乡绅特里罗尼，利弗西医生，还有其余的那些先生们，早就要我从头至尾、毫 无保留地写下有关宝岛的全部详情——只除掉它的方位，而那不过是至今那里仍有 未被取出的宝藏的缘故。我在公元一七××年提起了笔，思绪回到了当年我父亲开 “本葆海军上将”旅店的时候，当时那个棕色皮肤、带刀疤的老海员第一次到我们 屋顶下来投宿。
我回想起他恍惚就在昨天，当他步履沉重地来到旅店门口时，他的航海用的大 木箱搁在他身后的双轮手推车上。这是个高大。强壮、魁梧、有着栗色皮肤的人， 粘乎乎的辫子耷拉在脏兮兮的蓝外套的肩部，粗糙的手上疤痕累累，指甲乌青而残 缺不全，一道肮脏的铅灰色刀疤横贯一侧面颊。我记得他一面环顾着小海湾，一面 径自吹着口哨，接着嘴里突然冒出了那支水手老调，日后他也经常地唱：
十五个汉子扒上了死人胸——
哟——嗬——嗬，再来郎姆酒一大瓶！
那高亢、苍老、颤动的嗓音仿佛汇入了绞盘机起锚时众人合唱出的破调门。接着， 他用一根自带的像铁头手杖似的木棍子重重地敲门。当我父亲出来后，他又粗声大 气地要来杯郎姆酒。酒送到后，他慢慢地啜饮，像个鉴定家似的，一面细细地品味， 一面还继续打量着四周的峭壁，抬头审视我们的招牌。
“这是个挺便利的小海湾，”最后他说，“而且酒店的位置也很讨人喜欢。客 人多吗，伙计？”
我父亲告诉他不多，客人非常少，实在遗憾。
“那么好吧，”他说，“这是给我预备的好住处。过来，伙计，”他冲着推手 推车的人喊道，“把车子靠边儿，帮我卸下箱子，我要在这儿住上一小段儿。”接 着他又说，“我是个简朴的人，有郎姆酒、咸肉和鸡蛋就成，这就可以对着海湾看 船下海了。你们该怎么称呼我？你们可以叫我船长。噢，我懂你的意思——瞧这儿！” 说着他把三四枚金币抛在了门槛上，“用光的时候告诉我。”他说，神情严厉得像 个司令官。
说真的，虽然他破衣烂衫，言语粗鲁，风度却一点儿也不像个在桅杆前干活的 水手，倒像个惯于发号施令的大副或船长。那个推手推车的人告诉我们，他是那天 早晨被邮车送到‘乔治王”旅店门前的，在那儿，他打听了沿岸的小旅店。我猜想 他是听说了我们这里不错，被描绘得挺僻静，于是由于它所处的位置而挑中了它。 关于我们这位房客，我们就知道这么多了。
照常说他是个挺沉默的人。他整天带着架黄铜望远镜在小海湾一带转悠，要不 就在峭壁上游荡；整晚坐在客房火炉旁的角落里，拼命地灌郎姆酒和水。大多数时 候，别人和他说话他都不予理睬，只是猛然抬头瞪人一眼，像吹雾角似的哼一 下鼻子。我们和到我们这里来的人们很快便学会让他自取其便了。每天，当他巡游 回来的时候，他都会问是否有什么船员路过。起初我们以为他问这个问题是寻找伙 伴，后来我们才开始明白他是想避开他们。每当一个船员到“本葆海军上将”旅店 来投宿（时不时地有一些人来，要沿海边大道去布里斯托尔），他在进餐厅之前总 会透过门帘窥探一番，一旦有一个这样的人在里面，他必定会像只耗子似的不声不 响。这事对我来说至少已不是什么秘密了，因为，从某种意义上说，我得算他这种 戒备心理的分担者。有一天他曾把我拉到一边，并且答应我，只要我帮他“留神一 个独腿水手”，并且一旦那个人出现就向他通风报信，这样每月月初他就付给我一 枚四便士银币。有好多回，当月初到来，我向他申请报酬的时候，他便会对我嗤之 以鼻，还瞪得我低下了头；但是不等一周过完，他肯定好好考虑考虑，给我那四便 士，同时重申他那个要我监视“独腿水手”的命令。
那个人物怎样搅得我不得安眠，那是不必多说了。在暴风雨的夜晚，当大风撼 动着房子的四角，碎浪咆哮着冲过海岸、跃上悬崖，我就会在一千种形象、一千种 的表情中看到他。一会儿是腿被齐膝砍断，一会儿是齐臀部；一会儿他又是个 什么都没有，只有一条长在身体中央的腿的奇形怪状的家伙。看他单腿跑跳着追赶 我，越过篱笆和水沟，是最坏的恶梦了。总之，为了我那每月的四便士，这些想像 出来的形状令我付出了相当昂贵的代价。
不过，尽管我一想到那个独腿的海员就那么恐惧，但还远远比不上其他认识船 长的人对他本人怕得厉害。有些晚上，在他喝了他的脑袋支撑不住的过量的郎姆酒 和水后，有时他就会坐下来唱他那些个、古老、粗野的水手歌曲，旁若无人； 但有时他会嚷着轮流干杯，还逼着所有战战兢兢的房客们听他讲故事，或者和他一 起合唱。我常常听见房子和“哟—嗬—嗬，再来郎姆酒一大瓶”的歌声一起颤动； 邻居们全都为了宝贵的性命、怀着对死亡的恐惧加入到这歌声里来，而且一个比一 个唱得响亮，生怕引起他的注意。因为在这些他发作起来的场合下，他就成了个最 肆无忌惮的人。他会用手拍着桌子要全体肃静；他会勃然大怒，暴跳如雷，有时是 因为一个问题，有时则是因为没人提问题，于是他断定大家没好好听他的故事。在 他喝得醉醺醺的、摇摇晃晃地上床之前，他不准任何一个人离开这个旅店。
