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Chapter 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 ***!
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 *** 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.