“Now, that bird,” he would say, “is, maybe, two hundred years old, Hawkins—­they live forever mostly; and if anybody’s seen more wickedness, it must be the devil himself.  She’s sailed with England, the great Cap’n England, the pirate.  She’s been at Madagascar, and at Malabar, and Surinam, and Providence, and Portobello.  She was at the fishing up of the wrecked plate ships.  It’s there she learned ’Pieces of eight,’ and little wonder; three hundred and fifty thousand of ’em, Hawkins!  She was at the boarding of the viceroy of the Indies out of Goa, she was; and to look at her you would think she was a babby.  But you smelt powder—­didn’t you, cap’n?”

“Stand by to go about,” the parrot would scream.

“Ah, she’s a handsome craft, she is,” the cook would say, and give her sugar from his pocket, and then the bird would peck at the bars and swear straight on, passing belief for wickedness.  “There,” John would add, “you can’t touch pitch and not be mucked, lad.  Here’s this poor old innocent bird o’ mine swearing blue fire, and none the wiser, you may lay to that.  She would swear the same, in a manner of speaking, before chaplain.”  And John would touch his forelock with a solemn way he had that made me think he was the best of men.

In the meantime, the squire and Captain Smollett were still on pretty distant terms with one another.  The squire made no bones about the matter; he despised the captain.  The captain, on his part, never spoke but when he was spoken to, and then sharp and short and dry, and not a word wasted.  He owned, when driven into a corner, that he seemed to have been wrong about the crew, that some of them were as brisk as he wanted to see and all had behaved fairly well.  As for the ship, he had taken a downright fancy to her.  “She’ll lie a point nearer the wind than a man has a right to expect of his own married wife, sir.  But,” he would add, “all I say is, we’re not home again, and I don’t like the cruise.”

The squire, at this, would turn away and march up and down the deck, chin in air.

“A trifle more of that man,” he would say, “and I shall explode.”

We had some heavy weather, which only proved the qualities of the Hispaniola.  Every man on board seemed well content, and they must have been hard to please if they had been otherwise, for it is my belief there was never a ship’s company so spoiled since Noah put to sea.  Double grog was going on the least excuse; there was duff on odd days, as, for instance, if the squire heard it was any man’s birthday, and always a barrel of apples standing broached in the waist for anyone to help himself that had a fancy.

“Never knew good come of it yet,” the captain said to Dr. Livesey.  “Spoil forecastle hands, make devils.  That’s my belief.”

But good did come of the apple barrel, as you shall hear, for if it had not been for that, we should have had no note of warning and might all have perished by the hand of treachery.