他的故事吓坏了所有的人。那些可怕的故事净是关于绞刑。走木板、海上 风暴和干托吐加群岛以及拉丁美洲大陆的蛮荒地区和野蛮风俗的。照他的说法，他 一定是活在被上帝放逐到海上的一些最的人们中间的。他讲这些故事所用的语 言，就像他所描述的那些罪恶一样，大大震动了我们淳朴的村民。我的父亲总说这 小旅店会被毁掉的，因为人们不堪忍受暴虐、压制以及战战兢兢上床的滋味，他们 很快将不复光顾这里。但是我倒确信他的存在对我们有好处。人们当时是受了惊吓， 可回过头来看，他们相当喜欢这样。在安静的乡村生活中，这是很好的兴奋剂。这 里甚至有一群年轻人声称崇拜他，称他是“货真价实的船员”、“真正的老水手”， 以及诸如此类的称呼，还说正是因为有他这样的人，英格兰才称雄海上。
从某方面讲，说真的，他很有可能毁掉我们；因为他一周复一周，最后一月接 一月地住下来，以致于他付的那些钱已经全部用光了，而我的父亲从不敢壮起胆子 坚持要他加钱。如果一旦对他提及钱的事，船长就会用可以说是咆哮的那么大的声 音哼他的鼻子，并且直瞪得我可怜的父亲倒着退出房门。我曾看到父亲在经历了这 样的一次奚落后绞着双手，我相信一定是这种烦恼和恐惧大大加速了他不幸的早逝。
在船长和我们住在一起的全部时间里，除了从一个货郎那里买些袜子外，他的 穿着丝毫未变。他的三角帽的一角耷拉下来了，自那时起，他就让它那么耷拉着， 尽管这给他带来了极大的不便。我记得他外套的样子，就是他躲在楼上屋子里自己 打补丁的那件，到后来，那件衣服上就满是补丁了。他从未写、也从未接到过一封 信，他也从不和邻居以外的任何人说话，即使和他们交谈，也大多是在喝酒的时候。 那个航海用的大木箱，我们谁也没见他打开过。
他只碰了一次钉子，那是事情接近尾声的时候，那时我可怜的父亲的病情正每 况愈下。利弗西医生在一个傍晚来看望病人，用了点我母亲准备的晚餐后走进了客 厅，想袖口烟，等人把他的马从小村子里牵过来，因为我们的老“本葆海军上将” 旅店没有马厩。我跟着他走进了客厅，我记得我看到这位干净利整的医生，发套上 搽着雪白的发粉，他的明亮的黑眼睛和翩翩的风度，同那些轻佻的乡下人，特别是 同那个猥亵、笨拙、醉眼惺忪的我们心目中的海盗，形成了鲜明的对照。他正喝得 烂醉，胳膊搁在桌子上。突然，他——也就是船长——开始唱起了他常唱的那个歌 儿：
十五个汉子扒上了死人胸——
哟——嗬——嗬，再来郎姆酒一大瓶！
酗酒和恶魔使其余的人都丧了命——
哟——嗬——嗬，再来他郎姆酒一大瓶！
起初，我把“死人胸”想成了同一概念的他楼上前屋里的那只大箱子，而这想法又 和我恶梦中的独腿水手搅和到了一块儿。但是，到了这会儿，我们对这支歌都不怎 么特别在意了，这个晚上，它只对医生来说是新鲜的，而我察觉到，就是医生，对 它也毫无赞赏的表示，因为在他同花匠老泰勒谈话的过程中，他很愤怒地抬头望了 一下，接着就又谈论起关于治疗风湿病的新药方来。同时，船长逐渐被自己的歌鼓 动起情绪来，最后他玩起了我们都知道的那一套，用手拍面前的桌子——安静。声 音立刻平息下去，只有利弗西医生一如既往地讲着，声音清晰悦耳，在每一句话间 还轻松地抽一口烟斗。船长盯着他瞅了一会儿，又拍了一遍桌子，更为严厉地瞪着 他，最后用恶狠狠、低沉的声音咒骂起来：“安静，上下甲板都给我安静！”
“你是在关照我吗，先生？”医生说道，而当那个恶汉用另外一声诅咒告诉他 是这样时，“我只对你说一件事，先生，”医生回答说，“这就是，如果你继续酗 酒的话，这世上很快将减少一个肮脏无比的恶棍！”
这个老家伙的暴怒是可怕的。他跳了起来，拔出并打开了一把水手用的折叠式 小刀，摊开在他的手掌上，好像是恐吓医生，要把他扎到墙上去。
医生岿然不动。他转过头来，用和刚才一样的声调侃侃而谈，声音略微高些， 以使全屋的人都能听见，口气却相当平静而严肃：“如果你不立刻将刀子送回你的 口袋，我以我的名誉发誓，你将在下一次的巡回审判中被绞死。”
接着，在他们之间展开了一场目光的对峙战。但是船长很快便屈服了，放下了 他的武器，退回到座位上，像只挨了打的狗似地咕哝着。
“现在，你听着，先生，”医生继续说道，“既然现在我知道在我的辖区内有 这么个人物，你将考虑我会时时刻刻都用一只眼睛盯着你。我不仅仅是个医生，我 还是一名地方法官，如果我听到一句对你的控告，哪怕只是像今晚这样的一次无礼， 我都将为此而采取有效措施，追捕并找出你。我想话说到这儿已经足够了。”
不久，利弗西医生的马便被牵到了门前，他就上马离开了。但是那天整个晚上 船长都保持沉默，并且后来许多晚上也是这样。
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.
