Chapter 25: I Strike the Jolly Roger
The deck of the Hispaniola is pure chaos as the ship is tossed around on the water. Loose sails whip in the wind, booms swing to and fro, and the unpredictable lurching makes one’s footing uncertain. Jim believes the ship to be entirely abandoned at first, but soon finds the two pirates he had seen fighting the prior evening, laying still on the afterdeck and looking quite dead. Bloodstains on the wood seem to confirm this suspicion.
However, one of the men soon sits back upright after a rogue wave knocks him over and groans for brandy. This is the guy I’ve so far identified as the former gunner—the one who had fired the cannon at the rowboat. Although I was determined not to bother introducing his name, the book is equally determined to make him a noteworthy character; and seeing as our cast of characters for the next two chapters is literally just him and and the Hawkins boy, I find myself with little other option but to finally specify that his name is Israel Hands.
We do also learn the name of the other pirate here—the man with the red cap—but he actually is 100% verifiably dead, so there’s really no point.
Jim hustles below deck to retrieve the brandy for Hands, on the way pausing briefly to examine the damage and havoc the pirates have wrought during their possession of the ship, including this fun detail:
I went into the cellar; all the barrels were gone, and of the bottles a most surprising number had been drunk out and thrown away. Certainly, since the mutiny began, not a man of them could ever have been sober.
The brandy seems to revive Hands slightly, though not enough to get him moving around; he doesn’t budge from his position sitting against the railing at the edge of the ship. After all, he’s been stabbed in the thigh and has probably lost a decent amount of blood by this point. He tells Jim that, while it would be a quick recovery if Doctor Livesey was around—as if it’s Livesey’s fault he’s not accompanying the pirates anymore—he’s probably not doing a lot of walking anytime soon. He then asks where Jim came from, anyway; but Jim sidesteps the question and announces that he’s come to take over the ship, and requests that Hands refer to him as “captain”. His first act as captain of the Hispaniola is taking down the Jolly Roger and tossing it out into the sea.
Although Israel Hands seems a bit peeved at this snot-nosed kid showing up and acting like he owns the place, the gunner resigns himself to the situation and offers to strike a bargain with Jim, seeing as the boy has no idea how to sail the ship. His demand, however, is a bandage for his wound and some food. He speaks much in the same overly-humble way that Silver employs to hide his true manner, and Jim notes there’s something in in the pirate’s smile that is a little off-putting; but at the end of the day, Jim really has little other option if he wants to gain control of the wayward Hispaniola. Hands never rises from where he sits, but once tended to he is able to direct Jim in the workings of the ship. Before long, the two of them are cruising along the north shore of the island and making quite good time, indeed.