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

killed a

cat. Fetch ahead for the doubloons.”

 

We started, certainly; but in spite of the hot sun and

the staring daylight, the pirates no longer ran

separate and shouting through the wood, but kept side

by side and spoke with bated breath. The terror of the

dead buccaneer had fallen on their spirits.

 

32

 

The Treasure-hunt—The Voice Among the Trees

 

PARTLY from the damping influence of this alarm, partly

to rest Silver and the sick folk, the whole party sat

down as soon as they had gained the brow of the ascent.

 

The plateau being somewhat tilted towards the west,

this spot on which we had paused commanded a wide

prospect on either hand. Before us, over the tree-tops, we beheld the Cape of the Woods fringed with

surf; behind, we not only looked down upon the

anchorage and Skeleton Island, but saw—clear across

the spit and the eastern lowlands—a great field of

open sea upon the east. Sheer above us rose the Spy-glass, here dotted with single pines, there black with

precipices. There was no sound but that of the distant

breakers, mounting from all round, and the chirp of

countless insects in the brush. Not a man, not a sail,

upon the sea; the very largeness of the view increased

the sense of solitude.

 

Silver, as he sat, took certain bearings with his compass.

 

“There are three ‘tall trees’” said he, “about in the right

line from Skeleton Island. ‘Spy-glass shoulder,’ I take it,

means that lower p’int there. It’s child’s play to find the

stuff now. I’ve half a mind to dine first.”

 

“I don’t feel sharp,” growled Morgan. “Thinkin’ o’

Flint—I think it were—as done me.”

 

“Ah, well, my son, you praise your stars he’s dead,”

said Silver.

 

“He were an ugly devil,” cried a third pirate with a

shudder; “that blue in the face too!”

 

“That was how the rum took him,” added Merry. “Blue!

Well, I reckon he was blue. That’s a true word.”

 

Ever since they had found the skeleton and got upon

this train of thought, they had spoken lower and lower,

and they had almost got to whispering by now, so that

the sound of their talk hardly interrupted the silence

of the wood. All of a sudden, out of the middle of the

trees in front of us, a thin, high, trembling voice

struck up the well-known air and words:

 

“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest—

Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

 

I never have seen men more dreadfully affected than the

pirates. The colour went from their six faces like

enchantment; some leaped to their feet, some clawed

hold of others; Morgan grovelled on the ground.

 

“It’s Flint, by –-!” cried Merry.

 

The song had stopped as suddenly as it began—broken off,

you would have said, in the middle of a note, as though

someone had laid his hand upon the singer’s mouth. Coming

through the clear, sunny atmosphere among the green tree-tops,

I thought it had sounded airily and sweetly; and the effect

on my companions was the stranger.

 

“Come,” said Silver, struggling with his ashen lips to

get the word out; “this won’t do. Stand by to go

about. This is a rum start, and I can’t name the

voice, but it’s someone skylarking—someone that’s

flesh and blood, and you may lay to that.”

 

His courage had come back as he spoke, and some of the

colour to his face along with it. Already the others

had begun to lend an ear to this encouragement and were

coming a little to themselves, when the same voice

broke out again—not this time singing, but in a faint

distant hail that echoed yet fainter among the clefts

of the Spy-glass.

 

“Darby M’Graw,” it wailed—for that is the word that

best describes the sound—“Darby M’Graw! Darby

M’Graw!” again and again and again; and then rising a

little higher, and with an oath that I leave out:

“Fetch aft the rum, Darby!”

 

The buccaneers remained rooted to the ground, their eyes

starting from their heads. Long after the voice had died

away they still stared in silence, dreadfully, before them.

 

“That fixes it!” gasped one. “Let’s go.”

 

“They was his last words,” moaned Morgan, “his last

words above board.”

 

Dick had his Bible out and was praying volubly. He had

been well brought up, had Dick, before he came to sea

and fell among bad companions.

 

Still Silver was unconquered. I could hear his teeth

rattle in his head, but he had not yet surrendered.

 

“Nobody in this here island ever heard of Darby,” he

muttered; “not one but us that’s here.” And then,

making a great effort: “Shipmates,” he cried, “I’m here

to get that stuff, and I’ll not be beat by man or

devil. I never was feared of Flint in his life, and,

by the powers, I’ll face him dead. There’s seven

hundred thousand pound not a quarter of a mile from

here. When did ever a gentleman o’ fortune show his

stern to that much dollars for a boozy old seaman with

a blue mug—and him dead too?”

 

But there was no sign of reawakening courage in his

followers, rather, indeed, of growing terror at the

irreverence of his words.

 

“Belay there, John!” said Merry. “Don’t you

cross a sperrit.”

 

And the rest were all too terrified to reply. They

would have run away severally had they dared; but fear

kept them together, and kept them close by John, as if

his daring helped them. He, on his part, had pretty

well fought his weakness down.

 

“Sperrit? Well, maybe,” he said. “But there’s one

thing not clear to me. There was an echo. Now, no man

ever seen a sperrit with a shadow; well then, what’s he

doing with an echo to him, I should like to know? That

ain’t in natur’, surely?”

