Silver's Embassy

Silver's Embassy is the pivotal parley at the stockade where Long John Silver, under a flag of truce, attempts to negotiate the surrender of the treasure map and the safe departure of the mutineers, only to be met with Captain Smollett's defiant refusal and a threat of execution. This scene marks the first direct confrontation between the two leaders after the mutineers have taken possession of the island's anchorage, and it crystallizes the irreconcilable conflict between the loyal party and the pirates. Silver's performance—alternately cajoling, threatening, and ingratiating—reveals his tactical cunning, while Smollett's unyielding stance establishes the moral and strategic foundation for the siege that follows.

The Arrival and the Flag of Truce

Early on the coldest morning the party had yet experienced on the island, two men appeared just outside the stockade. One waved a white cloth; the other, unmistakably Silver himself, stood placidly by. The sky was bright and cloudless overhead, but where Silver and his lieutenant stood, all was still in shadow, and they waded knee-deep in a low white vapour that had crawled during the night out of the morass. The chill and the vapour together told a poor tale of the island—plainly a damp, feverish, unhealthy spot. Captain Smollett, keeping himself carefully out of the way of a treacherous shot, hailed the buccaneer: "Who goes? Stand, or we fire." Silver cried back, "Flag of truce." The captain then ordered the watch to their posts—Dr. Livesey to the north side, Jim to the east, Gray to the west—and the watch below to load muskets. When asked what he wanted, Silver's lieutenant shouted that "Cap'n Silver" wished to come on board and make terms. Smollett, with heavy irony, replied that he did not know any "Cap'n Silver" and that if the man wished to talk, he could come alone. Silver, laughing at his own lieutenant's attempt to hold him back, advanced to the stockade, threw over his crutch, got a leg up, and with great vigour and skill surmounted the fence and dropped safely to the other side.

The Negotiation

Silver had terrible hard work getting up the knoll, what with the steepness of the incline, the thick tree stumps, and the soft sand, but he stuck to it like a man in silence and at last arrived before the captain, whom he saluted in the handsomest style. He was tricked out in his best: an immense blue coat, thick with brass buttons, hung as low as to his knees, and a fine laced hat was set on the back of his head. The captain, seated on the threshold with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, whistling "Come, Lasses and Lads," told him to sit down on the sand. Silver complained of the cold, but Smollett retorted that if he had pleased to be an honest man, he might have been sitting in his galley. Silver then laid out his terms: the mutineers wanted the treasure map, and in exchange they would offer the loyal party a choice—either come aboard after the treasure was shipped and be set safely ashore somewhere, or stay on the island with a division of stores, with Silver's word of honour to send the first ship he sighted to pick them up. He added that he had never meant them any harm. The captain, however, was unmoved. He rose, knocked out his pipe, and delivered his own ultimatum: if the mutineers came up one by one, unarmed, he would clap them all in irons and take them home to a fair trial in England; if they refused, he would see them all to Davy Jones. He declared that they could not find the treasure, could not sail the ship, and could not fight them—Gray had got away from five of them. "Your ship's in irons, Master Silver; you're on a lee shore, and so you'll find." He concluded, "I'll put a bullet in your back when next I meet you. Tramp, my lad. Bundle out of this, please, hand over hand, and double quick."

The Aftermath

Silver's face was a picture; his eyes started in his head with wrath. He shook the fire out of his pipe and demanded a hand up, but no one moved. Growling the foulest imprecations, he crawled along the sand till he got hold of the porch and could hoist himself again upon his crutch. Then he spat into the spring and cried, "There! That's what I think of ye. Before an hour's out, I'll stove in your old block house like a rum puncheon. Laugh, by thunder, laugh! Before an hour's out, ye'll laugh upon the other side. Them that die'll be the lucky ones." With a dreadful oath he stumbled off, was helped across the stockade after four or five failures by the man with the flag of truce, and disappeared among the trees. The embassy had failed utterly, and the attack on the stockade was now inevitable.