“And when? says you,” he added. “Why, from about noon observation to about six bells.”

“Good,” says I, “and now may I go?”

“You won’t forget?” he inquired, anxiously. “Precious sight, and reasons of his own, says you. Reasons of his own; that’s the mainstay; as between man and man. Well, then”⁠—still holding me⁠—“I reckon you can go, Jim. And, Jim, if you was to see Silver, you wouldn’t go for to sell Ben Gunn? wild horses wouldn’t draw it from you? No, says you. And if them pirates came ashore, Jim, what would you say but there’d be widders in the morning?”

Here he was interrupted by a loud report, and a cannon ball came tearing through the trees and pitched in the sand, not a hundred yards from where we two were talking. The next moment each of us had taken to our heels in a different direction.