"I have but one word more to say," he added. "Whatever happens, leave me to do the talking."
"Ye'd do it whether we would or no," growled O'Donnell.
Flint climbed over the bulwarks with a racket of oaths and swaggered up to the poop. Martin dropped a whip from a block on the mainyard, and John Silver was hauled up in its bight, his crutch hanging from his neck. Darby and the rest scaled the side ladder and mingled with the James' crew. Their eyes popped from their heads as they circled the heap of treasure, Long John stumping with them, listening avidly to the accounts of the James' men, hefting the weight of the packages of bullion and painfully deciphering the inscriptions on the kegs and chests of coin.
Their chief was equally frank in revealing the lust of greed the picture wakened in him. His green eyes flickered hotly on either side of his thin, beaked nose, and his blue jowl was bluer than ever, the weather-worn skin over his cheekbones laced with a network of crimson veins that brightened as his excitement increased.
Yet he forgot the treasure the instant his gaze fell upon Peter and me.
"So your hostages returned to ye, Murray? Gut me, 'twas a pretty trick ye played us! Ye'd keep faith wi' me, ye would! Oh, yes! Ye'd give me two hostages, instead o' one. You'll fulfill your contract, you will. There's no need for it, to be sure, but ye'll do anything to prove good faith to me! And take both or none, says you. Both or none! Well, ye fooled me that time, Murray, but ye never will again, by thunder—not if my name's John Flint!"
My great-uncle heard him out in silence, waiting until he had stepped off the poop-ladder and stood facing us.
"I am not responsible for your losing the hostages," he replied then in his iciest tones. "Stap me, Flint, I warned you your ship was in a disgraceful condition. With all hands drunk, did you think to keep fast two men of strength and intelligence?"
"Drunk or sober, we were promised them," asserted Flint, a trifle less belligerently. "And sure, ye could ha' turned 'em back to us—not that that will do me any good for the two men they killed, they or whoever helped 'em to break from the Walrus."
"Nobody from the Royal James assisted them," said Murray. "You have my word for that. I can not say as much for your own ship, although they told me when they discovered themselves to me, several days after our sailing, that they had acted alone."