Nor would he allow anyone to leave the inn till he had drunk himself sleepy and reeled off to bed . His stories were what frightened people worst of all . Dreadful stories they were -- about hanging , and walking the plank , and storms at sea , and the Dry Tortugas , and wild deeds and places on the Spanish Main . By his own account he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest men that God ever allowed upon the sea , and the language in which he told these stories shocked our plain country people almost as much as the crimes that he described . My father was always saying the inn would be ruined , for people would soon cease coming there to be tyrannized over and put down , and sent shivering to their beds ; but I really believe his presence did us good . People were frightened at the time , but on looking back they rather liked it ; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country life , and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to admire him , calling him a `` true sea-dog '' and a `` real old salt '' and such like names , and saying there was the sort of man that made England terrible at sea . In one way , indeed , he bade fair to ruin us , for he kept on staying week after week , and at last month after month , so that all the money had been long exhausted , and still my father never plucked up the heart to insist on having more . If ever he mentioned it , the captain blew through his nose so loudly that you might say he roared , and stared my poor father out of the room . I have seen him wringing his hands after such a rebuff , and I am sure the annoyance and the terror he lived in must have greatly hastened his early and unhappy death . All the time he lived with us the captain made no change whatever in his dress but to buy some stockings from a hawker . One of the cocks of his hat having fallen down , he let it hang from that day forth , though it was a great annoyance when it blew . I remember the appearance of his coat , which he patched himself upstairs in his room , and which , before the end , was nothing but patches . He never wrote or received a letter , and he never spoke with any but the neighbours , and with these , for the most part , only when drunk on rum . The great sea-chest none of us had ever seen open . He was only once crossed , and that was towards the end , when my poor father was far gone in a decline that took him off . Dr. Livesey came late one afternoon to see the patient , took a bit of dinner from my mother , and went into the parlour to smoke a pipe until his horse should come down from the hamlet , for we had no stabling at the old Benbow . I followed him in , and I remember observing the contrast the neat , bright doctor , with his powder as white as snow and his bright , black eyes and pleasant manners , made with the coltish country folk , and above all , with that filthy , heavy , bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours , sitting , far gone in rum , with his arms on the table . Suddenly he -- the captain , that is -- began to pipe up his eternal song : `` Fifteen men on the dead man 's chest -- Yo-ho-ho , and a bottle of rum ! Drink and the devil had done for the rest -- Yo-ho-ho , and a bottle of rum ! '' At first I had supposed `` the dead man 's chest '' to be that identical big box of his upstairs in the front room , and the thought had been mingled in my nightmares with that of the one-legged seafaring man .
But by this time we had all long ceased to pay any particular notice to the song ; it was new , that night , to nobody but Dr. XXXXX , and on him I observed it did not produce an agreeable effect , for he looked up for a moment quite angrily before he went on with his talk to old Taylor , the gardener , on a new cure for the rheumatics .
Benbow England Livesey Spanish Yo-ho-ho afternoon day month scarecrow week