Crawling on all fours, I made steadily but slowly towards them, till at last, raising my head to an aperture among the leaves, I could see clear down into a little green dell beside the marsh, and closely set about with trees, where Long John Silver and another of the crew stood face to face in conversation. The sun beat full upon them. Silver had thrown his hat beside him on the ground, and his great, smooth, blond face, all shining with heat, was lifted to the other man’s in a kind of appeal. “Mate,” he was saying, “it’s because I thinks gold dust of you—gold dust, and you may lay to that! If I hadn’t took to you like pitch, do you think I’d have been here a-warning of you? All’s up—you can’t make nor mend; it’s to save your neck that I’m a-speaking, and if one of the wild uns knew it, where’d I be, Tom—now, tell me, where’d I be?” “Silver,” said the other man—and I observed he was not only red in the face, but spoke as hoarse as a crow, and his voice shook too, like a taut rope—“Silver,” says he, “you’re old, and you’re honest, or has the name for it; and you’ve money too, which lots of poor sailors hasn’t; and you’re brave, or I’m mistook. And will you tell me you’ll let yourself be led away with that kind of a mess of swabs? Not you!