mingled
in my nightmares with that of the one-legged seafaring man. But by this
time we had all long ceased to pay any particular notice to the song; it
was new, that night, to nobody but Doctor Livesey, and on him I observed
it did not produce an agreeable effect, for he looked up for a moment
quite angrily before he went on with his talk to old Taylor, the
gardener, on a new cure for rheumatics. In the meantime the captain
gradually brightened up at his own music, and at last flapped his hand
upon the table before him in a way we all knew to mean--silence. The
voices stopped at once, all but Doctor Livesey's; he went on as before,
speaking clear and kind, and drawing briskly at his pipe between every
word or two. The captain glared at him for a while, flapped his hand
again, glared still harder, and at last broke out with a villainous
oath: "Silence, there, between decks!"

"Were you addressing me, sir?" said the doctor; and when the ruffian had
told him, with another oath, that this was so, replied, "I have only one
thing to say to you, sir, that if you keep on drinking rum, the world
will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!"

The old fellow's fury was awful. He sprang to his feet, drew and opened
a sailor's clasp-knife, and balancing it open on the palm of his hand,
threatened to pin the doctor to the wall.

The doctor never so much as moved. He spoke to him, as before, over his
shoulder, and in the same tone of voice, rather high, so that all the
room might hear, but perfectly calm and steady:

"If you do not put that knife this instant into your pocket, I promise,
upon my honor, you shall hang at the next assizes."

Then followed a battle of looks between them; but the captain soon
knuckled under, put up his weapon, and resumed his seat, grumbling like
a beaten dog.

"And now, sir," continued the doctor, "since I now know there's such a
fellow in my district, you may count I'll have an eye upon you day and
night. I'm not a doctor only, I'm a magistrate; and if I catch a breath
of complaint against you, if it's only for a piece of incivility like
to-night's, I'll take effectual means to have you hunted down and routed
out of this. Let that suffice."

Soon after Doctor Livesey's horse came to the door and he rode away, but
the captain held his peace that evening, and for many evenings to come.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II

BLACK DOG APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS

It was not very long after this tha