f he had been twenty.

"Avast, there!" cried Silver. "Who are you, Tom Morgan? Maybe you
thought you were captain here, perhaps. By the powers, but I'll teach
you better! Cross me and you'll go where many a good man's gone before
you, first and last, these thirty year back--some to the yardarm, shiver
my sides! and some by the board, and all to feed the fishes. There's
never a man looked me between the eyes and seen a good day a'terward,
Tom Morgan, you may lay to that."

Morgan paused, but a hoarse murmur rose from the others.

"Tom's right," said one.

"I stood hazing long enough from one," added another. "I'll be hanged if
I'll be hazed by you, John Silver."

"Did any of you gentlemen want to have it out with _me_?" roared Silver,
bending far forward from his position on the keg, with his pipe still
glowing in his right hand. "Put a name on what you're at; you ain't
dumb, I reckon. Him that wants shall get it. Have I lived this many
years to have a son of a rum puncheon cock his hat athwart my hawser at
the latter end of it? You know the way; you're all gentlemen o' fortune,
by your account. Well, I'm ready. Take a cutlass, him that dares, and
I'll see the color of his inside, crutch and all, before that pipe's
empty."

Not a man stirred; not a man answered.

"That's your sort, is it?" he added, returning his pipe to his mouth.
"Well, you're a gay lot to look at, any way. Not worth much to fight,
you ain't. P'r'aps you can understand King George's English. I'm cap'n
here by 'lection. I'm cap'n here because I'm the best man by a long
sea-mile. You won't fight, as gentlemen o' fortune should; then, by
thunder, you'll obey, and you may lay to it! I like that boy, now; I
never seen a better boy than that. He's more a man than any pair of rats
of you in this here house, and what I say is this: Let me see him
that'll lay a hand on him--that's what I say, and you may lay to it."

There was a long pause after this. I stood straight up against the wall,
my heart still going like a sledgehammer, but with a ray of hope now
shining in my bosom. Silver leant back against the wall, his arms
crossed, his pipe in the corner of his mouth, as calm as though he had
been in church; yet his eye kept wandering furtively, and he kept the
tail of it on his unruly followers. They, on their part, drew gradually
together toward the far end of the blockhouse, and the low hiss of their
whispering sounded in my ears continuously, like a