Treasure Island

Treasure Island an adventure novel by author Robert Louis Stevenson Free eBook

Treasure Island is an adventure novel by author Robert Louis Stevenson

PART I—"THE OLD BUCCANEER"

An old sailor, calling himself "the captain"—real name Billy Bones—comes to lodge at the Admiral Benbow Inn on the west English coast during the mid-1700s, paying the innkeeper's son, Jim Hawkins, a few pennies to keep a lookout for a one-legged "seafaring man". A seaman with intact legs, but lacking two fingers, shows up to confront Billy about sharing his treasure map. After running the stranger off in a violent fight, Billy, who drinks far too much rum, has a stroke and tells Jim his former shipmates covet the contents of his sea chest. After a visit from an evil blind man named Pew who gives him "the black spot", as a summons to share the treasure, Billy has another stroke and dies; Jim and his mother (his father has also died just a few days before) unlock the sea chest, finding some money, a journal, and a map. The local physician, Dr. Livesey, deduces that the map is of an island where a deceased pirate—Captain Flint—buried a vast treasure. The district squire, Trelawney, proposes buying a ship and going after the treasure, taking Livesey as ship's doctor and Jim as cabin boy.

PART II—"THE SEA COOK"

Several weeks later, the Squire introduces Jim and Dr. Livesy to "Long John" Silver, a one-legged Bristol tavern-keeper whom he has hired as ship's cook. (Silver enhances his outre attributes—crutch, pirate argot, etc.—with a talking parrot.) They also meet Captain Smollett, who tells them that he dislikes most of the crew on the voyage, which it seems everyone in Bristol knows is a search for treasure. After taking a few precautions, however, they set sail on Trelawney's schooner, the Hispaniola, for the distant island. During the voyage, the first mate, a drunkard, disappears overboard. And just before the island is sighted, Jim—concealed in an apple barrel—overhears Silver talking with two other crewmen. Most of them are former "gentlemen o'fortune" (pirates) from Flint's crew and have planned a mutiny. Jim alerts the captain, doctor, and squire, and they calculate that they will be seven to 19 against the mutineers and must pretend not to suspect anything until the treasure is found when they can surprise their adversaries.

PART III—"MY SHORE ADVENTURE"

But after the ship is anchored, Silver and some of the others go ashore, and two men who refuse to join the mutiny are killed—one with so loud a scream that everyone realizes there can be no more pretence. Jim has impulsively joined the shore party and covertly witnessed Silver committing one of the murders; now, in fleeing, he encounters a half-crazed Englishman, Ben Gunn, who tells him he was marooned here and can help against the mutineers in return for passage home and part of the treasure.

PART IV—"THE STOCKADE"

Meanwhile, Smollett, Trelawney, and Livesey, along with Trelawney's three servants and one of the other hands, Abraham Gray, abandon the ship and come ashore to occupy an old abandoned stockade. The men still on the ship, led by the coxswain Israel Hands, run up the pirate flag. One of Trelawney's servants and one of the pirates are killed in the fight to reach the stockade, and the ship's gun keeps up a barrage upon them, to no effect, until dark when Jim finds the stockade and joins them. The next morning, Silver appears under a flag of truce, offering terms that the captain refuses, and revealing that another pirate has been killed in the night (by Gunn, Jim realizes, although Silver does not). At Smollett's refusal to surrender the map, Silver threatens an attack, and, within a short while, the attack on the stockade is launched.

PART V—"MY SEA ADVENTURE"

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PART VI—"CAPTAIN SILVER"

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