CHAPTER I - THE ISLAND OF SILVER-STORE
It was in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and forty-four,
that I, Gill Davis to command, His Mark, having then the honour to be a
private in the Royal Marines, stood a-leaning over the bulwarks of the
armed sloop Christopher Columbus, in the South American waters off the
Mosquito shore.
My lady remarks to me, before I go any further, that there is no such
christian-name as Gill, and that her confident opinion is, that the name
given to me in the baptism wherein I was made, &c., was Gilbert. She is
certain to be right, but I never heard of it. I was a foundling child,
picked up somewhere or another, and I always understood my christian-name
to be Gill. It is true that I was called Gills when employed at
Snorridge Bottom betwixt Chatham and Maidstone to frighten birds; but
that had nothing to do with the Baptism wherein I was made, &c., and
wherein a number of things were promised for me by somebody, who let me
alone ever afterwards as to performing any of them, and who, I consider,
must have been the Beadle. Such name of Gills was entirely owing to my
cheeks, or gills, which at that time of my life were of a raspy
description.
My lady stops me again, before I go any further, by laughing exactly in
her old way and waving the feather of her pen at me. That action on her
part, calls to my mind as I look at her hand with the rings on it--Well!
I won't! To be sure it will come in, in its own place. But it's always
strange to me, noticing the quiet hand, and noticing it (as I have done,
you know, so many times) a-fondling children and grandchildren asleep, to
think that when blood and honour were up--there! I won't! not at
present!--Scratch it out.
She won't scratch it out, and quite honourable; because we have made an
understanding that everything is to be taken down, and that nothing that
is once taken down shall be scratched out. I have the great misfortune
not to be able to read and write, and I am speaking my true and faithful
account of those Adventures, and my lady is writing it, word for word.
I say, there I was, a-leaning over the bulwarks of the sloop Christopher
Columbus in the South American waters off the Mosquito shore: a subject
of his Gracious Majesty King George of England, and a private in the
Royal Marines.
In those climates, you don't want to do much. I was doing nothing. I
was thinking of the shepherd (my father, I wonder?) on the hillsides by
Snorridge Bottom, with a long staff, and with a rough white coat in all
weathers all the year round, who used to let me lie in a corner of his
hut by night, and who used to let me go about with him and his sheep by
day when I could get nothing else to do, and who used to give me so
little of his victuals and so much of his staff, that I ran away from
him--which was what he wanted all along, I expect--to be knocked about
the world in preference to Snorridge Bottom. I had been knocked about
the world for nine-and-twenty years in all, when I stood looking along
those bright blue South American Waters. Looking after the shepherd, I
may say. Watching him in a half-waking dream, with my eyes half-shut, as
he, and his flock of sheep, and his two dogs, seemed to move away from
the ship's side, far away over the blue water, and go right down into the
sky.
