Chapter IX: The Island

One day was like another aboard the _Royal James_, although to a landsman the routine of duties, work and varying weather was charged with unending interest. My great-uncle held his pack of wolves on a short leash and exacted from them all the efficiency of a man-o’-war’s company. Indeed, he rather fancied himself in the status of admiral upon a private establishment, and occasionally indulged in visions of the _James_ gazetted to the roster of the royal fleet and himself flying a broad pennant in a line-ship at the head of a squadron.

“His Majesty could scarce make me Lord Admiral, Robert,” he would say, pacing the poop with hands clasped behind him and spyglass tucked beneath his left arm. “I am one for maintaining the rights of tradition, and the Howards have an inalienable claim to the place. But a regular commission--that would be vastly different. Admiral of the White, let us say--or if that grade be filled, perhaps of the Red. I understand there to be considerable jealousy amongst the sea-dogs of the Navy over the rankings on the White, and I am a reasonable man. Military or naval fitness must never be sacrificed to political ends. ’Tis a canker will wreck the most powerful State in time.”

Each morning he inspected the ship from stem to stern, accompanied by his officers, and he was not slow to administer rebukes for shortcomings or oversights. Later in the forenoon the men were exercised at the great guns, and in the afternoon there was pike and cutlass drill. The watch was rigorously maintained. We carried lookouts day and night at all three mast-heads and on poop and fo’csle, and every one of them was equipped with an observation glass. The handling of the sails was astonishingly smart to me, who, of course, had had no previous experience to go by.

The cleanliness of the decks and living-quarters was beyond any peradventure of criticism. Even the men of the crew--as choice a collection of hangman’s favorites, jail-breakers, road-wanderers, hedge-thieves, pickpockets, murderers and mutineers as could have been mustered upon one deck--were kept personally tidy and clothed with a rough similarity in wide trousers of tough canvas, gaudy shirts of calico and round-jackets of Irish frieze.

There was plenty of food, and of far better quality than is served on King’s ships, as I have since learned, and enough rum to keep all hands in good humor without being drunk. None of this broaching a cask on the spar-deck according to Flint’s habit, but a full pannikin three times a day. And in tropical waters, so Master Martin told me, Murray was at great pains to keep the ship stocked with fresh fruit to prevent the scurvy and the wasting fevers of the hot latitudes.

The officers lodged for’ard of the cabin in what answered, I suppose, for a gun-room. Murray had the poop quarters to himself, with only Peter and me for company, aside from Ben Gunn and the two negro lackeys, who were more for show than aught else, seeing that the steward did practically all the work.

With our accommodations I could find no cause for quarrel. My great-uncle had promised me I should fare like an admiral, and certes, like an admiral or a princeling did I fare. There was a stateroom each for Peter and me, and whilst constricted in space by shore standards, they were spacious beside the cubby-hole we had shared aboard the brig.

The main cabin I have already described, but I may add that in addition to its artistic decorations it possessed a well-chosen library of Latin, French, Italian, Spanish and British authors, including such recent works as our own Cadwallader Colden’s “History of the Iroquois Nations,” which my father esteemed a masterpiece of historical authority; Smollet’s novels, several pamphlets and slim volumes dealing with the experiences of spirited gentlemen who had participated in the struggles of the ’45; and a variety of philosophical studies and disquisitions upon political economy. Perceiving that I displayed some interest in it, my great-uncle commended to my attention Monsieur de Montesquieu’s “Spirit of Laws,” Cervantes’ “Don Quixote,” the “Satyricon” of Petronius, Carte’s monumental “Life of the Duke Ormond” and Clarendon’s “History of the Rebellion.”

“There, Robert,” he remarked of the last, “is an object-lesson in the success to which a man may attain by application, diplomacy and native genius. My Lord Clarendon began life as a commoner; yet he lived to see his daughter married to the brother of the King of England, and only by the obscure bafflements of fate was he prevented from beholding the offspring of her body occupying the holy eminence of the throne. I have derived much satisfaction from the contemplation of his success in moments when I might have despaired of the future’s reward of my own efforts.”

