"The old devil!" he howled then, and fled down the hillside for all he was worth.
Flint did not wait to receive Murray's verbal answer; that pistol-shot was sufficiently explicit. Three musket-shots echoed it from the foot of the hill, and at once there was a renewed bustle of men on the fo'csle of the Walrus. A puff of white smoke blew up from the deck, and the crack of a long twelve started myriads of seabirds from the seaward marshes. The shot sang over us and crashed into the forest beyond. The other chase-gun bowled a shot into the enclosure, where it simply buried itself in the soft sand. Two carronades, with lower mounts and shorter range, discharged missiles that fell short of the stockade. And that first salvo might pass for a chronology of the bombardment to which we were subjected until sunset.
One man was killed, and no material damage was done. The carronades were unable to reach the blockhouse with their heavier shot, and the Long Toms lacked the power to penetrate the green wood of the walls. Most of the round-shot plumped into the sand. Three posts of the stockade were knocked over and promptly set up again. That was all. The noise was most impressive, with the echoes reverberating across the island from the sounding-board of the Spyglass, but the net result was to imbue me with a confidence I had not previously entertained. When darkness intervened and the firing ceased we felt that we had been the winners of the first bout of the struggle.
In the mean time we had not seen a trace of the landing-party from the Walrus, and as the night shut down we all peered curiously through the posts of the stockade, expecting momentarily to discover a rush of crouching figures. But hour after hour passed without a sound to disturb the silence, and even Murray, whose nerves were of forged steel, became uneasy as he up-ended the hour-glass for the third time since sunset and decided to inspect the circuit of the defenses.
"There is another hand than Flint's behind these Fabian tactics," he observed. "Perhaps John Silver's. 'Tis a clever rogue, and a cunning. We can not be too vigilant."
Moira, poor lass, was asleep beneath the stack of gold and silver inside the blockhouse. Ben Gunn and black Scipio, equally frightened, were huddled on the doorstep; and the men of the after-guard were sprawled in the sand, some of them asleep, some of them gambling—the pirates of both crews were inveterate gamblers—at pitch-penny or with pebbles and shells or at a kind of mumbletypeg with their clasp-knives.
Coupeau joined us on the southern arc of the stockade. He reported dim flittings and shadowy movements on the lower hillside, but naught in the nature of an advance or a threat of one. Elsewhere the men rose from their burrows and sullenly or stupidly, according to their dispositions, affirmed they had seen no enemies. On the north side we came to a pit which was empty, and in the one next to it a man lay on his stomach as if asleep.
Murray prodded him with his sword, and the fellow groaned, but did not stir.
"What is the matter with this man?" demanded my great-uncle.
"Please, zur, 'tis Job Pytchens," answered the man next beyond.