Robert Louis Stevenson

And he began to laugh again, and that so heartily, that, though I did not see the joke as he did, I was again obliged to join him in his mirth. The wind blowing steady and gentle from the south, there was no contrariety between that and the current, and the billows rose and fell unbroken. It was a long, difficult business, for the coins were of all countries and sizes — doubloons, and louis d'ors, and guineas, and pieces of eight, and I know not what besides, all shaken together at random. The wind, serving us to a desire, now hauled into the west. When did ever a gentleman o’ fortune show his stern to that much dollars for a boosy old seaman with a blue mug — and him dead too? […] I could hear nothing but a low gabbling; but at last the voices began to grow higher, and I could pick up a word or two […] Just then, with a roar and a whistle, a round-shot passed high above the roof of the log-house and plumped far beyond us in the wood. It was such a scene of confusion as you can hardly fancy. All the lockfast places had been broken open in quest of the chart. “I make it a point of honour not to lose a man for King George (God bless him!) and the gallows.” The rogues looked at each other but swallowed the home-thrust in silence. The bar silver and the arms still lie, for all that I know, where Flint buried them; and certainly they shall lie there for me. Possibly I might be blamed a bit for my truantry, but the recapture of the Hispaniola was a clenching answer, and I hoped that even Captain Smollett would confess I had not lost my time. I have a boatswain who pipes, Livesey; so things shall go man-o-war fashion on board the good ship Hispaniola. Quick as thought, I sprang into the mizzen shrouds, rattled up hand over hand, and did not draw a breath till I was seated on the cross-trees. "Dear, deary me," cried my mother, "what a disgrace upon the house! And your poor father sick!" Maybe you think we were all a sheet in the wind’s eye. But I’ll tell you I was sober; I was on’y dog tired; and if I’d awoke a second sooner, I’d ’a caught you at the act, I would. I'm to be a poor, crawling beggar, sponging for rum, when I might be rolling in a coach! It was just at sundown when we cast anchor in a most beautiful land-locked gulf, and were immediately surrounded by shore boats full of Negroes and Mexican Indians and half-bloods selling fruits and vegetables and offering to dive for bits of money. For my part, I must do my best to save this fellow's trebly worthless life; Jim, you get me a basin. Hawkins, neither you nor I are much account at the shooting; we’ll stand by to load and bear a hand. The cap’n was displeased at that, but my messmates were all of a mind and landed. Dozens of empty bottles clinked together in corners to the rolling of the ship. One of the doctor’s medical books lay open on the table, half of the leaves gutted out, I suppose, for pipe-lights. […] if you spare me, bygones are bygones, and when you fellows are in court for piracy, I'll save you all I can. You have your hands on thousands, you fools, and you hang a leg! You'd be as rich as kings if you could find it, and you know it's here, and you stand there skulking. I remembered with confusion my insubordinate and stealthy conduct, and when I saw where it had brought me […] I felt ashamed to look him in the face. 'But now, you look here: you're young, you are, but you're as smart as paint. I see that when I set my eyes on you, and I'll talk to you like a man.' We had soon touched land in the same place as before and set to provision the blockhouse. All three made the first journey, heavily laden, and tossed our stores over the palisade. It was a strange collection, like Billy Bones’s hoard for the diversity of coinage, but so much larger and so much more varied that I think I never had more pleasure than in sorting them. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Georges, and Louises, doubloons and double guineas and moidores and sequins, the pictures of all the kings of Europe for the last hundred years, […] I’ll take it on my shoulders, holus bolus, blame and shame, my boy; but stay here, I cannot let you. Jump! One jump, and you’re out, and we’ll run for it like antelopes. […] and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to admire him, calling him a "true sea-dog," and "real old salt," and such-like names, and saying there was the sort of man that made England terrible at sea. The hawser was as taut as a bowstring, and the current so strong she pulled upon her anchor. All around the hull, in the blackness, the rippling current bubbled and chattered like a little mountain stream. "Avast, there!" cried Silver. "Who are you, Tom Morgan? Maybe you thought you was cap'n here, perhaps. By the powers, but I'll teach you better! […]"

I was struck besides with the shocking expression of his face, with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity and great apparent debility of constitution ‘That is just what I was about to venture to propose,’returned the doctor with a smite. But the words were hardly uttered, before the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such abject terror and despair, as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below. This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centered on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone. The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands of Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the monstrous. When I would come back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious depravity.

Iron-bound, impersonal ethics, the procrustean bed of rules, he soon saw at their true value as the deification of averages.

To look back upon the past year, and see how little we have striven and to what small purpose; and how often we have been cowardly and hung back, or temerarious and rushed unwisely in; and how every day and all day long we have transgressed the law of kindness;—it may seem a paradox, but in the bitterness of these discoveries, a certain consolation resides.