beam-ends.

I scrambled forward and looked over. It seemed shallow enough, and
holding the cut hawser in both hands for a last security, I let myself
drop softly overboard. The water scarcely reached my waist; the sand was
firm and covered with ripple-marks, and I waded ashore in great spirits,
leaving the _Hispaniola_ on her side, with her mainsail trailing wide
upon the surface of the bay. About the same time the sun went fairly
down, and the breeze whistled low in the dusk among the tossing pines.

At least, and at last, I was off the sea, nor had I returned thence
empty-handed. There lay the schooner, clear at last from buccaneers and
ready for our own men to board and get to sea again. I had nothing
nearer my fancy than to get home to the stockade and boast of my
achievements. Possibly I might be blamed a bit for my truantry, but the
recapture of the _Hispaniola_ was a clinching answer, and I hoped that
even Captain Smollett would confess I had not lost my time.

So thinking, and in famous spirits, I began to set my face homeward for
the blockhouse and my companions. I remembered that the most easterly of
the rivers which drain into Captain Kidd's anchorage ran from the
two-peaked hill upon my left; and I bent my course in that direction
that I might pass the stream while it was small. The wood was pretty
open, and keeping along the lower spurs, I had soon turned the corner of
that hill, and not long after waded to the mid-calf across the
watercourse.

This brought me near to where I had encountered Ben Gunn, the maroon,
and I walked more circumspectly, keeping an eye on every side. The dusk
had come nigh hand completely, and, as I opened out the cleft between
the two peaks, I became aware of a wavering glow against the sky, where,
as I judged, the man of the island was cooking his supper before a
roaring fire. And yet I wondered, in my heart, that he should show
himself so careless. For if I could see this radiance, might it not
reach the eye of Silver himself where he camped upon the shore among the
marshes?

Gradually the night fell blacker; it was all I could do to guide myself
even roughly toward my destination; the double hill behind me and the
Spy-glass on my right hand loomed faint and fainter, the stars were few
and pale, and in the low ground where I wandered I kept tripping among
bushes and rolling into sandy pits.

Suddenly a kind of brightness fell about me. I looked up; a pale glimmer
of moonb