And then all of a sudden he was interrupted by a noise.I had found one of the honest hands--well, here,at that same moment, came news of another.Far away out in the marsh there arose, all of a sudden,a sound like the cry of anger,then another on the back of it; and then one horrid,long-drawn scream. The rocks of the Spy-glass re-echoed it a score of times;the whole troop of marsh-birds rose again,darkening heaven, with a simultaneous whirr;and long after that death yell was still ringing in my brain,silence had re-established its empire,and only the rustle of the redescending birds and the boom of the distant surges disturbed the languor of the afternoon.
Tom had leaped at the sound, like a horse at the spur,but Silver had not winked an eye.He stood where he was, resting lightly on his crutch,watching his companion like a snake about to spring.
“John!” said the sailor, stretching out his hand.
“Hands off!” cried Silver, leaping back a yard, as it seemed to me,with the speed and security of a trained gymnast.
“Hands off, if you like, John Silver,” said the other.“It’s a black conscience that can make you feared of me.But in heaven’s name, tell me, what was that?”
“That?” returned Silver, smiling away, but warier than ever,his eye a mere pin-point in his big face,but gleaming like a crumb of glass. “That?Oh, I reckon that’ll be Alan.”
And at this point Tom flashed out like a hero.
“Alan!” he cried. “Then rest his soul for a true seaman!And as for you, John Silver,long you’ve been a mate of mine,but you’re mate of mine no more. If I die like a dog,I’ll die in my dooty. You’ve killed Alan, have you?Kill me too, if you can. But I defies you.”
And with that, this brave fellow turned his back directly on the cook and set off walking for the beach. But he was not destined to go far. With a cry John seized the branch of a tree, whipped the crutch out of his armpit, and sent that uncouth missile hurtling through the air. It struck poor Tom, point foremost, and with stunning violence, right between the shoulders in the middle of his back. His hands flew up, he gave a sort of gasp, and fell.
Whether he were injured much or little,none could ever tell. Like enough,to judge from the sound,his back was broken on the spot.But he had no time given him to recover. Silver,agile as a monkey even without leg or crutch,was on the top of him next moment and had twice buried his knife up to the hilt in that defenceless body. From my place of ambush, I could hear him pant aloud as he struck the blows.
I do not know what it rightly is to faint,but I do know that for the next little while the whole world swam away from before me in a whirling mist; Silver and the birds, and the tall Spy-glass hilltop, going round and round and topsy-turvy before my eyes, and all manner of bells ringing and distant voices shouting in my ear.
When I came again to myself the monster had pulled himself together,his crutch under his arm, his hat upon his head.Just before him Tom lay motionless upon the sward;but the murderer minded him not a whit,cleansing his blood-stained knife the while upon a wisp of grass.Everything else was unchanged,the sun still shining mercilessly on the steaming marsh and the tall pinnacle of the mountain, and I could scarce persuade myself that murder had been actually done and a human life cruelly cut short a moment since before my eyes.
But now John put his hand into his pocket,brought out a whistle,and blew upon it several modulated blasts that rang far across the heated air.I could not tell, of course, the meaning of the signal,but it instantly awoke my fears.More men would be coming. I might be discovered.They had already slain two of the honest people;after Tom and Alan, might not I come next?
Instantly I began to extricate myself and crawl back again,with what speed and silence I could manage,to the more open portion of the wood. As I did so,I could hear hails coming and going between the old buccaneer and his comrades,and this sound of danger lent me wings.As soon as I was clear of the thicket,I ran as I never ran before,scarce minding the direction of my flight,so long as it led me from the murderers; and as I ran,fear grew and grew upon me until it turned into a kind of frenzy.
Indeed, could anyone be more entirely lost than I?When the gun fired, how should I dare to go down to the boats among those fiends, still smoking from their crime?Would not the first of them who saw me wring my neck like a snipe’s?Would not my absence itself be an evidence to them of my alarm,and therefore of my fatal knowledge?It was all over, I thought. Good-bye to the HISPANIOLA;good-bye to the squire, the doctor, and the captain!There was nothing left for me but death by starvation or death by the hands of the mutineers.
All this while, as I say, I was still running,and without taking any notice,I had drawn near to the foot of the little hill with the two peaks and had got into a part of the island where the live-oaks grew more widely apart and seemed more like forest trees in their bearing and dimensions. Mingled with these were a few scattered pines, some fifty, some nearer seventy, feet high. The air too smelt more freshly than down beside the marsh.
And here a fresh alarm brought me to a standstill with a thumping heart.
XV The Man of the Island
From the side of the hill,which was here steep and stony,a spout of gravel was dislodged and fell rattling and bounding through the trees. My eyes turned instinctively in that direction, and I saw a figure leap with great rapidity behind the trunk of a pine. What it was, whether bear or man or monkey, I could in no wise tell. It seemed dark and shaggy; more I knew not. But the terror of this new apparition brought me to a stand.
I was now, it seemed, cut off upon both sides;behind me the murderers,before me this lurking nondescript.And immediately I began to prefer the dangers that I knew to those I knew not.Silver himself appeared less terrible in contrast with this creature of the woods, and I turned on my heel, and looking sharply behind me over my shoulder, began to retrace my steps in the direction of the boats.