Black Bartlemys Treasure

"So-ho, my merry lad!" quoth Tressady, glaring down into Smiling Sam's convulsed face, "And must ye be at it afore I give the word? Who's captain here--who? Come speak up, my roaring boy!" and he thrust his hook beneath the Smiler's great, flabby chin.

"Mercy, Cap'n--mercy!" cried Spraggons, his high-pitched voice rising to a pitiful squeal. "Not the hook, Cap'n--O Lord love me--not the hook!"

"Hook? And why not, Sam, why not? 'Tis sharp and clean and quick, and hath done the business o' nicer rogues than you, bully, aye and better, Sam, better--"

"O Cap'n--for God's sake--"

"Who're you to call on God so glib, Sammy? 'Tis marvel He don't strike ye blind, lad. Or there's your innards, Sam, here's that may whip out your liver, lad--So!" I saw the glitter of the hook, heard Smiling Sam's gasping scream as the steel bit into him, and then Tressady was on his feet smiling round upon his awed and silent company.

"Look'ee, bullies!" says he, pointing to the Smiler's inanimate form, "Here's poor Sam all swounded away at touch o' my hook like any woman--and him my bo'sun! Pshaw! I want a man!" Here he stooped, and wrenching the silver pipe from Smiling Sam's fat throat stared from one shuffling rogue to another: "Step forward, Abner," says he at last, "Come, you'll do--you're a prime sailor-man, you're my bo'sun henceforth."

But now Smiling Sam awaking from his swoon moaned feebly and sat up: "Not the hook, Cap'n!" he wailed, "O not that--"

"No, Smiler, no, I keep it for better men. Disobey me again and I'll drown ye in a puddle. And now up wi' you, Sammy, up wi' you and stand by to teach Martin here how to talk."

"Aye, aye, Cap'n--aye, aye!" says the gross fellow, rising nimbly enough, whiles his comrades closed about us expectant, and glancing from me to Tressady where he had seated himself on a boulder: "Here will do!" says he, pointing to a brilliant strip of moonlit sand midway betwixt the shadows of the cliff and Bartlemy's tree. "On his back, hearties, and grapple him fast, he's strong well-nigh as I am. Now his hand, Smiler, his right hand--"

"Aye, aye, Cap'n!" quoth the fellow, kneeling above me where I lay helpless. "Will I cut it adrift--slow like?" And as he flourished his knife I saw a trickle of saliva at the corners of his great, loose mouth, "Off at the wrist, Cap'n, or fingers first?"

"No, fool! His thumb-nail first--try that!"

Sweating and with every nerve a-quiver I watched that cruel knife, holding my breath in expectation of the coming agony, and then--from the black gloom of the cliff beyond burst a sudden echoing roar, I heard the whine of a bullet and immediately all was confusion and uproar, shouts of dismay and a wild rush for shelter from this sudden attack. But as I struggled to my knees Tressady's great hand gripped my throat, and dragging me behind a boulder he pinned me there.