“You, doctor! Top o’ the morning to you, sir!” cried Silver, broad awake and beaming with good nature in a moment. “Bright and early, to be sure; and it’s the early bird, as the saying goes, that gets the rations. George, shake up your timbers, son, and help Doctor Livesey over the ship’s side. All a-doin’ well, your patients was⁠—all well and merry.”

So he pattered on, standing on the hilltop, with his crutch under his elbow, and one hand upon the side of the log-house⁠—quite the old John in voice, manner, and expression.

“We’ve quite a surprise for you, too, sir,” he continued. “We’ve a little stranger here⁠—he! he! A noo boarder and lodger, sir, and looking fit and taut as a fiddle; slep’ like a supercargo, he did, right alongside of John⁠—stem to stem we was, all night.”

Doctor Livesey was by this time across the stockade and pretty near the cook, and I could hear the alteration in his voice as he said:

“Not Jim?”