“Well, I was in another ship three years back, and we sighted this island.  ‘Boys,’ said I, ’here’s Flint’s treasure; let’s land and find it.’  The cap’n was displeased at that, but my messmates were all of a mind and landed.  Twelve days they looked for it, and every day they had the worse word for me, until one fine morning all hands went aboard.  ’As for you, Benjamin Gunn,’ says they, ‘here’s a musket,’ they says, ’and a spade, and pick-axe.  You can stay here and find Flint’s money for yourself,’ they says.

“Well, Jim, three years have I been here, and not a bite of Christian diet from that day to this.  But now, you look here; look at me.  Do I look like a man before the mast?  No, says you.  Nor I weren’t, neither, I says.”

And with that he winked and pinched me hard.

“Just you mention them words to your squire, Jim,” he went on.  “Nor he weren’t, neither—­that’s the words.  Three years he were the man of this island, light and dark, fair and rain; and sometimes he would maybe think upon a prayer (says you), and sometimes he would maybe think of his old mother, so be as she’s alive (you’ll say); but the most part of Gunn’s time (this is what you’ll say)—­the most part of his time was took up with another matter.  And then you’ll give him a nip, like I do.”

And he pinched me again in the most confidential manner.

“Then,” he continued, “then you’ll up, and you’ll say this:  Gunn is a good man (you’ll say), and he puts a precious sight more confidence—­a precious sight, mind that—­in a gen’leman born than in these gen’leman of fortune, having been one hisself.”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t understand one word that you’ve been saying.  But that’s neither here nor there; for how am I to get on board?”

“Ah,” said he, “that’s the hitch, for sure.  Well, there’s my boat, that I made with my two hands.  I keep her under the white rock.  If the worst come to the worst, we might try that after dark.  Hi!” he broke out.  “What’s that?”

For just then, although the sun had still an hour or two to run, all the echoes of the island awoke and bellowed to the thunder of a cannon.

“They have begun to fight!” I cried.  “Follow me.”

And I began to run towards the anchorage, my terrors all forgotten, while close at my side the marooned man in his goatskins trotted easily and lightly.

“Left, left,” says he; “keep to your left hand, mate Jim!  Under the trees with you!  Theer’s where I killed my first goat.  They don’t come down here now; they’re all mastheaded on them mountings for the fear of Benjamin Gunn.  Ah!  And there’s the cetemery”—­cemetery, he must have meant.  “You see the mounds?  I come here and prayed, nows and thens, when I thought maybe a Sunday would be about doo.  It weren’t quite a chapel, but it seemed more solemn like; and then, says you, Ben Gunn was short-handed—­no chapling, nor so much as a Bible and a flag, you says.”