pon 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 clenching 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 block house 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 eyes
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 towards 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 moonbeams had alighted on the summit of the Spy-glass, and soon after
I saw something broad and silvery moving low down behind the trees, and
knew the moon had risen.

With this to help me, I passed rapidly over what remained to me of my
journey, and sometimes walking, sometimes running, impatiently drew near
to the stockade. Yet, as I began to thread the grove that lies b