the doctor. "Well, step up here, Dick, and let me see
your tongue. No, I should be surprised if he did! the man's tongue is fit
to frighten the French. Another fever."

"Ah, there," said Morgan, "that comed of sp'iling Bibles."

"That comed--as you call it--of being arrant asses," retorted the doctor,
"and not having sense enough to know honest air from poison, and the dry
land from a vile, pestiferous slough. I think it most probable--though,
of course, it's only an opinion--that you'll all have the deuce to pay
before you get that malaria out of your systems. Camp in a bog, would
you?--Silver, I'm surprised at you. You're less a fool than many, take
you all round; but you don't appear to me to have the rudiments of a
notion of the rules of health."

"Well," he added, after he had dosed them round, and they had taken his
prescriptions with really laughable humility, more like charity-school
children than blood-guilty mutineers and pirates--"Well, that's done for
to-day. And now I should wish to have a talk with that boy, please."

And he nodded his head in my direction carelessly.

George Merry was at the door, spitting and spluttering over some
bad-tasted medicine; but at the first word of the doctor's proposal he
swung round with a deep flush, and cried "No!" and swore.

Silver struck the barrel with his open hand.

"Si-lence!" he roared, and looked about him positively like a lion.
"Doctor," he went on, in his usual tones, "I was a-thinking of that,
knowing as how you had a fancy for the boy. We're all humbly grateful for
your kindness, and, as you see, puts faith in you, and takes the drugs
down like that much grog. And I take it, I've found a way as'll suit
all.--Hawkins, will you give me your word of honour as a young
gentleman--for a young gentleman you are, although poor born--your word
of honour not to slip your cable?"

I readily gave the pledge required.

"Then, doctor," said Silver, "you just step outside o' that stockade, and
once you're there, I'll bring the boy down on the inside, and I reckon
you can yarn through the spars. Good-day to you, sir, and all our dooties
to the squire and Cap'n Smollett."

The explosion of disapproval, which nothing but Silver's black looks had
restrained, broke out immediately the doctor had left the house. Silver
was roundly accused of playing double--of trying to make a separate peace
for himself--of sacrificing the interests of his accomplices and victims;
and