He was particular that I should be well garbed, and forced upon me several suits out of his abundant wardrobe which were given the necessary alterations by a former journeyman tailor who had escaped from Newgate on the eve of execution for the murder of a scolding wife. He would have done as much for Peter also; but the Dutchman refused to be parted from his salt-stained buckskin shirt and leggings; and an odd figure Corlaer made, in all conscience, striding the decks of the _Royal James_ in the costume of a forest-runner, even to the knife and hatchet hung on either thigh.

We were fortunate in our weather until we had gained the latitude of Florida, when a northwesterly storm drove us some hundreds of miles out of our course and separated us for several weeks from our consort. By reason of this misadventure we were obliged to beat back to the north in order to take advantage of the trades to run down upon the island from the nor’east, which was highly essential, so my great-uncle said, else we must be compelled to thread the dangerous mazes of the Bahama group or sail uncomfortably close to the eastern coast of Cuba.

To the west of the Bermoothes--within sight of which we never came--we encountered the _Walrus_ again, Flint having had substantially the same experience as ourselves, and thenceforward we continued in company. Other ships we occasionally sighted from the mast-head; but as Murray was particularly anxious to avoid calling attention to his presence the cry, “Sail ho!” was the signal for our bearing off upon any course which would fetch a compass around the strangers. This fact, together with the time lost through the storm, protracted the voyage near a month beyond what might have been expected, and we were eleven weeks out of New York when a cluster of rocky peaks soared above the heat-haze dead ahead.

My great-uncle, after a single squint through his object-glass, handed the instrument to me.

“’Tis the island,” he said. “I’d know those peaks anywhere.”

The double lens etched distinctly a rugged spread of land, shelving up out of the sea from a succession of yellow beaches on the east to a series of small hills which culminated in a range of considerable height along the westward side, running almost due north and south. The interior seemed to be heavily forested; the trees climbed the mountains to within the last few hundred feet of their summits, which were bare rock, precipitous in the case of the midmost and highest, a cloud-hung giant which dominated the island.

“That is Spyglass Hill,” said my great-uncle, noting the intentness of my survey of it. “’Tis there we maintain our lookouts whilst we are in harbor, and some men give the name of the hill to the island. But in truth the place hath no set name, and is dubbed by each to suit his fancy. You may judge this to be all the more so when I add that Spyglass Hill is known likewise as Mainmast Hill. Do you see the two other high peaks in line with it, north and south? That to the nor’ard is called Foremast Hill, and its twin in the south is Mizzenmast Hill.”

We were on the la’b’d tack, clawing off to work eastward of the island’s mass, and as he spoke we opened up a sizable bight. Rocky headlands fell away to tree-clad shores, and I caught the gleam of a little river which flowed into the upper end of the basin.

“Is that our haven?” I asked.

“No, ’tis in no sense as secure as that which we customarily use,” replied Murray, “although safe enough in storm. It is called the North Inlet. The principal harbor is known as Captain Kidd’s Anchorage, and is bitten into the so’east corner of the island. We shall not open it for another two glasses.”

The breeze was dwindling, which was fortunate for us as we required plenty of sea-room to weather the island; and the east coast, though flat and sandy, offered no feasible harbor or roadstead. The surf boomed up on the beaches with a steady roar which we could hear above the creaking of our vessel’s cordage and the shrieking of the sea-birds whose countless flocks wheeled overhead as we approached. A half-mile astern of us the _Walrus_ was bouncing in our wake. Seaward in every quarter the horizon-line melted into the infinite expanse of the ocean.

To me, used to the busy life of a bustling little town or the tossing treetops of the forests of the wilderness, cloaking beneath their restless boughs all manner of wild and savage life, there was something appalling in the isolation of the blotch of land ahead of us.

A continent in miniature, complete with capes, bays, inlets, rivers, mountains, woods and fields, it was yet so utterly desolate in its setting of blue-green water. Actually, I believe, ’twas as much as three leagues in length from north to south, and perhaps better than a league across at its widest. But as I stared at it from the poop of the _Royal James_ it seemed less than the green dot of Nutting Island,[1] which lies in the mouth of the East River over against New York. And what scenes of heart-rending cruelty it had witnessed! What acts of ruthless perfidy!

[1] Governors Island.

