Watch him as we pleased , we could do nothing to solve it ; and when we asked him to his face , he would only laugh if he were drunk , and if he were sober deny solemnly that he ever tasted anything but water . He was not only useless as an officer and a bad influence amongst the men , but it was plain that at this rate he must soon kill himself outright , so nobody was much surprised , nor very sorry , when one dark night , with a head sea , he disappeared entirely and was seen no more . `` Overboard ! '' said the captain . `` Well , gentlemen , that saves the trouble of putting him in irons . '' But there we were , without a mate ; and it was necessary , of course , to advance one of the men . The boatswain , Job Anderson , was the likeliest man aboard , and though he kept his old title , he served in a way as mate . Mr. Trelawney had followed the sea , and his knowledge made him very useful , for he often took a watch himself in easy weather . And the coxswain , Israel Hands , was a careful , wily , old , experienced seaman who could be trusted at a pinch with almost anything . He was a great confidant of Long John Silver , and so the mention of his name leads me on to speak of our ship 's cook , Barbecue , as the men called him . 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 XXXXX 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 .
asked carried cross disappeared followed kept kill sailed see solve