A mysterious map, pirates, and pieces of eight! When young Jim Hawkins finds a map to pirates’ gold he starts on an adventure that takes him from his English village to a desert island with the murderous Black Dog, half-mad Ben Gunn, and (of course) Long John Silver. Arr Jim lad! R.L. Stevenson (1850-1894) was born in Scotland and travelled extensively in California and the south Pacific.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894)
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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-18th-century, paying the innkeeper's son, Jim Hawkins, a few pennies to keep a lookout for "a one-legged seafaring man". A former shipmate 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 that his former shipmates covet the his map to buried treasure. After a visit from an evil blind man named Pew who gives him "the black spot" as a summons to share the treasure map, 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 the map. The local physician, Dr. Livesey and the district squire, Trelawney, deduce that the map is of the island where a deceased pirate, Captain Flint buried his treasure. Squire Trelawney proposes buying a ship and going after the treasure, taking Livesey as ship's doctor and Jim as cabin boy.
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" (as Long John Silver refers to 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.
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 that 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 there and that he can help against the mutineers in return for passage home and part of the treasure.
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.
After a battle, the surviving mutineers retreat, having lost five men, but two more of the captain's group have been killed and Smollett himself is badly wounded. When Livesey leaves in search of Gunn, Jim runs away without permission and finds Gunn's homemade coracle. After dark, he goes out and cuts the ship adrift. The two pirates on board, Hands and O'Brien, interrupt their drunken quarrel to run on deck, but the ship—with Jim's boat in her wake—is swept out to sea on the ebb tide. Exhausted, Jim falls asleep in the boat and wakes up the next morning, bobbing along on the west coast of the island, carried by a northerly current. Eventually, he encounters the ship, which seems deserted, but getting on board, he finds O'Brien dead and Hands badly wounded. He and Hands agree that they will beach the ship at an inlet on the northern coast of the island. As the ship is about to beach, Hands attempts to kill Jim but is himself killed in the attempt. Then, after securing the ship as well as he can, Jim goes back ashore and heads for the stockade. Once there, in utter darkness, he enters the blockhouse—to be greeted by Silver and the remaining five mutineers, who have somehow taken over the stockade in his absence.
Silver and the others argue about whether to kill Jim, and Silver talks them down. He tells Jim that, when everyone found the ship was gone, the captain's party agreed to a treaty whereby they gave up the stockade and the map. In the morning, the doctor arrives to treat the wounded and sick pirates and tells Silver to look out for trouble when they find the site of the treasure. After he leaves, Silver and the others set out with the map, taking Jim along as hostage. They encounter a skeleton, arms apparently oriented toward the treasure, which seriously unnerves the party. Eventually, they find the treasure cache—empty. The pirates are about to charge at Silver and Jim, but shots are fired by Livesey, Gray, and Gunn, from ambush. One pirate is killed and George Merry wounded, but quickly killed by Silver. The other three run away, and Livesey explains that Gunn had already found the treasure and taken it to his cave.
In the next few days, they load much of the treasure onto the ship, abandon the three remaining mutineers (with supplies and ammunition) and sail away. At their first port in Spanish America, where they will sign on more crew, Silver steals a bag of money and escapes. The rest sail back to Bristol and divide up the treasure. Jim says there is more left on the island, but he for one will not undertake another voyage to recover it.
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