He drew again quietly at his pipe.

“And lest you should take it into that head of yours,” he went on, “that you was included in the treaty, here’s the last word that was said:  ’How many are you,’ says I, ‘to leave?’ ‘Four,’ says he; ’four, and one of us wounded.  As for that boy, I don’t know where he is, confound him,’ says he, ‘nor I don’t much care.  We’re about sick of him.’  These was his words.

“Is that all?” I asked.

“Well, it’s all that you’re to hear, my son,” returned Silver.

“And now I am to choose?”

“And now you are to choose, and you may lay to that,” said Silver.

“Well,” said I, “I am not such a fool but I know pretty well what I have to look for.  Let the worst come to the worst, it’s little I care.  I’ve seen too many die since I fell in with you.  But there’s a thing or two I have to tell you,” I said, and by this time I was quite excited; “and the first is this:  here you are, in a bad way—­ship lost, treasure lost, men lost, your whole business gone to wreck; and if you want to know who did it—­it was I!  I was in the apple barrel the night we sighted land, and I heard you, John, and you, Dick Johnson, and Hands, who is now at the bottom of the sea, and told every word you said before the hour was out.  And as for the schooner, it was I who cut her cable, and it was I that killed the men you had aboard of her, and it was I who brought her where you’ll never see her more, not one of you.  The laugh’s on my side; I’ve had the top of this business from the first; I no more fear you than I fear a fly.  Kill me, if you please, or spare me.  But one thing I’ll say, and no more; if you spare me, bygones are bygones, and when you fellows are in court for piracy, I’ll save you all I can.  It is for you to choose.  Kill another and do yourselves no good, or spare me and keep a witness to save you from the gallows.”

I stopped, for, I tell you, I was out of breath, and to my wonder, not a man of them moved, but all sat staring at me like as many sheep.  And while they were still staring, I broke out again, “And now, Mr. Silver,” I said, “I believe you’re the best man here, and if things go to the worst, I’ll take it kind of you to let the doctor know the way I took it.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” said Silver with an accent so curious that I could not, for the life of me, decide whether he were laughing at my request or had been favourably affected by my courage.

“I’ll put one to that,” cried the old mahogany-faced seaman—­Morgan by name—­whom I had seen in Long John’s public-house upon the quays of Bristol.  “It was him that knowed Black Dog.”

“Well, and see here,” added the sea-cook.  “I’ll put another again to that, by thunder!  For it was this same boy that faked the chart from Billy Bones.  First and last, we’ve split upon Jim Hawkins!”

“Then here goes!” said Morgan with an oath.

And he sprang up, drawing his knife as if he had been twenty.