This was certainly the end for both of us, I thought.  How I cursed the cowardice of the neighbours; how I blamed my poor mother for her honesty and her greed, for her past foolhardiness and present weakness!  We were just at the little bridge, by good fortune; and I helped her, tottering as she was, to the edge of the bank, where, sure enough, she gave a sigh and fell on my shoulder.  I do not know how I found the strength to do it at all, and I am afraid it was roughly done, but I managed to drag her down the bank and a little way under the arch.  Farther I could not move her, for the bridge was too low to let me do more than crawl below it.  So there we had to stay—­my mother almost entirely exposed and both of us within earshot of the inn.

5

The Last of the Blind Man

My curiosity, in a sense, was stronger than my fear, for I could not remain where I was, but crept back to the bank again, whence, sheltering my head behind a bush of broom, I might command the road before our door.  I was scarcely in position ere my enemies began to arrive, seven or eight of them, running hard, their feet beating out of time along the road and the man with the lantern some paces in front.  Three men ran together, hand in hand; and I made out, even through the mist, that the middle man of this trio was the blind beggar.  The next moment his voice showed me that I was right.

“Down with the door!” he cried.

“Aye, aye, sir!” answered two or three; and a rush was made upon the Admiral Benbow, the lantern-bearer following; and then I could see them pause, and hear speeches passed in a lower key, as if they were surprised to find the door open.  But the pause was brief, for the blind man again issued his commands.  His voice sounded louder and higher, as if he were afire with eagerness and rage.

“In, in, in!” he shouted, and cursed them for their delay.

Four or five of them obeyed at once, two remaining on the road with the formidable beggar.  There was a pause, then a cry of surprise, and then a voice shouting from the house, “Bill’s dead.”

But the blind man swore at them again for their delay.

“Search him, some of you shirking lubbers, and the rest of you aloft and get the chest,” he cried.

I could hear their feet rattling up our old stairs, so that the house must have shook with it.  Promptly afterwards, fresh sounds of astonishment arose; the window of the captain’s room was thrown open with a slam and a jingle of broken glass, and a man leaned out into the moonlight, head and shoulders, and addressed the blind beggar on the road below him.

“Pew,” he cried, “they’ve been before us.  Someone’s turned the chest out alow and aloft.”

“Is it there?” roared Pew.

“The money’s there.”

The blind man cursed the money.

“Flint’s fist, I mean,” he cried.

“We don’t see it here nohow,” returned the man.