Nearing its shores, I descried the tangled masses of trees which clothed most of its surface. A few conifers shot up to goodly stature, but the greater part of the forest growth was gnarled, wind-tortured dwarfs, misshapen abortions of trees. The whole effect of the place seen from offshore was sinister and forbidding, repulsive as the silent ferocity which emanated from the blind man Pew.

The crew of the _Royal James_ eyed the unfolding shoreline with a slackness of interest which surprized me. Men did not talk together. There was no jesting. The bracing of the sheets and trimming of the yards brought forth no more than the customary amount of shouting and “yo-ho-hoing” without which the sailorman is powerless for good or ill.

I commented upon this; and my great-uncle, silently contemplative beside me, smiled.

“If the ensuing weeks meant leisure and carousing it might be we should be put to it to maintain our standard of discipline,” he said. “But as it chances, our crew find confronting them a task of difficulty and duration, the which they know and realize. And therefore, Robert, are they silent, and not because of the spell of evil deeds which you think to decipher from our surroundings. Evil enough the island hath known, I doubt not. What place could not as much be said of? But men, and especially seamen, reck little of an evil past if land be usefully available for their needs. No, no, my boy; you shall sleep securely tonight in Captain Kidd’s Anchorage, for all the ghostly memories it contains. And Peter shall eat without a qualm, for the _James_ will lie as still as the dry land in the haven’s shelter.”

“We get some fenison, _ja_,” spoke up Peter, with marked enthusiasm for him.

He pointed toward the slopes of a hill this side of the Spyglass, and I had a brief glimpse of a string of white dots which leaped from crag to crag.

Murray laughed.

“You have keen eyes, friend Peter,” he observed. “But if you will accept the aid of my glass you will perceive that what you saw were goats--the descendants, we are told, of a flock left here by the old buccaneers, to whom we owe an appreciable debt therefor. Goatflesh is not venison by long odds, but it hath much to commend it over salt beef and pork, and the tender bits of a young kid seethed in the milk of its dam--we are not obligated to obey the Mosaic code--might appeal even to an epicure of as unquestioned taste as yourself. There are, too, certain wildfowl and a breed of duck not to be despised; and we shall have much store of fish and shellfish. Yes, I can assure you additions to our diet which should go far to reconcile you with your lot.”

Peter’s face shone.

“Dot’s goodt,” he said. “_Ja_, now I fill oop my stomach wit’out it yumps from der wafes.”

Several miles south of this mountain we sighted a white rock on a point of land and beyond it an islet and beyond that a much larger island. Murray ordered the helmsman to edge away to the east, and presently we bore off on a long tack to the so’east to fetch us around a patch of shoals. A man was ordered into the forechains with a leadline, and several others relayed his soundings aft along the deck to the poop. The water shoaled rapidly from ten fathoms to five and a trifle less; but Murray conned his way coolly, the _Walrus_ scrupulously exact in our wake, and of a sudden we went about on the starboard tack and opened a wider, deeper harbor even than the North Inlet, on the right hand the shores of the smaller island, on the left the main itself.

My great-uncle turned over the conduct of the ship to Martin and crossed to where Peter and I stood, staring about us. Already we were under the lee of the smaller island, and the ship was making less way as the force of the wind was decreased. The water seemed strangely quiet--instead of bouncing us up and down, it did no more than purr and ripple as the bow cleaved through it. And the heat of the sun, unrelieved by the free sweep of the wind, became intense. In a few moments the decks were hot to the touch, and we might not lay our hands with comfort upon the bulwarks.

Here were no beaches; only mud-banks covered to the waterline with twisting, many-rooted trees, their foliage of an ardently soft green presenting impenetrable, whispering barriers to the eye. The channel curved, following the contour of the smaller island, and we sighted the mouth of a little river similar to that which had flowed into the head of the North Inlet.

“Starboard, Master Martin!” called my great-uncle as he joined Peter and me. “Starboard your helm, if you please. Aye, on to this shoal here. We shall have three fathoms and less to careen in. Bid them drop the anchor.”

Martin bawled an order. A whistle piped, and there was a great clatter and rustling of rope running loose, a mighty splash that drove the birds in tumult into the air; and the _Royal James_ swung to her cable close under the lesser island’s shore. My great-uncle waved one hand over the bulwark.

