upon his
shoulder and gabbled odds and ends of purposeless sea-talk. I had a line
about my waist, and followed obediently after the sea-cook, who held the
loose end of the rope, now in his free hand, now between his powerful
teeth. For all the world, I was led like a dancing bear.

The other men were variously burdened; some carrying picks and
shovels--for that had been the very first necessary they brought ashore
from the _Hispaniola_--others laden with pork, bread, and brandy for the
midday meal. All the stores, I observed, came from our stock, and I
could see the truth of Silver's words the night before. Had he not
struck a bargain with the doctor, he and his mutineers, deserted by the
ship, must have been driven to subsist on clear water, and the proceeds
of their hunting. Water would have been little to their taste; a sailor
is not usually a good shot; and, besides all that, when they were so
short of eatables, it was not likely they would be very flush of powder.

Well, thus equipped, we all set out--even the fellow with the broken
head, who should certainly have kept in shadow--and straggled, one after
another, to the beach, where the two gigs awaited us. Even these bore
trace of the drunken folly of the pirates, one in a broken thwart, and
both in their muddied and unbailed condition. Both were to be carried
along with us, for the sake of safety; and so, with our numbers divided
between them, we set forth upon the bosom of the anchorage.

As we pulled over, there was some discussion on the chart. The red cross
was, of course, far too large to be a guide; and the terms of the note
on the back, as you will hear, admitted of some ambiguity. They ran, the
reader may remember, thus:

"Tall tree, Spy-glass shoulder, bearing a point to the N. of N.N.E.

"Skeleton Island E.S.E. and by E.

"Ten feet."

A tall tree was thus the principal mark. Now, right before us, the
anchorage was bounded by a plateau from two to three hundred feet high,
adjoining on the north the sloping southern shoulder of the Spy-glass,
and rising again toward the south into the rough, cliffy eminence called
the Mizzen-mast Hill. The top of the plateau was dotted thickly with
pine trees of varying height. Every here and there, one of a different
species rose forty or fifty feet clear above its neighbors, and which of
these was the particular "tall tree" of Captain Flint could only be
decided on the spot, and by the readings of the