It was so decided; loaded pistols were served out to all the sure men;Hunter, Joyce, and Redruth were taken into our confidence and received the news with less surprise and a better spirit than we had looked for, and then the captain went on deck and addressed the crew.
“My lads,” said he, “we’ve had a hot day and are all tired and out of sorts.A turn ashore’ll hurt nobody--the boats are still in the water;you can take the gigs,and as many as please may go ashore for the afternoon.I’ll fire a gun half an hour before sundown.”
I believe the silly fellows must have thought they would break their shins over treasure as soon as they were landed, for they all came out of their sulks in a moment and gave a cheer that started the echo in a faraway hill and sent the birds once more flying and squalling round the anchorage.
The captain was too bright to be in the way.He whipped out of sight in a moment,leaving Silver to arrange the party,and I fancy it was as well he did so.Had he been on deck,he could no longer so much as have pretended not to understand the situation.It was as plain as day. Silver was the captain,and a mighty rebellious crew he had of it.The honest hands--and I was soon to see it proved that there were such on board--must have been very stupid fellows. Or rather, I suppose the truth was this, that all hands were disaffected by the example of the ringleaders--only some more, some less; and a few, being good fellows in the main, could neither be led nor driven any further. It is one thing to be idle and skulk and quite another to take a ship and murder a number of innocent men.
At last, however, the party was made up.Six fellows were to stay on board,and the remaining thirteen, including Silver, began to embark.
Then it was that there came into my head the first of the mad notions that contributed so much to save our lives. If six men were left by Silver, it was plain our party could not take and fight the ship; and since only six were left, it was equally plain that the cabin party had no present need of my assistance. It occurred to me at once to go ashore. In a jiffy I had slipped over the side and curled up in the fore-sheets of the nearest boat, and almost at the same moment she shoved off.
No one took notice of me, only the bow oar saying, “Is that you, Jim?Keep your head down.” But Silver, from the other boat,looked sharply over and called out to know if that were me;and from that moment I began to regret what I had done.
The crews raced for the beach, but the boat I was in,having some start and being at once the lighter and the better manned,shot far ahead of her consort,and the bow had struck among the shore-side trees and I had caught a branch and swung myself out and plunged into the nearest thicket while Silver and the rest were still a hundred yards behind.
“Jim, Jim!” I heard him shouting.
But you may suppose I paid no heed; jumping, ducking,and breaking through,I ran straight before my nose till I could run no longer.
XIV The First Blow
I was so pleased at having given the slip to Long John that I began to enjoy myself and look around me with some interest on the strange land that I was in.
I had crossed a marshy tract full of willows, bulrushes,and odd, outlandish, swampy trees;and I had now come out upon the skirts of an open piece of undulating,sandy country, about a mile long,dotted with a few pines and a great number of contorted trees,not unlike the oak in growth, but pale in the foliage,like willows. On the far side of the open stood one of the hills,with two quaint, craggy peaks shining vividly in the sun.
I now felt for the first time the joy of exploration.The isle was uninhabited;my shipmates I had left behind,and nothing lived in front of me but dumb brutes and fowls.I turned hither and thither among the trees.Here and there were flowering plants, unknown to me;here and there I saw snakes,and one raised his head from a ledge of rock and hissed at me with a noise not unlike the spinning of a top. Little did I suppose that he was a deadly enemy and that the noise was the famous rattle.
Then I came to a long thicket of these oaklike trees--live,or evergreen, oaks,I heard afterwards they should be called--which grew low along the sand like brambles, the boughs curiously twisted, the foliage compact, like thatch. The thicket stretched down from the top of one of the sandy knolls, spreading and growing taller as it went, until it reached the margin of the broad, reedy fen, through which the nearest of the little rivers soaked its way into the anchorage. The marsh was steaming in the strong sun, and the outline of the Spy-glass trembled through the haze.
All at once there began to go a sort of bustle among the bulrushes;a wild duck flew up with a quack, another followed,and soon over the whole surface of the marsh a great cloud of birds hung screaming and circling in the air. I judged at once that some of my shipmates must be drawing near along the borders of the fen. Nor was I deceived, for soon I heard the very distant and low tones of a human voice, which, as I continued to give ear, grew steadily louder and nearer.
This put me in a great fear,and I crawled under cover of the nearest live-oak and squatted there,hearkening, as silent as a mouse.
Another voice answered, and then the first voice,which I now recognized to be Silver’s,once more took up the story and ran on for a long while in a stream,only now and again interrupted by the other.By the sound they must have been talking earnestly,and almost fiercely;but no distinct word came to my hearing.
At last the speakers seemed to have paused and perhaps to have sat down,for not only did they cease to draw any nearer,but the birds themselves began to grow more quiet and to settle again to their places in the swamp.
And now I began to feel that I was neglecting my business,that since I had been so foolhardy as to come ashore with these desperadoes,the least I could do was to overhear them at their councils,and that my plain and obvious duty was to draw as close as I could manage,under the favourable ambush of the crouching trees.
I could tell the direction of the speakers pretty exactly,not only by the sound of their voices but by the behaviour of the few birds that still hung in alarm above the heads of the intruders.
Crawling on all fours,I made steadily but slowly towards them, till at last,raising my head to an aperture among the leaves,I could see clear down into a little green dell beside the marsh,and closely set about with trees,where Long John Silver and another of the crew stood face to face in conversation.
The sun beat full upon them.Silver had thrown his hat beside him on the ground,and his great, smooth, blond face,all shining with heat,was lifted to the other man’s in a kind of appeal.
“Mate,” he was saying,“it’s because I thinks gold dust of you--gold dust,and you may lay to that!If I hadn’t took to you like pitch,do you think I’d have been here a-warning of you?All’s up--you can’t make nor mend;it’s to save your neck that I’m a-speaking,and if one of the wild uns knew it, where’d I be,Tom--now, tell me, where’d I be?”
“Silver,” said the other man--and I observed he was not only red in the face,but spoke as hoarse as a crow, and his voice shook too,like a taut rope--“Silver,” says he, “you’re old,and you’re honest, or has the name for it;and you’ve money too,which lots of poor sailors hasn’t; and you’re brave,or I’m mistook. And will you tell me you’ll let yourself be led away with that kind of a mess of swabs?Not you!As sure as God sees me, I’d sooner lose my hand.If I turn agin my dooty--”