“You’ll, perhaps, batten down your hatches till you’re spoke to, my friend,” cried Silver, truculently, to this speaker. And then, in his first gracious tones, he replied to me: “Yesterday morning, Mr. Hawkins,” said he, “in the dogwatch, down came Doctor Livesey with a flag of truce. Says he: ‘Cap’n Silver, you’re sold out. Ship’s gone!’ Well, maybe we’d been taking a glass, and a song to help it round. I won’t say no. Leastways, none of us had looked out. We looked out, and, by thunder! the old ship was gone. I never seen a pack o’ fools look fishier; and you may lay to that, if I tells you that I looked the fishiest. ‘Well,’ says the doctor, ‘let’s bargain.’ We bargained, him and I, and here we are; stores, brandy, blockhouse, the firewood you was thoughtful enough to cut, and, in a manner of speaking, the whole blessed boat, from crosstrees to keelson. As for them, they’ve tramped; I don’t know where’s they are.”

He drew again quietly at his pipe.