gamekeeper a person employed to breed and care for game birds and animals on private estates, releasing them for hunts.
schooner a sailing vessel with two or more masts.
a pretty rum go . . . a shame, a bad thing.
a score twenty.
salts slang term for seasoned sailors.
sailing master an officer in charge of navigation.
a stiff man . . . a stern man, strict, unbending (Smollett will later be called the ship's captain, a higher rank than sailing master, so perhaps Trelawney is belittling him here).
figurehead a carved figure on the bow of a ship.
sea-walk a kind of rolling, swaggering gait; sailors, walking on the rolling decks of relatively small ships at sea for months on end, did not regain their land legs until they'd been back on shore for some time.
boatswain a ship's warrant officer or petty officer in charge of the deck crew, anchors, boats, etc. (pronounced and often spelled bosun).
quid a piece, as of tobacco, to be chewed.
dead-eye a round, flat block of wood with three holes in it for a lanyard (short rope or cord), used in pairs on a sailing ship to hold the shrouds and stays (ropes for moving the sails) taut.
keel-haul to haul a person down through the water on one side of a ship, under the keel, and up on the other side as punishment or torture.
deadlights windows of heavy glass set in the side of a ship; nautical slang for "eyes."
my score my take; the man did not pay for his rum.
my davy Silver means "my affidavit" or statement made under oath; later he will say "my affy-davy."
my officer my first mate; next in rank to the captain.
the fable of the mountain and the mouse This is in reference to a saying ("a mountain labored and gave birth to a mouse") and means, roughly, "you seemed to be going to say a lot more than you finally did say."
tip us a stave start up a song for us; sailors sang to establish a rhythm for their work.
forehold storage space below the front part of a ship's deck.
head sea an ocean current moving in a direction opposite that of the ship's motion; sailing would be rough here.
coxswain a person in charge of a ship's boat and usually acting as its helmsman.
lanyard a short rope or cord used on board ship; a cord hung round the neck (by sailors) used to hang something.
pieces of eight obsolete Spanish and Spanish-American dollars.
foc's'le forecastle; the area of a ship ahead of the foremast.
quartermaster nautical term for petty officer or mate trained to steer a ship, perform navigational duties, and so on; on pirate ships, the next in line to the captain, elected by the crew as their representative.
England In Silver's conversation with Dick and Hands, England is the name of a pirate captain he has sailed with. (Edward England was a historical pirate; he died in the early 1720s, and one of his companions, a one-legged man, is said to have been the model on whom Stevenson based the character Long John Silver.)
a kind of a chapling a kind of a chaplain; Hands implies that Silver is known for not carousing like the other pirates.
trades trade winds; one of the winds that blows steadily toward the equator from the northeast in the tropics north of the equator and from the southeast in the tropics south of the equator.
mizzentop the top of the mizzenmast, which is the mast third from the bow of a ship with three or more masts.
careen to cause a ship to lean or lie on one side, as on a beach, for cleaning.
yard-arm either side of a yard, a slender rod fastened at right angles across a mast to support a sail.
lay to . . . keep a bright lookout to lie more or less stationary (as a ship, with the bow into the wind) and keep an alert watch.
