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About noon I stopped at the captain's door with some cooling drinks andmedicines. He was lying very much as we had left him, only a littlehigher, and he seemed both weak and excited.

"Jim," he said, "you're the only one here that's worth anything; and youknow I've always been good to you. Never a month but I've given you asilver 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 heknow about seafaring men? I been in places hot as pitch, and matesdropping round with yellow jack, and the blessed land a-heaving like thesea with earthquakes--what do the doctor know of lands like that?--and Ilived on rum, I tell you. It's been meat and drink, and man and wife, tome; and if I am not to have my rum now I'm a poor old hulk on a leeshore. My blood'll be on you, Jim, and that doctor swab," and he ran onagain for a while with curses. "Look, Jim, how my fingers fidges," hecontinued in the pleading tone. "I can't keep 'em still, not I. Ihaven'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 someon 'em already. I seen old Flint in the corner there, behind you; asplain as print, I seen him; and if I get the horrors, I'm a man that haslived rough, and I'll raise Cain. Your doctor hisself said one glasswouldn'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 myfather, who was very low that day, needed quiet; besides, I wasreassured by the doctor's words, now quoted to me, and rather offendedby the offer of a bribe.

"I want none of your money," said I, "but what you owe my father. I'llget you one glass and no more."

When I brought it to him he seized it greedily and drank it out.

"Ay, ay," said he, "that's some better, sure enough. And now, matey, didthat 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 blackspot on me by then. The lubbers is going about to get the wind of methis blessed moment; lubbers as couldn't keep what they got, and want tonail what is another's. Is that seamanly behavior, now, I want to know?But I'm a saving soul. I never wasted good money of mine, nor lost itneither; and I'll trick 'em again. I'm not afraid on 'em. I'll shake outanother 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, andmoving his legs like so much dead weight. His words, spirited as theywere in meaning, contrasted sadly with the weakness of the voice inwhich they were uttered. He paused when he had got into a sittingposition 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 hisformer place, where he lay for a while silent.

"Jim," he said, at length, "you saw that seafaring man to-day?"

"Black Dog?" I asked.

"Ah! Black Dog," said he. "_He's_ a bad 'un; but there's worse that puthim 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--youcan, can't you? Well, then, you get on a horse and go to--well, yes, Iwill!--to that eternal doctor swab, and tell him to pipe allhands--magistrates and sich--and he'll lay 'em aboard at the 'AdmiralBenbow'--all old Flint's crew, man and boy, all on 'em that's left. Iwas first mate, I was, old Flint's first mate, and I'm the on'y one asknows the place. He gave it me at Savannah, when he lay a-dying, like asif I was to now, you see. But you won't peach unless they get the blackspot on me, or unless you see that Black Dog again, or a seafaring manwith 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 keepyour weather-eye open, Jim, and I'll share with you equals, upon myhonor."

He wandered a little longer, his voice growing weaker; but soon after Ihad 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 allgone well I do not know. Probably I should have told the whole story tothe doctor; for I was in mortal fear lest the captain should repent ofhis confessions and make an end of me. But as things fell out, my poorfather died quite suddenly that evening, which put all other matters onone side. Our natural distress, the visits of the neighbors, thearranging of the funeral, and all the work of the inn to be carried onin the meanwhile, kept me so busy that I had scarcely time to think ofthe 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 supplyof rum, for he helped himself out of the bar, scowling and blowingthrough his nose, and no one dared to cross him. On the night before thefuneral he was as drunk as ever; and it was shocking, in that house ofmourning, to hear him singing away his ugly old sea-song; but, weak ashe was, we were all in fear of death for him, and the doctor wassuddenly taken up with a case many miles away, and was never near thehouse after my father's death. I have said the captain was weak, andindeed he seemed rather to grow weaker than to regain his strength. Heclambered up and down stairs, and went from the parlor to the bar andback 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 andfast, like a man on a steep mountain. He never particularly addressedme, and it is my belief he had as good as forgotten his confidences; buthis temper was more flighty, and, allowing for his bodily weakness, moreviolent than ever. He had an alarming way now when he was drunk ofdrawing 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 ownthoughts and rather wandering. Once, for instance, to our extremewonder, 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 thesea.

So things passed until the day after the funeral and about three o'clockof a bitter, foggy, frosty afternoon, I was standing at the door for amoment, full of sad thoughts about my father, when I saw someone drawingslowly near along the road. He was plainly blind, for he tapped beforehim 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 oldtattered sea-cloak with a hood that made him appear positively deformed.I never saw in my life a more dreadful-looking figure. He stopped alittle 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 precioussight of his eyes in the gracious defense of his native country,England, and God bless King George!--where or in what part of thiscountry 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 creaturegripped it in a moment like a vise. I was so much startled that Istruggled to withdraw, but the blind man pulled me close up to him witha 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 yourarm."

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 heused 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 andtowards the parlor, where the sick old buccaneer was sitting, dazed withrum. The blind man clung close to me, holding me in one iron fist, andleaning almost more of his weight on me than I could carry. "Lead mestraight up to him, and when I'm in view, cry out, 'Here's a friend foryou, Bill.' If you don't, I'll do this," and with that he gave me atwitch that I thought would have made me faint. Between this and that, Iwas so utterly terrified by the blind beggar that I forgot my terror ofthe captain, and as I opened the parlor door, cried out the words he hadordered in a trembling voice.

The poor captain raised his eyes, and at one look the rum went out ofhim and left him staring sober. The expression of his face was not somuch of terror as of mortal sickness. He made a movement to rise, but Ido not believe he had enough force left in his body.

"Now, Bill, sit where you are," said the beggar. "If I can't see, I canhear a finger stirring. Business is business. Hold out your left hand.Boy, take his left hand by the wrist and bring it near to my right."

We both obeyed him to the letter, and I saw him pass something from thehollow of the hand that held his stick into the palm of the captain's,which closed upon it instantly.

"And now that's done," said the blind man, and at the words he suddenlyleft hold of me, and with incredible accuracy and nimbleness, skippedout of the parlor and into the road, where, as I stood motionless, Icould hear his stick go tap-tap-tapping into the distance.

It was some time before either I or the captain seemed to gather oursenses; but at length, and about the same moment, I released his wrist,which I was still holding, and he drew in his hand, and looked sharplyinto the palm.

"Ten o'clock!" he cried. "Six hours! We'll do them yet!" and he sprangto his feet.

Even as he did so, he reeled, put his hand to his throat, stood swayingfor a moment, and then, with a peculiar sound, fell from his wholeheight face foremost to the floor.

I ran to him at once, calling to my mother. But haste was all in vain.The captain had been struck dead by thundering apoplexy. It is a curiousthing to understand, for I had certainly never liked the man, though oflate I had begun to pity him, but as soon as I saw that he was dead Iburst into a flood of tears. It was the second death I had known, andthe sorrow of the first was still fresh in my heart.