Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (the top 100 crime novels of all time TXT) đź“–
- Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
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was so slow and laborious that, in my new-found
security, I laughed aloud. At last, with a swallow or
two, he spoke, his face still wearing the same
expression of extreme perplexity. In order to speak he
had to take the dagger from his mouth, but in all else
he remained unmoved.
“Jim,” says he, “I reckon we’re fouled, you and me, and
we’ll have to sign articles. I’d have had you but for
that there lurch, but I don’t have no luck, not I; and
I reckon I’ll have to strike, which comes hard, you see,
for a master mariner to a ship’s younker like you, Jim.”
I was drinking in his words and smiling away, as
conceited as a cock upon a wall, when, all in a breath,
back went his right hand over his shoulder. Something
sang like an arrow through the air; I felt a blow and
then a sharp pang, and there I was pinned by the
shoulder to the mast. In the horrid pain and surprise
of the moment—I scarce can say it was by my own
volition, and I am sure it was without a conscious aim—
both my pistols went off, and both escaped out of my
hands. They did not fall alone; with a choked cry, the
coxswain loosed his grasp upon the shrouds and plunged
head first into the water.
27
“Pieces of Eight”
OWING to the cant of the vessel, the masts hung far out
over the water, and from my perch on the cross-trees I
had nothing below me but the surface of the bay.
Hands, who was not so far up, was in consequence nearer
to the ship and fell between me and the bulwarks. He
rose once to the surface in a lather of foam and blood
and then sank again for good. As the water settled, I
could see him lying huddled together on the clean, bright
sand in the shadow of the vessel’s sides. A fish or two
whipped past his body. Sometimes, by the quivering of the
water, he appeared to move a little, as if he were trying
to rise. But he was dead enough, for all that, being both
shot and drowned, and was food for fish in the very place
where he had designed my slaughter.
I was no sooner certain of this than I began to feel
sick, faint, and terrified. The hot blood was running
over my back and chest. The dirk, where it had pinned
my shoulder to the mast, seemed to burn like a hot
iron; yet it was not so much these real sufferings that
distressed me, for these, it seemed to me, I could bear
without a murmur; it was the horror I had upon my mind
of falling from the cross-trees into that still green
water, beside the body of the coxswain.
I clung with both hands till my nails ached, and I shut my
eyes as if to cover up the peril. Gradually my mind came
back again, my pulses quieted down to a more natural time,
and I was once more in possession of myself.
It was my first thought to pluck forth the dirk, but
either it stuck too hard or my nerve failed me, and I
desisted with a violent shudder. Oddly enough, that
very shudder did the business. The knife, in fact, had
come the nearest in the world to missing me altogether;
it held me by a mere pinch of skin, and this the
shudder tore away. The blood ran down the faster, to
be sure, but I was my own master again and only tacked
to the mast by my coat and shirt.
These last I broke through with a sudden jerk, and then
regained the deck by the starboard shrouds. For
nothing in the world would I have again ventured,
shaken as I was, upon the overhanging port shrouds from
which Israel had so lately fallen.
I went below and did what I could for my wound; it pained
me a good deal and still bled freely, but it was neither
deep nor dangerous, nor did it greatly gall me when I used
my arm. Then I looked around me, and as the ship was now,
in a sense, my own, I began to think of clearing it from
its last passenger—the dead man, O’Brien.
He had pitched, as I have said, against the bulwarks,
where he lay like some horrible, ungainly sort of puppet,
life-size, indeed, but how different from life’s colour
or life’s comeliness! In that position I could easily
have my way with him, and as the habit of tragical
adventures had worn off almost all my terror for the
dead, I took him by the waist as if he had been a sack
of bran and with one good heave, tumbled him overboard.
He went in with a sounding plunge; the red cap came off
and remained floating on the surface; and as soon as the
splash subsided, I could see him and Israel lying side
by side, both wavering with the tremulous movement of
the water. O’Brien, though still quite a young man, was
very bald. There he lay, with that bald head across the
knees of the man who had killed him and the quick fishes
steering to and fro over both.
I was now alone upon the ship; the tide had just
turned. The sun was within so few degrees of setting
that already the shadow of the pines upon the western
shore began to reach right across the anchorage and
fall in patterns on the deck. The evening breeze had
sprung up, and though it was well warded off by the
hill with the two peaks upon the east, the cordage had
begun to sing a little softly to itself and the idle
sails to rattle to and fro.
