My curiosity, in a sense, was stronger than my fear; for I could not remain where I was, but crept back to the bank again, whence, sheltering my head behind a bush of broom, I might command the road before our door.
I was scarcely in position ere my enemies began to arrive, seven or eight of them, running hard, their feet beating out of time along the road, and the man with the lantern some paces in front. Three men ran together, hand in hand; and I made out, even through the mist, that the middle man of this trio was the blind beggar. The next moment his voice showed me that I was right.
`Down with the door!' he cried.
`Ay, ay, sir!' answered two or three; and a rush was made upon the `Admiral Benbow,' the lantern-bearer following; and then I could see them pause, and hear speeches passed in a lower key, as if they were surprised to find the door open. But the pause was brief, for the blind man again issued his commands. His voice sounded louder and higher, as if he were afire with eagerness and rage.
`In, in, in!' he shouted, and cursed them for their delay. Four or five of them obeyed at once, two remaining on the road with the formidable beggar.
There was a pause, then a cry of surprise, and then a voice shouting from the house:--`Bill's dead!'
But the blind man swore at them again for their delay.
`Search him, some of you shirking lubbers, and the rest of you aloft and get the chest,' he cried.
I could hear their feet rattling up our old stairs, so that the house must have shook with it. Promptly afterwards, fresh sounds of astonishment arose; the window of the captain's room was thrown open with a slam and a jingle of broken glass; and a man leaned out into the moonlight, head and shoulders, and addressed the blind beggar on the road below him.
`Pew,' he cried, `they've been before us. Someone's turned the chest out alow and aloft.'
`Is it there?' roared Pew.
`The money's there.'
The blind man cursed the money.
`Flint's fist, I mean,' he cried.
`We don't see it here nohow,' returned the man.
`Here, you below there, is it on Bill?' cried the blind man again.
At that, another fellow, probably him who had remained below to search the captain's body, came to the door of the inn. `Bill's been overhauled a'ready,' said he, `nothin' left.'
`It's these people of the inn - it's that boy. I wish I had put his eyes out!' cried the blind man, Pew. `They were here no time ago - they had the door bolted when I tried it. Scatter lads, and find 'em.'
`Sure enough, they left their glim here,' said the fellow from the window.
`Scatter and find 'em! Rout the house out!' reiterated Pew striking with his stick upon the road.
Then there followed a great to-do through all our old inn heavy feet pounding to and fro, furniture thrown over, door: kicked in, until the very rocks re-echoed, and the men came out again, one after another, on the road, and declared that we were nowhere to be found. And just then the same whistle that had alarmed my mother and myself over the dead captain's money was once more clearly audible through the night, but this time twice repeated. I had thought it to be the blind man's trumpet, so to speak, summoning his crew to the assault; but I now found that it was a signal from the hillside towards the hamlet, and, from its effect upon the buccaneers a signal to warn them of approaching danger.
`There's Dirk again,' said one. `Twice! We'll have to budge, mates.'
`Budge, you skulk!' cried Pew. Dirk was a fool and coward from the first - you wouldn't mind him. They must be close by; they can't be far; you have your hands on it Scatter and look for them, dogs! Oh, shiver my soul,' he cried `if I had eyes!'
This appeal seemed to produce some effect, for two of the fellows began to look here and there among the lumber, but halfheartedly, I thought, and with half an eye to their own danger all the time, while the rest stood irresolute on the road.
`You have your hands on thousands, you fools, and you hang a leg! You'd be as rich as kings if you could find it, and you know it's here, and you stand there skulking. There wasn't one of you dared face Bill, and I did it - a blind man! And I'm to lose my chance for you! I'm to be a poor, crawling beggar, sponging for rum, when I might be rolling in a coach!
If you had the pluck of a weevil in a biscuit you would catch them still.'
`Hang it, Pew, we've got the doubloons!' grumbled one. `They might have hid the blessed thing,' said another.
`Take the Georges, Pew, and don't stand here squalling.'
Squalling was the word for it, Pew's anger rose so high at these objections; till at last, his passion completely taking the upper hand, he struck at them right and left in his blindness, and his stick sounded heavily on more than one.
