`and the first is this: here you are, in a bad way: ship lost, treasure lost, men lost; your whole business gone to wreck; and if you want to know who did it - it was I! I was in the apple barrel the night we sighted land, and I heard you, John, and you, **** Johnson, and Hands, who is now at the bottom of the sea, and told every word you said before the hour was out. And as for the schooner, it was I who cut her cable, and it was I that killed the men you ha aboard of her, and it was I who brought her where you'll never see her more, not one of you. The laugh's on my side;
I've had the top of this business from the first; I no more fear you than I fear a fly. Kill me, if you please, or spare me. But one thing I'll say, and no more; if you spare me, bygones are bygones, and when you fellows are in court for piracy, I'll save you all I can. It is for you to choose.
Kill another and do yourselves no good, or spare me and keep a witness to save you from the gallows.'
I stopped, for, I tell you, I was out of breath, and, to my wonder, not a man of them moved, but all sat staring at me like as many sheep.
And while they were still staring, I broke out again:--`And now, Mr Silver,' I said, `I believe you're the best man here, and if things go to the worst, I'll take it kind of you to let the doctor know the way I took it.'
`I'll bear it in mind,' said Silver, with an accent so curious that I could not, for the life of me, decide whether he were laughing at my request, or had been favourably affected by my courage.
`I'll put one to that,' cried the old mahogany-faced seaman - Morgan by name - whom I had seen in Long John's public house upon the quays of Bristol. `It was him that knowed Black Dog.'
`Well, and see here,' added the sea-cook. `I'll put another again to that, by thunder! for it was this same boy that faked the chart from Billy Bones. First and last, we've split upon Jim Hawkins!'
`Then here goes!' said Morgan, with an oath.
And he sprang up, drawing his knife as if he had been twenty.
`Avast, there!' cried Silver. `Who are you, Tom Morgan? Maybe you thought you was cap'n 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 yard-arm, shiver my timbers! 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 afterwards, 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 aint dumb, I reckon.
Him that wants shall get it. Have I lived this many years, and a son of a rum puncheon cock his hat athwart my hawse 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 colour 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, anyway. Not much worth to fight, you aint. 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.'