“Certainly,” I said, to make my own feelings as clear as possible. “We should take a look at them at close quarters, and then decide what to do.”
The captain did not give his own opinion. Instead, he clapped his hands on his knees and levered himself to his feet. Peering through the open window to see what kind of weather we might find in the morning, he said that rain was coming, and we had best close up the roundhouse before we turned in. With that we also stood, and he solemnly shook us by the hand before bowing good night, calling the same to our watchman in the rigging above us, and disappearing toward his cabin. Natty and I soon followed without any more words being spoken. I like to think it was not fear or confusion that kept us silent, merely the longing for sleep, now the first part of our adventure was over.
Part III
THE ISLAND
16
The Other Side of the Island
WHEN I AWOKE it was no thanks to daylight creeping through our porthole, but the result of an immense cacophony around the Nightingale. I left Natty pulling the blanket over her ears and climbed on deck to find Captain Beamish standing with his arms akimbo, scowling in outrage. Because a thick mist still hung over the inlet, it was impossible to see exactly what creatures were responsible for the hubbub, only to be sure they felt their proximity to one another was so disagreeable, it must be condemned in a steady barrage of whistles, grunts, squawks, flaps, rattles, whoops, skirls, snaps, laughs and watery ululations. For a moment I thought these were sufficiently offensive to explain the captain’s annoyance. Then I understood more clearly. Had the island’s other human inhabitants wanted to creep up on us undetected, using the racket as a protection, they might easily have done so.
The captain need not have worried. Soon after the sun had risen, every creature forgot its reasons for feeling insulted and the rumpus ended—or at any rate was replaced by the gentler chirping of countless insects. As the air steadied, and the vapor thinned, our new world was revealed to us. Both banks of the river were covered by the foliage of extraordinary plants—all growing together so densely, with such profusion of blossom, that after the predominant blues and greens and grays of the previous weeks they seemed unnatural as well as delightful.
Most I had never encountered before—although here and there were ferns that seemed related to smaller varieties I knew at home: these had furry trunks rising to the height of a man, and the tendrils of a gigantic octopus. Also camellias and rhododendrons—with pink, white, yellow, red and purple flowers of astonishing size. As their mixture of scents intensified with the sun it became actually overpowering—so that I soon felt a touch delirious, and wondered whether I might have arrived in the country of the lotus-eaters.
While I continued in this state of wonder, the rest of the crew emerged from their sleep in dribs and drabs—and eventually Natty, rubbing her eyes in amazement. They were not allowed to remain in their dizzy state for long.
“Good morning, men, good morning,” said the captain, clapping his hands when everyone was assembled. He then called each of us by name, to make sure we had not been carried off by wild beasts in the night—and at the end almost lost his hat when a flock of birds skimmed very low over the Nightingale and flew fast out to sea. I had the chance to notice they were as large as widgeon, but with gold feathers across their wings and back, and bills that were blue as cobalt.
The captain began by telling the men a little of what he and I had seen through the telescope the previous evening: enough to let them understand we might be close to danger, but not so much that they might be daunted. They responded with a show of courage that did them credit—clapping one another on the back, and boasting they were afraid of nothing. The captain smiled very broadly when he saw this, and moved on to other matters. He told us he had studied our map during the night and realized the inlet was only a short distance from the place marked as the site of the silver; once again, he made no mention of the arms. He said this discovery turned what had felt like an inconvenience on the previous evening into something that seemed like good fortune now—except that we faced a dilemma. Put simply, it was this: should we send a party to retrieve the treasure, then slip away from the island as stealthily as we had come? Or should we investigate the area around Captain Kidd’s Anchorage, and intervene if we found that crimes were occurring there?
No sooner had the captain presented us with these questions than we answered them. He announced that four men would accompany him to the site of the silver, and to collect some fresh water (and if possible some fresh meat) for the Nightingale; some other men, including Mr. Allan, the cook, who was not built for exertion outside the galley, would stay behind to defend our ship if necessary, with Mr. Stevenson still glued to his lookout post; and a third party would trek south to spy on the stockade.
