The novel is narrated by Jim Hawkins (in his early teens) except for a couple of chapters, which are narrated by Dr. Livesey. Jim works for his very ill father at the family owned Admiral Benbow Inn. One day a disagreeable seafaring man who calls himself Captain arrives at the inn. The Captain gives the innkeeper (Jim’s father) three or four gold pieces and announces, “You can tell me when I work through that...I’m a plain man; rum and bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there to watch the ships off.” He has a man with him who barrows a sea chest into the Captain’s room. During the day he hangs around the cove or the cliffs with his telescope (who is he looking for and what is his real name?). He stayed for months. Jim’s father was afraid to ask for more money. The Captain was drunk on rum every night and told the most dreadful stories to whomever was in the inn. Everybody was afraid of him and the inn’s customers couldn’t go home until he grew sleepy and went to bed. On a later day, Dr. Livesey shows up at the inn to check on the innkeeper’s health. After the doctor sees the innkeeper, he has words with the drunk Captain. Dr. Livesey doesn’t back down and says to the drunk seafaring man, “And now, sir, since I now know there’s such a fellow in my district, you may count I’ll have an eye upon you day and night. I’m not a doctor only; I’m a magistrate; and if I catch a breath of complaint against you, if it’s only for a piece of incivility like tonight’s, I’ll take effectual means to have you hunted down routed out of this. Let that suffice.” Winter comes and the Captain is still there. Jim’s dad is sicker.
One day while the Captain is out with his telescope, a sailor comes to the inn and asks Jim for his mate, Bill. Jim says, “Captain?” The sailor says, “the same.” The Captain comes back and sees the fellow he knows as Black Dog. They argue and draw cutlasses. Black dog is hurt and runs away. The Captain comes back in and asks for rum, but he reels and falls down. Just then the doctor enters the inn. The doctor realizes that the Captain just had a stroke. The doctor rips off the Captain’s sleeve and sees many tattoos, one saying that the Captain is really Billy Bones (He, a mate of Long John Silver and Captain Flint). The doctor draws blood (in the late 1700s, they were still bleeding patients as a treatment) and puts Billy to bed. Billy has the shakes, Jim gets him a glass of rum. Jim wants to know why the sailor was after him. Billy Bones says that they want his sea chest that was given to him when the notorious Captain Flint died. He tells Jim that he is the only one who knows where the place is. What place? During the night, Jim’s dad dies. On page 28 (yea, that’s all I’ve reviewed so far), Jim says, “I saw someone drawing slowly near along the road. He was plainly blind, for he tapped before him a stick and wore a great green shade over his eyes and nose.” The blind man says to Jim, “Will you give me your hand, my kind young friend, and lead me in.” Once in, the blind man turns nasty and has a vice grip on Jim’s arm and asks for the Captain. He puts something in the Captain’s palm and quickly leaves the inn. What did he give him? The Captain looks into his palm and says, “Ten o’clock! Six hours. We’ll do them yet.” As the Captain gets out of bed, he has a second stroke and drops dead.
Jim and his mom find a key around Billy Bones neck and take it off. They open the sea chest. Jim grabs an oilskin packet and a bag of coins and then runs out the back of the inn to get help as they hear the blind man and seven or eight pirate friends trying to break into the locked inn. The pirates get in and realize that Jim Hawkins took the packet. They hear horses coming, they run, but the blind man (who is the pirate known as Pew) runs in front of a horse and is killed. The horsemen were revenue officers coming to aide the inn. They take Jim to the doctor’s house, but he is not home...he is at Squire Trelawney’s house. Jim gets there and shows them the oilskin packet. They open it. It’s a map of Treasure Island showing where Captain Flint buried a vast treasure. They decide to go for it! On page 47 (I told you I was only going to give you a taste of the story), “Livesey,” said the squire, “you will give up this wretched practice at once. Tomorrow I start for Bristol. In three weeks’ time-three weeks!-two weeks-ten days- we’ll have the best ship, sir, and the choicest crew in England. Hawkins shall come as cabin-boy. You’ll make a famous cabin-boy, Hawkins. You, Livesey, are the ship’s doctor; I am admiral.” The doctor wanted to go with him because he knew the squire couldn't hold his tongue and the pirates also knew about the map, but the squire belayed that thought, by saying, “Livesey,” returned the squire, “you are always in the right of it. I’ll be silent as the grave.” Ha,ha, sure you will Mr. Trelawney (Was Stevenson using tree and lawn in the squire’s name to accentuate country squire? or country ignoramus?)
So Trelawney gets to Bristol and purchases a seaworthy ship named, The Hispaniola. Of course Mr. loose lips (they sink ships, don’t they?) lets the whole town know that he is going for treasure and needs a good crew (duh). Trelawney writes a letter to Livesay and Hawkins to tell them to get to Bristol immediately; he bought a ship and hired a crew. In his letter he says, “I wished a round score of men...till the most remarkable stroke of fortune brought me the very man I required. I was standing on the dock, when, by the merest accident, I fell in talk with him. I found he was an old sailor, kept a public house, knew all the seafaring men in Bristol, had lost his health ashore, and wanted a good berth as cook to get to sea again. He had hobbled down there that morning, he said, to get a smell of the salt. I was monstrously touched-so would you have been-and, out of pure pity, I engaged him on the spot to be ship’s cook. Long John Silver, he is called, and has lost a leg; but that I regarded as a recommendation, since he lost it in his country’s service (sure he did,ha-ha), under the immortal Hawke (a famous British Admiral)...between Silver and myself we got together in a few days a company of the toughest old salts imaginable-not pretty to look at, but fellows, by their faces, of the most indomitable spirit.” Can anybody be dumber? He just hired Captain Flint’s former dangerous quartermaster, Long John Silver and his ghastly crew. Okay, that’s it, I reviewed the first 53 pages. What happens after they leave Bristol and sail for Treasure Island is up to you to find out. This was a first rate novel that I highly recommend.
RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
Comment: If you want to read a fabulous historical novel about Robert Louis Stevenson and his romance with Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne read Nancy Horan’s Under the Wide and Starry Sky (see my review of 3/15/2014). It’s well worth the reading.
During Stevenson’s short life time, not only did he write the three classics that I mentioned in the review, but other writers also penned classic works during the years between 1850 (Stevenson is born) and 1894 (Stevenson dies). What were they? Okay, here is the ‘hall of fame’ list:
1859- Charles Darwin publishes, On the Origin of Species.
1859- Charles Dickens publishes, A Tale of Two Cities.
1865- Lewis Carroll publishes, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.1872- Lewis Carroll publishes, Through the Looking Glass.
1872- George Eliot publishes, Middlemarch.
1874- Thomas Hardy publishes, Far From the Madding Crowd. (see my review of 1/26/2015)
1891- Oscar Wilde publishes, The Picture of Dorian Gray (see my review of 8/8/2015)
How’s that for a magnificent seven (not the movie...the list of the above books).
This is the Long John Silver that I remember from the Disney movie:
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