Kabanata Kabanata 14 · XIV. The First Blow

XIV. 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.