This third group apparently had the hardest task, since the way was uncertain and the outcome possibly dangerous. It was therefore a surprise to hear the captain decide that I should be a part of the expedition, along with Natty and Mr. Lawson, under the supervision of Bo’sun Kirkby. Mr. Lawson was a dainty fellow, as I have already noticed—but taciturn, and for that reason I had not spoken to him much during our voyage. I now looked on him as someone who might shortly have my life in his hands—but he avoided my eye; his face was badly scarred with smallpox, which I thought explained his shyness.
After considering for a moment, I understood the captain had made these divisions of labor in order that our duties should be more or less equal, and everyone should feel they were somehow responsible for the safety of us all. It seemed a sensible way of keeping us linked together, even when we were separate. If the captain had known a half of what I was about to see, I am sure he would have chosen differently and decided to keep me and Natty on board.
When the arrangements were settled, we set about fueling ourselves with water and biscuits and apples, while collecting enough of the same to last a day’s march. The captain also provided, from the chest in his cabin where they had been locked before we left London, a short sword for each of us, and a pistol for himself and Bo’sun Kirkby. The allocation of these items was undertaken with the formality of a solemn rite. The captain did not need to say that our weapons should be used only in extremity, nor did Bo’sun Kirkby have to support this by giving a speech of his own. One look from his badger’s face, and I understood my duty was not to be courageous, but to be quiet.
The two parties disembarked at the same time, clambering down ropes over the side of the Nightingale then rowing the short distance to shore in our jolly-boat. I saw as I descended that the submerged part of our hull was covered in brilliant green weed; it was very slimy to the touch, and I thought must have attached itself as we came into the warmer waters around the island.
This was the first time for six or seven weeks that I had stepped onto dry land—if you can call it land when the ground bubbles, and wobbles, and shows an insatiable desire to take the boot off a foot. After so many days of rolling decks and plunging seas, even this degree of solidity was extremely strange, and brought on such a fit of giddiness that as I reached the vegetation I actually sank to my knees. This disappointed me, because I had meant to enjoy the moment I came to stand in my father’s footsteps at last. Instead I could only think how wildly everything was heaving around me, as if the whole earth were suffering a convulsion. The consolation was seeing a small orange lizard, which seemed to have a divided tail, look me straight in the eye. I had never seen such a strange creature in my life before, but it vanished so quickly I thought I might have invented it, and therefore said nothing to any of my party.
After we had shaken hands with the captain and wished him good luck, I watched him and his men disappear into the undergrowth—and heard what I thought must have been a kind of macaw give an opinion of their prospects. It ended with a derisive laugh. No sooner had this faded than a similar verdict was shouted in our own direction: a riotous outburst of mirth and sneering, that was suddenly interrupted by a series of loud and cl
umsy-sounding scuffles.
I shall return to these noises—as they also returned to me—in a little while. At the beginning of our journey, it was the communication of plants rather than animals that most preoccupied me. The rasp of leaves against our arms as we pushed uphill from the river; the soft explosion of tubers under our shoes; the squelch of wet grasses as we sank into slushy ground and pulled free.
In several places the vegetation was so densely woven together we had to crawl forward on our hands and knees, taking it in turns to grapple with the tendrils of vines and other obstacles. Mr. Lawson, being small, might have shown the initiative here, but seemed nervous of what he might find. Natty immediately took his place, and showed such adeptness in making our path that she became the leader we all preferred. To see her slither like an eel through tangled roots, and spring like a cat across the barriers of fallen trees, and worry like a dog at the knots of branches, made me think she must be a compendium of God’s creatures.
The reward for our persistence was to emerge, as soon as we left the valley, into the pine wood we had previously seen (or more properly heard) in darkness from the deck of the Nightingale. The contrast was wonderful, especially since the trees were impressive specimens, with some standing fifty feet, some nearer seventy feet high. To walk between them was a delight, and also very easy, since the ground was covered with a bed of needles that was smooth as a carpet.
