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Treasure Island
Chapter 32. The Treasure-hunt. The Voice Among the Trees
Because of fear from the alarm, the whole group sat down as soon as they reached the top of the hill.
They also sat to let Silver and the sick men rest.
The plateau was tilted a little toward the west, so this spot gave us a wide view on both sides.
In front of us, above the tree-tops, we saw the Cape of the Woods with waves breaking around it.
Behind us, we looked down on the anchorage and Skeleton Island.
And we could see clearly across the spit and the eastern lowlands a great area of open sea to the east.
Above us rose the Spy-glass, here dotted with single pine trees, there black with cliffs.
There was no sound except the distant breakers rising from all around and the chirp of countless insects in the bushes.
There wasn't a man or a sail on the sea.
The very size of the view made the feeling of loneliness stronger.
Silver sat and took some bearings with his compass.
"There are three 'tall trees,'"
He said, "About in the right line from Skeleton Island, 'Spy-glass shoulder' means that lower point there."
"He said, "It's child's play to find the treasure now. I've half a mind to eat first.
"I don't feel sharp," growled Morgan.
"Thinking about Flint. I think it was, that did me in."
"Ah, well, my son, you can thank your stars he's dead," said Silver.
"He was an ugly devil," cried a third pirate with a shudder.
"That blue in the face too!"
"That was how the rum affected him," added Merry.
"Blue! Well, I reckon he was blue. That's a true word."
Ever since they had found the skeleton and started thinking about this, they had spoken lower and lower.
By now they were almost whispering, so the sound of their talk hardly broke the silence of the wood.
All of a sudden, from the middle of the trees in front of us, a thin, high, trembling voice started singing the well-known tune and words,
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest. Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
I have never seen men more terribly affected than the pirates.
The color left their six faces as if by magic.
Some jumped to their feet, some grabbed hold of others, Morgan lay flat on the ground.
"It's Flint, by, !" cried Merry.
The song stopped as suddenly as it had started.
It broke off, you'd have said, in the middle of a note, as if someone had put his hand over the singer's mouth.
Coming through the clear, sunny air among the green tree-tops, I thought it had sounded light and sweet.
The effect on my companions was even stranger.
"Come," said Silver, struggling to get the words out with his pale lips.
"This won't do."
"Stand by to turn around."
"This is a strange start, and I can't name the voice, but it's someone playing a trick, someone that's flesh and blood,"
"And you can be sure of that."
His courage had come back as he spoke, and some color had returned to his face with it.
The others had already started to listen to this encouragement and were recovering a little, when the same voice broke out again.
This time it wasn't singing, but a faint, distant call that echoed even more faintly among the cracks of the Spy-glass.
"Darby M'Graw," it wailed, for that's the best word to describe the sound, "Darby M'Graw! Darby M'Graw!" again and again and again.
Then it rose a little higher, and with an oath that I won't repeat, "Bring the rum aft, Darby!"
The pirates stood frozen to the ground, their eyes wide open.
Long after the voice had died away, they still stared in silence, terribly afraid, straight ahead.
"That settles it!" gasped one.
"Let's go."
"Those were his last words," moaned Morgan.
"His last words above deck."
Dick had his Bible out and was praying without stopping.
He had been well brought up, had Dick, before he came to sea and fell in with bad companions.
Still Silver wasn't defeated, I could hear his teeth rattling in his head, but he hadn't given up yet.
"Nobody on this island ever heard of Darby," he muttered.
"No one except us who are here."
Then, making a great effort, "Shipmates," he cried, "I'm here to get that treasure, and I won't be beaten by man or devil."
"I was never afraid of Flint when he was alive, and by the powers, I'll face him dead."
"There's seven hundred thousand pounds not a quarter of a mile from here."
"When did a gentleman of fortune ever turn his back on that much money for a drunken, blue-faced sailor, dead too"?
But there was no sign of returning courage in his followers.
Instead, there was growing terror at the disrespect of his words.
"Stop there, John!" said Merry.
"Don't you cross a spirit."
The rest were all too terrified to reply.
They'd have run away separately if they had dared, but fear kept them together and kept them close to John, as if his boldness helped them.
He, for his part, had pretty much fought his weakness down.
"Spirit? Well, maybe," he said.
"But there's one thing that's not clear to me."
"There was an echo."
"Now, no one has ever seen a spirit with a shadow."
"So what's he doing with an echo, I'd like to know?"
"That's not natural, surely?"
This argument seemed weak enough to me.
