"Yes."
"Drop your arms and bide where ye are, then. We're comin' in to look ye over."
Torches flickered around the circuit of the stockade, and as they drew nearer Peter and I tore down the barricade of treasure I had built across the doorway. Figures appeared in the wavy light, naked to the waist, scratched by the jungle growth; uncouth, grizzled faces lowered at us.
"Keep back," I warned them. "We'll let no man in until Captain Flint is here."
"Careful, ain't ye, Buckskin?" he mocked me from behind a clump of pirates. "Make way, shipmates. Ye'll all ha' a chance to see the treasure, soon or late, and we'll share in it equal and regular, accordin' to the Articles."
The group split to make way for him, and he strode up to the door. Bones was with him, and Silver, and the man they called Black Dog, who carried a torch, as did Bones. And behind them all limped an awful creature, whose grimy face was a mask of pain, whose bare back and flanks were crisscrossed with festering welts. In one hand he held a cat-o'-nine-tails, the pendent rope lashes with their jagged knots stained a dark claret hue.
Bones flourished his torch as they entered the low door, and the light shone into every corner of the big hut.
"Is that Murray?"
He pointed to the body that lay beneath the hacked remnants of the plum satin coat which served as shroud.
"Yes," I said, and Moira shrank betwixt Peter and me as they crowded forward, staring open-mouthed at the cold clay that represented the man they had so feared and hated.