From my place of ambush , I could hear him pant aloud as he struck the blows . I do not know what it rightly is to faint , but I do know that for the next little while the whole world swam away from before me in a whirling mist ; Silver and the birds , and the tall Spy-glass hilltop , going round and round and topsy-turvy before my eyes , and all manner of bells ringing and distant voices shouting in my ear . When I came again to myself the monster had pulled himself together , his crutch under his arm , his hat upon his head . Just before him Tom lay motionless upon the sward ; but the murderer minded him not a whit , cleansing his blood-stained knife the while upon a wisp of grass . Everything else was unchanged , the sun still shining mercilessly on the steaming marsh and the tall pinnacle of the mountain , and I could scarce persuade myself that murder had been actually done and a human life cruelly cut short a moment since before my eyes . But now John put his hand into his pocket , brought out a whistle , and blew upon it several modulated blasts that rang far across the heated air . I could not tell , of course , the meaning of the signal , but it instantly awoke my fears . More men would be coming . I might be discovered . They had already slain two of the honest people ; after Tom and Alan , might not I come next ? Instantly I began to extricate myself and crawl back again , with what speed and silence I could manage , to the more open portion of the wood . As I did so , I could hear hails coming and going between the old buccaneer and his comrades , and this sound of danger lent me wings . As soon as I was clear of the thicket , I ran as I never ran before , scarce minding the direction of my flight , so long as it led me from the murderers ; and as I ran , fear grew and grew upon me until it turned into a kind of frenzy . Indeed , could anyone be more entirely lost than I ? When the gun fired , how should I dare to go down to the boats among those fiends , still smoking from their crime ? Would not the first of them who saw me wring my neck like a snipe 's ? Would not my absence itself be an evidence to them of my alarm , and therefore of my fatal knowledge ? It was all over , I thought . Good-bye to the HISPANIOLA ; good-bye to the squire , the doctor , and the captain ! There was nothing left for me but death by starvation or death by the hands of the mutineers .
All this while , as I say , I was still running , and without taking any notice , I had drawn near to the foot of the little hill with the two peaks and had got into a part of the island where the live-oaks XXXXX more widely apart and seemed more like forest trees in their bearing and dimensions .
coming cut discovered grew led shouting slain swam whistle wring