14 The Doctor Continues The First Day of Fighting Ends

CHAPTER 14 The Doctor Continues: The First Day of Fighting Ends We now ran to the stockade and at every step heard the pirates drawing closer. As we made for the clearing, the Captain passed his best gun to the Squire, who raised it to his shoulder and took aim. I turned and gave my sword to Gray, who, I am happy to say, spit on his hands and, taking it, made it sing as he slashed the blade through the sharp air. He had come back to the right side. We were advancing to our stockade when

some of the mutineers appeared. They stopped suddenly and the Squire and I fired, just as Hunter and Joyce did from the stockade. One of the enemy fell dead, shot through the heart. The rest scattered. Just as we were beginning to feel victorious, a shot rang out and poor Tom Redruth fell to the ground. It was plain he was dying. The rest of the mutineers had retreated, so we carried poor Tom back to our stockade, and there, after requesting prayers and asking forgiveness from the Squire, he died. The Captain then emptied his pocket of the many small items he had been carrying, such as pen, rope, ink, tobacco and a logbook. He climbed to the roof of the log house and there tied the flag of England to the top of a fallen tree he had with many pains drawn up. Finishing this, he came back down and asked me how many weeks before

I expected another ship would come to find us if we had not returned. I answered that it would more likely be months, not weeks, before that happened. The Captain then answered that we were very tight on rations. "It's a shame we lost that second load. We're much in trouble without it." Just then, we heard the cannon fire again and heard a ball land just beyond the cabin. We knew then that they were firing for us, but we felt no alarm. "Oho!" said the Captain, "blaze away. You'll never hit us from where you are, but you'll do us the favor of using up all your powder." With that, the gun flared again, but to no purpose. They continued this all through the evening. Later that night, Gray and Hunter volunteered to try to rescue the rations from the shallow water where the low tide had left

them in the sand. This proved useless, as Silver's men, they found, were already carrying most of them away. They had their arms around our supplies and each bore a musket, taken no doubt from some secret hiding place of their own. The Captain began to record our condition in his log. "Alexander Smollett, master, David Livesey, ship's doctor, Abraham Gray, carpenter's mate, John Trelawney, owner, John Hunter and Richard Joyce, owner's servants, landsmen, being all that's left, with stores for ten days. Thomas Redruth, shot dead, James Hawkins...." And, even as he was finishing, we heard a joyous shout—I ran out just in time to see Jim Hawkins safe and sound, climbing over the stockade wall.