我回想起他恍惚就在昨天，当他步履沉重地来到旅店门口时，他的航海用的大 木箱搁在他身后的双轮手推车上。这是个高大。强壮、魁梧、有着栗色皮肤的人， 粘乎乎的辫子耷拉在脏兮兮的蓝外套的肩部，粗糙的手上疤痕累累，指甲乌青而残 缺不全，一道肮脏的铅灰色刀疤横贯一侧面颊。我记得他一面环顾着小海湾，一面 径自吹着口哨，接着嘴里突然冒出了那支水手老调，日后他也经常地唱：
十五个汉子扒上了死人胸——
哟——嗬——嗬，再来郎姆酒一大瓶！
那高亢、苍老、颤动的嗓音仿佛汇入了绞盘机起锚时众人合唱出的破调门。接着， 他用一根自带的像铁头手杖似的木棍子重重地敲门。当我父亲出来后，他又粗声大 气地要来杯郎姆酒。酒送到后，他慢慢地啜饮，像个鉴定家似的，一面细细地品味， 一面还继续打量着四周的峭壁，抬头审视我们的招牌。
“这是个挺便利的小海湾，”最后他说，“而且酒店的位置也很讨人喜欢。客 人多吗，伙计？”
我父亲告诉他不多，客人非常少，实在遗憾。
“那么好吧，”他说，“这是给我预备的好住处。过来，伙计，”他冲着推手 推车的人喊道，“把车子靠边儿，帮我卸下箱子，我要在这儿住上一小段儿。”接 着他又说，“我是个简朴的人，有郎姆酒、咸肉和鸡蛋就成，这就可以对着海湾看 船下海了。你们该怎么称呼我？你们可以叫我船长。噢，我懂你的意思——瞧这儿！” 说着他把三四枚金币抛在了门槛上，“用光的时候告诉我。”他说，神情严厉得像 个司令官。
说真的，虽然他破衣烂衫，言语粗鲁，风度却一点儿也不像个在桅杆前干活的 水手，倒像个惯于发号施令的大副或船长。那个推手推车的人告诉我们，他是那天 早晨被邮车送到‘乔治王”旅店门前的，在那儿，他打听了沿岸的小旅店。我猜想 他是听说了我们这里不错，被描绘得挺僻静，于是由于它所处的位置而挑中了它。 关于我们这位房客，我们就知道这么多了。
照常说他是个挺沉默的人。他整天带着架黄铜望远镜在小海湾一带转悠，要不 就在峭壁上游荡；整晚坐在客房火炉旁的角落里，拼命地灌郎姆酒和水。大多数时 候，别人和他说话他都不予理睬，只是猛然抬头瞪人一眼，像吹雾角似的哼一 下鼻子。我们和到我们这里来的人们很快便学会让他自取其便了。每天，当他巡游 回来的时候，他都会问是否有什么船员路过。起初我们以为他问这个问题是寻找伙 伴，后来我们才开始明白他是想避开他们。每当一个船员到“本葆海军上将”旅店 来投宿（时不时地有一些人来，要沿海边大道去布里斯托尔），他在进餐厅之前总 会透过门帘窥探一番，一旦有一个这样的人在里面，他必定会像只耗子似的不声不 响。这事对我来说至少已不是什么秘密了，因为，从某种意义上说，我得算他这种 戒备心理的分担者。有一天他曾把我拉到一边，并且答应我，只要我帮他“留神一 个独腿水手”，并且一旦那个人出现就向他通风报信，这样每月月初他就付给我一 枚四便士银币。有好多回，当月初到来，我向他申请报酬的时候，他便会对我嗤之 以鼻，还瞪得我低下了头；但是不等一周过完，他肯定好好考虑考虑，给我那四便 士，同时重申他那个要我监视“独腿水手”的命令。
那个人物怎样搅得我不得安眠，那是不必多说了。在暴风雨的夜晚，当大风撼 动着房子的四角，碎浪咆哮着冲过海岸、跃上悬崖，我就会在一千种形象、一千种 的表情中看到他。一会儿是腿被齐膝砍断，一会儿是齐臀部；一会儿他又是个 什么都没有，只有一条长在身体中央的腿的奇形怪状的家伙。看他单腿跑跳着追赶 我，越过篱笆和水沟，是最坏的恶梦了。总之，为了我那每月的四便士，这些想像 出来的形状令我付出了相当昂贵的代价。
不过，尽管我一想到那个独腿的海员就那么恐惧，但还远远比不上其他认识船 长的人对他本人怕得厉害。有些晚上，在他喝了他的脑袋支撑不住的过量的郎姆酒 和水后，有时他就会坐下来唱他那些个、古老、粗野的水手歌曲，旁若无人； 但有时他会嚷着轮流干杯，还逼着所有战战兢兢的房客们听他讲故事，或者和他一 起合唱。我常常听见房子和“哟—嗬—嗬，再来郎姆酒一大瓶”的歌声一起颤动； 邻居们全都为了宝贵的性命、怀着对死亡的恐惧加入到这歌声里来，而且一个比一 个唱得响亮，生怕引起他的注意。因为在这些他发作起来的场合下，他就成了个最 肆无忌惮的人。他会用手拍着桌子要全体肃静；他会勃然大怒，暴跳如雷，有时是 因为一个问题，有时则是因为没人提问题，于是他断定大家没好好听他的故事。在 他喝得醉醺醺的、摇摇晃晃地上床之前，他不准任何一个人离开这个旅店。
