Now that I had a moment to myself, I lost no time in changing the priming of my pistol, and then, having one ready for service, and to make assurance doubly sure, I proceeded to draw the load of the other, and recharge it afresh from the beginning.
My new employment struck Hands all of a heap; he began to see the dice going against him; and after an obvious hesitation, he also hauled himself heavily into the shrouds, and, with the dirk in his teeth, began slowly and painfully to mount. It cost him no end of time and groans to haul his wounded leg behind him; and I had quietly finished my arrangements before he was much more than a third of the way up. Then, with a pistol in either hand, I addressed him.
“One more step, Mr. Hands,” said I, “and I’ll blow your brains out! Dead men don’t bite, you know,” I added, with a chuckle.
He stopped instantly. I could see by the working of his face that he was trying to think, and the process was so slow and laborious that, in my new-found security, I laughed aloud. Then with a swallow or two, he spoke, his face still wearing the same expression of extreme perplexity. In order to speak he had to take the dagger from his mouth, but, in all else, he remained unmoved.
“Jim,” says he, “I reckon we’re fouled, you and me, and we’ll have to sign articles. I’d have had you but for that there lurch: but I don’t have no luck, not I; and I reckon I’ll have to strike, which comes hard, you see, for a master mariner to a ship’s younker like you, Jim.”
I was drinking in his words and smiling away, as conceited as a cock upon a wall, when, all in a breath back went his right hand over his shoulder. Something sang like an arrow through the air; I felt a blow and then a sharp pang, and there I was pinned by the shoulder to the mast. In the horrid pain and surprise of the moment—I scarce can say it was by my own volition, and I am sure it was without a conscious aim—both my pistols went off, and both escaped out of my hands. They did not fall alone; with a choked cry, the coxswain loosed his grasp upon the shrouds, and plunged head first into the water.
Stevenson was not one of the men who can write only one sort of thing. The numerous little poems contained in the first volume of this series show his sympathetic knowledge of children, while his essays prove that he could handle serious subjects in a most masterly manner. The extract from Treasure Island which you have just been reading displays his skill in still another field—the writing of stories of pure adventure.
One of the striking things in all Stevenson’s writings is his power of vivid description, his ability to make us see things. Nor does he make us wait while he gives us page-long descriptions; he suggests pictures to us with a few words. It may be safely said of descriptions, when they are part of a story, that those which are given in the fewest words, if those few words are the right ones, are most effective. Stevenson fully grasped this fact, and that is the reason he is able to bring all his scenes before us so vividly, without wearying our patience.
[352-1] From Treasure Island.