(continued)

"You didn't know his name, did you?"

"No, sir."

"By the powers, Tom Morgan, it's as good for you!" exclaimed the landlord.  "If you had been mixed up with the like of that, you would never have put another foot in my house, you may lay to that.  And what was he saying to you?"

"I don't rightly know, sir," answered Morgan.

"Do you call that a head on your shoulders, or a blessed dead-eye?" cried Long John.  "Don't rightly know, don't you!  Perhaps you don't happen to rightly know who you was speaking to, perhaps?  Come, now, what was he jawing—v'yages, cap'ns, ships?  Pipe up!  What was it?"

"We was a-talkin' of keel-hauling," answered Morgan.

"Keel-hauling, was you?  And a mighty suitable thing, too, and you may lay to that.  Get back to your place for a lubber, Tom."

And then, as Morgan rolled back to his seat, Silver added to me in a confidential whisper that was very flattering, as I thought, "He's quite an honest man, Tom Morgan, on'y stupid.  And now," he ran on again, aloud, "let's see—Black Dog?  No, I don't know the name, not I.  Yet I kind of think I've—yes, I've seen the swab.  He used to come here with a blind beggar, he used."

"That he did, you may be sure," said I.  "I knew that blind man too.  His name was Pew."

"It was!" cried Silver, now quite excited.  "Pew!  That were his name for certain.  Ah, he looked a shark, he did!  If we run down this Black Dog, now, there'll be news for Cap'n Trelawney!  Ben's a good runner;  few seamen run better than Ben.  He should run him down, hand over hand, by the powers!  He talked o' keel-hauling, did he?  I'll keel-haul him!"

All the time he was jerking out these phrases he was stumping up and down the tavern on his crutch, slapping tables with his hand, and giving such a show of excitement as would have convinced an Old Bailey judge or a Bow Street runner.  My suspicions had been thoroughly reawakened on finding Black Dog at the Spy-glass, and I watched the cook narrowly.  But he was too deep, and too ready, and too clever for me, and by the time the two men had come back out of breath and confessed that they had lost the track in a crowd, and been scolded like thieves, I would have gone bail for the innocence of Long John Silver.

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