他的故事吓坏了所有的人。那些可怕的故事净是关于绞刑。走木板、海上 风暴和干托吐加群岛以及拉丁美洲大陆的蛮荒地区和野蛮风俗的。照他的说法，他 一定是活在被上帝放逐到海上的一些最的人们中间的。他讲这些故事所用的语 言，就像他所描述的那些罪恶一样，大大震动了我们淳朴的村民。我的父亲总说这 小旅店会被毁掉的，因为人们不堪忍受暴虐、压制以及战战兢兢上床的滋味，他们 很快将不复光顾这里。但是我倒确信他的存在对我们有好处。人们当时是受了惊吓， 可回过头来看，他们相当喜欢这样。在安静的乡村生活中，这是很好的兴奋剂。这 里甚至有一群年轻人声称崇拜他，称他是“货真价实的船员”、“真正的老水手”， 以及诸如此类的称呼，还说正是因为有他这样的人，英格兰才称雄海上。
从某方面讲，说真的，他很有可能毁掉我们；因为他一周复一周，最后一月接 一月地住下来，以致于他付的那些钱已经全部用光了，而我的父亲从不敢壮起胆子 坚持要他加钱。如果一旦对他提及钱的事，船长就会用可以说是咆哮的那么大的声 音哼他的鼻子，并且直瞪得我可怜的父亲倒着退出房门。我曾看到父亲在经历了这 样的一次奚落后绞着双手，我相信一定是这种烦恼和恐惧大大加速了他不幸的早逝。
在船长和我们住在一起的全部时间里，除了从一个货郎那里买些袜子外，他的 穿着丝毫未变。他的三角帽的一角耷拉下来了，自那时起，他就让它那么耷拉着， 尽管这给他带来了极大的不便。我记得他外套的样子，就是他躲在楼上屋子里自己 打补丁的那件，到后来，那件衣服上就满是补丁了。他从未写、也从未接到过一封 信，他也从不和邻居以外的任何人说话，即使和他们交谈，也大多是在喝酒的时候。 那个航海用的大木箱，我们谁也没见他打开过。
他只碰了一次钉子，那是事情接近尾声的时候，那时我可怜的父亲的病情正每 况愈下。利弗西医生在一个傍晚来看望病人，用了点我母亲准备的晚餐后走进了客 厅，想袖口烟，等人把他的马从小村子里牵过来，因为我们的老“本葆海军上将” 旅店没有马厩。我跟着他走进了客厅，我记得我看到这位干净利整的医生，发套上 搽着雪白的发粉，他的明亮的黑眼睛和翩翩的风度，同那些轻佻的乡下人，特别是 同那个猥亵、笨拙、醉眼惺忪的我们心目中的海盗，形成了鲜明的对照。他正喝得 烂醉，胳膊搁在桌子上。突然，他——也就是船长——开始唱起了他常唱的那个歌 儿：
十五个汉子扒上了死人胸——
哟——嗬——嗬，再来郎姆酒一大瓶！
酗酒和恶魔使其余的人都丧了命——
哟——嗬——嗬，再来他郎姆酒一大瓶！
起初，我把“死人胸”想成了同一概念的他楼上前屋里的那只大箱子，而这想法又 和我恶梦中的独腿水手搅和到了一块儿。但是，到了这会儿，我们对这支歌都不怎 么特别在意了，这个晚上，它只对医生来说是新鲜的，而我察觉到，就是医生，对 它也毫无赞赏的表示，因为在他同花匠老泰勒谈话的过程中，他很愤怒地抬头望了 一下，接着就又谈论起关于治疗风湿病的新药方来。同时，船长逐渐被自己的歌鼓 动起情绪来，最后他玩起了我们都知道的那一套，用手拍面前的桌子——安静。声 音立刻平息下去，只有利弗西医生一如既往地讲着，声音清晰悦耳，在每一句话间 还轻松地抽一口烟斗。船长盯着他瞅了一会儿，又拍了一遍桌子，更为严厉地瞪着 他，最后用恶狠狠、低沉的声音咒骂起来：“安静，上下甲板都给我安静！”
“你是在关照我吗，先生？”医生说道，而当那个恶汉用另外一声诅咒告诉他 是这样时，“我只对你说一件事，先生，”医生回答说，“这就是，如果你继续酗 酒的话，这世上很快将减少一个肮脏无比的恶棍！”
这个老家伙的暴怒是可怕的。他跳了起来，拔出并打开了一把水手用的折叠式 小刀，摊开在他的手掌上，好像是恐吓医生，要把他扎到墙上去。
医生岿然不动。他转过头来，用和刚才一样的声调侃侃而谈，声音略微高些， 以使全屋的人都能听见，口气却相当平静而严肃：“如果你不立刻将刀子送回你的 口袋，我以我的名誉发誓，你将在下一次的巡回审判中被绞死。”
接着，在他们之间展开了一场目光的对峙战。但是船长很快便屈服了，放下了 他的武器，退回到座位上，像只挨了打的狗似地咕哝着。
“现在，你听着，先生，”医生继续说道，“既然现在我知道在我的辖区内有 这么个人物，你将考虑我会时时刻刻都用一只眼睛盯着你。我不仅仅是个医生，我 还是一名地方法官，如果我听到一句对你的控告，哪怕只是像今晚这样的一次无礼， 我都将为此而采取有效措施，追捕并找出你。我想话说到这儿已经足够了。”
不久，利弗西医生的马便被牵到了门前，他就上马离开了。但是那天整个晚上 船长都保持沉默，并且后来许多晚上也是这样。
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.
