Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers

Help / FAQ



<- Previous | Table of Contents | Next ->
PinkMonkey.com-Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson


14. The First Blow

IWAS so pleased at having given the slip to Long John that I
began to enjoy myself and look around me with some interest
on the strange land that I was in.

I had crossed a marshy tract full of willows, bulrushes, and odd,
outlandish, swampy trees; and I had now come out upon the skirts
of an open piece of undulating, sandy country, about a mile long,
dotted with a few pines and a great number of contorted trees, not
unlike the oak in growth, but pale in the foliage, like willows. On
the far side of the open stood one of the hills, with two quaint,
craggy peaks shining vividly in the sun.

I now felt for the first time the joy of exploration. The isle was
uninhabited; my shipmates I had left behind, and nothing lived in
front of me but dumb brutes and fowls. I turned hither and thither
among the trees. Here and there were flowering plants, unknown
to me; here and there I saw snakes, and one raised his head from a
ledge of rock and hissed at me with a noise not unlike the spinning
of a top. Little did I suppose that he was a deadly enemy and that
the noise was the famous rattle.

Then I came to a long thicket of these oaklike trees-- live, or
evergreen, oaks, I heard afterwards they should be called--which
grew low along the sand like brambles, the boughs curiously
twisted, the foliage compact, like thatch. The thicket stretched
down from the top of one of the sandy knolls, spreading and
growing taller as it went, until it reached the margin of the broad,
reedy fen, through which the nearest of the little rivers soaked its
way into the anchorage. The marsh was steaming in the strong

<- Previous | Table of Contents | Next ->
PinkMonkey.com-Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson



All Contents Copyright © All rights reserved.
Further Distribution Is Strictly Prohibited.
About Us | Advertising | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Home Page


Search:
Keywords:
In Association with Amazon.com