Treasure Island

Treasure Island By Robert Louis Stevenson An old sailor, calling himself “the captain”-real name Billy Bones-comes to lodge at the Admiral Benbow Inn on the west English coast during the mid-18th-century, paying the innkeeper’s son, Jim Hawkins, a few pennies to keep a lookout for “a one-legged seafaring man.” A seaman with intact legs, but lacking two fingers, shows up to confront Billy about sharing his treasure map. After running the stranger off in a violent fight, Billy, who drinks far too much rum, has a stroke and tells Jim that his former shipmates covet the contents of his sea chest. After a visit from an evil blind man named Pew who gives him “the black spot” as a summons to share the treasure, Billy has another stroke and dies; Jim and his mother (his father has also died just a few days before) unlock the sea chest, finding some money, a journal, and a map. The local physician, Dr. Livesey and the district squire, Trelawney, deduce that the map is of the island where a deceased pirate, Captain Flint buried his treasure. Squire Trelawney proposes buying a ship and going after the treasure, taking Livesey as ship’s doctor and Jim as cabin boy.