这件事过去不久，就发生了第一桩神秘的事件，那使我们最终摆脱掉了船长， 尽管就像你们将会看到的那样，这还并未使我们摆脱掉和他有关的事情。那是个颇 为寒冷的冬天，长久地下着严霜，刮着暴风。一看而知，我的可怜的父亲没有多少 希望再看到春天了。他一天天衰弱下去，我和母亲挑起了经营旅店的全副担子，忙 个不停，再也无心留意那个令人不快的客人了。
那是一月里的一个早晨，很早——一个折磨人的下霜的早晨——海湾覆着白霜， 灰蒙蒙的，波浪轻轻拍打着岩石，太阳低低地悬在山尖上，照亮了一海面。船 长比往常起得早，出发到海边去了，他那把水手用的短刀在旧蓝外套的宽宽的下摆 上晃悠着，黄铜望远镜夹在胳膊底下，帽子在头上向右斜歪着。我记得当他大步走 开时，他呼出的哈气好像烟雾一般地缭绕在身后，而我听到他发出的最后的声音， 是在他转过大石头时，气愤愤地哼了一下鼻子，好像仍对利弗西医生耿耿于怀似的。
那会儿，母亲正同父亲一起呆在楼上，我正往餐桌上摆放早餐，等船长回来。 这时客厅的门打开了，一个我从未见过的人走了进来。他是个面色苍白、脂肪过多 的家伙，左手少了两个手指。虽然他也带着把水手用的短刀，看上去却不像个好斗 的人。我一直留意着水手们是一条腿还是两条腿，可这个人却使我纳闷。他不像个 水手，然而身上还带有海上的气味。
我问他要点什么，他说他要郎姆酒。但当我要走出房间去取酒时，他在餐桌旁 坐下来，打手势要我过去。我手里拿着餐巾停在那里。
“到这儿来，孩子，”他说，“走近些。”
我走近了一步。
“这张餐桌是我同伴比尔的吗？”他问道，不怀好意地眨了眨眼睛。
我告诉他我不认识他的同伴比尔，而这张桌子是给住在我们这里的一个我们叫 做“船长”的人的。
“好啦，”他说，“我的同伴比尔也可能被叫做‘船长’，这很有可能。他的 脸上有一道疤，嗜酒如命，我的同伴比尔就是这样。为信服起见，我可以指出，你 们的‘船长’脸上有一道刀疤——我们还可以指出，如果你想知道的话，那道刀疤 是在右半边脸上。噢，好啦！我都告诉你了。现在，我的同伴比尔是住在这所房子 里吧？”
我告诉他，船长到外面散步去了。
“哪条路，孩子？他走的是哪条路？”
我指出了那块岩石，还告诉他船长就快要回来了，并且还回答了几个其他的问 题。“噢，”他说，“这对于我的同伴比尔来说将和喝酒一样适合。”
当他说这些话的时候，他脸上的表情却一点也不愉快，于是我就掂量着这陌生 人是弄错了人，即使他有意说那样的话。但这不关我的事，我想，而且，此外我也 想不出该怎么办。这个陌生人一直守候在旅店的门边，盯着那个角落，就像猫在等 耗子出现似的。一旦我向外面走出一步，他就立刻召唤我回来。要是我的动作比他 要求的慢了一拍的话，他的脂肪过多的脸就变得特别可怕起来，他用足以让我跳起 来的咒骂命令我进来。只要我一回来，他就又恢复了常态，半是巴结、半是讽消地 拍拍我的肩膀，说我是个好孩子，而他特别喜欢我。“我有个儿子，”他说，“和 你就像一个模子里出来的，他是我最大的骄傲。但是对孩子们来说，最要紧的是听 话，孩子——听话。嗯，如果你跟着比尔航行过，你就不需要站在那儿让比尔对你 说两遍——你肯定不会。那不是比尔的作风，也不是和他一起航海的人的作风。啊， 这肯定是我的同伴比尔，胳膊底下夹个望远镜，哎呀，真的，你和我得回到客厅里 去，孩子，到门后边去，我们要让比尔惊奇一下，啊，我再说一遍。”
说着，陌生人和我一起退回到客厅里，把我藏在他后面的角落里，以便我们两 个都能藏到开着的门后面。我非常的不安和惊慌，你可以想像得出来，而当我注意 到陌生人自己也相当地恐惧时，我的恐惧就又重了一层。他擦了擦短刀的柄，又活 动了一下鞘里的刀身，在我们等待的时间里，他不断地咽口水，就好像我们通常说 的有什么东西卡在喉咙里似的。
终于，船长大步走进来，砰地一声关掉他身后的门，既不向右看，也不向左看， 径直穿过房间，向给他预备好的早餐走过去。
“比尔。”陌生人叫道，用那种在我看来是竭力为自己壮胆的声调。
船长旋转脚跟，面向我们。他棕色的脸孔一下子变了色，连鼻子都青了，他看 那个人的样子就像见了鬼或者的东西，或者这世上能有的什么更坏的东西。而 我，说实话，看到他在刹那间变得既苍老又衰弱，感到有些歉疚。
“来，比尔，你是认得我的，你认得老船友的，比尔，这是肯定的。”陌生人 说道。
船长发出一声喘息。
“‘黑狗’！”他说。
“还能是谁呢？”另一个回答说，变得轻松了一些。“‘黑狗’和从前一样， 看他的老船友比尔来了，在‘本葆海军上将’旅店。噢，比尔，比尔，我们经历了 很多事情，我们两个，自从我失去了两根指头。”他举起了他残废的手。
“喂，听着，”船长说，“既然你找到了我，我就在此地，那么好吧，说，有 何贵干？”
