The Black Spot

ABOUT noon I stopped at the captain's door

with some cooling drinks and medicines.

He was lying very much as we had left him,

only a little higher, and he seemed both

weak and excited.

"Jim," he said, "you're the only one here

that's worth anything, and you know I've

been always good to you.

Never a month but I've given you a silver

fourpenny for yourself.

And now you see, mate, I'm pretty low, and

deserted by all; and Jim, you'll bring me

one noggin of rum, now, won't you, matey?"

"The doctor--" I began.

But he broke in cursing the doctor, in a

feeble voice but heartily.

"Doctors is all swabs," he said; "and that

doctor there, why, what do he know about

seafaring men?

I been in places hot as pitch, and mates

dropping round with Yellow Jack, and the

blessed land a-heaving like the sea with

earthquakes--what to the doctor know of

lands like that?--and I lived on rum, I

tell you.

It's been meat and drink, and man and wife,

to me; and if I'm not to have my rum now

I'm a poor old hulk on a lee shore, my

blood'll be on you, Jim, and that doctor

swab"; and he ran on again for a while with

curses.

"Look, Jim, how my fingers fidges," he

continued in the pleading tone.

"I can't keep 'em still, not I.

I haven't had a drop this blessed day.

That doctor's a fool, I tell you.

If I don't have a drain o' rum, Jim, I'll

have the horrors; I seen some on 'em

already.

I seen old Flint in the corner there,

behind you; as plain as print, I seen him;

and if I get the horrors, I'm a man that

has lived rough, and I'll raise Cain.

Your doctor hisself said one glass wouldn't

hurt me.

I'll give you a golden guinea for a noggin,

Jim."

He was growing more and more excited, and

this alarmed me for my father, who was very

low that day and needed quiet; besides, I

was reassured by the doctor's words, now

quoted to me, and rather offended by the

offer of a bribe.

"I want none of your money," said I, "but

what you owe my father.

I'll get you one glass, and no more."

When I brought it to him, he seized it

greedily and drank it out.

"Aye, aye," said he, "that's some better,

sure enough.

And now, matey, did that doctor say how

long I was to lie here in this old berth?"

"A week at least," said I.

"Thunder!" he cried.

"A week!

I can't do that; they'd have the black spot

on me by then.

The lubbers is going about to get the wind

of me this blessed moment; lubbers as

couldn't keep what they got, and want to

nail what is another's.

Is that seamanly behaviour, now, I want to

know?

But I'm a saving soul.

I never wasted good money of mine, nor lost

it neither; and I'll trick 'em again.

I'm not afraid on 'em.

I'll shake out another reef, matey, and

daddle 'em again."

As he was thus speaking, he had risen from

bed with great difficulty, holding to my

shoulder with a grip that almost made me

cry out, and moving his legs like so much

dead weight.

His words, spirited as they were in

meaning, contrasted sadly with the weakness

of the voice in which they were uttered.

He paused when he had got into a sitting

position on the edge.

"That doctor's done me," he murmured.

"My ears is singing.

Lay me back."

Before I could do much to help him he had

fallen back again to his former place,

where he lay for a while silent.

"Jim," he said at length, "you saw that

seafaring man today?"

"Black Dog?" I asked.

"Ah! Black Dog," says he.

"HE'S a bad un; but there's worse that put

him on.

Now, if I can't get away nohow, and they

tip me the black spot, mind you, it's my

old sea-chest they're after; you get on a

horse--you can, can't you?

Well, then, you get on a horse, and go to--

well, yes, I will!--to that eternal doctor

swab, and tell him to pipe all hands--

magistrates and sich--and he'll lay 'em

aboard at the Admiral Benbow--all old

Flint's crew, man and boy, all on 'em

that's left.

I was first mate, I was, old Flint's first

mate, and I'm the on'y one as knows the

place.

He gave it me at Savannah, when he lay a-

dying, like as if I was to now, you see.

But you won't peach unless they get the

black spot on me, or unless you see that

Black Dog again or a seafaring man with one

leg, Jim--him above all."

"But what is the black spot, captain?"

I asked.

"That's a summons, mate.

I'll tell you if they get that.

But you keep your weather-eye open, Jim,

and I'll share with you equals, upon my

honour."

