My foot struck something yielding—­it was a sleeper’s leg; and he turned and groaned, but without awaking.

And then, all of a sudden, a shrill voice broke forth out of the darkness: 

“Pieces of eight!  Pieces of eight!  Pieces of eight!  Pieces of eight!  Pieces of eight!” and so forth, without pause or change, like the clacking of a tiny mill.

Silver’s green parrot, Captain Flint!  It was she whom I had heard pecking at a piece of bark; it was she, keeping better watch than any human being, who thus announced my arrival with her wearisome refrain.

I had no time left me to recover.  At the sharp, clipping tone of the parrot, the sleepers awoke and sprang up; and with a mighty oath, the voice of Silver cried, “Who goes?”

I turned to run, struck violently against one person, recoiled, and ran full into the arms of a second, who for his part closed upon and held me tight.

“Bring a torch, Dick,” said Silver when my capture was thus assured.

And one of the men left the log-house and presently returned with a lighted brand.

PART SIX—­Captain Silver

28

In the Enemy’s Camp

The red glare of the torch, lighting up the interior of the block house, showed me the worst of my apprehensions realized.  The pirates were in possession of the house and stores:  there was the cask of cognac, there were the pork and bread, as before, and what tenfold increased my horror, not a sign of any prisoner.  I could only judge that all had perished, and my heart smote me sorely that I had not been there to perish with them.

There were six of the buccaneers, all told; not another man was left alive.  Five of them were on their feet, flushed and swollen, suddenly called out of the first sleep of drunkenness.  The sixth had only risen upon his elbow; he was deadly pale, and the blood-stained bandage round his head told that he had recently been wounded, and still more recently dressed.  I remembered the man who had been shot and had run back among the woods in the great attack, and doubted not that this was he.

The parrot sat, preening her plumage, on Long John’s shoulder.  He himself, I thought, looked somewhat paler and more stern than I was used to.  He still wore the fine broadcloth suit in which he had fulfilled his mission, but it was bitterly the worse for wear, daubed with clay and torn with the sharp briers of the wood.

“So,” said he, “here’s Jim Hawkins, shiver my timbers!  Dropped in, like, eh?  Well, come, I take that friendly.”

And thereupon he sat down across the brandy cask and began to fill a pipe.

“Give me a loan of the link, Dick,” said he; and then, when he had a good light, “That’ll do, lad,” he added; “stick the glim in the wood heap; and you, gentlemen, bring yourselves to!  You needn’t stand up for Mr. Hawkins; he’ll excuse you, you may lay to that.  And so, Jim”—­stopping the tobacco—­“here you were, and quite a pleasant surprise for poor old John.  I see you were smart when first I set my eyes on you, but this here gets away from me clean, it do.”