. He appoints Dr. Livesey as the ships doctor and Jim as a cabin boy and himself, the Captain. The doctor approves Mr. Trelawneys decision to accompany him on the condition that he would not tell anyone about their secret possession. He feared the men who had destroyed the Inn would be after them to get the details of the treasure and should anyone know of their plans, they would face grave problems.

