I had nothing nearer my fancy than to get home to the stockade and boast of my achievements . Possibly I might be blamed a bit for my truantry , but the recapture of the HISPANIOLA was a clenching answer , and I hoped that even Captain Smollett would confess I had not lost my time . So thinking , and in famous spirits , I began to set my face homeward for the block house and my companions . I remembered that the most easterly of the rivers which drain into Captain Kidd 's anchorage ran from the two-peaked hill upon my left , and I bent my course in that direction that I might pass the stream while it was small . The wood was pretty open , and keeping along the lower spurs , I had soon turned the corner of that hill , and not long after waded to the mid-calf across the watercourse . This brought me near to where I had encountered Ben Gunn , the maroon ; and I walked more circumspectly , keeping an eye on every side . The dusk had come nigh hand completely , and as I opened out the cleft between the two peaks , I became aware of a wavering glow against the sky , where , as I judged , the man of the island was cooking his supper before a roaring fire . And yet I wondered , in my heart , that he should show himself so careless . For if I could see this radiance , might it not reach the eyes of Silver himself where he camped upon the shore among the marshes ? Gradually the night fell blacker ; it was all I could do to guide myself even roughly towards my destination ; the double hill behind me and the Spy-glass on my right hand loomed faint and fainter ; the stars were few and pale ; and in the low ground where I wandered I kept tripping among bushes and rolling into sandy pits . Suddenly a kind of brightness fell about me . I looked up ; a pale glimmer of moonbeams had alighted on the summit of the Spy-glass , and soon after I saw something broad and silvery moving low down behind the trees , and knew the moon had risen . With this to help me , I passed rapidly over what remained to me of my journey , and sometimes walking , sometimes running , impatiently drew near to the stockade . Yet , as I began to thread the grove that lies before it , I was not so thoughtless but that I slacked my pace and went a trifle warily . It would have been a poor end of my adventures to get shot down by my own party in mistake . The moon was climbing higher and higher , its light began to fall here and there in masses through the more open districts of the wood , and right in front of me a glow of a different colour appeared among the trees . It was red and hot , and now and again it was a little darkened -- as it were , the embers of a bonfire smouldering . For the life of me I could not think what it might be . At last I came right down upon the borders of the clearing . The western end was already steeped in moonshine ; the rest , and the block house itself , still lay in a black shadow chequered with long silvery streaks of light .
On the other side of the house an immense XXXXX had burned itself into clear embers and shed a steady , red reverberation , contrasted strongly with the mellow paleness of the moon .
Gunn HISPANIOLA Kidd Smollett Spy-glass embers fire left moonshine watercourse