Well, I said, I don t understand one word that you ve been saying.
But that s neither here nor there; for how am I to get on board?
Ah, said he, that s the hitch, for sure. Well, there s my boat, that
I made with my two hands. I keep her under the white rock. If the worst
come to the worst, we might try that after dark. Hi! he broke out.
What s that?
For just then, although the sun had still an hour or two to run, all the
echoes of the island awoke and bellowed to the thunder of a cannon.
They have begun to fight! I cried. Follow me.
And I began to run towards the anchorage, my terrors all forgotten,
while close at my side the marooned man in his goatskins trotted easily
and lightly.
Left, left, says he; keep to your left hand, mate Jim! Under the
trees with you! Theer s where I killed my first goat. They don t come
down here now; they re all mastheaded on them mountings for the fear
of Benjamin Gunn. Ah! And there s the cetemery --cemetery, he must have
meant. You see the mounds? I come here and prayed, nows and thens, when
I thought maybe a Sunday would be about doo. It weren t quite a chapel,
but it seemed more solemn like; and then, says you, Ben Gunn was
short-handed--no chapling, nor so much as a Bible and a flag, you says.
So he kept talking as I ran, neither expecting nor receiving any answer.
The cannon-shot was followed after a considerable interval by a volley
of small arms.
Another pause, and then, not a quarter of a mile in front of me, I
beheld the Union Jack flutter in the air above a wood.
PART FOUR--The Stockade
84