mounting from all round, and the chirp of
countless insects in the brush. Not a man, not a sail upon the sea; the
very largeness of the view increased the sense of solitude.

Silver, as he sat, took certain bearings with his compass.

"There are three 'tall trees,'" said he, "about in the right line from
Skeleton Island. 'Spy-glass Shoulder,' I take it, means that lower p'int
there. It's child's-play to find the stuff now. I've half a mind to dine
first."

"I don't feel sharp," growled Morgan. "Thinkin' o' Flint--I think it
were--'as done me."

"Ah, well, my son, you praise your stars he's dead," said Silver.

"He were an ugly devil," cried a third pirate with a shudder; "that blue
in the face, too!"

"That was how the rum took him," added Merry. "Blue! well, I reckon he
was blue. That's a true word."

Ever since they had found the skeleton and got upon this train of
thought, they had spoken lower and lower, and they had almost got to
whispering by now, so that the sound of their talk hardly interrupted the
silence of the wood. All of a sudden, out of the middle of the trees in
front of us, a thin, high, trembling voice struck up the well-known air
and words:--

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

I never have seen men more dreadfully affected than the pirates. The
colour went from their six faces like enchantment; some leaped to their
feet, some clawed hold of others; Morgan grovelled on the ground.

"It's Flint, by ----!" cried Merry.

The song had stopped as suddenly as it began--broken off, you would have
said, in the middle of a note, as though some one had laid his hand upon
the singer's mouth. Coming so far through the clear, sunny atmosphere
among the green tree-tops, I thought it had sounded airily and sweetly;
and the effect on my companions was the stranger.

"Come," said Silver, struggling with his ashen lips to get the word out,
"this won't do. Stand by to go about. This is a rum start, and I can't
name the voice: but it's some one skylarking--some one that's flesh and
blood, and you may lay to that."

His courage had come back as he spoke, and some of the colour to his face
along with it. Already the others had begun to lend an ear to this
encouragement, and were coming a little to themselves, when the same
voice broke out again--not this time singing, but in a faint distant
hail, that echoed yet fainter among the clefts of the Spy-glass.

"Dar