Here were all things made plain to me: Paradise--Paris, I mean--Regained, Carthew protected, Jim restored, the creditors...
"The creditors!" I repeated, and sank back benumbed.

It was all theirs to the last farthing: my grandfather had died too soon to save me.
I must have somewhere a rare vein of decision.

In that revolutionary moment, I found myself prepared for all extremes except the one: ready to do anything, or to go anywhere, so long as I might save my money.
At the worst, there was flight, flight to some of those blest countries where the serpent, extradition, has not yet entered in.
On no condition is extradition Allowed in Callao! -- the old lawless words haunted me; and I saw myself hugging my gold in the company of such men as had once made and sung them, in the rude and bloody wharfside drinking-shops of Chili and Peru.

The run of my ill-luck, the breach of my old friendship, this bubble fortune flaunted for a moment in my eyes and snatched again, had made me desperate and (in the expressive vulgarism) ugly.

To drink vile spirits among vile companions by the flare of a pine-torch; to go burthened with my furtive treasure in a belt; to fight for it knife in hand, rolling on a clay floor; to flee perpetually in fresh ships and to be chased through the sea from isle to isle, seemed, in my then frame of mind, a welcome series of events.
That was for the worst; but it began to dawn slowly on my mind that there was yet a possible better.