in a moment. "Bright and early, to be sure;
and it's the early bird, as the saying goes, that gets the
rations.--George, shake up your timbers, son, and help Dr. Livesey over
the ship's side. All a-doin' well, your patients was--all well and
merry."

So he pattered on, standing on the hill-top, with his crutch under his
elbow, and one hand upon the side of the log-house--quite the old John in
voice, manner, and expression.

"We've quite a surprise for you too, sir," he continued. "We've a little
stranger here--he! he! A noo boarder and lodger, sir, and looking fit
and taut as a fiddle; slep' like a supercargo, he did, right alongside of
John--stem to stem we was, all night."

Dr. Livesey was by this time across the stockade and pretty near the
cook; and I could hear the alteration in his voice as he said--

"Not Jim?"

"The very same Jim as ever was," says Silver.

The doctor stopped outright, although he did not speak, and it was some
seconds before he seemed able to move on.

"Well, well," he said, at last, "duty first and pleasure afterwards, as
you might have said yourself, Silver. Let us overhaul these patients of
yours."

A moment afterwards he had entered the block-house, and, with one grim
nod to me, proceeded with his work among the sick. He seemed under no
apprehension, though he must have known that his life, among these
treacherous demons, depended on a hair; and he rattled on to his patients
as if he were paying an ordinary professional visit in a quiet English
family. His manner, I suppose, reacted on the men; for they behaved to
him as if nothing had occurred--as if he were still ship's doctor, and
they still faithful hands before the mast.

"You're doing well, my friend," he said to the fellow with the bandaged
head, "and if ever any person had a close shave, it was you; your head
must be as hard as iron.--Well, George, how goes it? You're a pretty
colour, certainly; why, your liver, man, is upside down. Did you take
that medicine?--did he take that medicine, men?"

"Ay, ay, sir, he took it, sure enough," returned Morgan.

"Because, you see, since I am mutineers' doctor, or prison doctor, as I
prefer to call it," says Dr. Livesey, in his pleasantest way, "I make it
a point of honour not to lose a man for King George (God bless him!) and
the gallows."

The rogues looked at each other, but swallowed the home-thrust in
silence.

"Dick don't feel well, sir," said one.

"Don't he?" replied