We now began to make rapid progress, which should have lifted our spirits. Yet as we pressed ahead a peculiar nervousness began to settle on us again. This was due to the scuffling sound I have already mentioned. My first thought was: it must be some kind of small deer that was native to the island, since the noise was always accompanied by a sense of speed. But as we pressed deeper into the pine forest, where there was no underbrush, this seemed unlikely. And the more unlikely it became, the more frightening the noise seemed—until our fear suddenly turned into amazement.
We had stopped to drink a mouthful of water from our flasks, and so for a moment were unusually silent, when we saw the treetops ahead of us shake violently, then open to reveal a red squirrel bounding toward us. A red squirrel quite unlike any I had seen in England, for the simple reason that it was ten times larger—the size of a spaniel, in fact—and apparently not at all well suited to its treetop existence. For as long as the creature did not see us, it blundered through the high branches, shaking down a shower of needles and twigs, and sometimes snapping off small branches; when we did come to its attention, it careered away at the fastest possible speed, causing as much damage as a miniature tornado.
Although I felt almost stupid with astonishment, I nevertheless reckon this was the moment I first accepted a truth that had already begun to occur to me on the Nightingale: namely, that Treasure Island was the home to several creatures that were not to be found anywhere else in the world, let alone in England. Although this excited me very much, and made me feel there was a reason other than treasure for being where we were, it did not change my mood entirely. There was too much uncertainty in what else might be lurking around us, and too much fear of what more definitely lay ahead.
Judging by their faces, my companions felt the same. Once their pleasure in seeing the squirrel had faded, and the creature itself had thrashed off into the distance, I saw Bo’sun Kirkby fall into a melancholy stoop. I knew a part of the reason must be that he felt anxious about what we would find in the stockade. But I also suspected that he was influenced by our surroundings—by the drab country that opened in front of us as the pine forest ended. This was made of bare slopes, colored a uniform slate gray, that undulated like a frozen sea until they formed the foothills of the Spyglass, which ran up sheer on every side, then suddenly ended as if it had been hacked by an enormous ax.
The effect was extremely alarming, and found a natural accompaniment in the music we now began to notice—the boom of surf breaking along the shore on our left-hand side. When I first heard its thunder and foam, and the seabirds crying as they dived into its scrambling rollers, I immediately remembered my father saying how much he had come to hate Treasure Island. He insisted he never saw the sea quiet around its shores. The sun might dazzle overhead, the air be without a breath, the sky smooth and blue, but still these great rollers would be running along the eternal coast, thundering by day and night; he did not believe there was a spot on the island where a man could be out of earshot of their noise, and complained always about their poisonous brightness—the same that I now saw myself, as spray-light bounced off the rocks and boulders.
Whether Natty compared her own impressions with her father’s, I could not tell. She had spoken so sparingly of Mr. Silver since leaving England, it was not clear how much was strange to her, and how much she recognized. All I know is: she kept very silent as we continued across our shaly floor, with her shoulders slumped and her eyes fixed on the ground, as though she were being pulled forward by an invisible force. Whenever she shook off its authority, she dropped into place at my side and threw me a look that seemed like a request to confirm something she had just asked—but I had never heard the question.
After half an hour of this, during which we skirted the edge of Spyglass Hill and began a slow descent toward the southeast corner of the island, our suspicions deepened. The ground here was more fertile, and we found large stretches of azalea, mainly red and purple, with a few thickets of green nutmeg trees that mixed their spice with the aroma of the flowers. The effect would have been delicious if the walking had been easier; as it was, we picked a way around the bushes with some difficulty—and almost every footstep provoked a prodigious amount of scrambling and flapping from the creatures we disturbed in their lairs.
