f the mountain, and I could
scarce persuade myself that murder had actually been done and a human
life cruelly cut short a moment since, before my eyes.

But now John put his hand into his pocket, brought out a whistle, and
blew upon it several modulated blasts, that rang far across the heated
air. I could not tell, of course, the meaning of the signal, but it
instantly awoke my fears. More men would be coming. I might be
discovered. They had already slain two of the honest people; after Tom
and Alan, might not I come next?

Instantly I began to extricate myself and crawl back again, with what
speed and silence I could manage, to the more open portion of the wood.
As I did so I could hear hails coming and going between the old
buccaneer and his comrades, and this sound of danger lent me wings. As
soon as I was clear of the thicket, I ran as I never ran before, scarce
minding the direction of my flight, so long as it led me from the
murderers, and as I ran, fear grew and grew upon me, until it turned
into a kind of frenzy.

Indeed, could anyone be more entirely lost than I? When the gun fired,
how should I dare to go down to the boats among those fiends, still
smoking from their crime? Would not the first of them who saw me wring
my neck like a snipe's? Would not my absence itself be an evidence to
them of my alarm, and therefore of my fatal knowledge? It was all over,
I thought. Good-by to the _Hispaniola_, good-by to the squire, the
doctor, and the captain. There was nothing left for me but death by
starvation, or death by the hands of the mutineers.

All this while, as I say, I was still running, and, without taking any
notice, I had drawn near to the foot of the little hill with the two
peaks, and had got into a part of the island where the wild oaks grew
more widely apart, and seemed more like forest trees in their bearing
and dimensions. Mingled with these were a few scattered pines, some
fifty, some nearer seventy, feet high. The air, too, smelled more fresh
than down beside the marsh.

And here a fresh alarm brought me to a standstill with a thumping heart.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XV

THE MAN OF THE ISLAND

From the side of the hill, which was here steep and stony, a spout of
gravel was dislodged, and fell rattling and bounding through the trees.
My eyes turned instinctively in that direction, and I saw a figure leap
with great rapidity behind the trunk of a pine. What it was, whether
bear, o