All the crew respected and even obeyed him. He had a way of talking to each, and doing everybody some particular service. To me he was unweariedly kind, and always glad to see me in the galley, which he kept as clean as a new pin; the dishes hanging up burnished, and his parrot in a cage in the corner.

“Come away, Hawkins,” he would say; “come and have a yarn with John. Nobody more welcome than yourself, my son. Sit you down and hear the news. Here’s Cap’n Flint⁠—I calls my parrot Cap’n Flint, after the famous buccaneer⁠—here’s Cap’n Flint predicting success to our v’yage. Wasn’t you, Cap’n?”

And the parrot would say, with great rapidity: “Pieces of eight! pieces of eight! pieces of eight!” till you wondered that it was not out of breath or till John threw his handkerchief over the cage.