us, and you would have thought any one would have
been glad to get to land after being so long at sea, my heart sank, as
the saying is, into my boots; and from that first look onward I hated the
very thought of Treasure Island.

We had a dreary morning's work before us, for there was no sign of any
wind, and the boats had to be got out and manned, and the ship warped
three or four miles round the corner of the island, and up the narrow
passage to the haven behind Skeleton Island. I volunteered for one of the
boats, where I had, of course, no business. The heat was sweltering, and
the men grumbled fiercely over their work. Anderson was in command of my
boat, and instead of keeping the crew in order, he grumbled as loud as
the worst.

"Well," he said, with an oath, "it's not for ever."

I thought this was a very bad sign; for, up to that day, the men had gone
briskly and willingly about their business; but the very sight of the
island had relaxed the cords of discipline.

All the way in, Long John stood by the steersman and conned the ship. He
knew the passage like the palm of his hand; and though the man in the
chains got everywhere more water than was down in the chart, John never
hesitated once.

"There's a strong scour with the ebb," he said, "and this here passage
has been dug out, in a manner of speaking, with a spade."

We brought up just where the anchor was in the chart, about a third of a
mile from either shore, the mainland on one side, and Skeleton Island on
the other. The bottom was clean sand. The plunge of our anchor sent up
clouds of birds wheeling and crying over the woods; but in less than a
minute they were down again, and all was once more silent.

The place was entirely land-locked, buried in woods, the trees coming
right down to high-water mark, the shores mostly flat, and the hill-tops
standing round at a distance in a sort of amphitheatre, one here, one
there. Two little rivers, or rather, two swamps, emptied out into this
pond, as you might call it; and the foliage round that part of the shore
had a kind of poisonous brightness. From the ship we could see nothing of
the house or stockade, for they were quite buried among trees; and if it
had not been for the chart on the companion, we might have been the first
that had ever anchored there since the island arose out of the seas.

There was not a breath of air moving, nor a sound but that of the surf
booming half a mile away along the beach