Chapter 10: The Voyage
With a rousing rendition of “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!”, the Hispaniola disembarks for the sea. Jim tells us that the voyage itself was very pleasant, aside from a couple of events that he says we should probably know about going forward, which is really underselling what he’s about to tell us.
For example, the first mate Mr. Arrow eventually disappears in the middle of the night and nobody bats an eye at it. To that point he’d been constantly getting drunk—though nobody knew where he was getting the booze—and when he finally goes missing (presumably falling overboard), even Captain Smollett says, yeah, honestly I’m fine with that.
If there are any other notable events that take place on this voyage, however, we’re going to have to wait, because Jim now spends some time recounting what life on the ship was like even though he told us he wasn’t going to do that. There’s brief mention of the weather, and of Smollett’s and Trelawney’s continued bickering, but most of all we get more insight on Long John Silver, who is apparently badass enough to warrant having a second nickname from the crew, this one being “Barbecue”. I don’t love it, but you weren’t ever going to top “Long John Silver” when it comes to cool pirate errr… sailor… names, so I appreciate Robert Louis Stevenson not really trying.
Anyway, Silver is well-respected by the crew, and by Jim, who he spends a lot of time telling stories to. Silver also has a talking parrot, who he calls “Cap’n Flint”, which was the name of the feared pirate captain we learned about at the beginning of the book so you’d think that would be a red flag, but the connection isn’t even mentioned.
Lastly, Jim tells us about a barrel of apples that is open to any man hankering for a snack at any time. Although a seemingly insignificant detail, Jim says that he went to fetch himself an apple one night to discover the barrel nearly empty. Apparently, his solution to “I want one of the apples at the bottom” is to climb into the barrel, and subsequently crouch down so that he conveniently can’t be seen by anybody who might happen to be doing some secret scheming nearby.
Well, it turns out that while he’s crouched down in the barrel, some people DO come nearby to do some secret scheming. And wouldn’t you know it—one of them is Long John Silver.