It occurred to me at once to go ashore . In a jiffy I had slipped over the side and curled up in the fore-sheets of the nearest boat , and almost at the same moment she shoved off . No one took notice of me , only the bow oar saying , `` Is that you , Jim ? Keep your head down . '' But Silver , from the other boat , looked sharply over and called out to know if that were me ; and from that moment I began to regret what I had done . The crews raced for the beach , but the boat I was in , having some start and being at once the lighter and the better manned , shot far ahead of her consort , and the bow had struck among the shore-side trees and I had caught a branch and swung myself out and plunged into the nearest thicket while Silver and the rest were still a hundred yards behind . `` Jim , Jim ! '' I heard him shouting . But you may suppose I paid no heed ; jumping , ducking , and breaking through , I ran straight before my nose till I could run no longer . 14 The First Blow I WAS 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 sun , and the outline of the Spy-glass trembled through the haze .
All at once there began to go a sort of bustle among the XXXXX ; a wild duck flew up with a quack , another followed , and soon over the whole surface of the marsh a great cloud of birds hung screaming and circling in the air .
First John Spy-glass bulrushes fen fowls knolls left oar shore-side