on one side, five on the other, the pit between
us, and nobody screwed up high enough to offer the first blow. Silver
never moved; he watched them, very upright on his crutch, and looked as
cool as ever I saw him. He was brave, and no mistake.

At last, Merry seemed to think a speech might help matters.

"Mates," says he, "there's two of them alone there; one's the old cripple
that brought us all here and blundered us down to this; the other's that
cub that I mean to have the heart of. Now, mates----"

He was raising his arm and his voice, and plainly meant to lead a charge.
But just then--crack! crack! crack!--three musket-shots flashed out of
the thicket. Merry tumbled head-foremost into the excavation; the man
with the bandage spun round like a teetotum, and fell all his length upon
his side, where he lay dead, but still twitching; and the other three
turned and ran for it with all their might.

Before you could wink, Long John had fired two barrels of a pistol into
the struggling Merry; and as the man rolled up his eyes at him in the
last agony, "George," said he, "I reckon I settled you."

At the same moment the doctor, Gray, and Ben Gunn joined us, with
smoking muskets, from among the nutmeg trees.

"Forward!" cried the doctor. "Double quick, my lads! We must head 'em off
the boats."

And we set off at a great pace, sometimes plunging through the bushes to
the chest.

I tell you, but Silver was anxious to keep up with us. The work that man
went through, leaping on his crutch till the muscles of his chest were
fit to burst, was work no sound man ever equalled; and so thinks the
doctor. As it was, he was already thirty yards behind us, and on the
verge of strangling, when we reached the brow of the slope.

"Doctor," he hailed, "see there! no hurry!"

Sure enough there was no hurry. In a more open part of the plateau, we
could see the three survivors still running in the same direction as they
had started, right for Mizzen-mast Hill. We were already between them and
the boats; and so we four sat down to breathe, while Long John, mopping
his face, came slowly up with us.

"Thank ye kindly, doctor," says he. "You came in in about the nick, I
guess, for me and Hawkins.--And so it's you, Ben Gunn!" he added. "Well,
you're a nice one, to be sure."

"I'm Ben Gunn, I am," replied the maroon, wriggling like an eel in his
embarrassment. "And," he added, after a long pause, "how do, Mr. Silver?
Pretty well, I th