"Davis was a man too, by all accounts," said Silver. "I never sailed
along of him; first with England, then with Flint, that's my story;
and now here on my own account, in a manner of speaking. I laid by nine
hundred safe, from England, and two thousand after Flint. That ain't bad
for a man before the mast--all safe in bank. 'Tain't earning now, it's
saving does it, you may lay to that. Where's all England's men now? I
dunno. Where's Flint's? Why, most on 'em aboard here, and glad to get
the duff--been begging before that, some on 'em. Old Pew, as had lost
his sight, and might have thought shame, spends twelve hundred pound in
a year, like a lord in Parliament. Where is he now? Well, he's dead now
and under hatches; but for two year before that, shiver my timbers,
the man was starving! He begged, and he stole, and he cut throats, and
starved at that, by the powers!"

"Well, it ain't much use, after all," said the young seaman.

"'Tain't much use for fools, you may lay to it--that, nor nothing,"
cried Silver. "But now, you look here: you're young, you are, but you're
as smart as paint. I see that when I set my eyes on you, and I'll talk
to you like a man."

You may imagine how I felt when I heard this abominable old rogue
addressing another in the very same words of flattery as he had used
to myself. I think, if I had been able, that I would have killed
him through the barrel. Meantime, he ran on, little supposing he was
overheard.

"Here it is about gentlemen of fortune. They lives rough, and they risk
swinging, but they eat and drink like fighting-cocks, and when a cruise
is done, why, it's hundreds of pounds instead of hundreds of farthings