Treasure Island: Part VI

The red glare of the torch lighting up the interior of the blockhouse showed me the worst of my apprehensions realized.

Silver leant back against the wall, his arms crossed, his pipe in the corner of his mouth, as calm as though he had been in church; yet his eye kept wandering furtively, and he kept the tail of it on his unruly followers.

"I thought you said you knowed the rules," returned Silver contemptuously.

And you're the last above board of that same meddling crew; and you have the Davy Jones insolence to up and stand for cap'n over me — you, that sunk the lot of us!

"That's for number one," cried the accused, wiping the sweat from his brow, for he had been talking with a vehemence that shook the house.

Maybe you don't count it nothing to have a real college doctor come to see you every day—you, John, with your head broke—or you, George Merry, that had the ague shakes upon you not six hours agone, and has your eyes the color of lemon peel to this same moment on the clock?

Soon after, with a drink all round, we lay down to sleep, and the outside of Silver's vengeance was to put George Merry up for sentinel, and threaten him with death if he should prove unfaithful.

I remembered with confusion my insubordinate and stealthy conduct; and when I saw where it had brought me — among what companions and surrounded by what dangers — I felt ashamed to look him in the face.

You're less of 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.

Silver, if we both get out alive out of this wolf-trap, I'll do my best to save you, short of perjury.

Should the scheme he had now sketched prove feasible, Silver, already doubly a traitor, would not hesitate to adopt it.

The color went from their six faces like enchantment; some leaped to their feet, some clawed hold of others; Morgan groveled on the ground.

The thought of the money, as they drew nearer, swallowed up their previous terrors. Their eyes burned in their heads; their feet grew speedier and lighter; their whole soul was bound up in that fortune, that whole lifetime of extravagance and pleasure, that lay waiting there for each of them.

And there was Silver, sitting back almost out of the firelight, but eating heartily, prompt to spring forward when anything was wanted, even joining quietly in our laughter — the same bland, polite, obsequious seaman of the voyage out.

Indeed, it was remarkable how well he bore these slights and with what unwearying politeness he kept on trying to ingratiate himself with all.