shouldn’t wonder. Kill that boy? not me, mates! And number three? Ah, well, there’s a deal to say to number three. Maybe you don’t count it nothing to have a real college doctor come to see you every day—you, John, with your head broke—or you, George Merry, that had the ague shakes upon you not six hours agone, and has your eyes the color of lemon peel to this same moment on the clock? And maybe, perhaps, you didn’t know there was a consort coming, either? But there is, and not so long till then; and we’ll see who’ll be glad to have a hostage when it comes to that. And as for number two, and why I made a bargain—well, you come crawling on your knees to me to make it—on your knees you came, you was that downhearted—and you’d have starved, too, if I hadn’t—but that’s a trifle! you look there—that’s why!”
And he cast down upon the floor a paper that I instantly recognized—none other than the chart on yellow paper, with the three red crosses, that I had found in the oilcloth at the bottom of the captain’s chest. Why the doctor had given it to him was more than I could