Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Page B

the dog, sir!”
    “You,” replied the doctor; “for you cannot hold your tongue. We are not the only men who know of this paper. These fellows who attacked the inn to-night—bold, desperate blades, for sure—and the rest who stayed aboard that lugger, and more, I dare say, not far off, are, one and all, through thick and thin, bound that they’ll get that money. We must none of us go alone till we get to sea. Jim and I shall stick together in the meanwhile: you’ll take Joyce and Hunter when you ride to Bristol, and, from first to last, not one of us must breathe a word of what we’ve found.”
    “Livesey,” returned the squire, “you are always in the right of it. I’ll be as silent as the grave.”

PART II
THE SEA COOK

CHAPTER VII
I Go to Bristol
    It was longer than the squire imagined ere we were ready for the sea, and none of our first plans—not even Dr. Livesey’s, of keeping me beside him—could be carried out as we intended. The doctor had to go to London for a physician to take charge of his practice; the squire was hard at work at Bristol; and I lived on at the Hall under the charge of old Redruth, the gamekeeper, almost a prisoner, but full of sea-dreams and the most charming anticipations of strange islands and adventures. I brooded by the hour together over the map, all the details of which I well remembered. Sitting by the fire in the housekeeper’s room, I approached that island in my fancy, from every possible direction; I explored every acre of its surface; I climbed a thousand times to that tall hill they call the Spyglass, and from the top enjoyed the most wonderful and changing prospects. Sometimes the isle was thick with savages, with whom we fought; sometimes full of dangerous animals that hunted us; but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange and tragic as our actual adventures.
    So the weeks passed on, till one fine day there came a letter addressed to Dr. Livesey, with this addition, “To be opened, in the case of his absence, by Tom Redruth, or young Hawkins.” Obeying this order, we found, or rather, I found—for the gamekeeper was a poor hand at reading anything but print—the following important news:—
    “
Old Anchor Inn, Bristol, March 1, 17
—.
    “D ear L ivesey ,—As I do not know whether you are at the Hall or still in London, I send this in double to both places.
    “The ship is bought and fitted. She lies at anchor, ready for sea. You never imagined a sweeter schooner—a child might sail her—two hundred tons; name,
Hispaniola
.
    “I got her through my old friend, Blandly, who has proved himself throughout the most surprising trump. The admirable fellow literallyslaved in my interest, and so, I may say, did every one in Bristol, as soon as they got wind of the port we sailed for—treasure, I mean.”
    “Redruth,” said I, interrupting the letter, “Doctor Livesey will not like that. The squire has been talking, after all.”
    “Well, who’s a better right?” growled the gamekeeper. “A pretty rum go if squire ain’t to talk for Doctor Livesey, I should think.”
    At that I gave up all attempt at commentary, and read straight on:—
    “Blandly himself found the
Hispaniola
, and by the most admirable management got her for the merest trifle. There is a class of men in Bristol monstrously prejudiced against Blandly. They go the length of declaring that this honest creature would do anything for money, that the
Hispaniola
belonged to him, and that he sold it me absurdly high—the most transparent calumnies. None of them dare, however, to deny the merits of the ship.
    “So far there was not a hitch. The workpeople, to be sure—riggers and what not—were most annoyingly slow; but time cured that. It was the crew that troubled me.
    “I wished a round score of men—in case of natives, buccaneers, or the odious French—and I had the worry of the deuce itself to find so much as half a dozen, till the most remarkable stroke of fortune brought