Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson (best ebook reader txt) 📗

speak back, pikes will be going in two shakes; if I

don’t, Silver will see there’s something under that, and

the game’s up. Now, we’ve only one man to rely on.”

 

“And who is that?” asked the squire.

 

“Silver, sir,” returned the captain; “he’s as anxious

as you and I to smother things up. This is a tiff;

he’d soon talk ‘em out of it if he had the chance, and

what I propose to do is to give him the chance. Let’s

allow the men an afternoon ashore. If they all go, why

we’ll fight the ship. If they none of them go, well

then, we hold the cabin, and God defend the right. If

some go, you mark my words, sir, Silver’ll bring ‘em

aboard again as mild as lambs.”

 

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 far-away 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.

 

14

 

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—”

 

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