Chapter 22: How I Began My Sea Adventure
I guess I should take back how glib I was at the end of the last chapter about the losses sustained by our protagonists, though I still maintain the book was needlessly vague on details. Trelawney’s other retainer, who we were told was hit by a rifle stock, eventually dies from his wounds. As we hadn’t been informed of its nature, I had wrongly assumed that he’d been struck in the head, given that he was knocked unconscious. Thinking about it again, I freely admit that this could have been a killing blow. However, we now learn that he’d actually been hit in the chest, then fell over and fractured his skull. I would have just gone with the simpler, more plausible explanation for the death of this largely-insignificant character, but what do I know about writing.
We also learn the extent of Smollett’s injuries. The captain was shot twice, once in the upper chest near the shoulder and once in the leg. Not severe enough to be life-threatening—because goodness knows we can’t lose any of our important characters—but bad enough that he’s likely to be out of action for the rest of the book.
Once the wounded are tended to as best as able, Doctor Livesey departs the cabin alone to go meet with Ben Gunn as Jim had promised. However, the day grows hot, and Jim soon begins to resent Livesey for going out into the cool shade of the trees while he’s stuck in this baking cabin that’s still full of dead bodies that nobody seems to be doing anything with. Remember too that Livesey has essentially left this boy here in the care of a dandy and a sailor who was, until recently, contemplating piracy. I sure hope Livesey never becomes a father.
Jim purloins some biscuits and pistols and sneaks out while the others aren’t looking. He’s not wandering the island aimlessly; his plan is to head to the southeast corner by the bay and see if he can find Ben Gunn’s boat. Did Ben say he had a boat? Hell if I know, I can only ever understand maybe a third of what that guy is saying.
After giving us some more detailed imagery of the island and its surroundings that is difficult to summarize, he eventually does find the boat. It’s… well, it’s basically little more than a large bucket, homemade of wood scraps and goatskins, probably not even large enough to accomodate a full-grown man. Practically a deathtrap, really.
So of course Jim gets the idea to take it out on the water. Because he’s come up with a new plan.
He believes that, following the pirates’ heavy losses during the battle this morning, they’re probably demoralized enough to raise the Hispaniola’s anchor and get the hell off of this island. I will point out that he does reach this conclusion this after watching most of the pirates take a rowboat from the ship back to shore, laughing merrily as they go; so how he manages to interpret this as “they’re going to flee”, I have no goddamn idea. I’m beginning to think Jim isn’t all that bright.
But he has it in his head that they’re going to take the ship and bugger off. And since the ship is undermanned at the moment, he thinks it would be a terribly clever idea if he waited until nightfall, then rowed out into the bay and cut the Hispaniola from its anchor, thus letting the ship drift ashore.
I have to be honest: I’m not seeing how this would be helpful to anybody. I suppose preventing the pirates from leaving, somehow incapacitating them all, and then unbeaching the grounded ship with a total of four able-bodied men and a teenager—assuming no more casualties, anyway—is a marginally better plan then letting the pirates take the ship and stranding you on the island, but I wouldn’t exactly consider this a “calculated risk”. But this is what we’re doing now, so, all right, whatever, let’s just see how the next chapter goes.