Chapter: THE MAN OF THE ISLAND


From the side of the hill, which was here steep and stony, a spout of
gravel was dislodged, and fell rattling and bounding through the trees.
My eyes turned instinctively in that direction, and I saw a figure leap
with great rapidity behind the trunk of a pine. What it was, whether
bear, or man, or monkey, I could in nowise tell. It seemed dark and
shaggy; more I knew not. But the terror of this new apparition brought
me to a stand.

I was now, it seemed, cut off upon both sides: behind me the murderers,
before me this lurking nondescript. And immediately I began to prefer
the dangers that I knew to those I knew not. Silver himself appeared
less terrible in contrast with this creature of the woods, and I turned
on my heel, and, looking sharply behind me over my shoulder, began to
retrace my steps in the direction of the boats.

Instantly the figure reappeared, and, making a wide circuit, began to
head me off. I was tired, at any rate, but had I been as fresh as when I
rose, I could see it was in vain for me to contend in speed with such an
adversary. From trunk to trunk the creature flitted like a deer, running
man-like on two legs, but unlike any man that I had ever seen, stooping
almost double as it ran. Yet a man it was! I could no longer be in doubt
about that.

I began to recall what I had heard of cannibals. I was within an ace of
calling for help. But the mere fact that he was a man, however wild, had
somewhat reassured me, and my fear of Silver began to revive in
proportion. I stood still, therefore, and cast about for some method of
escape, and as I was so thinking, the recollection of my pistol flashed
into my mind. As soon as I remembered I was not defenseless, courage
glowed again in my heart, and I set my face resolutely for this man of
the island, and walked briskly toward him.

He was concealed by this time, behind another tree-trunk, but he must
have been watching me closely, for as soon as I began to move in his
direction he reappeared and took a step to meet me. Then he hesitated,
drew back, came forward again, and, at last, to my wonder and confusion,
threw himself on his knees and held out his clasped hands in
supplication.

At that I once more stopped.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Ben Gunn," he answered, and his voice sounded hoarse and awkward, like
a rusty lock. "I'm poor Ben Gunn, I am; and I haven't spoke with a
Christian these three years."

I could now see that he was a white man like myself, and that his
features were even pleasing. His skin, wherever it was exposed, was
burned by the sun; even his lips were black, and his fair eyes looked
quite startling in so dark a face. Of all the beggar-men that I had seen
or fancied, he was the chief for raggedness. He was clothed with tatters
of old ships' canvas and old sea-cloth, and this extraordinary patchwork
was all held together by a system of the most various and incongruous
fastenings, brass buttons, bits of stick, and loops of tarry gaskin.
About his waist he wore an old brass-buckled leather belt, which was the
one thing solid in his whole accouterment.

"Three years!" I cried. "Were you shipwrecked?"

"Nay, mate," said he, "marooned."

I had heard the word and I knew it stood for a horrible kind of
punishment common enough among the buccaneers, in which the offender is
put ashore with a little powder and shot and left behind on some
desolate and distant island.

"Marooned three years agone," he continued, "and lived on goats since
then, and berries and oysters. Wherever a man is, says I, a man can do
for himself. But, mate, my heart is sore for Christian diet. You
mightn't happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now? No? Well,
many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese--toasted, mostly--and woke
up again, and here I were."

"If ever I can get aboard again," said I, "you shall have cheese by the
stone."

All this time he had been feeling the stuff of my jacket, smoothing my
hands, looking at my boots, and generally, in the intervals of his
speech, showing a childish pleasure in the presence of a
fellow-creature. But at my last words he perked up into a kind of
startled slyness.

"If ever you get aboard again, says you?" he repeated. "Why, now, who's
to hinder you?"

"Not you, I know," was my reply.

"And right you was," he cried. "Now you--what do you call yourself,
mate?"

"Jim," I told him.

"Jim, Jim," says he, quite pleased, apparently. "Well, now, Jim, I've
lived that rough as you'd be ashamed to hear of. Now, for instance, you
wouldn't think I had had a pious mother--to look at me?" he asked.

"Why, no, not in particular," I answered.

