Treasure Island

The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral BenbowSQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen havingasked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, fromthe beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of theisland, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, Itake up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time whenmy father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with thesabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to theinn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow–atall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over theshoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, withblack, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, lividwhite. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himselfas he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang sooften 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 andbroken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit ofstick 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 stilllooking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.