The Song
Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest.
This is a full summary of Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, so it spoils everything, the ending included. And I have a hook. The villain everyone remembers, Long John Silver, is nowhere in the first six chapters. His name first appears in chapter seven, and he walks on in chapter eight. After that I counted his name about two hundred and twenty times. So we will take the story in six parts, with the cook as our yardstick.
Which Edition
I read the Project Gutenberg text, ebook number one hundred and twenty. The file names Louis Rhead as illustrator and gives a release date of February twenty-sixth, two thousand six. I give no first publication date, because I could not source one twice.
By my count the story runs about sixty-eight thousand words, in thirty-four chapters and six parts. The narrator is a boy, Jim Hawkins, writing years later because Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey and the rest asked him to. He promises to keep nothing back except the bearings of the island, because there is still treasure not yet lifted. Remember that line.
The Old Buccaneer
Part one, chapters one to six. Jim’s father keeps the Admiral Benbow inn, and one day a sunburned old seaman with a sabre cut arrives, with a heavy sea chest. He wants rum, calls himself captain, and sings that song. The doctor, Livesey, tells him to his face that rum will kill him.
In chapter two, a pale man missing two fingers finds him. It is Black Dog, and the two fight with cutlasses. The captain has a stroke, and Livesey reads his tattoo and names him Billy Bones. In chapter three, the captain tells Jim he was first mate to a pirate named Flint, and begs him to watch for a seafaring man with one leg. That night Jim’s father dies. The day after the funeral, a blind beggar named Pew presses a paper into the captain’s hand. It is the black spot, and the captain drops dead.
In chapter four, Jim and his mother go back for what he owes them, and open the chest. They count only what is due, and Jim takes an oilskin packet. In chapter five, the pirates raid the inn, and Pew is trampled by the horses of the revenue men. In chapter six, the squire and the doctor open the packet. It holds an account book and a map of an island, about nine miles long and five across, shaped like a fat dragon standing up. Three red crosses mark it, and one says, bulk of treasure here.
The Sea-cook
Part two, chapters seven to twelve. The squire buys a schooner, the Hispaniola, and hires a crew. In chapter eight, Jim carries a note to a tavern called the Spy-glass, and there at last is Long John Silver, a cheerful landlord with one leg. Jim spots Black Dog in the room, and Silver sends a man to chase him. The squire and the doctor both like him, and he is hired as ship’s cook.
Captain Smollett does not like the voyage, the men or the mate. He says the secret has been told to the parrot. Then the mate, Arrow, goes overboard in the night, and the voyage goes on.
Chapter eleven is the hinge. The night before they reach the island, Jim climbs into the apple barrel for an apple, and Silver sits down against it. Jim hears him say he was quartermaster to Flint, and he hears him recruit a young sailor to be a gentleman of fortune. That means a pirate. Most of the crew is in it. In chapter twelve, Jim tells the captain, the squire and the doctor. They count seven who can be trusted out of twenty-six, and one of the seven is a boy.
My Shore Adventure
Part three is only three chapters. The ship is anchored and the crew goes ashore, and Jim slips into a boat with them. In chapter fourteen, he hides in the trees and watches Silver talk to an honest sailor named Tom, who refuses to join the plot. Silver kills him with his knife. A scream in the marsh says another honest man, Alan, has died too.
Jim runs, and in chapter fifteen meets a wild figure in goatskins. It is Ben Gunn, who was marooned three years ago and has lived on goats, berries and oysters. He dreams of cheese. He tells Jim, whispering, that he is rich. Then a cannon fires, and the fighting has begun.
The Stockade
Part four, chapters sixteen to twenty-one. For three chapters the doctor takes over the narration. The cabin party leaves the ship, and the captain gives Abraham Gray thirty seconds to join them. He does. Their overloaded boat sinks in shallow water, but they reach an old log stockade on the island. Tom Redruth, the squire’s servant, is shot, and then Jim climbs the wall, safe.
Next morning Silver comes with a white flag and offers terms. Captain Smollett says he will take them home for trial, or see them all to Davy Jones. Silver spits in the spring, and swears they’ll laugh on the other side of their faces. The attack comes within the hour. They win, but the price is Joyce and Hunter, and the captain is wounded. He counts the odds. They started seven against nineteen. Now it is four against nine.
My Sea Adventure
Part five, chapters twenty-two to twenty-seven, is Jim alone. At night he takes Ben Gunn’s little coracle, and cuts the Hispaniola loose. The tide sweeps the coracle and the ship out to sea together. He wakes at the south-west end of the island and gets aboard by jumping to the bowsprit. There he finds two drunk watchmen, one dead and one badly hurt, the coxswain Israel Hands. Jim strikes the pirate flag.
Hands pilots him into North Inlet, then tries to kill him with a dirk. Jim climbs the rigging. His pistols go off, and the knife pins his shoulder to the mast. Hands falls and drowns. With the ship aground, Jim walks back to the stockade at night. Inside, a shrill voice cries, pieces of eight. It is Silver’s parrot, and the stockade now belongs to the pirates.
Captain Silver
Part six, chapters twenty-eight to thirty-four. Silver has taken command, but his crew is shaky. Jim tells the whole room that he heard them in the apple barrel, cut the ship’s cable and killed the men they left aboard. Silver quietly decides to back Jim, to save his own neck. In chapter twenty-nine, the men give Silver the black spot, a page cut from a Bible with the word deposed. He talks them round by throwing down the map. In chapter thirty, the doctor visits as the mutineers’ doctor. Jim refuses to run, because he gave his word.
The treasure hunt, chapters thirty-one and thirty-two, opens with a skeleton laid out like a compass needle. A voice sings that song, and then the men reach the pit. It holds a broken pick, a few boards branded Walrus, and one two-guinea coin. The treasure is gone.
Gone Before
The doctor and Gray ambush from the trees, with Ben Gunn, who has already carried the gold to a cave. Two mutineers fall at the first volley, and Silver himself fires into one of them. The squire calls Silver a villain, the captain says one word, and the gold is shown to us at last: coin and bars, from every country.
Chapter thirty-four is the last. Three mutineers are left behind, with supplies. They reach a Spanish port, and Silver slips off in the night with one sack of coin, helped by Ben Gunn. Five of the men who left return to Bristol. Gray rises to mate. Ben Gunn spends his thousand pounds in nineteen days. Jim says he’ll never go back, and still dreams of the parrot.
Counting
Now the counts. These are mine, over the thirty-four chapters, headings removed. Silver’s name appears about two hundred and twenty-three times. The whole word rum, fifty-seven times, thirty-two of them in the first six chapters. The black spot, nine times. Pieces of eight, nine times.
Here is my reading, and it is an opinion. The book is a boy’s adventure on top, but the real subject is Silver, who is liked by everyone and cannot be trusted by anyone. That is why the book will not tell us what happens to him.
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