Sometimes we caught a glimpse of feather or fur, and these sightings tended to confirm that here at least we were unlikely to meet something larger than ourselves. On one occasion, however, as we paused in a patch of open ground, we heard a different and much more alarming sound. At first it was almost indistinguishable from silence—yet seemed a heightened sort of silence, rising from deep within one of the larger bushes. Slowly this sound developed, becoming first a soft scratching, then a definite shaking rustle. A part of me thought it might be some sort of spirit—a spirit of the place, if you like—but I could not entertain this idea for long, and told Natty and the rest that it must be a monkey. They gave me a blank look. We had neither seen nor heard a trace of monkeys elsewhere on the island. Certainly, whatever it was had the ability to move through thick undergrowth at great speed. If it had been impelled by fear, as seemed likely, I did not like to think how intense that fear must have been.
In later life I have often the chance to notice that people who discern a particular mood in others will soon feel it in themselves. So it was with us, as silence settled around us again. Hitherto on our march, any feelings of dread or sadness had been assuaged by self-congratulation: we were equal to the task our captain had assigned us. Now we were near our goal, I could not feel so optimistic. I knew in my heart that what I had already glimpsed in the stockade was enough to justify all the horror I felt growing inside me.
For this reason, it was a relief that Bo’sun Kirkby began to lead us much more carefully, repeatedly holding up his hand like a scout to indicate when we should halt in file behind him. As it turned out, we faced a more immediate danger than any we knew. For as we continued to creep forward, we suddenly found ourselves at the edge of what I can only call a ravine. My first indication of this was seeing our bo’sun fling out his arms and lurch wildly. When I leaned forward to offer him a hand (he gave me a scowl that said my help was not necessary), I saw over his shoulder a horrible gash in the earth, as if God himself had scratched a fingernail across his creation. It was not wide—only about six or seven feet—but about forty deep, with extraordinarily smooth sides that were interrupted here and there by saplings sprouting from small fissures and ledges. Jagged stones lay on the bottom, green with damp, and also the white rib cage of a large goat, or perhaps a pig.<
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A very peculiar sort of air rose from this ravine, which produced a feverish sensation of cold and damp as it entered my lungs. Natty must have felt it too, for while I was still intent on looking, she put her hand on my arm and urgently led me away—led us all away, in fact, so that we continued our descent along a path that ran a good distance away from any risk of falling. I say path, but in truth there was no such thing, only a floor of roots coated with moss, and clumps of flowers the same color as bluebells, but like celandines in their shape.
At another time, I would have relished the chance to botanize among them; now, after we had continued for another minute or so, I found the wilderness had suddenly ended, and was crisscrossed by a number of tracks, some running true and purposeful, others circling as though they described the movements of someone who had no idea of where they wanted to be. Because we reckoned these had been made by human feet, and meant we might soon be discovered, we were very glad the ground cover soon changed yet again, and concealed us inside a thick belt of rhododendron. Here we gratefully dropped onto our hands and knees, and took shelter in the darkness under their leaves.
Once we had got our breath, Bo’sun Kirkby pressed down a branch so that we were able to look ahead. Imagine a child opening a book written in a language of which he speaks almost nothing. Just such a book is what I saw when I looked a hundred yards down the slope ahead. I mean I saw confusion. Confusion slowly settling and resolving. The stockade, for example: I recognized that. Also the cleared area, and the cemetery, and the farm pen. Further off, a quarter-mile beyond the stockade, the marshes had been drained, and rice was growing in small fields divided by low mud walls.
All these things suggested order and were therefore reassuring. But then my eyes lifted toward Captain Kidd’s Anchorage, and I found the entire harbor blighted by the wreck of a large sailing ship. She was a very desolate sight, lolling four-square against the backdrop of Skeleton Island, with the neat little obstacle of the White Rock shaking its fronds fifty years astern. Her decks were as bare as one of the prison hulks I had often seen in the Thames at home, with all the masts and rigging torn away. Her hull was split in two and many of its planks were broken or missing. It may sound extravagant, but this ruin spread a pall of misery across everything that lay round about: whatever catastrophe had brought her to the Anchorage still lurked within her timbers like a tyrant in his castle.
Silver Page 15
