to draw as close as I could manage, under
the favorable ambush of the crouching trees.

I could tell the direction of the speakers pretty exactly, not only by
the sound of their voices, but by the behavior of the few birds that
still hung in alarm above the heads of the intruders.

Crawling on all-fours, I made steadily but slowly towards them, till at
last, raising my head to an aperture among the leaves, I could see clear
down into a little green dell beside the marsh, and closely set about
with trees, where Long John Silver and another of the crew stood face to
face in conversation.

The sun beat full upon them. Silver had thrown his hat beside him on the
ground, and his great, smooth, blonde face, all shining with heat, was
lifted to the other man's in a kind of appeal.

"Mate," he was saying, "it's because I thinks gold dust of you--gold
dust, and you may lay to that! If I hadn't took to you like pitch, do
you think I'd have been here a-warning of you? All's up--you can't make
nor mend; it's to save your neck that I'm a-speaking, and if one of the
wild 'uns knew it, where 'ud I be, Tom--now tell me, where 'ud I be?"

"Silver," said the other man--and I observed he was not only red in the
face, but spoke as hoarse as a crow, and his voice shook, too, like a
taut rope--"Silver," says he, "you're old, and you're honest, or has the
name for it; and you've money, too, which lots of poor sailors hasn't;
and you're brave, or I'm mistook. And will you tell me you'll let
yourself be led away with that kind of a mess of swabs? Not you! As sure
as God sees me, I'd sooner lose my hand. If I turn agin my dooty--"

And then all of a sudden he was interrupted by a noise. I had found one
of the honest hands--well, here, at that same moment, came news of
another. Far away out in the marsh there arose, all of a sudden, a sound
like the cry of anger, then another on the back of it, and then one
horrid, long-drawn scream. The rocks of the Spy-glass re-echoed it a
score of times; the whole troop of marsh-birds rose again, darkening
heaven with a simultaneous whir; and long after that death-yell was
still ringing in my brain, silence had re-established its empire, and
only the rustle of the redescending birds and the boom of the distant
surges disturbed the languor of the afternoon.

Tom had leaped at the sound, like a horse at the spur; but Silver had
not winked an eye. He stood where he was, resting lightly on his crutch,
watc