TREASURE ISLAND

by Robert Louis Stevenson

TO S.L.O., an American gentleman whose classic taste shaped this story, the author dedicates it with warm thanks and best wishes for many delightful hours.

TO THE HESITATING PURCHASER

If you enjoy sailor tales set to sailor tunes—stories full of storms and adventure, heat and cold, schooners, islands, castaways, pirates, and buried gold—retold in the old-fashioned way that once thrilled readers, then perhaps you too, wiser young reader of today, will find pleasure here.

If so, dive in! But if young readers no longer crave these old-fashioned adventure tales and have forgotten writers like Kingston, Ballantyne, or Cooper, that's all right too. Either way, I hope that I and all my pirates rest peacefully alongside the stories and storytellers who came before us.

CONTENTS

PART ONE: The Old Buccaneer
I. The Old Sea-Dog at the Admiral Benbow
II. Black Dog Appears and Disappears
III. The Black Spot
IV. The Sea-Chest
V. The Last of the Blind Man
VI. The Captain's Papers

PART TWO: The Sea Cook
VII. I Go to Bristol
VIII. At the Sign of the Spy-Glass
IX. Powder and Arms
X. The Voyage
XI. What I Heard in the Apple-Barrel
XII. Council of War

PART THREE: My Shore Adventure
XIII. How I Began My Shore Adventure
XIV. The First Blow
XV. The Man of the Island

PART FOUR: The Stockade
XVI. Narrative Continued by the Doctor: How the Ship Was Abandoned
XVII. Narrative Continued by the Doctor: The Jolly-Boat's Last Trip
XVIII. Narrative Continued by the Doctor: End of the First Day's Fighting
XIX. Narrative Resumed by Jim Hawkins: The Garrison in the Stockade
XX. Silver's Embassy
XXI. The Attack

PART FIVE: My Sea Adventure
XXII. How I Began My Sea Adventure
XXIII. The Ebb-Tide Runs
XXIV. The Cruise of the Coracle
XXV. I Strike the Jolly Roger
XXVI. Israel Hands
XXVII. "Pieces of Eight"

PART SIX: Captain Silver
XXVIII. In the Enemy's Camp
XXIX. The Black Spot Again
XXX. On Parole
XXXI. The Treasure-Hunt—Flint's Pointer
XXXII. The Treasure-Hunt—The Voice Among the Trees
XXXIII. The Fall of a Chieftain
XXXIV. And Last

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PART ONE: The Old Buccaneer

Chapter I: The Old Sea-Dog at the Admiral Benbow

Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the other gentlemen involved have asked me to write down everything about Treasure Island—from start to finish. I'm to leave out only the island's exact location, since some treasure is still buried there. So in this year of our Lord 17—, I pick up my pen and travel back to the days when my father ran the Admiral Benbow Inn, and a weathered old sailor with a scarred face first came to stay under our roof.

I remember him as clearly as if it happened yesterday. He came trudging up to the inn door, his sea chest—a large trunk sailors used to store their belongings—following behind him on a cart. He was tall, strong, and heavily built, with skin browned by years at sea. His greasy braided hair fell over the shoulder of his dirty blue coat. His hands were rough and scarred, with broken black fingernails, and a sword slash cut across one cheek, leaving an ugly pale scar.

I remember him studying the cove and whistling to himself, then breaking into that old sailor's song he would sing so often afterward:

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

His voice was high and shaky, as if it had been strained and cracked from years of shouting orders on ships. Then he banged on the door with a stick shaped like a handspike (a tool sailors used for turning heavy equipment) and demanded a glass of rum when my father came out. He drank it slowly, like someone savoring fine wine, all the while studying the cliffs and our inn's sign.

"This is a handy cove," he said finally. "And a nicely placed tavern. Much business, friend?"

My father told him no, business was slow—more's the pity.

"Well then," the man said, "this is the place for me. Hey, you," he shouted to the man pushing the cart, "bring that chest up here and help me carry it in. I'll stay a while," he continued. "I'm a simple man—rum, bacon, and eggs are all I need, plus that cliff up there to watch for ships. You can call me Captain. Oh, I see what you're thinking—here." He tossed three or four gold coins onto the doorstep. "You can let me know when I've used that up," he said, looking as commanding as any ship's officer.

