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Treasure Island
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
He was a very silent man by custom. All day he hung round the cove or upon
the cliffs with a brass telescope; all evening he sat in a corner of the parlour
next the fire and drank rum and water very strong. Mostly he would not speak
when spoken to; only look up sudden and fierce and blow through his nose like
a fog-horn; and we and the people who came about our house soon learned to
let him be. Every day, when he came back from his stroll, he would ask if
any seafaring men had gone by along the road.
At first we thought it was the want of company of his own kind that made him ask this question; but at last we began to see he was desirous to avoid them. When a seaman put up at the “Admiral Benbow” (as now and then some did, making by the coast road for Bristol), he would look in at him through the curtained door before he entered the parlour; and he was always sure to be as silent as a mouse when any such was present. For me, at least, there was no secret about the matter; for I was, in a way, a sharer in his alarms.
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