“Skeleton Island this is called, Robert,” he said. “I tell you because you demonstrate so gruesome an interest in the more horrifying episodes of our past. But I regret I must confess that I know of no authentic detail to account for the nomenclature. Pirates have a way of naming a spot to suit themselves, without rime or reason, if the fancy once moves them.”

“May we land?” I answered, ignoring his gibe.

“Suit yourselves,” he returned with a shrug. “I must have all my men busy aboard here, however, and can spare none to guide you.”

“_Ja, ja_,” urged Peter. “We shoodt some goats, eh?”

“If you please,” agreed Murray. “Ben Gunn will find you a brace of light muskets preferable to our rack-blunderbusses. I’ll have the gig put overside, and you may row yourselves, if you will.”

“Are you not afraid we may plan to escape?” I asked curiously.

“How?” he countered. “Look about you.”

“We might fashion ourselves a vessel,” I declared. “A raft, at the least.”

“And whither would you go?” he pressed me. “These seas are unfrequented and tempestuous. Also, I do not think that you would be able to construct a vessel in the amount of uninterrupted time I should allow you. And finally, my dear nephew, I must remind you that you have promised your aid to me in a certain matter.”

“I need not consider that binding in event of an opportunity to escape,” I retorted.

“You need not perhaps,” said he. “Yet you would.”

And with that he walked off and bade Saunders order the gig lowered overside. Nor did he say another word until we had secured our weapons and a packet of food from Ben Gunn and returned to the deck. Then he gave over supervising the cock-billing of the mainyard and joined us at the gangway.

“I desire above all things, Robert,” he said, “to deal gently with you. Therefore I ask you to believe I am considering your own safety when I require your promise to be aboard again not later than an hour after sundown.”

“Why, what harm----”

The _Walrus_ slatted past us, her canvas in a slovenly mess alow and aloft, a dozen men howling orders and counter-orders from poop, waist and fo’csle, Flint in his red coat strutting the poop and adding his own bellow to the din whenever the confusion showed signs of dissolving. Pew was huddled over the wheel, the green eyeshade masking his powder-burned eyes, John Silver tall beside him, a-leaning on the carven mahogany crutch, his cool, pleasant voice the one sensible sound in the tumult on those disordered decks.

My great-uncle’s eyes strayed across the narrow gap of water betwixt the two vessels.

“Well, damme, it’s been a ---- of a voyage, Murray!” shouted Flint.

“We are here,” returned my great-uncle urbanely.

“Aye, and what to do wi’ ourselves?” Flint called back. “Blast me for a ---- ---- ---- if I can see what five hundred ---- ---- ---- are to do wi’ months on their hands, and naught but rum-drinkin’ and quarrellin’ for diversion.”

“There’s your ship to clean, man,” replied Murray. “She needs it.”

Flint answered with a curse. The _Walrus_ had slid on too far for all his words to be distinct, but I heard a fragment of the beginning.

“--use o’ cleaning’ ship? Only a ---- ---- swab o’ a ---- ---- Navy officer ’ud think to ---- ---- his ----”

My great-uncle indulged in one of his essentially Gallic shrugs and dusted a pinch of snuff into his nostrils.

“Captain Flint doth not agree with me, it seems. A strange character, and eke a forceful one, Robert, for all his inherent stupidity and blindness of view. But to return to your question. You were about to ask me what harm could befall you ashore. I answer you that I do not know, but that in all candid truth we are here, to quote my associate, some ‘five hundred ---- ---- ----,’ and accidents may happen. Therefore, I suggest that you be aboard not later than an hour after sunset. On second thoughts, Robert, I regret that I shall be unable to permit you to leave the ship save upon your parole on those terms.”

“You have it,” I answered shortly, and followed Peter down the side-cleats into the gig.

We rowed up the estuary for the mouth of the little river which we had seen from the _James’_ deck, and our course took us under the yellow hull of the _Walrus_. A shrill voice hailed from a gunport, and Darby McGraw’s red head was thrust out beside the frowning black muzzle.

“Glory be, Master Bob, and do they let ye go free wherever ye will? Sure, it’s yourself must be one o’ the grand favorites over yon. Are ye an officer yet?”

I was about to answer him when Flint gloomed down at us from the towering poop.

