Silver nodded almost complacently.
"What I gets, I keeps. I'm none o' your free spenders, rich today, poor tomorrow. Some day I'll be retirin' from piratin', and then I'll aim to ride in my own coach and sit in Parleyment."
"You'll have to sail your own ship first, John," said Pew, and the remark was fraught with implications that made me turn cold at the pit of my stomach.
It was as if you could see the trail of bloodshed and suffering Silver would blaze to possess that ship and to exploit her to advantage.
"And why not?" returned Silver vigorously. "We'll name no names, Ezra, but captains can't live for ever. Some is aged and some soaks theirselves in rum. You never know! You never know!"
"There's Bill Bones, as has ideas on the subjeck," remarked Pew.
And he contrived to make me feel the horror of a long-drawn-out feud and rivalry.
"Yes, there's Bill," ruminated Silver. "Flint's mate, is Bill. Flint's best pal, is Bill. Flint's confeydantey, some says, is Bill. Well, well! But we was talkin' o' cripples and how a blind man can steer, which is a long way off from Bill, who isn't neither crippled nor blind, and maybe has hopes, so he has, when he remembers that."
Pew laughed so coldly, with such demoniac inhumanity, that I experienced a sudden fellow-feeling for Master Bones, distasteful as I had found him—also, a pronounced desire to change the subject. The bare proximity to such whole-souled, heartless cruelty was unpleasant.
"Do you commonly indulge in exploits like yesterday's, Silver?" I asked.