Despite his rough clothes and crude speech, he didn't seem like an ordinary sailor. He seemed more like an officer used to giving orders—or striking those who disobeyed. The cart driver told us that a mail coach had dropped the man off the morning before at the Royal George Inn. He'd asked about inns along the coast, and after hearing ours described as quiet and out of the way, he'd chosen us over the others. That was all we ever learned about our new guest.

He was naturally a quiet man. All day he wandered around the cove or the cliffs with a brass telescope. Each evening he sat by the fire in the parlor, drinking strong rum mixed with water. He rarely answered when spoken to—he'd just glance up sharply and snort through his nose like a foghorn. We and our other customers quickly learned to leave him alone. Every day when he returned from his walk, he'd ask whether any sailors had passed by on the road. At first we assumed he simply missed the company of other seafaring men. But eventually we realized he was actually trying to avoid them. Whenever a sailor did stop at the Admiral Benbow (which happened occasionally, since some traveled the coast road to Bristol), the captain would peek at him through the curtained doorway before entering the parlor himself. He always stayed silent as a mouse whenever such a person was around.

For me, though, there was no real mystery, since I was included in his worries. One day he'd pulled me aside and promised me a silver four-penny coin every month if I would keep watch for a seafaring man with one leg and warn him the moment such a man appeared. Often, when the first of the month arrived and I asked for my payment, he would only snort at me and glare, but before the week ended he always thought better of it, handed over my coin, and repeated his orders to watch for "the seafaring man with one leg."

I can hardly describe how that one-legged man haunted my dreams. On stormy nights, when the wind rattled every corner of the house and waves crashed along the cliffs, I would picture him in countless terrifying forms. Sometimes his leg was cut off at the knee, sometimes at the hip. Other times he was some monstrous creature who'd never had two legs at all, but just one growing from the middle of his body. Watching him leap and chase me over fences and ditches in my nightmares was the worst part of all. I paid dearly for that monthly four-penny coin through these horrible imaginings.

Yet despite how terrified I was of this imaginary one-legged sailor, I was actually less afraid of the captain himself than anyone else who knew him. Some nights he drank far more rum and water than was good for him, and then he would sing his wild old pirate songs, paying no attention to anyone around him. Other nights he would demand drinks for everyone and force the frightened customers to listen to his stories or join his singing. I often heard the whole house shaking with "Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum," with all the neighbors singing along as loud as they could, terrified of what might happen if they didn't join in. During these outbursts, he was the bossiest man imaginable. He would slam his hand on the table for silence, or explode in anger at an innocent question—or sometimes because nobody asked him anything, which he took as a sign they weren't paying attention to his story. He wouldn't let anyone leave the inn until he'd drunk himself into a stupor and stumbled off to bed.

His stories frightened people most of all. They were terrifying tales about hangings, walking the plank, storms at sea, and wicked deeds in dangerous places along the Spanish coast. Based on what he said, he must have spent his life among some of the most evil men who ever sailed the seas. The rough language he used to tell these stories shocked our peaceful country neighbors almost as much as the crimes themselves. My father constantly worried the inn would go out of business, since he assumed people would stop coming to be bullied and frightened half to death. But I honestly believe the captain's presence actually helped us. People were scared while it was happening, but looking back, they rather enjoyed the excitement it brought to their quiet country lives. Some of the younger men even claimed to admire him, calling him a "true sea-dog" and a "real old salt," saying men like him were what made England powerful at sea.

In one sense, though, he really was ruining us. He kept extending his stay week after week, then month after month, until his money ran out completely—yet my father never worked up the courage to demand more payment. Whenever my father brought it up, the captain would snort so loudly it sounded like a roar, staring my father down until he left the room. I once saw my father wringing his hands in distress after being treated this way, and I'm certain that the constant worry and fear the captain caused him helped bring about his early and unhappy death.

During his entire stay with us, the captain never changed his clothing except to buy some stockings from a traveling salesman. When one corner of his hat fell down, he simply let it hang that way from then on, even though it annoyed him whenever the wind blew. I remember his coat, which he patched himself up in his room, until eventually it was nothing but patches sewn together. He never wrote or received any letters, and he never spoke with anyone in town except when drinking rum with the neighbors. None of us had ever seen his large sea chest opened.

He was challenged only once, and that happened near the end, when my poor father was already very sick and close to death. Dr. Livesey came late one afternoon to check on the patient...