`` Ah , well , my son , you praise your stars he 's dead , '' said Silver . `` He were an ugly devil , '' cried a third pirate with a shudder ; `` that blue in the face too ! '' `` That was how the rum took him , '' added Merry . `` Blue ! Well , I reckon he was blue . That 's a true word . '' Ever since they had found the skeleton and got upon this train of thought , they had spoken lower and lower , and they had almost got to whispering by now , so that the sound of their talk hardly interrupted the silence of the wood . All of a sudden , out of the middle of the trees in front of us , a thin , high , trembling voice struck up the well-known air and words : `` Fifteen men on the dead man 's chest -- Yo-ho-ho , and a bottle of rum ! '' I never have seen men more dreadfully affected than the pirates . The colour went from their six faces like enchantment ; some leaped to their feet , some clawed hold of others ; Morgan grovelled on the ground . `` It 's Flint , by -- ! '' cried Merry . The song had stopped as suddenly as it began -- broken off , you would have said , in the middle of a note , as though someone had laid his hand upon the singer 's mouth . Coming through the clear , sunny atmosphere among the green tree-tops , I thought it had sounded airily and sweetly ; and the effect on my companions was the stranger . `` Come , '' said Silver , struggling with his ashen lips to get the word out ; `` this wo n't do . Stand by to go about . This is a rum start , and I ca n't name the voice , but it 's someone skylarking -- someone that 's flesh and blood , and you may lay to that . '' His courage had come back as he spoke , and some of the colour to his face along with it . Already the others had begun to lend an ear to this encouragement and were coming a little to themselves , when the same voice broke out again -- not this time singing , but in a faint distant hail that echoed yet fainter among the clefts of the Spy-glass . `` Darby M'Graw , '' it wailed -- for that is the word that best describes the sound -- `` Darby M'Graw !
Darby XXXXX ! ''
Flint M'Graw Merry Morgan Silver Spy-glass Yo-ho-ho colour third tree-tops