I began to see a danger to the ship. The jibs I
speedily doused and brought tumbling to the deck, but
the main-sail was a harder matter. Of course, when the
schooner canted over, the boom had swung out-board, and
the cap of it and a foot or two of sail hung even under
water. I thought this made it still more dangerous;
yet the strain was so heavy that I half feared to
meddle. At last I got my knife and cut the halyards.
The peak dropped instantly, a great belly of loose
canvas floated broad upon the water, and since, pull as
I liked, I could not budge the downhall, that was the
extent of what I could accomplish. For the rest, the
HISPANIOLA must trust to luck, like myself.
By this time the whole anchorage had fallen into
shadow—the last rays, I remember, falling through a
glade of the wood and shining bright as jewels on the
flowery mantle of the wreck. It began to be chill; the
tide was rapidly fleeting seaward, the schooner
settling more and more on her beam-ends.
I scrambled forward and looked over. It seemed shallow
enough, and holding the cut hawser in both hands for a
last security, I let myself drop softly overboard. The
water scarcely reached my waist; the sand was firm and
covered with ripple marks, and I waded ashore in great
spirits, leaving the HISPANIOLA on her side, with her
main-sail trailing wide upon the surface of the bay.
About the same time, the sun went fairly down and the
breeze whistled low in the dusk among the tossing pines.
At least, and at last, I was off the sea, nor had I
returned thence empty-handed. There lay the schooner,
clear at last from buccaneers and ready for our own men
to board and get to sea again. I had nothing nearer my
fancy than to get home to the stockade and boast of my
achievements. Possibly I might be blamed a bit for my
truantry, but the recapture of the HISPANIOLA was a
clenching answer, and I hoped that even Captain
Smollett would confess I had not lost my time.
So thinking, and in famous spirits, I began to set
my face homeward for the block house and my companions.
I remembered that the most easterly of the rivers which
drain into Captain Kidd’s anchorage ran from the two-peaked
hill upon my left, and I bent my course in that direction
that I might pass the stream while it was small. The wood
was pretty open, and keeping along the lower spurs, I had
soon turned the corner of that hill, and not long after
waded to the mid-calf across the watercourse.
This brought me near to where I had encountered Ben
Gunn, the maroon; and I walked more circumspectly,
keeping an eye on every side. The dusk had come nigh
hand completely, and as I opened out the cleft between
the two peaks, I became aware of a wavering glow
against the sky, where, as I judged, the man of the
island was cooking his supper before a roaring fire.
And yet I wondered, in my heart, that he should show
himself so careless. For if I could see this radiance,
might it not reach the eyes of Silver himself where he
camped upon the shore among the marshes?
Gradually the night fell blacker; it was all I could do
to guide myself even roughly towards my destination;
the double hill behind me and the Spy-glass on my right
hand loomed faint and fainter; the stars were few and
pale; and in the low ground where I wandered I kept
tripping among bushes and rolling into sandy pits.
Suddenly a kind of brightness fell about me. I looked
up; a pale glimmer of moonbeams had alighted on the
summit of the Spy-glass, and soon after I saw something
broad and silvery moving low down behind the trees, and
knew the moon had risen.
With this to help me, I passed rapidly over what
remained to me of my journey, and sometimes walking,
sometimes running, impatiently drew near to the
stockade. Yet, as I began to thread the grove that
lies before it, I was not so thoughtless but that I
slacked my pace and went a trifle warily. It would
have been a poor end of my adventures to get shot down
by my own party in mistake.
The moon was climbing higher and higher, its light
began to fall here and there in masses through the more
open districts of the wood, and right in front of me a
glow of a different colour appeared among the trees.
It was red and hot, and now and again it was a little
darkened—as it were, the embers of a bonfire smouldering.
For the life of me I could not think what it might be.
At last I came right down upon the borders of the
clearing. The western end was already steeped in moon-shine; the rest, and the block house itself, still lay
in a black shadow chequered with long silvery streaks
of light. On the other side of the house an immense
fire had burned itself into clear embers and shed a
steady, red reverberation, contrasted strongly with the
mellow paleness of the moon. There was not a soul
stirring nor a sound beside the noises of the breeze.
I stopped, with much wonder in my heart, and perhaps a
little terror also. It had not been our way to build
great fires; we were, indeed, by the captain’s orders,
somewhat niggardly of firewood, and I began to fear
that something had gone wrong while I was absent.
I stole round by the eastern end, keeping close in
shadow, and at a convenient place, where the darkness
was thickest, crossed the palisade.
To make assurance surer, I
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