e blood-stained bandage round
his head told that he had recently been wounded, and still more recently
dressed. I remembered the man who had been shot and run back among the
woods in the great attack, and doubted not that this was he.

The parrot sat, preening her plumage, on Long John's shoulder. He
himself, I thought, looked somewhat paler and more stern than I was used
to. He still wore his fine broadcloth suit in which he had fulfilled his
mission, but it was bitterly the worse for wear, daubed with clay and
torn with sharp briers of the wood.

"So," said he, "here's Jim Hawkins, shiver my timbers! dropped in,
like, eh? Well, come, I take that friendly."

And thereupon he sat down across the brandy-cask, and began to fill a
pipe.

"Give me the loan of a link, Dick," said he; and then, when he had a
good light, "That'll do, my lad," he added, "stick the glim in the wood
heap; and you, gentlemen, bring yourselves to!--you needn't stand up for
Mr. Hawkins; _he'll_ excuse you, you may lay to that. And so,
Jim"--stopping the tobacco--"here you are, and quite a pleasant surprise
for poor old John. I see you were smart when first I set my eyes on you,
but this here gets away from me clean, it do."

To all this, as may be well supposed, I made no answer. They had set me
with my back against the wall, and I stood there, looking Silver in the
face, pluckily enough, I hope, to all outward appearance, but with black
despair in my heart.

Silver took a whiff or two of his pipe with great composure, and then
ran on again:

"Now, you see, Jim, so be as you _are_ here," says he, "I'll give you a
piece of my mind. I've always liked you, I have, for a lad of spirit,
and the picter of my own self when I was young and handsome. I always
wanted you to jine and take your share, and die a gentleman, and now, my
cock, you've got to. Cap'n Smollett's a fine seaman, as I'll own up to
any day, but stiff on discipline. 'Dooty is dooty,' says he, and right
he is. Just you keep clear of the cap'n. The doctor himself is gone dead
again you--'ungrateful scamp' was what he said; and the short and long
of the whole story is about here: You can't go back to your own lot, for
they won't have you; and, without you start a third ship's company all
by yourself, which might be lonely, you'll have to jine with Cap'n
Silver."

So far so good. My friends, then, were still alive, and though I partly
believed the truth of Silver's statement, that the