I was so pleased at having given the slip to Long John, that I began toenjoy myself and look around me with some interest on the strange landthat I was in. I had crossed a marshy tract full of willows, bulrushes,and odd, outlandish, swampy trees; and had now come out upon the skirtsof an open piece of undulating, sandy country, about a mile long, dottedwith a few pines, and a great number of contorted trees, not unlike theoak in growth, but pale in the foliage, like willows. On the far side ofthe open stood one of the hills, with two quaint, craggy peaks, shiningvividly in the sun.

I now felt for the first time the joy of exploration. The isle wasuninhabited; my shipmates I had left behind, and nothing lived in frontof me but dumb brutes and fowls. I turned hither and thither among thetrees. Here and there were flowering plants, unknown to me; here andthere I saw snakes, and one raised his head from a ledge of rock andhissed at me with a noise not unlike the spinning of a top. Little did Isuppose that he was a deadly enemy, and that the noise was the famousrattle.

Then I came to a long thicket of these oak-like trees--live, orevergreen, oaks, I heard afterward they should be called--which grew lowalong the sand like brambles, the boughs curiously twisted, the foliagecompact, like thatch. The thicket stretched down from the top of one ofthe sandy knolls, spreading and growing taller as it went, until itreached the margin of the broad, reedy fen, through which the nearest ofthe little rivers soaked its way into the anchorage. The marsh wassteaming in the strong sun, and the outline of the Spy-glass trembledthrough the haze.

All at once there began to go a sort of bustle among the bulrushes; awild duck flew up with a quack, another followed, and soon over thewhole surface of the marsh a great cloud of birds hung screaming andcircling in the air. I judged at once that some of my shipmates must bedrawing near along the borders of the fen. Nor was I deceived, for soonI heard the very distant and low tones of a human voice, which, as Icontinued to give ear, grew steadily louder and nearer.

This put me in great fear, and I crawled under cover of the nearestlive-oak, and squatted there, hearkening, as silent as a mouse.

Another voice answered; and then the first voice, which I now recognizedto be Silver's, once more took up the story, and ran on for a long whilein a stream, only now and again interrupted by the other. By the soundthey must have been talking earnestly, and almost fiercely, but nodistinct word came to my hearing.

At last the speakers seemed to have paused, and perhaps to have satdown, for not only did they cease to draw any nearer, but the birdsthemselves began to grow more quiet, and to settle again to their placesin the swamp.

And now I began to feel that I was neglecting my business; that since Ihad been so foolhardy as to come ashore with these desperadoes, theleast I could do was to overhear them at their councils, and that myplain and obvious duty was to draw as close as I could manage, underthe favorable ambush of the crouching trees.

I could tell the direction of the speakers pretty exactly, not only bythe sound of their voices, but by the behavior of the few birds thatstill hung in alarm above the heads of the intruders.

Crawling on all-fours, I made steadily but slowly towards them, till atlast, raising my head to an aperture among the leaves, I could see cleardown into a little green dell beside the marsh, and closely set aboutwith trees, where Long John Silver and another of the crew stood face toface in conversation.

The sun beat full upon them. Silver had thrown his hat beside him on theground, and his great, smooth, blonde face, all shining with heat, waslifted to the other man's in a kind of appeal.

"Mate," he was saying, "it's because I thinks gold dust of you--golddust, and you may lay to that! If I hadn't took to you like pitch, doyou think I'd have been here a-warning of you? All's up--you can't makenor mend; it's to save your neck that I'm a-speaking, and if one of thewild 'uns knew it, where 'ud I be, Tom--now tell me, where 'ud I be?"

"Silver," said the other man--and I observed he was not only red in theface, but spoke as hoarse as a crow, and his voice shook, too, like ataut rope--"Silver," says he, "you're old, and you're honest, or has thename 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 letyourself be led away with that kind of a mess of swabs? Not you! As sureas 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 oneof the honest hands--well, here, at that same moment, came news ofanother. Far away out in the marsh there arose, all of a sudden, a soundlike the cry of anger, then another on the back of it, and then onehorrid, long-drawn scream. The rocks of the Spy-glass re-echoed it ascore of times; the whole troop of marsh-birds rose again, darkeningheaven with a simultaneous whir; and long after that death-yell wasstill ringing in my brain, silence had re-established its empire, andonly the rustle of the redescending birds and the boom of the distantsurges disturbed the languor of the afternoon.

Tom had leaped at the sound, like a horse at the spur; but Silver hadnot 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, withthe speed and security of a trained gymnast.

"Hands off, if you like, John Silver," said the other. "It's a blackconscience that can make you feared of me. But, in heaven's name, tellme what was that?"

"That?" returned Silver, smiling away, but warier than ever, his eye amere pin-point in his big face, but gleaming like a crumb of glass."That? Oh, I reckon that'll be Alan."

And at this poor 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 nomore. 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 andset off walking for the beach. But he was not destined to go far. With acry John seized the branch of a tree, whipped the crutch out of hisarmpit, and sent that uncouth missile hurling through the air. It struckpoor Tom, point foremost, and with stunning violence, right between theshoulders in the middle of his back. His hands flew up, he gave a sortof gasp and fell.

Whether he was injured much or little, none could ever tell. Likeenough, to judge from the sound, his back was broken on the spot. But hehad no time given him to recover. Silver, agile as a monkey, evenwithout leg or crutch, was on the top of him next moment, and had twiceburied his knife up to the hilt in that defenseless body. From my placeof 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 thenext little while the whole world swam away from before me in a whirlingmist; Silver and the birds and the tall Spy-glass hilltop going roundand round and topsy-turvy before my eyes, and all manner of bellsringing, and distant voices shouting in my ear.

When I came again to myself the monster had pulled himself together, hiscrutch under his arm, his hat upon his head. Just before him Tom laymotionless upon the sward; but the murderer minded him not a whit,cleansing his blood-stained knife the while upon a whisp of grass.Everything else was unchanged, the sun still shining mercilessly uponthe steaming marsh and the tall pinnacle of the mountain, and I couldscarce persuade myself that murder had actually been done and a humanlife cruelly cut short a moment since, before my eyes.

But now John put his hand into his pocket, brought out a whistle, andblew upon it several modulated blasts, that rang far across the heatedair. I could not tell, of course, the meaning of the signal, but itinstantly awoke my fears. More men would be coming. I might bediscovered. They had already slain two of the honest people; after Tomand Alan, might not I come next?

Instantly I began to extricate myself and crawl back again, with whatspeed 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 oldbuccaneer and his comrades, and this sound of danger lent me wings. Assoon as I was clear of the thicket, I ran as I never ran before, scarceminding the direction of my flight, so long as it led me from themurderers, and as I ran, fear grew and grew upon me, until it turnedinto 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, stillsmoking from their crime? Would not the first of them who saw me wringmy neck like a snipe's? Would not my absence itself be an evidence tothem of my alarm, and therefore of my fatal knowledge? It was all over,I thought. Good-by to the _Hispaniola_, good-by to the squire, thedoctor, and the captain. There was nothing left for me but death bystarvation, or death by the hands of the mutineers.

All this while, as I say, I was still running, and, without taking anynotice, I had drawn near to the foot of the little hill with the twopeaks, and had got into a part of the island where the wild oaks grewmore widely apart, and seemed more like forest trees in their bearingand dimensions. Mingled with these were a few scattered pines, somefifty, some nearer seventy, feet high. The air, too, smelled more freshthan down beside the marsh.

And here a fresh alarm brought me to a standstill with a thumping heart.

[Illustration]