And there was Silver, sitting back almost out of the firelight, but eating heartily, prompt to spring forward when anything was wanted, even joining quietly in our laughter--the same bland, polite, obsequious seaman of the voyage out.
When did ever a gentleman o' fortune show his stern to that much dollars for a boozy old seaman with a blue mug--and him dead too?
Cap'n Smollett's a fine seaman, as I'll own up to any day, but stiff on discipline.
Still, as I say, it was a boy's game, and I thought I could hold my own at it against an elderly seaman with a wounded thigh.
"He warn't no seaman anyhow.
And then, as we all slunk back to our places, "Gray," he said, "I'll put your name in the log; you've stood by your duty like a seaman.
"Then rest his soul for a true seaman!
" "Well, it ain't much use, after all," said the young seaman.
And the coxswain, Israel Hands, was a careful, wily, old, experienced seaman who could be trusted at a pinch with almost anything.
I believe he's a good seaman, but he's too free with the crew to be a good officer.
" He wandered a little longer, his voice growing weaker; but soon after I had given him his medicine, which he took like a child, with the remark, "If ever a seaman wanted drugs, it's me," he fell at last into a heavy, swoon-like sleep, in which I left him.
Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.
-- • The good seaman is known in bad weather.
Love is a harbor in a turbulent sea which makes a weary seaman safe and sound.
