TREASURE ISLAND

by Robert Louis Stevenson

Chapter 1: The Old Sailor at the Inn

My name is Jim. Some friends asked me to write down everything that happened about Treasure Island. So I will tell you the whole story, from beginning to end. I won't tell you exactly where the island is, though, because there is still treasure buried there that no one has found yet.

I will start back when my father ran the Admiral Benbow inn. That was the day an old, brown-skinned sailor came to stay with us. He had a scar on his face from a sword.

I remember him so clearly, even now. He walked slowly up to our door. A man pushed his big sea chest behind him in a cart. The sailor was tall and strong, with rough, scarred hands and broken fingernails. He looked around at the sea and the cliffs and began whistling. Then he sang an old sea song:

*"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"*

He knocked on the door with his walking stick. When my father came out, the sailor asked loudly for a glass of rum. He drank it slowly, looking around at the cliffs and our sign.

"This is a nice, quiet spot," he said. "Do many people come here?"

My father said no, not many.

"Good," said the sailor. "This is the place for me. Bring my chest inside!" he called to the cart driver. "I'll stay here a while. I just want rum, bacon, and eggs — and a spot up on that hill to watch for ships. You can call me Captain."

Then he threw down some gold coins. "That should pay for a while," he said, looking fierce, like someone used to giving orders.

We learned that a mail coach had dropped him off the day before. He had asked about inns nearby and picked ours because it was quiet and far from town. That's all we ever found out about him.

The captain didn't talk much. All day he walked by the sea with a small telescope (a tube you look through to see far away). At night he sat by the fire and drank strong rum. He didn't like being talked to — he would just look up fiercely and snort like an angry animal. Soon everyone learned to leave him alone.

Every day when he came back from his walk, he asked if any sailors had passed by on the road. At first we thought he just wanted company. But soon we realized — he was actually trying to avoid other sailors! Whenever a sailor did come to stay at our inn, the captain would peek at him through the curtain before deciding to come out. He always stayed quiet when other sailors were around.

I knew his secret, though, because he had asked me for help. He promised to pay me a small silver coin every month if I would watch for a sailor with only one leg and tell him right away if I ever saw him. Sometimes, when I asked for my coin, he would just snort and glare at me. But by the end of the week, he always gave it to me and reminded me: "Watch for the sailor with one leg!"

That one-legged sailor haunted my dreams! On stormy nights, when the wind howled and the waves crashed, I imagined him in all sorts of scary shapes. Sometimes his leg was cut off at the knee, sometimes higher up. Sometimes he seemed like a monster with just one leg right in the middle of his body, chasing me over fences and ditches. That silver coin came with some very bad dreams!

But even though that imaginary one-legged sailor scared me, I wasn't as afraid of the captain as most people were. Some nights he drank too much rum. Then he would sing his wild old sea songs, not caring who heard. Other nights he would make everyone listen to his stories, or force them to sing along with him. I remember the whole house shaking as everyone sang "Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" — all scared, but singing loudly so he wouldn't notice them being quiet. When he got like this, he was very bossy. He'd bang his hand on the table for silence, or get angry over nothing at all. No one was allowed to leave until he had drunk himself sleepy and gone to bed.

His stories were the scariest part. He told tales about hangings, and pirates making people "walk the plank" (forcing them off a ship into the sea), and terrible storms, and dangerous places by the sea. He must have spent his life among some very wicked men! The way he talked shocked our quiet neighbors almost as much as the stories themselves.

My father worried the inn would lose customers because of the captain. But really, people didn't mind so much. It was exciting for our quiet little town! Some young men even admired him and called him a "true old sailor," saying men like him made England strong at sea.

The captain stayed with us for weeks, then months. Eventually he ran out of money to pay us, but my father was too afraid to ask him for more. Whenever my father tried to bring it up, the captain would snort so loudly it sounded like a roar, and glare until my father left the room. I saw my father wringing his hands with worry many times. I believe all this stress made him sick sooner than he should have been.

The whole time he stayed with us, the captain never bought new clothes — except some stockings from a traveling seller. When part of his hat broke, he just let it hang loose. His coat became covered in patches he sewed himself. He never wrote letters or got any mail. He barely spoke to anyone in town, except when he'd been drinking rum. And that big sea chest of his? None of us had ever seen what was inside it.

Only once did anyone dare stand up to him — and that happened near the end, when my poor father was very sick and close to dying. One afternoon, Dr. Livesey came late in the day to see him...