But you can never tell what will affect superstitious people, and to my surprise, George Merry was greatly relieved.
"Well, that's true," he said.
"You've got a good head on your shoulders, John, no mistake."
"Turn around, mates!"
"This crew is on the wrong track, I do believe."
"And come to think of it, it was like Flint's voice, I admit, but not exactly the same, after all."
"It was more like someone else's voice now, it was more like,"
"By the powers, Ben Gunn!" roared Silver.
"Yes, and so it was," cried Morgan, jumping to his knees.
"It was Ben Gunn!"
"It doesn't make much difference, does it?" asked Dick.
"Ben Gunn isn't here in the body any more than Flint."
But the older men treated this remark with scorn.
"Why, nobody cares about Ben Gunn," cried Merry.
"Dead or alive, nobody cares about him."
It was amazing how their spirits had returned and how the natural color had come back to their faces.
Soon they were chatting together, with pauses to listen.
Not long after, hearing no more sound, they picked up their tools and set off again.
Merry walked first with Silver's compass to keep them on the right line with Skeleton Island.
He had told the truth, dead or alive, nobody cared about Ben Gunn.
Dick alone still held his Bible and looked around him as he walked with fearful glances.
But he found no sympathy, and Silver even joked about his precautions.
"I told you,"
"He said, "I told you you ruined your Bible. If it's no good for swearing, what would a spirit care for? Not that!
He snapped his big fingers, stopping for a moment on his crutch.
But Dick couldn't be comforted, In fact, it was soon clear to me that the boy was getting sick.
The fever that Dr. Livesey had predicted was clearly rising fast, made worse by the heat, exhaustion, and the shock of his fear.
It was fine, open walking here on the top.
Our path went a little downhill, because, as I've said, the plateau tilted toward the west.
The pine trees, big and small, grew far apart.
Even between the clumps of nutmeg and azalea, wide open spaces baked in the hot sunshine.
We traveled northwest across the island, On one side, we drew closer to the Spy-glass hill.
On the other side, we looked out over the western bay where I had once been tossed in the coracle.
We reached the first of the tall trees, and the bearings showed it was the wrong one.
The same with the second, the third rose nearly two hundred feet into the air above a clump of undergrowth.
It was a giant tree, with a red trunk as big as a cottage and a wide shadow where a company could move.
It was visible far out to sea on both east and west and could be marked as a sailing landmark on charts.
But it wasn't its size that impressed my companions now.
It was the knowledge that seven hundred thousand pounds in gold lay buried somewhere under its spreading shadow.
The thought of the money, as they drew nearer, swallowed up their earlier terrors.
Their eyes burned in their heads, Their feet grew faster and lighter.
Their whole souls were fixed on that fortune, that whole lifetime of luxury and pleasure, that lay waiting there for each of them.
Silver hobbled, grunting, on his crutch, his nostrils stuck out and quivered.
He cursed like a madman when the flies settled on his hot, shiny face.
He pulled furiously at the rope that held me to him, and from time to time turned his eyes on me with a deadly look.
He certainly took no trouble to hide his thoughts, and I certainly read them like print.
In the nearness of the gold, everything else had been forgotten.
His promise and the doctor's warning were both things of the past.
I couldn't doubt that he hoped to seize the treasure.
He planned to find and board the Hispaniola under cover of night.
Then he'd cut every honest throat on that island.
Finally, he'd sail away loaded with crimes and riches, as he had first planned.
Shaken as I was by these fears, it was hard for me to keep up with the fast pace of the treasure-hunters.
Now and then I stumbled, and then Silver pulled roughly at the rope and gave me his murderous looks.
Dick, who had fallen 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 misery, I was haunted by the thought of a tragedy on that plateau.
There, the evil pirate with the blue face had killed his six helpers with his own hand.
He died later at Savannah, singing and shouting for drink.
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 edge of the thicket.
"Hurrah, mates, all together!" shouted Merry.
And the front men broke into a run.
And suddenly, not ten yards further, we saw them stop.
A low cry arose, Silver doubled his pace, digging away with the foot of his crutch like a man possessed.
And the next moment, he and I had also come to a dead stop.
In front of us was a big hole in the ground.
It wasn't very recent, because the sides had fallen in and grass had grown on the bottom.
In it were the shaft of a pickaxe broken in two and the boards of several packing cases scattered around.
On one of these boards I saw, branded with a hot iron, the name WALRUS, the name of Flint's ship.
Everything was clear to me now, the hiding place had been found and robbed.
The seven hundred thousand pounds were gone!