ships--_Royal Fortune_ and so on. Now, what a ship was christened, so let
her stay, I say. So it was with the _Cassandra_, as brought us all safe
home from Malabar, after England took the Viceroy of the Indies; so it
was with the old _Walrus_, Flint's old ship, as I've seen a-muck with the
red blood and fit to sink with gold."

"Ah!" cried another voice, that of the youngest hand on board, and
evidently full of admiration, "he was the flower of the flock, was
Flint!"

"Davis was a man, too, by all accounts," said Silver. "I never sailed
along of him; first with England, then with Flint, that's my story; and
now here on my own account, in a manner of speaking. I laid by nine
hundred safe, from England, and two thousand after Flint. That ain't bad
for a man before the mast--all safe in bank. 'Tain't earning now, it's
saving does it, you may lay to that. Where's all England's men now? I
dunno. Where's Flint's? Why, most on 'em aboard here, and glad to get the
duff--been begging before that, some on 'em. Old Pew, as had lost his
sight, and might have thought shame, spends twelve hundred pound in a
year, like a lord in Parliament. Where is he now? Well, he's dead now
and under hatches; but for two year before that, shiver my timbers! the
man was starving. He begged, and he stole, and he cut throats, and
starved at that, by the powers!"

"Well, it ain't much use, after all," said the young seaman.

"'Tain't much use for fools, you may lay to it--that, nor nothing," cried
Silver. "But now, you look here: you're young, you are, but you're as
smart as paint. I see that when I set my eyes on you, and I'll talk to
you like a man."

You may imagine how I felt when I heard this abominable old rogue
addressing another in the very same words of flattery as he had used to
myself. I think, if I had been able, that I would have killed him through
the barrel. Meantime he ran on, little supposing he was overheard.

"Here it is about gentlemen of fortune. They lives rough, and they risk
swinging, but they eat and drink like fighting cocks, and when a cruise
is done, why, it's hundreds of pounds instead of hundreds of farthings in
their pockets. Now, the most goes for rum and a good fling, and to sea
again in their shirts. But that's not the course I lay. I puts it all
away, some here, some there, and none too much anywheres, by reason of
suspicion. I'm fifty, mark you; once back from this cruise, I set up
gentleman in earnest. Time en