"Ah, well," said he, "but I had--remarkable pious. And I was a civil,
pious boy, and could rattle off my catechism that fast as you couldn't
tell one word from another. And here's what it come to, Jim, and it
begun with chuck-farthen on the blessed gravestones! That's what it
begun with, but it went further'n that, and so my mother told me, and
predicked the whole, she did, the pious woman. But it were Providence
that put me here. I've thought it all out in this here lonely island and
I'm back on piety. You can't catch me tasting rum so much, but just a
thimbleful for luck, of course, the first chance I have. I'm bound I'll
be good, and I see the way to. And, Jim"--looking all round him and
lowering his voice to a whisper--"I'm rich."

I now felt sure that the poor fellow had gone crazy in his solitude, and
I suppose I must have shown the feeling in my face, for he repeated the
statement hotly:

"Rich! rich! I says. And I'll tell you what, I'll make a man of you,
Jim. Ah, Jim, you'll bless your stars, you will, you was the first that
found me!"

And at this there came suddenly a lowering shadow over his face and he
tightened his grasp upon my hand and raised a forefinger threateningly
before my eyes.

"Now, Jim, you tell me true; that ain't Flint's ship?" he asked.

At this I had a happy inspiration. I began to believe that I had found
an ally and I answered him at once.

"It's not Flint's ship and Flint is dead, but I'll tell you true, as
you ask me--there are some of Flint's hands aboard; worse luck for the
rest of us."

"Not a man--with one--leg?" he gasped.

"Silver?" I asked.

"Ah, Silver!" says he, "that were his name."

"He's the cook, and the ringleader, too."

He was still holding me by the wrist, and at that he gave it quite a
wring. "If you was sent by Long John," he said, "I'm as good as pork and
I know it. But where was you, do you suppose?"

I had made my mind up in a moment, and by way of answer told him the
whole story of our voyage and the predicament in which we found
ourselves. He heard me with the keenest interest, and when I had done he
patted me on the head.

"You're a good lad, Jim," he said, "and you're all in a clove hitch,
ain't you? Well, you just put your trust in Ben Gunn--Ben Gunn's the man
to do it. Would you think it likely, now, that your squire would prove a
liberal-minded one in case of help--him being in a clove hitch, as you
remark?"

I told him the squire was the most liberal of men.

"Ay, but you see," returned Ben Gunn, "I didn't mean giving me a gate to
keep and a suit of livery clothes, and such; that's not my mark, Jim.
What I mean is, would he be likely to come down to the toon of, say one
thousand pounds out of money that's as good as a man's own already?"

"I am sure he would," said I. "As it was, all hands were to share."

"_And_ a passage home?" he added, with a look of great shrewdness.

"Why," I cried, "the squire's a gentleman. And, besides, if we got rid
of the others, we should want you to help work the vessel home."

"Ah," said he, "so you would." And he seemed very much relieved.

"Now, I'll tell you what," he went on. "So much I'll tell you, and no
more. I were in Flint's ship when he buried the treasure; he and six
along--six strong seamen. They was ashore nigh on a week, and us
standing off and on in the old _Walrus_. One fine day up went the
signal, and here come Flint by himself in a little boat, and his head
done up in a blue scarf. The sun was getting up, and mortal white he
looked about the cutwater. But, there he was, you mind, and the six all
dead--dead and buried. How had he done it, not a man aboard us could
make out. It was battle, murder, and sudden death, leastways--him
against six. Billy Bones was the mate; Long John, he was quartermaster;
and they asked him where the treasure was. 'Ah,' says he, 'you can go
ashore, if you like, and stay,' he says; 'but as for the ship, she'll
beat up for more, by thunder!' That's what he said.

"Well, I was in another ship three years back, and we sighted this
island. 'Boys,' said I, 'here's Flint's treasure; let's land and find
it.' The cap'n was displeased at that; but my messmates were all of a
mind, and landed. Twelve days they looked for it, and every day they had
the worse word for me, until one fine morning all hands went aboard. 'As
for you, Benjamin Gunn,' says they, 'here's a musket,' they says, 'and a
spade, and a pickax. You can stay here and find Flint's money for
yourself,' they says.

"Well, Jim, three years have I been here, and not a bite of Christian
diet from that day to this. But now, you look here; look at me. Do I
look like a man before the mast? No, says you. Nor I weren't, neither, I
says."

And with that he winked and pinched me hard.