“有你的，比尔，”“黑狗”答道，“你说得对，比尔。我得让这个可爱的孩 子上杯郎姆酒，因为我已有了这么个嗜好。你乐意的话，我们坐下来，像老船友似 地好好谈谈。”
当我端来郎姆酒的时候，他们已经分坐在船长早餐桌的两边——“黑狗”靠近 门斜坐着，以便盯着老船长，另一方面，我想，也是为了给自己留个退路。
他命令我出去，同时让房门开着。“甭想从你的钥匙孔里探听我些什么，小家 伙。”他说。于是我撇下他们俩，退回到酒吧间里去。
很长一段时间，尽管我竭力地听，却除了低低的叽哩咕噜声之外什么也听不清， 但是声音终于开始大了起来，我能听到一句两句了，多半是船长的咒骂。
“不，不，不，不，到此为止吧！”他叫道，并且又重复了一遍，“如果要上 绞架，就统统都上，我就是这么说的。”
接着就是突如其来的咒骂和其他什么声音的大爆发——椅子和桌子倒在了一块 儿，跟着是金属的撞击声，然后是一声痛苦的嘶喊，接下来我看到“黑狗”拼命逃 窜，而船长穷追不舍，两人都拔出了水手用的短刀，前者左肩淌着血。就在门口， 船长给了那个亡命徒有力的一刀，要不是我们“本葆海军上将”的大招牌挡着，准 能将他一劈到底，至今你还可以看到下边的那个缺口哩。
这是那场战斗的最后一击。“黑狗”尽管受了伤，一旦他跑到了路上，却显示 出令人叫绝的脚力来，不到半分钟就消失在小丘边上。船长这边却怔怔地直盯着招 牌，像个木头人似的。然后他揉了几把眼睛，最后返身回屋了。
“吉姆，”他说，“酒！”当他说话的时候，他有点儿摇晃，于是用一只手扶 住墙支撑着身体。
“你受伤了吗？”我叫道。
“酒，”他重复着，“我必须离开这里。酒！酒！”
我飞奔着去取酒，但发生的这一切使我心烦意乱，我打碎了一个杯子，碰坏了 一个活嘴儿，而当我返回来的时候，我听到客厅里有重物倒地的声音，跑进去时， 只见船长仰面躺在地板上。这时，母亲已被叫声和打斗声惊动了，跑下楼来帮助我。 我们合力搬起了他的脑袋，他的呼吸非常重浊和吃力，眼睛闭着，脸色十分难看。
“哎呀，乖乖，”母亲叫道，“这屋子怎么这么倒霉呀！你可怜的爸爸还在病 着！”
这会儿，至于究竟怎样才能帮助船长，我们都没了主意，除了想到他是在同陌 生人的混战中得了这个致命伤外，简直想不到别的。我甚至拿来了酒，试着往他的 喉咙里灌；但是他牙关紧闭，下颚像铁一样僵硬。当门打开、利弗西医生走进来时， 我们大喜过望。他是来看望我父亲的。
“噢，大夫，”我们叫道，“该怎么办哪？他伤在哪儿啦？”
“伤了？乱弹琴！”医生说，“和你我一样完好。这个人是中风了，就像我警 告过他的那样。现在，霍金斯太太，可能的话，你赶紧跑到楼上你丈夫那儿，告诉 他没什么事。至于我这方面，一定会尽力挽救这个家伙毫无价值的生命。吉姆，给 我拿个盆来。”
当我取来盆时，医生已招起了船长的衣袖，露出了他粗壮的胳膊，上面有几处 刺花。前臂上精巧、清晰地刺着“好运在此”、“顺风”以及“比尔·彭斯的爱物”， 而上头挨近肩膀的地方则刺着个一个人吊在绞刑架上的草图。刺这些画，照我看， 是费了好大的功夫。
“是个预言，”医生边用手指触摸着这幅画边说。“现在，比尔·彭斯船长— —如果这是你的名字的话，我们来看看你血液的颜色。吉姆，”他说，“你怕血吗？”
“不，先生。”我说。
“那么好吧，”他说，“你端着盆。”说着他拿起刺血针刺穿了一条静脉。
在放了大量的血之后，船长睁开了眼睛，迷迷糊糊地望着四周。他先是认出了 医生，明显地皱了皱眉，然后他的目光又扫向我，看上去就放松了些。但是猛然间 他的脸色就变了，挣扎着要起来，叫道：“‘黑狗’在哪儿？”“这儿没什么‘黑 狗’，”医生说，“只有你躺在这里。你一直酗酒，已经中风，就像我曾明白地告 诉过你的那样。而巳刚刚，我违反了我的意愿，抢先把你从坟墓里拖了出来。现在， 彭斯先生——”
“那不是我的名字。”他打断道。
“我当然明白。”医生回答说。
“这是我知道的一个海盗的名字。我这样称呼你是方便起见，而我不得不对你 说的是：一杯酒不会要你的命，但是如果你喝了一杯，你就会接二连三地喝下去， 我以我法官的假发来打赌，要是你恶习不改，你会送命——你明白这个意思吗？— —送命，并且去你该去的地方，像《圣经》里的那个人。现在，来，努把力，我来 帮你回到床上去。”
我们俩费了九牛二虎之力，设法把他抬到了楼上，放倒在床上，使他的脑袋靠 在了枕头上，好像他快要昏迷过去了。
“现在，我提醒你，”医生说，“好让我问心无愧——‘酒’这个字眼对你而 言即是死亡。”
说完，他就拉着我的胳膊去看我的父亲。
“不碍事，”当他关上门的时候说道，“我给他放掉的血足以使他安静一会。 他会在那儿躺上一个星期——对他对你来说最好不过，但是再来一次中风的话，他 就没救了。”
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."
