TREASURE ISLAND
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 Spy– glass, 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.”
Dick had his Bible out and was praying volubly. He had been well
brought up, had Dick, 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 boozy old seaman 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
Dick. “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.
Dick 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 Dick 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. Dick, 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!