Treasure Island

Part One · The Black Spot

The old sailor had been dead for one night when the blind man came tapping up the road. Jim Hawkins, twelve years old, crouched behind the door of his mother's inn and listened. Tap, tap, tap went the stick. Then the pirates burst in, tore the dead man's room apart, and found nothing except a little paper on the floor. It was a black circle, and on the back, one scrawled word: Tonight.

Jim and his mother grabbed the sailor's heavy sea chest and ran. Inside they found a bag of coins and a packet wrapped in oilcloth. Jim took the packet and hid under a bridge while pirates swarmed the inn, and when they were gone, he ran to the doctor's house. What was in the packet? A map. An island was drawn on it in red ink, and one cross marked the spot where Captain Flint had buried a fortune.

Within weeks, a ship called the Hispaniola stood ready at the docks. Dr. Livesey and the squire had hired the crew, and Jim came along as the cabin boy. The squire's cook was a big, friendly man with one leg and a crutch, and he owned a parrot that screamed, "Pieces of eight!" His name was Long John Silver. He winked at Jim and gave him an apple. Jim liked him at once. That was his first mistake.

Weeks later, with the island nearly in sight, Jim climbed into an empty apple barrel for a snack. He had just settled down when he heard a voice above him, and it was Silver. He was whispering a plan for mutiny, because most of the crew were pirates, old shipmates of Captain Flint. When the treasure was aboard, they would seize the ship. Jim held his breath in the dark. The apple in his hand had never tasted so loud.

Jim crept out and told the captain, the doctor, and the squire everything. They were outnumbered, so they made a quiet plan. They would act friendly and strike first when the time was right. But trouble came sooner than anyone expected. When the Hispaniola dropped anchor, half the crew rowed to shore in an ugly mood. Jim stared at the dark hills, and then he did something rash. He jumped into the last boat and went with them.

Part Two · The Island

The island was hot, silent, and wrong. Mist crept through the trees, and from somewhere far off came a groan, like a giant being sick. Jim slipped away from the pirates and ran, and then he stopped dead. A figure was darting between the trunks, shaggy and wild, dressed in goat skins and rags. It stepped out, shaking, and whispered in a rusty voice. "My name is Ben Gunn," it said. "I have been alone for three years."

Ben Gunn had once been a pirate himself. Marooned on the island by Flint's crew, he had lived on goats and oysters and had gone slightly mad. His only dream was cheese. "Have you got any cheese, matey?" he begged. "Just a nibble?" But he was not too mad to have been busy. He had a secret to trade. "Get me home, and I will make you rich." Then Jim heard the pirates shouting his name through the trees.

Meanwhile, the doctor and the squire had taken over an old log fort with thick walls and a flag on its pole. That evening the pirates attacked it, yelling and firing from the bushes. The fort held, but the fight was hard. Jim did the boldest thing of his life. Alone, in the dark, he rowed out to the Hispaniola in a small leather boat and cut her anchor rope. The ship drifted into the shallows and stuck fast.

The pirates could not leave the island, but the honest men could not outrun them for long, either. Jim climbed aboard the stranded ship and found a pirate guard, who chased him up the rigging with a knife. Jim swung there high above the water and drew his pistols. Both of them clicked, and both were wet. The pirate grinned and came on. Then Jim grabbed a loose rope, leaped off the mast, and swung out over the sea.

The pirate lunged and caught nothing but air. He toppled off the rigging with a howl and a tremendous splash, then bobbed up spluttering and swam for the shore, calling Jim names that cannot be printed. Jim slid down the rope, dripping and grinning. But when he finally reached the fort, he got a dreadful shock, because the flag was down. Long John Silver stood at the gate, smiling. The pirates had taken it.

The doctor, the squire, and the captain were prisoners now, and Jim had walked right into the arms of the enemy. A pirate raised a knife, but Silver stretched out his crutch and stopped him. "This boy," he said smoothly, "stays alive, because he is worth more to us as a hostage." Next day, the pirates marched across the island with the map, dragging Jim along on a rope. They found the spot and fell on their knees, scooping away the sand.

There was nothing there. Only a broken pick and a few old boards. The pirates turned on Silver with a snarl, and Jim felt the cook tremble. Then shots rang out from the rocks, and the doctor and Ben Gunn burst out of the bushes. The pirates scattered like rabbits. Ben Gunn had found the treasure long before and moved it to his cave, and inside lay heaps of gold, silver bars, and jewels. He had no use for it. He wanted cheese.

The honest men carried every coin aboard the Hispaniola and sailed for home. At the first port, Long John Silver slipped away in the dark with a small bag of gold and one stolen crutch. Nobody chased him. Jim often wondered what became of that smiling man, and he hoped, a little, that Silver had found a quiet life. But on stormy nights, Jim still woke in a sweat, hearing the parrot scream: Pieces of eight!