 

This argument seemed weak enough to me. But you can

never tell what will affect the superstitious, and to

my wonder, George Merry was greatly relieved.

 

“Well, that’s so,” he said. “You’ve a head upon your

shoulders, John, and no mistake. ‘Bout ship, mates!

This here crew is on a wrong tack, I do believe. And

come to think on it, it was like Flint’s voice, I grant

you, but not just so clear-away like it, after all. It

was liker somebody else’s voice now—it was liker—”

 

“By the powers, Ben Gunn!” roared Silver.

 

“Aye, and so it were,” cried Morgan, springing on his

knees. “Ben Gunn it were!”

 

“It don’t make much odds, do it, now?” asked Dick.

“Ben Gunn’s not here in the body any more’n Flint.”

 

But the older hands greeted this remark with scorn.

 

“Why, nobody minds Ben Gunn,” cried Merry; “dead or

alive, nobody minds him.”

 

It was extraordinary how their spirits had returned and

how the natural colour had revived in their faces.

Soon they were chatting together, with intervals of

listening; and not long after, hearing no further

sound, they shouldered the tools and set forth again,

Merry walking first with Silver’s compass to keep them

on the right line with Skeleton Island. He had said

the truth: dead or alive, nobody minded Ben Gunn.

 

Dick alone still held his Bible, and looked around him

as he went, with fearful glances; but he found no

sympathy, and Silver even joked him on his precautions.

 

“I told you,” said he—“I told you you had sp’iled your

Bible. If it ain’t no good to swear by, what do you

suppose a sperrit would give for it? Not that!” and he

snapped his big fingers, halting a moment on his crutch.

 

But Dick was not to be comforted; indeed, it was soon

plain to me that the lad was falling sick; hastened by

heat, exhaustion, and the shock of his alarm, the

fever, predicted by Dr. Livesey, was evidently growing

swiftly higher.

 

It was fine open walking here, upon the summit; our way

lay a little downhill, for, as I have said, the plateau

tilted towards the west. The pines, great and small,

grew wide apart; and even between the clumps of nutmeg

and azalea, wide open spaces baked in the hot sunshine.

Striking, as we did, pretty near north-west across the

island, we drew, on the one hand, ever nearer under the

shoulders of the Spy-glass, and on the other, looked

ever wider over that western bay where I had once

tossed and trembled in the oracle.

 

The first of the tall trees was reached, and by the

bearings proved the wrong one. So with the second. The

third rose nearly two hundred feet into the air above a

clump of underwood—a giant of a vegetable, with a red

column as big as a cottage, and a wide shadow around in

which a company could have manoeuvred. It was conspicuous

far to sea both on the east and west and might have been

entered as a sailing mark upon the chart.

 

But it was not its size that now impressed my

companions; it was the knowledge that seven hundred

thousand pounds in gold lay somewhere buried below its

spreading shadow. The thought of the money, as they

drew nearer, swallowed up their previous terrors.

Their eyes burned in their heads; their feet grew

speedier and lighter; their whole soul was found up in

that fortune, that whole lifetime of extravagance and

pleasure, that lay waiting there for each of them.

 

Silver hobbled, grunting, on his crutch; his nostrils

stood out and quivered; he cursed like a madman when

the flies settled on his hot and shiny countenance; he

plucked furiously at the line that held me to him and

from time to time turned his eyes upon me with a deadly

look. Certainly he took no pains to hide his thoughts,

and certainly I read them like print. In the immediate

nearness of the gold, all else had been forgotten: his

promise and the doctor’s warning were both things of

the past, and I could not doubt that he hoped to seize

upon the treasure, find and board the HISPANIOLA

under cover of night, cut every honest throat about

that island, and sail away as he had at first intended,

laden with crimes and riches.

 

Shaken as I was with these alarms, it was hard for me

to keep up with the rapid pace of the treasure-hunters.

Now and again I stumbled, and it was then that Silver

plucked so roughly at the rope and launched at me his

murderous glances. Dick, who had dropped behind us and

now brought up the rear, was babbling to himself both

prayers and curses as his fever kept rising. This also

added to my wretchedness, and to crown all, I was haunted

by the thought of the tragedy that had once been acted on

that plateau, when that ungodly buccaneer with the blue face

—he who died at Savannah, singing and shouting for drink—

had there, with his own hand, cut down his six accomplices.

This grove that was now so peaceful must then have rung with

cries, I thought; and even with the thought I could believe

I heard it ringing still.

 

We were now at the margin of the thicket.

 

“Huzza, mates, all together!” shouted Merry; and the

foremost broke into a run.

 

And suddenly, not ten yards further, we beheld them stop.

A low cry arose. Silver doubled his pace, digging away

with the foot of his crutch like one possessed; and next

moment he and I had come also to a dead halt.

 

Before us was a great excavation, not very recent, for

the sides had fallen in and grass had sprouted on the

bottom. In this