那是一月里的一个早晨，很早——一个折磨人的下霜的早晨——海湾覆着白霜， 灰蒙蒙的，波浪轻轻拍打着岩石，太阳低低地悬在山尖上，照亮了一海面。船 长比往常起得早，出发到海边去了，他那把水手用的短刀在旧蓝外套的宽宽的下摆 上晃悠着，黄铜望远镜夹在胳膊底下，帽子在头上向右斜歪着。我记得当他大步走 开时，他呼出的哈气好像烟雾一般地缭绕在身后，而我听到他发出的最后的声音， 是在他转过大石头时，气愤愤地哼了一下鼻子，好像仍对利弗西医生耿耿于怀似的。
那会儿，母亲正同父亲一起呆在楼上，我正往餐桌上摆放早餐，等船长回来。 这时客厅的门打开了，一个我从未见过的人走了进来。他是个面色苍白、脂肪过多 的家伙，左手少了两个手指。虽然他也带着把水手用的短刀，看上去却不像个好斗 的人。我一直留意着水手们是一条腿还是两条腿，可这个人却使我纳闷。他不像个 水手，然而身上还带有海上的气味。
我问他要点什么，他说他要郎姆酒。但当我要走出房间去取酒时，他在餐桌旁 坐下来，打手势要我过去。我手里拿着餐巾停在那里。
“到这儿来，孩子，”他说，“走近些。”
我走近了一步。
“这张餐桌是我同伴比尔的吗？”他问道，不怀好意地眨了眨眼睛。
我告诉他我不认识他的同伴比尔，而这张桌子是给住在我们这里的一个我们叫 做“船长”的人的。
“好啦，”他说，“我的同伴比尔也可能被叫做‘船长’，这很有可能。他的 脸上有一道疤，嗜酒如命，我的同伴比尔就是这样。为信服起见，我可以指出，你 们的‘船长’脸上有一道刀疤——我们还可以指出，如果你想知道的话，那道刀疤 是在右半边脸上。噢，好啦！我都告诉你了。现在，我的同伴比尔是住在这所房子 里吧？”
我告诉他，船长到外面散步去了。
“哪条路，孩子？他走的是哪条路？”
我指出了那块岩石，还告诉他船长就快要回来了，并且还回答了几个其他的问 题。“噢，”他说，“这对于我的同伴比尔来说将和喝酒一样适合。”
当他说这些话的时候，他脸上的表情却一点也不愉快，于是我就掂量着这陌生 人是弄错了人，即使他有意说那样的话。但这不关我的事，我想，而且，此外我也 想不出该怎么办。这个陌生人一直守候在旅店的门边，盯着那个角落，就像猫在等 耗子出现似的。一旦我向外面走出一步，他就立刻召唤我回来。要是我的动作比他 要求的慢了一拍的话，他的脂肪过多的脸就变得特别可怕起来，他用足以让我跳起 来的咒骂命令我进来。只要我一回来，他就又恢复了常态，半是巴结、半是讽消地 拍拍我的肩膀，说我是个好孩子，而他特别喜欢我。“我有个儿子，”他说，“和 你就像一个模子里出来的，他是我最大的骄傲。但是对孩子们来说，最要紧的是听 话，孩子——听话。嗯，如果你跟着比尔航行过，你就不需要站在那儿让比尔对你 说两遍——你肯定不会。那不是比尔的作风，也不是和他一起航海的人的作风。啊， 这肯定是我的同伴比尔，胳膊底下夹个望远镜，哎呀，真的，你和我得回到客厅里 去，孩子，到门后边去，我们要让比尔惊奇一下，啊，我再说一遍。”
说着，陌生人和我一起退回到客厅里，把我藏在他后面的角落里，以便我们两 个都能藏到开着的门后面。我非常的不安和惊慌，你可以想像得出来，而当我注意 到陌生人自己也相当地恐惧时，我的恐惧就又重了一层。他擦了擦短刀的柄，又活 动了一下鞘里的刀身，在我们等待的时间里，他不断地咽口水，就好像我们通常说 的有什么东西卡在喉咙里似的。
终于，船长大步走进来，砰地一声关掉他身后的门，既不向右看，也不向左看， 径直穿过房间，向给他预备好的早餐走过去。
“比尔。”陌生人叫道，用那种在我看来是竭力为自己壮胆的声调。
船长旋转脚跟，面向我们。他棕色的脸孔一下子变了色，连鼻子都青了，他看 那个人的样子就像见了鬼或者的东西，或者这世上能有的什么更坏的东西。而 我，说实话，看到他在刹那间变得既苍老又衰弱，感到有些歉疚。
“来，比尔，你是认得我的，你认得老船友的，比尔，这是肯定的。”陌生人 说道。
船长发出一声喘息。
“‘黑狗’！”他说。
“还能是谁呢？”另一个回答说，变得轻松了一些。“‘黑狗’和从前一样， 看他的老船友比尔来了，在‘本葆海军上将’旅店。噢，比尔，比尔，我们经历了 很多事情，我们两个，自从我失去了两根指头。”他举起了他残废的手。
“喂，听着，”船长说，“既然你找到了我，我就在此地，那么好吧，说，有 何贵干？”
“有你的，比尔，”“黑狗”答道，“你说得对，比尔。我得让这个可爱的孩 子上杯郎姆酒，因为我已有了这么个嗜好。你乐意的话，我们坐下来，像老船友似 地好好谈谈。”
