ank ye, says you."

"Ben, Ben," murmured Silver, "to think as you've done me!"

The doctor sent back Gray for one of the pickaxes, deserted, in their
flight, by the mutineers; and then, as we proceeded leisurely down-hill
to where the boats were lying, related, in a few words, what had taken
place. It was a story that profoundly interested Silver; and Ben Gunn,
the half-idiot maroon, was the hero from beginning to end.

Ben, in his long, lonely wanderings about the island had found the
skeleton--it was he that had rifled it; he had found the treasure; he had
dug it up (it was the haft of his pickaxe that lay broken in the
excavation); he had carried it on his back, in many weary journeys, from
the foot of a tall pine to a cave he had on the two-pointed hill at the
north-east angle of the island, and there it had lain stored in safety
since two months before the arrival of the _Hispaniola_.

When the doctor had wormed this secret from him, on the afternoon of the
attack, and when, next morning, he saw the anchorage deserted, he had
gone to Silver, given him the chart, which was now useless--given him the
stores, for Ben Gunn's cave was well supplied with goat's meat salted by
himself--given anything and everything to get a chance of moving in
safety from the stockade to the two-pointed hill, there to be clear of
malaria and keep a guard upon the money.

"As for you, Jim," he said, "it went against my heart, but I did what I
thought best for those who had stood by their duty; and if you were not
one of these, whose fault was it?"

That morning, finding that I was to be involved in the horrid
disappointment he had prepared for the mutineers, he had run all the way
to the cave, and, leaving squire to guard the captain, had taken Gray and
the maroon, and started, making the diagonal across the island, to be at
hand beside the pine. Soon, however, he saw that our party had the start
of him: and Ben Gunn, being fleet of foot, had been despatched in front
to do his best alone. Then it had occurred to him to work upon the
superstitions of his former shipmates; and he was so far successful that
Gray and the doctor had come up and were already ambushed before the
arrival of the treasure-hunters.

"Ah," said Silver, "it were fortunate for me that I had Hawkins here. You
would have let old John be cut to bits, and never given it a thought,
doctor."

"Not a thought," replied Dr. Livesey cheerily.

And by this time we had re