Treasure Island

It is a cold winter, and Jim’s father’s health worsens. One January morning the captain goes for a walk. The inn’s parlor door opens, and a man enters whom Jim describes as “a pale, tallowy creature, wanting two fingers of the left hand” (14). The man orders some rum and then asks about a man named Bill. When Jim says he knows no one named Bill, the man describes the sea captain and asks if he is staying at the inn. The man and Jim wait for the captain to return by the inn’s door. After Bill enters, he recognizes the man with a look of horror, like “a man who sees a ghost, or the evil one, or something worse” (17). The strange man’s name is Black Dog. They sit down at the table, and Jim gets them more rum. Jim leaves the room, and the two seamen talk until “all of a sudden there was a tremendous explosion of oaths and other noises” (18). Jim then hears a cry of pain and sees Black Dog fleeing the inn, “streaming blood from the left shoulder” (19). The captain asks Jim for more rum. While he gets it, the captain falls onto the floor. Dr. Livesey arrives and draws blood from the captain. Dr. Livesey scolds the captain for drinking rum. He tells the captain that if he doesn’t “break off” drinking so much rum, he will die. The doctor and Jim help the captain to a bed upstairs.

Jim stops by the captain’s room with some drinks and medicines. The captain asks Jim for some rum. Jim protests but gets him a glass of rum. The captain tells Jim that if “they tip me the black spot, mind you, it’s my old sea chest they’re after” (26). Jim’s father dies that night. The distress of this event leads Jim to forget the captain’s words about the black spot. The next morning the captain is at the breakfast table, once again helping himself to rum. The night before the funeral, the captain is drunk and singing loudly in the house. The day after the funeral, Jim sees someone coming up the road. The man is blind and walks with a stick. He calls out asking where he is, and Jim responds that he is at the Admiral Benbow. The man asks for help, and Jim offers him his arm. Then the man tells Jim to take him to the captain. Jim tries to avoid doing so, but the old man grips Jim’s arm tightly and hurts him. He takes the man to the captain. When the captain sees the blind man, “[t]he expression of his face was not so much of terror as of mortal sickness” (30). Jim helps the blind man pass the captain something. The blind man turns and leaves. The captain looks into his palm then cries, “Ten o’clock! […] Six hours. We’ll do them yet” (32). The captain rises to his feet and then falls to the floor from a “thundering apoplexy” (32). Jim bursts into tears and notes, “It was the second death I had known, and the sorrow of the first was still fresh in my heart” (32).

Jim tells his mother everything that the captain had told him. Some of the dead captain’s money belongs to them, since he had not paid completely for his lodging at the inn. But Jim warns that Black Dog, the blind man, and others might also be after the money. Jim and his mother go to a nearby hamlet to enlist help against the blind man and the others, but none are willing to go back to the Admiral Benbow with them. Jim says, “The name of Captain Flint, though it was strange to me, was well enough known to some there and carried a great weight of terror” (35). Jim and his mother return to the Admiral Benbow. They lock the door and draw the blinds. They search the dead captain’s body for the key to his sea chest and find it around his neck. They go upstairs to the captain’s room and open the trunk. Inside they find, amongst other items, “a bundle tied up in oilcloth, and looking like papers, and a canvas bag that gave forth, at a touch, the jingle of gold” (38). Jim’s mother begins to count out her “dues” (39) when they hear the blind man knocking at the door below. When the knocking stops and they believe the blind man has left, Jim grabs the “oilskin packet” (40) and they leave the house. They soon hear footsteps behind them. Jim’s mother begins to feel faint, and Jim hides her and himself underneath a bridge on their path.

Jim watches from the bridge as several men, including the blind man, return to the inn and enter. They search the captain’s body and find the chest upstairs. When they realize that “Flint’s fist” (45) is missing from the chest, the blind man, whose name we learn is Pew, orders the crew to find Jim. They thrash and destroy the inn. They hear a loud whistle from the hill, which is a signal that they are being pursued. Horses appear on the hill, and a pistol fires. The buccaneers scatter in every direction, abandoning the blind man, who is trampled by a horse and killed. Jim waves to the riders. They carry Jim and his mother back to the hamlet, where Jim’s mother is revived. Supervisor Dance and his men go down to Kitt’s Hole to intercept one of the buccaneers, but he is already leaving on a small vessel. They return to the Admiral Benbow and find it in “a state of smash” (50). Jim says, “I could see at once that we were ruined” (50). Jim rides with Mr. Dance and the men to visit Dr. Livesey’s house.

Dr. Livesey is not home. The men ride to the Hall buildings where Dr. Livesey is said to be dining with the squire. Mr. Dance and Jim are shown into “a great library, all lined with bookcases and busts upon the top of them, where the squire and Dr. Livesey sat, pipe in hand, on either side of a bright fire” (53). The squire is described as “a tall man, over six feet high, and broad in proportion and he had a bluff, rough-and-ready face” (53). He has a “look of some temper, not bad, you would say, but quick and high” (53). Mr. Dance tells Dr. Livesey and the squire the story of the evening. They listen, enthralled. Dr. Livesey sends for some ale for Mr. Dance. They ask Jim for “the thing that they were after” (54), and Jim produces it. Dr. Livesey puts it in his pocket and announces that although Mr. Dance must be off, he would like Jim to stay for the evening. A meal is brought for Jim, and Mr. Dance leaves. Dr. Livesey asks the squire if he has heard of Flint. The squire says, “He was the bloodthirstiest buccaneer that sailed. Blackbeard was a child to Flint” (55). Dr. Livesey asks, “supposing that I have here in my pocket some clue to where Flint buried his treasure, will that treasure amount to much?” (56). The squire says that he would fit out a ship and search for the treasure if it took a year.

They open the packet and find inside a book and a sealed paper. The book contains a list of dates and sums of money, as well as the names of some places. The account covers a 20-year span and includes a “grand total” (58) at the end. “These crosses stand for the names of ships or towns that they sank or plundered” (58), the squire says. They open the seals of the paper and find inside the map of an island, “with latitude and longitude, soundings, names of hills, and bays, and inlets” (59). At one place on the map is written, “Bulk of treasure here” (60). The squire excitedly tells Dr. Livesey that he will go to Bristol to find a ship and a crew to sail and find the treasure. He says Jim will be the cabin boy. The doctor reminds him that there are likely many others searching for the same treasure and tells him not to say a word about it to anyone.