Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson [best sales books of all time txt] 📗

voice, which, as I continued to give ear, grew steadily louder and nearer.

This put me in 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 favorable 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 behavior 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, blonde 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 ’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 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 reechoed it a score of times; the whole troop of marsh-birds rose again, darkening heaven with a simultaneous whir; and long after that death-yell was still ringing in my brain, silence had reestablished 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 pinpoint 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 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 hurling 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 was 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 defenseless 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