Tales Of Adventure. Robert Louis Stevenson
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were at an end.
‘After all that you have heard?’ she whispered, leaning towards him with her lips and eyes.
‘I have heard nothing,’ he replied.
‘The captain’s name was Florimond de Champdivers,’ she said in his ear.
‘I did not hear it,’ he answered, taking her supple body in his arms and covering her wet face with kisses.
A melodious chirping was audible behind, followed by a beautiful chuckle, and the voice of Messire de Malétroit wished his new nephew a good morning.
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 to-day:
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
S. L. O.,
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.
Contents
PART I
THE OLD BUCCANEER
I The Old Sea-dog 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
The Old Sea-dog at the ‘Admiral Benbow’
SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr 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 sabre 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 hand-barrow; 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 sabre 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 grog-shop. 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