Aboard ship he carried his crutch by a lanyard round his neck , to have both hands as free as possible . It was something to see him wedge the foot of the crutch against a bulkhead , and propped against it , yielding to every movement of the ship , get on with his cooking like someone safe ashore . Still more strange was it to see him in the heaviest of weather cross the deck . He had a line or two rigged up to help him across the widest spaces -- Long John 's earrings , they were called ; and he would hand himself from one place to another , now using the crutch , now trailing it alongside by the lanyard , as quickly as another man could walk . Yet some of the men who had sailed with him before expressed their pity to see him so reduced . `` He 's no common man , Barbecue , '' said the coxswain to me . `` He had good schooling in his young days and can speak like a book when so minded ; and brave -- a lion 's nothing alongside of Long John ! I seen him grapple four and knock their heads together -- him unarmed . '' All the crew respected and even obeyed him . He had a way of talking to each and doing everybody some particular service . To me he was unweariedly kind , and always glad to see me in the galley , which he kept as clean as a new pin , the dishes hanging up burnished and his parrot in a cage in one corner . `` Come away , Hawkins , '' he would say ; `` come and have a yarn with John . Nobody more welcome than yourself , my son . Sit you down and hear the news . Here 's Cap'n Flint -- I calls my parrot Cap'n Flint , after the famous buccaneer -- here 's Cap'n Flint predicting success to our v ` yage . Was n't you , cap'n ? '' And the parrot would say , with great rapidity , `` Pieces of eight ! Pieces of eight ! Pieces of eight ! '' till you wondered that it was not out of breath , or till John threw his handkerchief over the cage .
`` Now , that bird , '' he would say , `` is , maybe , two hundred years old , XXXXX -- they live forever mostly ; and if anybody 's seen more wickedness , it must be the devil himself .
Flint Hawkins John buccaneer corner coxswain days lanyard schooling yage