Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson [best sales books of all time txt] 📗

Treasure Island

By Robert Louis Stevenson.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint To the Hesitating Purchaser Dedication Treasure Island Part I: The Old Buccaneer I: At the Admiral Benbow II: Black Dog Appears and Disappears III: The Black Spot IV: The Sea-Chest V: The Last of the Blind Man VI: The Captain’s Papers Part II: The Sea-Cook VII: I Go to Bristol VIII: At the Sign of the Spy-Glass IX: Powder and Arms X: The Voyage XI: What I Heard in the Apple Barrel XII: Council of War Part III: My Shore Adventure XIII: How My Shore Adventure Began XIV: The First Blow XV: The Man of the Island Part IV: The Stockade XVI: Narrative Continued by the Doctor—How the Ship Was Abandoned XVII: Narrative Continued by the Doctor—The Jolly-Boat’s Last Trip XVIII: Narrative Continued by the Doctor—End of the First Day’s Fighting XIX: Narrative Resumed by Jim Hawkins—The Garrison in the Stockade XX: Silver’s Embassy XXI: The Attack Part V: My Sea Adventure XXII: How My Sea Adventure Began XXIII: The Ebb-Tide Runs XXIV: The Cruise of the Coracle XXV: I Strike the Jolly Roger XXVI: Israel Hands XXVII: “Pieces of Eight” Part VI: Captain Silver XXVIII: In the Enemy’s Camp XXIX: The Black Spot Again XXX: On Parole XXXI: The Treasure-Hunt—Flint’s Pointer XXXII: The Treasure-Hunt—The Voice Among the Trees XXXIII: The Fall of a Chieftain XXXIV: And Last Endnotes Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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To the Hesitating Purchaser

If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons
And Buccaneers and buried Gold,
And all the old romance, retold
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of today:

—So be it, and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
So be it, also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave
Where these and their creations lie!

To
Lloyd Osbourne,
An American Gentleman,
In accordance with whose classic taste
The following narrative has been designed,
It is now, in return for numerous delightful hours
And with the kindest wishes,

Dedicated
By his affectionate friend,
The Author

Treasure Island Part I The Old Buccaneer I At the Admiral Benbow

Squire Trelawney, Doctor Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17⁠—, and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow Inn, and the brown old seaman, with the saber cut, first took up his lodging under our roof.

I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a handbarrow; a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulders of his soiled blue coat; his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the saber cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:

“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!”

in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste, and still looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.

“This is a handy cove,” says he, at length; “and a pleasant sittyated grogshop. Much company, mate?”

My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity.

“Well, then,” said he, “this is the berth for me. Here you, matey,” he cried to the man who trundled the barrow; “bring up alongside and help up my chest. I’ll stay here a bit,” he continued. “I’m a plain man; rum and bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there for to watch ships off. What you mought call me? You mought call me captain. Oh, I see what you’re at⁠—there”; and he threw down three or four gold pieces on the threshold. “You can tell me when I’ve worked through that,” said he, looking as fierce as a commander.

And, indeed, bad as his clothes were, and coarsely as he spoke, he had