Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Title: Treasure Island
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Release Date: February 25, 2006 [EBook #120]
[This file last Updated: August 24, 2010] Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** TREASURE ISLAND ***
Produced by Judy Boss, John Hamm and David Widger
TREASURE ISLAND
by Robert Louis Stevenson
Contents
TREASURE ISLAND PART ONE
1
2
3
4
5
6
PART TWO
7
8
9
10
11
12
1
PART THREE
13
14
15
PART FOUR
16
17
18
19
20
21
PART FIVE
22
23
24
25
26
27
PART SIX
28
29
30
31
32
33
34 THE OLD BUCCANEER
THE OLD SEA-DOG AT THE ADMIRAL BENBOW BLACK DOG APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS
THE BLACK SPOT THE SEA-CHEST
THE LAST OF THE BLIND MAN THE CAPTAIN'S PAPERS
THE SEA-COOK
I GO TO BRISTOL
AT THE SIGN OF THE SPY-GLASS POWDER AND ARMS
THE VOYAGE
WHAT I HEARD IN THE APPLE BARREL COUNCIL OF WAR
MY SHORE ADVENTURE
HOW MY SHORE ADVENTURE BEGAN
THE FIRST BLOW
THE MAN OF THE ISLAND
THE STOCKADE
HOW THE SHIP WAS ABANDONED THE JOLLY-BOAT'S LAST TRIP
END OF THE FIRST DAY'S FIGHTING THE GARRISON IN THE STOCKADE SILVER'S EMBASSY
THE ATTACK
MY SEA ADVENTURE
2
HOW MY SEA ADVENTURE BEGAN THE EBB-TIDE RUNS
THE CRUISE OF THE CORACLE I STRIKE THE JOLLY ROGER ISRAEL HANDS
"PIECES OF EIGHT"
CAPTAIN SILVER
IN THE ENEMY'S CAMP THE BLACK SPOT AGAIN ON PAROLE
FLINT'S POINTER
THE VOICE AMONG THE TREES THE FALL OF A CHIEFTAIN
AND LAST
TREASURE ISLAND
To S.L.O., an American gentleman in accordance with whose classic taste the following narrative has been designed, it is now, in return for numerous delightful hours, and with the kindest wishes, dedicated by his affectionate friend, the author.
TO THE HESITATING PURCHASER If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold, If schooners, islands, and maroons, And buccaneers, and buried gold, And all the old romance, retold Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old, The wiser youngsters of today:
--So be it, and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave, His ancient appetites forgot, Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave, Or Cooper of the wood and wave: So be it, also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave
Where these and their creations lie!
TREASURE ISLAND
PART ONE--The Old Buccaneer
3
1
The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral Benbow
SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about
Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there
is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17 and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral
Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.
I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow-- a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste and still looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.
"This is a handy cove," says he at length; "and a pleasant sittyated grog-shop. Much company, mate?" My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity.
"Well, then," said he, "this is the berth for me. Here you, matey," he cried to the man who trundled the barrow; "bring up alongside and help up my chest. I'll stay here a bit," he continued. "I'm a plain man; rum and bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there for to watch ships off. What you mought call me? You mought call me captain. Oh, I see what you're at--there"; and he threw down three or four gold pieces on the threshold. "You can tell me when I've worked through that," says he, looking as fierce as a commander.
And indeed bad as his clothes were and coarsely as he spoke, he had none of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast, but seemed like a mate or skipper accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. The man who came with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before at the Royal George, that he had inquired what inns there were along the coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and described as lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place of residence. And that was all we could learn of our guest.
He was a very silent man by custom. All day he hung round the cove or upon the cliffs with a brass telescope; all evening he sat in a corner of the parlour next the fire and drank rum and water very strong. Mostly he would not speak when spoken to, only look
up sudden and fierce and blow through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the people who came about our house soon learned to let him be. Every day when he came back from his stroll he would ask if any seafaring men had gone by along the road. At first we thought it was the want of company of