“Gut me!” he sneered. “’Tis Murray’s by-blow, no less! What d’ye make o’ this, Billy?”

The brutal face of Bones showed above the bulwarks.

“He’s a pris’ner,” jeered Bones. “Only he ain’t; d’ye see, Flint? Into New York Murray went to crimp him, and now, by ---- ---- ---- he gives him shore-leave!”

“Come aboard here, my hearty,” Flint hailed me.

“We are going ashore,” I answered; “and I have reason to hasten.”

Flint scowled.

“Well, ye’ll come soon enough. And when I get ye I’ll learn ye a thing or two! There’s too much politics and favoritism aboard the _James_ to suit me, and ye can tell your great-uncle or granddaddy or whatever he may be, blast him for a ---- ---- ---- ---- ----, that John Flint says so!”

Darby bobbed up on the poop beside him very much out of breath.

“Och, will ye let me go along o’ Master Bob, captain?” he cried. “Do now, avick! Sure, I hain’t seen him this long three-month gone.”

“That I’ll not,” snarled Flint, turning his back to us. “Isn’t this ship good enough for ye, Darby? Ain’t you our luck? Will I let you go and ruin it by rounding up wi’ Murray’s by-blow?”

“Troth, he’s no more’n the old master’s son that I worrked for in New York, captain darlin’, and him that good to me always I had a main likin’ for him, indeed and indeed I did! And I’m fair crazy to be ashore afther the weeks and months we’ll ha’----”

Flint clapped him on the shoulder, abruptly jovial.

“Ah, if it’s ashore you’d be that’s a different matter,” says he. “I’m for goin’ ashore myself. Bill, call all hands away for the boats, and we’ll have a grand goat-hunt up Spyglass. John Silver shall barbecue ’em for us. And break out a couple o’ casks o’ rum. Lively now, my lads! We’ll enjoy ourselves like the honest pirates we are!”

A frenzy of cheering answered him, and I backed water with my oars.

“You heard, Peter?” I said over my shoulder.

“_Ja_; dot’s badt.”

“We can’t go where they do.”

“_Neen_.”

I reflected and examined the surface of the main island, rearing itself before us on the opposite side of the estuary. A half-mile, perhaps, eastward of the river we had been heading for a second and less inviting stream oozed its way into the haven through a succession of swamps. Beyond it toward the island’s eastern shore the country was sandy and open. The Spyglass and the intervening hills were miles to the west, clear across the island and the two streams.

“There we’ll be safe, Peter,” I said. “They’re not going in that direction, and if they do by chance come after us we’ll be able to see them.”

“Maybe we better go back to der ship,” he answered doubtfully.

“Not I,” I returned grimly. “We won’t look for trouble; but if it comes our way we’ll meet it.”

“_Ja_,” he said, and bent to his oars.

We did not enter the second stream, because the swamps along its course presented no landing-place, but ran our boat aground on a sandy bank on the far side of a point which concealed us from the _Walrus_. Then we took our guns and walked inland through the trees up a graduated sandy slope to the top of a little hillock whence we could look off through the aisles of pines and see the _Walrus_, with boats putting off from her sides and pulling into the mouth of the first of the two streams, and over a spur of Skeleton Island the topmasts of the _Royal James_.

“This would be a good place for a fort,” I mused.

“_Ja_,” said Peter. “You got water, too.”

He pointed to a streak of green vegetation along the sandy slope of the knoll which we traced to a spring issuing from the summit.

“Now we got water, we better eat,” he added.

“But what about the goats?” I cried. “We were to----”

“No,” he insisted stubbornly; “we don’t shoodt. If we shoodt, der pirates hear us andt come. We waidt until they are all ashore. Then we go back to Murray.”

“I’ll not be driven from the first pleasure we have had in months,” I protested childishly.

“We do it again,” replied Peter placidly. “Next time Murray he come wit’ us himself, _ja_.”

“Yes, but----”

“Now you be sensible, Bob. Der Injuns is goodt friendts beside them fellers, _ja_. We go back to der _James_. Soon all o’ them be ashore andt drunk. Drunk, they like to kill us, but they can’t row--_neen_.”

And we rowed back to the _James_ ingloriously in the dusk, the shouts of the _Walrus’_ carousers echoing to us from the shore.