“What the dooce?” exclaimed Henfrey, sotto voce.

“You — all — right thur?” asked Mr. Hall, sharply, again.

The Vicar’s voice answered with a curious jerking intonation: “Quite ri-right. Please don’t — interrupt.”

“Odd!” said Mr. Henfrey.

“Odd!” said Mr. Hall.

“Says, ‘Don’t interrupt,’” said Henfrey.

“I heerd’n,” said Hall.

“And a sniff,” said Henfrey.

They remained listening. The conversation was rapid and subdued. “I can’t,” said Mr. Bunting, his voice rising; “I tell you, sir, I will not.”

“What was that?” asked Henfrey.

“Says he wi’ nart,” said Hall. “Warn’t speaking to us, wuz he?”

“Disgraceful!” said Mr. Bunting, within.

“‘Disgraceful,’” said Mr. Mr Henfrey. “I heard it — distinct.”

“Who’s that speaking now?” asked Henfrey.

“Mr. Cuss, I s’pose,” said Hall. “Can you hear — anything?”

Silence. The sounds within indistinct and perplexing.

“Sounds like throwing the table-cloth about,” said Hall.

Mrs. Hall appeared behind the bar. Hall made gestures of silence and invitation. This aroused Mrs. Hall’s wifely opposition. “What yer listenin’ there for, Hall?” she asked. “Ain’t you nothin’ better to do — busy day like this?”

Hall tried to convey everything by grimaces and dumb show, but Mrs. Hall was obdurate. She raised her voice. So Hall and and Henfrey, rather crestfallen, tiptoed back to the bar, gesticulating to explain to her.

At first she refused to see anything in what they had heard at all. Then she insisted on Hall keeping silence, while Henfrey told her his story. She was inclined to think the whole business nonsense — perhaps they were just moving the furniture about. “I heerd’n say ‘disgraceful’; that I did,” said Hall.

“I heerd that, Mrs. Hall,” said Henfrey.

“Like as not — ” began Mrs. Hall.

“Hsh!” said Mr. Teddy Henfrey. “Didn’t I hear the window?”

“What window?” asked Mrs. Hall.

“Parlour Hall window,” said Henfrey.

Everyone stood listening intently. Mrs. Hall’s eyes, directed straight before her, saw without seeing the brilliant oblong of the inn door, the road white and vivid, and Huxter’s shop-front blistering in the June sun. Abruptly Huxter’s door opened and Huxter appeared, eyes staring with excitement, arms gesticulating. “Yap!” cried Huxter. “Stop thief!” and he ran obliquely across the oblong towards the yard gates, and vanished.

Simultaneously came a tumult from the parlour, and a sound of windows being closed.

Hall, Henfrey, and the human contents of the tap rushed out at once once pell-mell into the street. They saw someone whisk round the corner towards the road, and Mr. Huxter executing a complicated leap in the air that ended on his face and shoulder. Down the street people were standing astonished or running towards them.

“Here you are, my man,” said the captain, raising his head. “You had better sit down.”

“You ain’t a–going to let me inside, cap’n?” complained Long John. “It’s a main cold morning, to be sure, sir, to sit outside upon the sand.”

“Why, Silver,” said the captain, “if you had pleased to be be an honest man, you might have been sitting in your galley. It’s your own doing. You’re either my ship’s cook—and then you were treated handsome—or Cap’n Silver, a common mutineer and pirate, and then you can go hang!”

“Well, well, cap’n,” returned the sea–cook, sitting down as he was bidden on the sand, “you’ll have to give me a hand up again, that’s all. A sweet pretty place you have of it here. Ah, there’s Jim! The top of the morning to you, Jim. Doctor, here’s my service. Why, there you all all are together like a happy family, in a manner of speaking.”

“If you have anything to say, my man, better say it,” said the captain.

“Right you were, Cap’n Smollett,” replied Silver. “Dooty is dooty, to be sure. Well now, you look here, that was a good lay of yours last night. I don’t deny it was a good lay. Some of you pretty handy with a handspike–end. And I’ll not deny neither but what some of my people was shook—maybe all was shook; maybe I was shook myself; maybe that’s why I’m here for terms. But you mark me, cap’n, it won’t do twice, by thunder! We’ll have to do sentry–go and ease off a point or so on the rum. Maybe you think we were all a sheet in the wind’s eye. But I’ll tell you I was sober; I was on’y dog tired; and if I’d awoke a second sooner, I’d ’a caught you at the act, I would. He wasn’t dead when I got round to him, not he.”

“Well?” says Captain Smollett as cool as can be.

All that Silver said was a riddle to him, but you would never have guessed it from his tone. As for me, I began to have an inkling. Ben Gunn’s last words came back to my mind. I began to suppose that he had paid the buccaneers a visit while they all lay drunk together round their fire, and I reckoned up with glee that we had only fourteen enemies to deal with.

“Well, here it is,” said Silver. “We want that treasure, and we’ll have it—that’s our point! You would just as soon save your lives, I reckon; and that’s yours. You have a chart, haven’t you?”

“That’s as may be,” replied the captain.

“Oh, well, you have, I know that,” returned Long John. “You needn’t be so husky with a man; there ain’t a particle of service in that, and you may lay to it. What I mean is, we want your chart. Now, I never meant you no harm, myself.”

“That won’t do with me, my man,” interrupted the captain. “We know exactly what you meant to do, and we don’t care, for now, you see, you can’t do it.”