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

he was trying to think, and the process

was so slow and laborious that, in my new-found

security, I laughed aloud. At last, with a swallow or

two, he spoke, his face still wearing the same

expression of extreme perplexity. In order to speak he

had to take the dagger from his mouth, but in all else

he remained unmoved.

 

“Jim,” says he, “I reckon we’re fouled, you and me, and

we’ll have to sign articles. I’d have had you but for

that there lurch, but I don’t have no luck, not I; and

I reckon I’ll have to strike, which comes hard, you see,

for a master mariner to a ship’s younker like you, Jim.”

 

I was drinking in his words and smiling away, as

conceited as a cock upon a wall, when, all in a breath,

back went his right hand over his shoulder. Something

sang like an arrow through the air; I felt a blow and

then a sharp pang, and there I was pinned by the

shoulder to the mast. In the horrid pain and surprise

of the moment—I scarce can say it was by my own

volition, and I am sure it was without a conscious aim—

both my pistols went off, and both escaped out of my

hands. They did not fall alone; with a choked cry, the

coxswain loosed his grasp upon the shrouds and plunged

head first into the water.

 

27

 

“Pieces of Eight”

 

OWING to the cant of the vessel, the masts hung far out

over the water, and from my perch on the cross-trees I

had nothing below me but the surface of the bay.

Hands, who was not so far up, was in consequence nearer

to the ship and fell between me and the bulwarks. He

rose once to the surface in a lather of foam and blood

and then sank again for good. As the water settled, I

could see him lying huddled together on the clean, bright

sand in the shadow of the vessel’s sides. A fish or two

whipped past his body. Sometimes, by the quivering of the

water, he appeared to move a little, as if he were trying

to rise. But he was dead enough, for all that, being both

shot and drowned, and was food for fish in the very place

where he had designed my slaughter.

 

I was no sooner certain of this than I began to feel

sick, faint, and terrified. The hot blood was running

over my back and chest. The dirk, where it had pinned

my shoulder to the mast, seemed to burn like a hot

iron; yet it was not so much these real sufferings that

distressed me, for these, it seemed to me, I could bear

without a murmur; it was the horror I had upon my mind

of falling from the cross-trees into that still green

water, beside the body of the coxswain.

 

I clung with both hands till my nails ached, and I shut my

eyes as if to cover up the peril. Gradually my mind came

back again, my pulses quieted down to a more natural time,

and I was once more in possession of myself.

 

It was my first thought to pluck forth the dirk, but

either it stuck too hard or my nerve failed me, and I

desisted with a violent shudder. Oddly enough, that

very shudder did the business. The knife, in fact, had

come the nearest in the world to missing me altogether;

it held me by a mere pinch of skin, and this the

shudder tore away. The blood ran down the faster, to

be sure, but I was my own master again and only tacked

to the mast by my coat and shirt.

 

These last I broke through with a sudden jerk, and then

regained the deck by the starboard shrouds. For

nothing in the world would I have again ventured,

shaken as I was, upon the overhanging port shrouds from

which Israel had so lately fallen.

 

I went below and did what I could for my wound; it pained

me a good deal and still bled freely, but it was neither

deep nor dangerous, nor did it greatly gall me when I used

my arm. Then I looked around me, and as the ship was now,

in a sense, my own, I began to think of clearing it from

its last passenger—the dead man, O’Brien.

 

He had pitched, as I have said, against the bulwarks,

where he lay like some horrible, ungainly sort of puppet,

life-size, indeed, but how different from life’s colour

or life’s comeliness! In that position I could easily

have my way with him, and as the habit of tragical

adventures had worn off almost all my terror for the

dead, I took him by the waist as if he had been a sack

of bran and with one good heave, tumbled him overboard.

He went in with a sounding plunge; the red cap came off

and remained floating on the surface; and as soon as the

splash subsided, I could see him and Israel lying side

by side, both wavering with the tremulous movement of

the water. O’Brien, though still quite a young man, was

very bald. There he lay, with that bald head across the

knees of the man who had killed him and the quick fishes

steering to and fro over both.

 

I was now alone upon the ship; the tide had just

turned. The sun was within so few degrees of setting

that already the shadow of the pines upon the western

shore began to reach right across the anchorage and

fall in patterns on the deck. The evening breeze had

sprung up, and though it was well warded off by the

hill with the two peaks upon the east, the cordage had

begun to sing a little softly to itself and the idle

sails to rattle to and fro.

 

I began to see a danger to the ship. The jibs I

speedily doused and brought tumbling to the deck, but

the main-sail was a harder matter. Of course, when the

schooner canted over, the boom had swung out-board, and

the cap of it and a foot or two of sail hung even under

water. I thought this made it still more dangerous;

yet the strain was so heavy that I half feared to

meddle. At last I got my knife and cut the halyards.

The peak dropped instantly, a great belly of loose

canvas floated broad upon the water, and since, pull as

I liked, I could not budge the downhall, that was the

extent of what I could accomplish. For the rest, the

HISPANIOLA must trust to luck, like myself.

 

By this time the whole anchorage had fallen into

shadow—the last rays, I remember, falling through a

glade of the wood and shining bright as jewels on the

flowery mantle of the wreck. It began to be chill; the

tide was rapidly fleeting seaward, the schooner

settling more and more on her beam-ends.

 

I scrambled forward and looked over. It seemed shallow

enough, and holding the cut hawser in both hands for a

last security, I let myself drop softly overboard. The

water scarcely reached my waist; the sand was firm and

covered with ripple marks, and I waded ashore in great

spirits, leaving the HISPANIOLA on her side, with her

main-sail trailing wide upon the surface of the bay.

About the same time, the sun went fairly down and the

breeze whistled low in the dusk among the tossing pines.

 

At least, and at last, I was off the sea, nor had I

returned thence empty-handed. There lay the schooner,

clear at last from buccaneers and ready for our own men

to board and get to sea again. I had nothing nearer my

fancy than to get home to the stockade and boast of my

achievements. Possibly I might be blamed a bit for my

truantry, but the recapture of the HISPANIOLA was a

clenching answer, and I hoped that even Captain

Smollett would confess I had not lost my time.

 

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 moon-shine; 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