'm with you there--and looks mighty
like a hornpipe in a rope's end at Execution Dock by London town, it
does. But who done it? Why, it was Anderson, and Hands, and you, George
Merry! And you're the last above board of that same meddling crew; and
you have the Davy Jones's insolence to up and stand for cap'n over
me--you, that sank the lot of us! By the powers! but this tops the
stiffest yarn to nothing."

Silver paused, and I could see by the faces of George and his late
comrades that these words had not been said in vain.

"That's for number one," cried the accused, wiping the sweat from his
brow, for he had been talking with a vehemence that shook the house.
"Why, I give you my word, I'm sick to speak to you. You've neither sense
nor memory, and I leave it to fancy where your mothers was that let you
come to sea. Sea! Gentlemen o' fortune! I reckon tailors is your trade."

"Go on, John," said Morgan. "Speak up to the others."

"Ah, the others!" returned John. "They're a nice lot, ain't they? You say
this cruise is bungled. Ah! by gum, if you could understand how bad it's
bungled, you would see! We're that near the gibbet that my neck's stiff
with thinking on it. You've seen 'em, maybe, hanged in chains, birds
about 'em, seamen p'inting 'em out as they go down with the tide. 'Who's
that?' says one. 'That! Why, that's John Silver. I knowed him well,' says
another. And you can hear the chains a-jangle as you go about and reach
for the other buoy. Now that's about where we are, every mother's son of
us, thanks to him, and Hands, and Anderson, and other ruination fools of
you. And if you want to know about number four, and that boy, why, shiver
my timbers, isn't he a hostage? Are we a-going to waste a hostage? No,
not us; he might be our last chance, and I 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 colour 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 came crawling on your knees to me to make