Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Chapter 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 Spyglass, 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."
*** had his Bible out and was praying
volubly.
He had been well brought up, had ***,
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 ***
old *** 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 ***.
"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.
*** 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 *** 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.
***, 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 were the shaft of a pick broken in
two and the boards of several packing-cases
strewn around.
On one of these boards I saw, branded with
a hot iron, the name WALRUS--the name of
Flint's ship.
All was clear to probation.
The CACHE had been found and rifled; the
seven hundred thousand pounds were gone!