A little before dawn the crew began to pull up the anchor.
“Now, Barbecue, sing us a song!” cried one voice.
“The old one!” cried another.
“Aye, aye, mates,” said Long John, and he began the song I knew so well. The whole crew joined in:
“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
For a moment I was back at the old Admiral Benbow, and I seemed to hear the captain’s voice among the others. Then the sails filled, and the Hispaniola began her voyage to Treasure Island.
I will not describe the whole voyage. But before we reached the island, a few things happened that you must know.
First, Mr. Arrow turned out even worse than the captain had feared. After a day or two at sea, he began to come on deck drunk, and again and again he was sent below. Nobody could find out where he got his drink. Then, one dark, stormy night, he disappeared and was never seen again.
“Overboard!” said the captain. “Well, gentlemen, that saves us the trouble of putting him in chains.”
Job Anderson, the boatswain, now did the mate’s work. Israel Hands, a careful old sailor who steered the ship, was a good friend of Long John Silver.
On board, Silver wore his crutch on a rope round his neck, so that his hands were free, and even in a storm he crossed the deck as fast as any other man.
“Barbecue is no ordinary man,” Hands told me. “He went to school when he was young, and he can speak like a gentleman. And brave! I once saw him fight four men with no weapon in his hand.”
All the crew respected him. To me he was always kind. His kitchen was as clean as a new pin, and in one corner his parrot sat in a cage.
“Come in, Hawkins,” he used to say. “Nobody is more welcome than you, my son. Here’s Captain Flint. I call my parrot Captain Flint, after the famous pirate. Captain Flint says our voyage will go well. Don’t you, Captain?”
And the parrot cried very fast, “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” until John threw his handkerchief over the cage.
“That bird is maybe two hundred years old, Hawkins,” he said. “She has sailed with the most famous pirates. To look at her, you would think she was a baby, but she has smelled gunpowder.”
Then the parrot began to swear terribly.
“There,” said John, “you can’t touch dirt and stay clean, lad. This poor innocent bird swears, and she doesn’t know what the words mean.” And he looked so serious that I thought he was the best of men.
The squire and Captain Smollett still did not like each other. The captain admitted that the men worked well and that he liked the ship. “But we’re not home yet,” he always said, “and I don’t like this voyage.”
“A little more of that man,” said the squire, “and I shall explode.”
The squire spoiled the men. There was extra rum for the smallest reason, and there was always a barrel of apples on deck for anyone who wanted one.
“No good ever came of spoiling sailors,” said the captain.
But good did come of the apple barrel. Without it, we would have had no warning, and we might all have died.
On the last evening of the voyage, we expected to see the island that night or the next morning. After sunset, when my work was done, I wanted an apple. Everyone was at the front of the ship, looking out for the island. I climbed right into the barrel and found that there was hardly an apple left. I sat there in the dark, rocked by the ship, and I was almost asleep when a heavy man sat down and leaned against the barrel.
I was just going to jump out when he began to speak. It was Silver’s voice. Before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for anything in the world. I lay there, trembling and listening, because I understood that the lives of all the honest men on board depended on me alone.