Treasure Island

Young Jim Hawkins lies asleep in his bed, dreaming of treasure and adventures at sea. In a few days’ time, the dream will come true. With his friends Squire Trelawney and Doctor Livesey, he’ll leave England in the sailing ship Hispaniola, and start the long voyage south to Treasure Island.

The treasure on that island once belonged to a famous pirate, Captain Flint, who buried it in a secret place. Captain Flint is dead now, but the pirates who sailed with him are not dead, and they, too, want to find Flint’s treasure. They don’t know where the gold is hidden, but they’ll stop at nothing to find out. There’s old blind Pew, the man called Black Dog, and the seaman with one leg … the most dangerous pirate of them all.

Squire Trelawney, Dr Livesey, and the others have asked me to write down all I know about Treasure Island. My name is Jim Hawkins, and I was in the story right from the start, back in 17 – . I was only a boy then, and it all began at the time my father owned the Admiral Benbow inn, at Black Hill Cove. I remember so clearly the day when the old seaman came to stay – I can almost see him in front of me as I write.

He arrived with his sea-chest, a tall, strong man with a cut across one cheek. He sang that old sea song as he walked up to the inn door:

The old seaman called for a glass of rum, and stood outside, drinking and looking around. Our inn was on the cliffs above Black Hill Cove, and was a wild, lonely place. But the seaman seemed to like it.

‘Do many people come here?’ he asked.

‘No,’ my father told him.

‘Then it’s the place for me,’ said the seaman. ‘I’ll stay here for a bit. You can call me Captain.’ He threw down three or four gold coins. ‘Tell me when I’ve spent all that.’

He was a silent man. All day he walked around the cove, or up on the cliffs; all evening he sat in a corner of the room, and drank rum and water. He only spoke to our other customers when he was drunk. Then he told them terrible stories of his wild and criminal life at sea. Our customers were mostly quiet, farming people; the captain frightened them and they soon learned to leave him alone.

Every day, he asked if any seamen had gone along the road. At first we thought he wanted friends of his own kind, but then we began to understand that there was a different reason. He told me to watch for a seaman with one leg and to let him know the moment when a man like that appeared. He promised to give me a silver coin every month for doing this. I dreamed about this one-legged seaman for many nights afterwards.

The captain stayed week after week, month after month. His gold coins were soon used up, but my father was a sick man and afraid to ask for more.

Dr Livesey came late one afternoon. After he had seen my father, he had dinner with my mother, then stayed to smoke his pipe. I noticed the difference between the doctor with his white hair and pleasant way of speaking, and that dirty, heavy, red-faced seaman, drunk with rum.