Treasure Island
A dead man's map, a one-legged cook, and the gold buried under Flint's cross
Page 1
On the English coast, in a little cove called Black Hill Cove, there stood an inn called the Admiral Benbow, kept by Jim Hawkins and his parents. One day an old sailor came trudging up the cliff road, dragging a handcart with his sea chest upon it. His face was brown and scarred, and he spoke rough and short. He took a room, paid in gold, and told Jim to watch every day for a one-legged seafaring man, promising him a silver fourpenny each month if he did. He kept his brass telescope always by him and stared long out at the sea road, as though he was afraid of something coming up it.
Page 2
Months later, a blind beggar came tapping to the inn door with a stick. He pressed a small folded paper into Billy Bones's hand and shuffled away. The paper was black on one side — the black spot, a pirate's warning — and the shock of it struck Bones down where he sat, and within the hour he was dead. That same night, with rough shapes moving outside in the dark, Jim and his mother hurried to unlock the old sea chest. She took only the money owed to them, no more, and Jim lifted out a strange oilskin packet hidden beneath the clothes. They had barely hidden themselves when they heard horses on the road outside, and the men who had come for the chest fled into the night without it.
Page 3
Jim carried the oilskin packet straight to Dr. Livesey, who sent for Squire Trelawney, the richest landowner in the district. Together they cut the packet open on the study table and found, inside a sealed book of accounts, a hand-drawn map of an island far across the sea, marked with three red crosses and notes in the hand of the pirate Captain Flint, telling where he had buried his treasure. Squire Trelawney, delighted, declared at once that he would travel to Bristol, buy the finest ship he could find, and sail for the island before the month was out, with Jim as cabin boy and Dr. Livesey as ship's doctor.
Page 4
In the busy port of Bristol, Squire Trelawney bought a fine ship called the Hispaniola and set about hiring a crew. At a dockside inn called the Spy-glass he found a cheerful one-legged cook named Long John Silver, who seemed able and willing and who helped find the rest of the sailors besides. Captain Alexander Smollett was given command of the ship, but from the very first day he felt something was wrong with the crew Silver had gathered, and said so plainly to the squire, though Trelawney would not hear a word against his new cook. Jim noticed Silver's green parrot, named Captain Flint, forever perched upon his shoulder, muttering old pirate words.
Page 5
Weeks into the voyage, with the island not far off, Jim climbed into an empty barrel on deck hunting for one last apple, and fell fast asleep inside it. He woke to the sound of Long John Silver talking low to the other sailors nearby, boasting of Captain Flint's buried treasure and the mutiny he meant to raise the moment the island came in sight. Hidden and barely breathing, Jim listened to every word and understood, with a cold shock, that most of the crew were pirates loyal to Silver and not to Captain Smollett at all. He waited, trembling, for his chance to slip away unseen and carry the warning below.
Page 6
The Hispaniola dropped anchor off Treasure Island, and before the landing boats were fully ashore, Jim slipped away alone to explore. Pushing through the trees, he came upon Long John Silver arguing with one of the honest sailors, a man named Tom, who refused outright to turn pirate and join the mutiny. Jim, hidden behind a fern and too frightened to move, saw the quarrel turn ugly, and crept away shaken and certain now of exactly what kind of man Silver truly was. Alone and lost, with no way back to the boats, Jim pressed on deeper into the unknown island.
Page 7
Deep in the woods, a strange wild figure sprang out from behind a tree, and Jim nearly ran before he saw it was only a man — a castaway sailor named Ben Gunn, left marooned on the island three years before by pirates who sailed on without him. Starving for company, Ben Gunn talked eagerly and fast, telling Jim he had built himself a little boat hidden among the rocks, and that he knew a secret about Captain Flint's treasure worth more than Jim could guess. He begged only for passage home and a fair share, and promised to help however he could.
Page 8
The captain's loyal party took shelter inside an old log stockade that Captain Flint himself had once built, while the mutineers gathered in the woods beyond. Long John Silver came forward alone under a flag of truce, offering terms if the honest men would hand over the map, but Captain Smollett refused outright to bargain with mutineers. Before long the pirates charged out of the trees toward the fence, and the defenders fired through the loopholes, driving the attack back into the woods, though the little garrison paid dearly for every minute of the fight before it was over.
Page 9
Slipping away from the stockade, Jim found the Hispaniola drifting untended in a quiet inlet, with only an injured pirate named Israel Hands left aboard to watch her. Jim managed to bring the ship safely in close to shore, but Hands, though wounded, dragged himself up and came after Jim with a knife to stop him giving away the ship's position. Jim scrambled up out of reach into the rigging, and when Hands followed him up the mast, Jim fired both his pistols. Hands lost his grip and tumbled backward off the mast into the sea below with a great splash, and did not come up again.
Page 10
When they finally reached the spot marked on Flint's map, they found the pit already empty — for Ben Gunn, alone on the island for years, had long since dug up the gold himself and carried it, little by little, back to his own cave. With his help they loaded the silver and gold aboard, and the Hispaniola sailed home across the ocean at last. Long John Silver slipped away quietly at a port along the way with a small bag of coins, and none of them ever saw him again. Jim, Dr. Livesey, Squire Trelawney, Captain Smollett and Ben Gunn came safe home to England, rich men every one of them, though Jim still dreams, now and then, of the surf booming on that island's shore.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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