He wandered a little longer, his voice

growing weaker; but soon after I had given

him his medicine, which he took like a

child, with the remark, "If ever a seaman

wanted drugs, it's me," he fell at last

into a heavy, swoon-like sleep, in which I

left him.

What I should have done had all gone well I

do not know.

Probably I should have told the whole story

to the doctor, for I was in mortal fear

lest the captain should repent of his

confessions and make an end of me.

But as things fell out, my poor father died

quite suddenly that evening, which put all

other matters on one side.

Our natural distress, the visits of the

neighbours, the arranging of the funeral,

and all the work of the inn to be carried

on in the meanwhile kept me so busy that I

had scarcely time to think of the captain,

far less to be afraid of him.

He got downstairs next morning, to be sure,

and had his meals as usual, though he ate

little and had more, I am afraid, than his

usual supply of rum, for he helped himself

out of the bar, scowling and blowing

through his nose, and no one dared to cross

him.

On the night before the funeral he was as

drunk as ever; and it was shocking, in that

house of mourning, to hear him singing away

at his ugly old sea-song; but weak as he

was, we were all in the fear of death for

him, and the doctor was suddenly taken up

with a case many miles away and was never

near the house after my father's death.

I have said the captain was weak, and

indeed he seemed rather to grow weaker than

regain his strength.

He clambered up and down stairs, and went

from the parlour to the bar and back again,

and sometimes put his nose out of doors to

smell the sea, holding on to the walls as

he went for support and breathing hard and

fast like a man on a steep mountain.

He never particularly addressed me, and it

is my belief he had as good as forgotten

his confidences; but his temper was more

flighty, and allowing for his bodily

weakness, more violent than ever.

He had an alarming way now when he was

drunk of drawing his cutlass and laying it

bare before him on the table.

But with all that, he minded people less

and seemed shut up in his own thoughts and

rather wandering.

Once, for instance, to our extreme wonder,

he piped up to a different air, a kind of

country love-song that he must have learned

in his youth before he had begun to follow

the sea.

So things passed until, the day after the

funeral, and about three o'clock of a

bitter, foggy, frosty afternoon, I was

standing at the door for a moment, full of

sad thoughts about my father, when I saw

someone drawing slowly near along the road.

He was plainly blind, for he tapped before

him with a stick and wore a great green

shade over his eyes and nose; and he was

hunched, as if with age or weakness, and

wore a huge old tattered sea-cloak with a

hood that made him appear positively

deformed.

I never saw in my life a more dreadful-

looking figure.

He stopped a little from the inn, and

raising his voice in an odd sing-song,

addressed the air in front of him, "Will

any kind friend inform a poor blind man,

who has lost the precious sight of his eyes

in the gracious defence of his native

country, England--and God bless King

George!--where or in what part of this

country he may now be?"

"You are at the Admiral Benbow, Black Hill

Cove, my good man," said I.

"I hear a voice," said he, "a young voice.

Will you give me your hand, my kind young

friend, and lead me in?"

I held out my hand, and the horrible, soft-

spoken, eyeless creature gripped it in a

moment like a vise.

I was so much startled that I struggled to

withdraw, but the blind man pulled me close

up to him with a single action of his arm.

"Now, boy," he said, "take me in to the

captain."

"Sir," said I, "upon my word I dare not."

"Oh," he sneered, "that's it!

Take me in straight or I'll break your

arm."

And he gave it, as he spoke, a wrench that

made me cry out.

"Sir," said I, "it is for yourself I mean.

The captain is not what he used to be.

He sits with a drawn cutlass.

Another gentleman--"

"Come, now, march," interrupted he; and I

never heard a voice so cruel, and cold, and

ugly as that blind man's.

It cowed me more than the pain, and I began

to obey him at once, walking straight in at

the door and towards the parlour, where our

sick old buccaneer was sitting, dazed with

rum.

The blind man clung close to me, holding me

in one iron fist and leaning almost more of

his weight on me than I could carry.

"Lead me straight up to him, and when I'm

in view, cry out, 'Here's a friend for you,

Bill.'

If you don't, I'll do this," and with that

he gave me a twitch that I thought would

have made me faint.

Between this and that, I was so utterly

terrified of the blind beggar that I forgot

my terror of the captain, and as I opened