Treasure Island / Остров сокровищ

You and me'll just go back into the parlor, sonny, and get behind the door, and we'll give Bill a little surprise – bless his 'art, I say again.”

So saying, the stranger backed along with me into the parlor, and put me behind him into the corner, so that we were both hidden by the open door. I was very uneasy and alarmed, as you may fancy, and it rather added to my fears to observe that the stranger was certainly frightened himself. He cleared the hilt of his cutlass and loosened the blade in the sheath, and all the time we were waiting there he kept swallowing as if he felt what we used to call a lump in the throat.

At last in strode the captain, slammed the door behind him, without looking to the right or left, and marched straight across the room to where his breakfast awaited him.

“Bill,” said the stranger, in a voice that I thought he had tried to make bold and big.

The captain spun round on his heel and fronted us; all the brown had gone out of his face, and even his nose was blue; he had the look of a man who sees a ghost, or the Evil One, or something worse, if anything can be; and, upon my word, I felt sorry to see him, all in a moment, turn so old and sick.

“Come, Bill, you know me; you know an old shipmate, Bill, surely,” said the stranger.

The captain made a sort of gasp.

“Black Dog!” said he.

“And who else?” returned the other, getting more at his ease. “Black Dog as ever was, come for to see his old shipmate, Billy, at the 'Admiral Benbow' Inn.

“Now, look here,” said the captain; “you've run me down; here I am; well, then, speak up; what is it?”

“That's you, Bill,” returned Black Dog; “you're in the right of it, Billy. I'll have a glass of rum from this dear child here, as I've took such a liking to; and we'll sit down, if you please, and talk square, like old shipmates.

When I returned with the rum they were already seated on either side of the captain's breakfast table – Black Dog next to the door, and sitting sideways, so as to have one eye on his old shipmate and one, as I thought, on his retreat.

He bade me go and leave the door wide open. “None of your keyholes for me, sonny,” he said, and I left them together and retired into the bar.