"Just you mention them words to your squire, Jim," he went on. "Nor he
weren't neither--that's the words. Three years he were the man of this
island, light and dark, fair and rain; and sometimes he would, may be,
think upon a prayer (says you), and sometimes he would, may be, think of
his old mother, so be as she's alive (you'll say); but the most part of
Gunn's time (this is what you'll say)--the most part of his time was
took up with another matter. And then you'll give him a nip, like I do."

And he pinched me again, in the most confidential manner.

"Then," he continued, "then you'll up, and you'll say this: Gunn is a
good man (you'll say), and he puts a precious sight more confidence--a
precious sight, mind that--in a gen'leman born than in these gen'lemen
of fortune, having been one hisself."

"Well," I said, "I don't understand one word that you've been saying.
But that's neither here nor there; for how am I to get on board?"

"Ah," said he, "that's the hitch, for sure. Well, there's my boat that I
made with my two hands. I keep her under the white rock. If the worst
come to the worst, we might try that after dark. Hi!" he broke out,
"what's that?"

For just then, although the sun had still an hour or two to run, all the
echoes of the island awoke and bellowed to the thunder of a cannon.

"They have begun to fight!" I cried. "Follow me!"

And I began to run toward the anchorage, my terrors all forgotten;
while, close at my side, the marooned man in his goat-skins trotted
easily and lightly.

"Left, left," says he; "keep to your left hand, mate Jim! Under the
trees with you! There's where I killed my first goat. They don't come
down here now; they're all mastheaded on them mountings for the fear of
Benjamin Gunn. Ah! and there's the cetemery"--cemetery he must have
meant. "You see the mounds? I come here and prayed, nows and thens, when
I thought maybe a Sunday would be about doo. It weren't quite a chapel,
but it seemed more solemn like; and then, says you, Ben Gunn was
shorthanded--no chapling, nor so much as a Bible and a flag, you says."

So he kept talking as I ran, neither expecting nor receiving any answer.

The cannon-shot was followed, after a considerable interval, by a volley
of small arms.

Another pause, and then, not a quarter of a mile in front of me, I
beheld the Union Jack flutter in the air above a wood.




PART IV

THE STOCKADE

 Jim sees a shadow jump behind a rock. Jim tries to retrace his steps back to the beach and the Hispaniola. The dark figure reappears and catches up with Jim. Jim is so afraid of Long John Silver that he decides not to call for help; instead, he turns to face the figure. Jim is totally surprised when the figure throws himself to his knees as though begging Jim for mercy. The figure introduces himself as Ben Gunn. He has been marooned alone on this island for three years, living off oysters, berries, and goat meat. All he wants is a bit of toasted cheese. Ben tells Jim that he's become a god-fearing man again after all this time on the island. Ben promises Jim that he'll give him riches if he helps him. Ben asks Jim if he has come to the island on Flint's ship. Jim says no, but some of the men on the ship were Flint's men. Ben asks if one of them is a man with one leg, Long John Silver. Jim says yes, and Ben asks if he is on Long John Silver's side or not. Jim realizes that Ben may be an enemy of Long John Silver, so he explains the whole story of the Hispaniola's voyage. Ben promises to help in exchange for 1,000 British pounds of the treasure and free passage home. Ben tells Jim that he was sailing with Captain Flint when Flint buried his treasure on this island. Somehow Flint managed to murder six sailors single-handedly in order to keep the treasure's burial place secret. Billy Bones and Long John Silver were both on the ship at this time. Three years ago, Ben was sailing aboard another ship when they passed this island. Ben suggested that they stop and look for Flint's treasure. The captain of the boat wasn't happy about it, but the men insisted. They spent twelve days looking for the treasure but couldn't find it. After wasting almost two weeks, the sailors turned on Ben Gunn. They marooned him on the island along with a gun, a spade, and a pickax so that he could keep looking for Flint's treasure by himself. Having spent three years on the island by himself, Ben seems to have gone a little nuts. Still, he asks Jim to put in a good word for him with Squire Trelawney. Jim asks how he's supposed to get back on board the Hispaniola. Ben says he has a small boat and suggests that they try using it to row to the Hispaniola after dark. Ben and Jim hear the sounds of a fight breaking out. They run over quietly to see what's happening. They hear the sound of a cannon going off, followed by gunfire. There is a pause, then Jim sees the Union Jack flying over the forest.

