Two men stood just outside the stockade. One was waving a white cloth; the other, standing calmly beside him, was Silver himself. It was a very cold morning, and a low white mist from the marsh lay around their knees. It was clearly an unhealthy place, full of fever.
“Stay inside, men,” said the captain. “Ten to one this is a trick.” He sent us to our posts. Then he called out: “What do you want with your white flag?”
“Captain Silver, sir, wants to come in and make a deal,” the other man shouted.
“Captain Silver! I don’t know him. Who’s he?” cried the captain.
“Me, sir,” answered Long John. “These poor lads have made me their captain, after you deserted, sir.” He said the word “deserted” very clearly. “All I ask is your word that I can leave this stockade safely.”
“My man,” said Captain Smollett, “I have no wish to talk to you. If you want to talk to me, you can come. If there’s any trick, it will be on your side.”
“That’s enough, captain,” shouted Long John cheerfully. “I know a gentleman when I see one.”
He threw his crutch over the fence, climbed it with great skill and dropped down on the other side. Then he slowly worked his way up the little hill through the soft sand. I had already left my loophole to watch. The captain sat in the doorway with his head in his hands, whistling. Silver, in his best blue coat with brass buttons, stood in front of him and saluted very politely.
“Here you are, my man,” said the captain. “You had better sit down.”
“You won’t let me in, captain? It’s a cold morning to sit on the sand.”
“Why, Silver, if you had chosen to be an honest man, you could be sitting in your warm kitchen now. Either you’re my ship’s cook, and you were treated well, or you’re Captain Silver, a common pirate, and you can go and be hanged!”
“Well, well, captain,” said Silver, and he sat down on the sand. “You’ll have to give me a hand up again, that’s all. Ah, there’s Jim! Good morning, Jim. Doctor, my respects. Here you all are together, like a happy family.”
“If you have something to say, my man, say it.”
“Right you are, captain. Well, that was a clever trick of yours last night. Some of my men were shaken by it; maybe I was shaken myself; maybe that’s why I’m here. But it won’t work twice. From now on we keep guard and drink a bit less rum. If I had woken a second sooner, I would have caught you at it. He wasn’t dead when I got to him, I can tell you.”
“Well?” said Captain Smollett, as cool as could be.
He had no idea what Silver meant, but I began to understand. I remembered Ben Gunn’s words and guessed that he had visited the pirates while they lay drunk around their fire. Happily, I counted: now there were only fourteen enemies.
“Well, here it is,” said Silver. “We want that treasure, and we’ll have it. You want to save your lives. You have a map, haven’t you? We want it. Now, I never meant you any harm myself—”
“That won’t work with me, my man,” said the captain. “We know exactly what you meant to do. And we don’t care, because now you can’t do it.”
He calmly began to fill a pipe. Silver filled one too, and the two men sat smoking in silence, looking each other in the face. It was as good as a play.
“Now,” Silver went on, “you give us the map and stop killing poor sailors in their sleep. Then you can choose. Either you come on the ship with us when the treasure is on board, and I give you my word of honor to put you ashore somewhere safe. Or you stay here, we share the food with you, half and half, and I tell the first ship I see to come and pick you up. That’s a fair offer. And I hope”—he raised his voice—“that everyone in that log house hears me, because what I say to one, I say to all.”
Captain Smollett stood up and knocked the ash out of his pipe.
“Is that all?”
“Every last word, by thunder! Refuse that, and the next thing you’ll get from me is bullets.”
“Very good. Now you’ll hear me. If you come up one by one, without weapons, I’ll put you all in chains and take you home to England for a fair trial. If you won’t, I’ll see you all at the bottom of the sea. You can’t find the treasure. You can’t sail the ship—there isn’t a man among you who can. You can’t fight us—Gray got away from five of you. Those are the last kind words you’ll get from me. The next time I meet you, I’ll put a bullet in your back. Now go, my lad, and quickly.”
Silver’s face was red with anger.
“Give me a hand up!” he cried.
“Not I,” said the captain.
“Who’ll give me a hand up?” he roared.
Not one of us moved. Cursing terribly, he crawled along the sand to the porch and pulled himself up on his crutch. Then he spat into the spring.
“There! That’s what I think of you. Within an hour I’ll break your old log house open like a barrel of rum. Laugh, by thunder, laugh! Within an hour you’ll stop laughing. The ones who die will be the lucky ones.”
He stumbled off down the sand, the other man helped him over the fence, and a moment later they were gone among the trees.