Chapter 8: The Effects of Mr. Arrow's Death
I mean to stay vague about the consequences of Arrow's death. You can imagine the nightmarish night and difficult morning I faced after the supernova for yourself, without my help. I feel no need to go beyond the necessary details regarding the aftermath. However, as I have just pointed out, there are a fair amount of details that must be brought to attention to understand the forthcomings of my account, and therefore I shall spend a little time describing these to you.
Throughout most of the night I wanted to blame Jim Hawkins for the accident. I knew that I could not however; for it was what it was—an accident—and I never really could force myself into truly believing Jim had any blame in it at all. I could not blame him then, and I do not blame him now.
I myself was unaccustomed to such intense emotional turmoil that Arrow's loss rendered in me, and I thusly suppressed any sort of distress in emotion brought about by my friend's death. I locked myself in my stateroom that night and had a time of it trying to nurse the open wound that had been exposed on account of this terrible event, without appearing as though I had something to nurse. But because of my determination to endure Arrow's death while maintaining the whole of my dignity, the harmful elements that attacked my wound came more destructively than if I had simply surrendered to my loss. The more I tried to discard it, the worse the sorrow became.
The Doctor, surprisingly enough, was the one to remedy my inhibition. He approached me quickly after Mr. Arrow died and tried to show some support and assurance on my behalf—all of which he gave me with uncertainty himself, which impressed upon me an odd fraudulence at the time, but what I now recognize was simply a reflection of how important it was to him to comfort me. I will admit that I was at first quite inclined to throw his sympathies and comforts their lengths across the floor, and a few into his face, I myself feeling unappreciative that he had uncovered the concealment of my insufficiently nursed wound and then dared to suggest it to me. Nevertheless, the Doctor stayed with me, took my blows and verbal bashes with silent passiveness, and did, I believe, everything he could think of in order to make me feel comfortable in my right to mourn for Mr. Arrow.
Eventually I did so. And the Doctor stayed with me. I was ashamed and embarrassed to weep as I did in front of the Doctor, but he remained with me still, sympathetic and gentle. I could not control my sobs for a long time, and I clung to him, and yet he remained. He was the most earnest help of all to me at that moment, and I will always be grateful to him for it.
The Doctor's and my relationship with one another transitioned into that of a much more open one after his consolation, one that was less formal and more friendly. I believe at first that I initiated this because he had been of such help to me, and I felt indebted to the Doctor, but this slowly went away after we spent more and more time together. Not only had I seen how useful, and indeed, genuinely valuable, he could actually present himself to be, he had seen a side I'd intended to keep hidden; a side that even Mr. Arrow very rarely saw evidence of. I daresay our impressions of one another were impressively altered after our shared, chance revelations.
As mutual as the Doctor and my understanding of each other grew to be, I could, after a long while, sense an odd tension in the air after Arrow died. The crew would mingle amongst themselves and murmur until I had to order them back to their duties, and then, disgruntled, they would, as a group, take their leave. I would find clusters of them on deck about their chores, as if, like cattle, they felt stronger and better defended in huddles. When I would approach, they would scatter, painting surly smiles along their faces, but remaining quiet, active, and obedient. I assumed that they were feeling the stress of the long voyage at last (it had, after all, been a long and slow month since we had launched). My assumption, however, was quickly disputed against, when I quietly observed that, mirroring when I would approach, so too would the crew pick up their spirits when the cyborg galley cook, John Silver, stepped onto the deck.
After this observation I made a point to take more notice of John Silver. He, unlike the crew, seemed unchanged. He had the same simple smile and the same clumsy dexterity whenever he was in sight, and yet the crew depleted their huddles and slapped on grins whenever he turned round to train his mechanical eye upon them.
Tension was arising, this I could tell; we were nearing Treasure Planet and the expectancy hung in the air like a fog. The old idea came back to me: this might be a potentially mutinous group of hands, and from the observations I took from Silver, I thought perhaps I had an ally in him.
In this way the days progressed. Mr. Arrow had been lost; the Doctor had begun to be of much more importance to me in his absence, and the crew slowly began to sink into sullen, anxious feeling, altered only when either I ordered them back to their duties or Silver passed by them.
At last, when the duration of the crew's odd behavior became a long unchanging one, I inquired the Doctor if he had noticed the same thing. He told me that he had. "I'm not much one for crewmen psychoanalysis," he warned me good-naturedly, which I took with a half-hearted smirk, "but it does seem as though their enthusiasm has… turned."
I thanked him and turned back to face the deck. He placed a hand tentatively on the railing of the bridge, close to my own. I glanced at him for a moment, and he seemed as though preparing to say something else, but movements perceived from the corner of my eye made me turn my gaze back upon the deck.
Silver had been standing on deck for a good bit of the morning, very quietly, with a brass spyglass in the grip of his metal hand. I'd paid him no particular attention beyond the normal observations, but I had taken notice of him when he first came up from the galley. He seemed to be doing nothing out of the ordinary then, but he had, at some point while the Doctor and I talked, taken on company, speaking with five members of the crew that huddled about him: Hands, Scroop, Birdbrain Mary, Meltdown, and Pigors. There was a small amount of verbal exchanges that were inaudible between the group and the cook. It seemed relatively heated, going by their faces and body language, until at last I heard Silver hush them urgently. Then all five heads huddled closely together, another moment passed, and then as a group they began moving down to the galley, without a word.
The Doctor and I observed this in silence. I removed my hand from the railing as I sensed the Doctor draw his face slightly nearer to mine, and I heard him whisper, "…And what do you believe of the galley cook Silver?"
I stared after the huddle that had just descended into the galley, and without looking at him, I replied, "…I believe… he is a friend…"
But I was beginning to doubt it.