当我端来郎姆酒的时候，他们已经分坐在船长早餐桌的两边——“黑狗”靠近 门斜坐着，以便盯着老船长，另一方面，我想，也是为了给自己留个退路。
他命令我出去，同时让房门开着。“甭想从你的钥匙孔里探听我些什么，小家 伙。”他说。于是我撇下他们俩，退回到酒吧间里去。
很长一段时间，尽管我竭力地听，却除了低低的叽哩咕噜声之外什么也听不清， 但是声音终于开始大了起来，我能听到一句两句了，多半是船长的咒骂。
“不，不，不，不，到此为止吧！”他叫道，并且又重复了一遍，“如果要上 绞架，就统统都上，我就是这么说的。”
接着就是突如其来的咒骂和其他什么声音的大爆发——椅子和桌子倒在了一块 儿，跟着是金属的撞击声，然后是一声痛苦的嘶喊，接下来我看到“黑狗”拼命逃 窜，而船长穷追不舍，两人都拔出了水手用的短刀，前者左肩淌着血。就在门口， 船长给了那个亡命徒有力的一刀，要不是我们“本葆海军上将”的大招牌挡着，准 能将他一劈到底，至今你还可以看到下边的那个缺口哩。
这是那场战斗的最后一击。“黑狗”尽管受了伤，一旦他跑到了路上，却显示 出令人叫绝的脚力来，不到半分钟就消失在小丘边上。船长这边却怔怔地直盯着招 牌，像个木头人似的。然后他揉了几把眼睛，最后返身回屋了。
“吉姆，”他说，“酒！”当他说话的时候，他有点儿摇晃，于是用一只手扶 住墙支撑着身体。
“你受伤了吗？”我叫道。
“酒，”他重复着，“我必须离开这里。酒！酒！”
我飞奔着去取酒，但发生的这一切使我心烦意乱，我打碎了一个杯子，碰坏了 一个活嘴儿，而当我返回来的时候，我听到客厅里有重物倒地的声音，跑进去时， 只见船长仰面躺在地板上。这时，母亲已被叫声和打斗声惊动了，跑下楼来帮助我。 我们合力搬起了他的脑袋，他的呼吸非常重浊和吃力，眼睛闭着，脸色十分难看。
“哎呀，乖乖，”母亲叫道，“这屋子怎么这么倒霉呀！你可怜的爸爸还在病 着！”
这会儿，至于究竟怎样才能帮助船长，我们都没了主意，除了想到他是在同陌 生人的混战中得了这个致命伤外，简直想不到别的。我甚至拿来了酒，试着往他的 喉咙里灌；但是他牙关紧闭，下颚像铁一样僵硬。当门打开、利弗西医生走进来时， 我们大喜过望。他是来看望我父亲的。
“噢，大夫，”我们叫道，“该怎么办哪？他伤在哪儿啦？”
“伤了？乱弹琴！”医生说，“和你我一样完好。这个人是中风了，就像我警 告过他的那样。现在，霍金斯太太，可能的话，你赶紧跑到楼上你丈夫那儿，告诉 他没什么事。至于我这方面，一定会尽力挽救这个家伙毫无价值的生命。吉姆，给 我拿个盆来。”
当我取来盆时，医生已招起了船长的衣袖，露出了他粗壮的胳膊，上面有几处 刺花。前臂上精巧、清晰地刺着“好运在此”、“顺风”以及“比尔·彭斯的爱物”， 而上头挨近肩膀的地方则刺着个一个人吊在绞刑架上的草图。刺这些画，照我看， 是费了好大的功夫。
“是个预言，”医生边用手指触摸着这幅画边说。“现在，比尔·彭斯船长— —如果这是你的名字的话，我们来看看你血液的颜色。吉姆，”他说，“你怕血吗？”
“不，先生。”我说。
“那么好吧，”他说，“你端着盆。”说着他拿起刺血针刺穿了一条静脉。
在放了大量的血之后，船长睁开了眼睛，迷迷糊糊地望着四周。他先是认出了 医生，明显地皱了皱眉，然后他的目光又扫向我，看上去就放松了些。但是猛然间 他的脸色就变了，挣扎着要起来，叫道：“‘黑狗’在哪儿？”“这儿没什么‘黑 狗’，”医生说，“只有你躺在这里。你一直酗酒，已经中风，就像我曾明白地告 诉过你的那样。而巳刚刚，我违反了我的意愿，抢先把你从坟墓里拖了出来。现在， 彭斯先生——”
“那不是我的名字。”他打断道。
“我当然明白。”医生回答说。
“这是我知道的一个海盗的名字。我这样称呼你是方便起见，而我不得不对你 说的是：一杯酒不会要你的命，但是如果你喝了一杯，你就会接二连三地喝下去， 我以我法官的假发来打赌，要是你恶习不改，你会送命——你明白这个意思吗？— —送命，并且去你该去的地方，像《圣经》里的那个人。现在，来，努把力，我来 帮你回到床上去。”
我们俩费了九牛二虎之力，设法把他抬到了楼上，放倒在床上，使他的脑袋靠 在了枕头上，好像他快要昏迷过去了。
“现在，我提醒你，”医生说，“好让我问心无愧——‘酒’这个字眼对你而 言即是死亡。”
说完，他就拉着我的胳膊去看我的父亲。
“不碍事，”当他关上门的时候说道，“我给他放掉的血足以使他安静一会。 他会在那儿躺上一个星期——对他对你来说最好不过，但是再来一次中风的话，他 就没救了。”
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."