So thinking, and in famous spirits,I began to set my face homeward for the block house and my companions.I remembered that the most easterly of the rivers which drain into Captain Kidd’s anchorage ran from the two-peaked hill upon my left, and I bent my course in that direction that I might pass the stream while it was small. The wood was pretty open, and keeping along the lower spurs, I had soon turned the corner of that hill, and not long after waded to the mid-calf across the watercourse.
This brought me near to where I had encountered Ben Gunn,the maroon; and I walked more circumspectly,keeping an eye on every side.The dusk had come nigh hand completely,and as I opened out the cleft between the two peaks,I became aware of a wavering glow against the sky,where, as I judged,the man of the island was cooking his supper before a roaring fire.And yet I wondered, in my heart,that he should show himself so careless.For if I could see this radiance,might it not reach the eyes of Silver himself where he camped upon the shore among the marshes?
Gradually the night fell blacker;it was all I could do to guide myself even roughly towards my destination;the double hill behind me and the Spy-glass on my right hand loomed faint and fainter; the stars were few and pale; and in the low ground where I wandered I kept tripping among bushes and rolling into sandy pits.
Suddenly a kind of brightness fell about me.I looked up; a pale glimmer of moonbeams had alighted on the summit of the Spy-glass, and soon after I saw something broad and silvery moving low down behind the trees, and knew the moon had risen.
With this to help me,I passed rapidly over what remained to me of my journey,and sometimes walking, sometimes running,impatiently drew near to the stockade. Yet,as I began to thread the grove that lies before it,I was not so thoughtless but that I slacked my pace and went a trifle warily.It would have been a poor end of my adventures to get shot down by my own party in mistake.
The moon was climbing higher and higher,its light began to fall here and there in masses through the more open districts of the wood, and right in front of me a glow of a different colour appeared among the trees. It was red and hot, and now and again it was a little darkened--as it were, the embers of a bonfire smouldering.
For the life of me I could not think what it might be.
At last I came right down upon the borders of the clearing.The western end was already steeped in moonshine;the rest, and the block house itself,still lay in a black shadow chequered with long silvery streaks of light.On the other side of the house an immense fire had burned itself into clear embers and shed a steady, red reverberation, contrasted strongly with the mellow paleness of the moon. There was not a soul stirring nor a sound beside the noises of the breeze.
I stopped, with much wonder in my heart,and perhaps a little terror also.It had not been our way to build great fires; we were,indeed, by the captain’s orders,somewhat niggardly of firewood,and I began to fear that something had gone wrong while I was absent.
I stole round by the eastern end,keeping close in shadow, and at a convenient place,where the darkness was thickest, crossed the palisade.
To make assurance surer,I got upon my hands and knees and crawled,without a sound, towards the corner of the house.As I drew nearer, my heart was suddenly and greatly lightened.It is not a pleasant noise in itself,and I have often complained of it at other times,but just then it was like music to hear my friends snoring together so loud and peaceful in their sleep. The sea-cry of the watch, that beautiful “All’s well,” never fell more reassuringly on my ear.
In the meantime, there was no doubt of one thing;they kept an infamous bad watch.If it had been Silver and his lads that were now creeping in on them,not a soul would have seen daybreak.That was what it was, thought I,to have the captain wounded;and again I blamed myself sharply for leaving them in that danger with so few to mount guard.
By this time I had got to the door and stood up.All was dark within,so that I could distinguish nothing by the eye.As for sounds, there was the steady drone of the snorers and a small occasional noise, a flickering or pecking that I could in no way account for.
With my arms before me I walked steadily in.I should lie down in my own place (I thought with a silent chuckle) and enjoy their faces when they found me in the morning.
My foot struck something yielding--it was a sleeper’s leg;and he turned and groaned, but without awaking.
And then, all of a sudden,a shrill voice broke forth out of the darkness:
“Pieces of eight!Pieces of eight!Pieces of eight!Pieces of eight!Pieces of eight!” and so forth, without pause or change,like the clacking of a tiny mill.
Silver’s green parrot, Captain Flint!It was she whom I had heard pecking at a piece of bark;it was she, keeping better watch than any human being,who thus announced my arrival with her wearisome refrain.
I had no time left me to recover. At the sharp,clipping tone of the parrot,the sleepers awoke and sprang up;and with a mighty oath, the voice of Silver cried, “Who goes?”
I turned to run, struck violently against one person,recoiled, and ran full into the arms of a second,who for his part closed upon and held me tight.
“Bring a torch, Dick,” said Silver when my capture was thus assured.
And one of the men left the log-house and presently returned with a lighted brand.
PART SIX--Captain Silver
XXVIII In the Enemy’s Camp
The red glare of the torch,lighting up the interior of the block house,showed me the worst of my apprehensions realized.The pirates were in possession of the house and stores:there was the cask of cognac,there were the pork and bread, as before,and what tenfold increased my horror,not a sign of any prisoner.I could only judge that all had perished,and my heart smote me sorely that I had not been there to perish with them.
There were six of the buccaneers, all told;not another man was left alive.Five of them were on their feet, flushed and swollen,suddenly called out of the first sleep of drunkenness.The sixth had only risen upon his elbow;he was deadly pale,and the blood-stained bandage round his head told that he had recently been wounded, and still more recently dressed. I remembered the man who had been shot and had run back among the woods in the great attack, and doubted not that this was he.
The parrot sat, preening her plumage,on Long John’s shoulder. He himself, I thought,looked somewhat paler and more stern than I was used to.He still wore the fine broadcloth suit in which he had fulfilled his mission,but it was bitterly the worse for wear,daubed with clay and torn with the sharp briers of the wood.
“So,” said he, “here’s Jim Hawkins, shiver my timbers!Dropped in, like, eh?Well, come, I take that friendly.”
And thereupon he sat down across the brandy cask and began to fill a pipe.
“Give me a loan of the link, Dick,” said he; and then,when he had a good light, “That’ll do, lad,” he added;“stick the glim in the wood heap; and you, gentlemen,bring yourselves to!You needn’t stand up for Mr. Hawkins; HE’LL excuse you,you may lay to that. And so,Jim”--stopping the tobacco--“here you were,and quite a pleasant surprise for poor old John.I see you were smart when first I set my eyes on you,but this here gets away from me clean, it do.”
To all this, as may be well supposed, I made no answer.They had set me with my back against the wall,and I stood there, looking Silver in the face,pluckily enough, I hope, to all outward appearance,but with black despair in my heart.
Silver took a whiff or two of his pipe with great composure and then ran on again.