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 destined to go far. With a cry John
seized the branch of a tree, whipped the crutch out of
his armpit, and sent that uncouth missile hurtling
through the air. It struck poor Tom, point foremost,
and with stunning violence, right between the shoulders
in the middle of his back. His hands flew up, he gave
a sort of gasp, and fell.

Whether he were injured much or little, none could ever
tell. Like enough, to judge from the sound, his back
was broken on the spot. But he had no time given him
to recover. Silver, agile as a monkey even without leg
or crutch, was on the top of him next moment and had
twice buried his knife up to the hilt in that
defenceless body. From my place of 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 the next little while the whole world swam away
from before me in a whirling mist; Silver and the birds,
and the tall Spy-glass hilltop, going round and round and
topsy-turvy before my eyes, and all manner of bells ringing
and distant voices shouting in my ear.

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

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

Instantly I began to extricate myself and crawl back
again, with what speed 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 old
buccaneer and his comrades, and this sound of danger
lent me wings. As soon as I was clear of the thicket,
I ran as I never ran before, scarce minding the
direction of my flight, so long as it led me from the
murderers; and as I ran, fear grew and grew upon me
until it turned into 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, still smoking from their crime?
Would not the first of them who saw me wring my neck like
a snipe's? Would not my absence itself be an evidence
to them of my alarm, and therefore of my fatal knowledge?
It was all over, I thought. Good-bye to the HISPANIOLA;
good-bye to the squire, the doctor, and the captain!
There was nothing left for me but death by starvation
or death by the hands of the mutineers.

All this while, as I say, I was still running, and
without taking any notice, I had drawn near to the foot
of the little hill with the two peaks and had got into
a part of the island where the live-oaks grew more
widely apart and seemed more like forest trees in their
bearing and dimensions. Mingled with these were a few
scattered pines, some fifty, some nearer seventy, feet
high. The air too smelt more freshly than down beside
the marsh.

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