“Then,” he continued, “then you’ll up, and you’ll say this: Gunn is a good man (you’ll say), and he puts a precious sight more confidence—a precious sight, mind that—in a gen’leman born than in these gen’lemen of fortune, having been one hisself.”
“Well,” I said, “I don’t understand one word that you’ve been saying. But that’s neither here nor there; for how am I to get on board?”
“Ah,” said he, “that’s the hitch, for sure. Well, there’s my boat that I made with my two hands. I keep her under the white rock. If the worst come to the worst, we might try that after dark. Hi!” he broke out, “what’s that?”
For just then, although the sun had still an hour or two to run, all the echoes of the island awoke and bellowed to the thunder of a cannon.
“They have begun to fight!” I cried. “Follow me!”
And I began to run toward the anchorage, my terrors all forgotten; while, close at my side, the marooned man in his goatskins trotted easily and lightly.
“Left, left,” says he; “keep to your left hand, mate Jim! Under the trees with you! There’s where I killed my first goat. They don’t come down here now; they’re all mastheaded on them mountings for the fear of Benjamin Gunn. Ah! and there’s the cetemery”—cemetery he must have meant. “You see the mounds? I come here and prayed, nows and thens, when I thought maybe a Sunday would be about doo. It weren’t quite a chapel, but it seemed more solemn like; and then, says you, Ben Gunn was shorthanded—no chapling, nor so much as a Bible and a flag, you says.”
So he kept talking as I ran, neither expecting nor receiving any answer.
The cannon-shot was followed, after a considerable interval, by a volley of small arms.