Treasure Island
'Treasure Island' Summary
An old sailor named Billy Bones comes to lodge in the rural Admiral Benbow Inn on the Bristol Channel, in England. He tells the innkeeper's son, Jim Hawkins, to keep a lookout for "a one-legged seafaring man". A former shipmate, Black Dog, confronts Bones and engages in a violent fight with him. After Black Dog is run off, a blind beggar named Pew visits to give Bones "the black spot" as a summons to share a map leading to buried treasure. Shortly thereafter, Bones suffers a stroke and dies. Pew and his accomplices attack the inn, but Jim and his mother save themselves while taking some money and a mysterious packet from Bones's sea chest. Pew is then trampled to death by excise officers. Inside the packet, Jim and his mother find a map of an island on which the infamous pirate Captain Flint hid his treasure. Jim shows the map to the local physician Dr. Livesey and the squire John Trelawney, and they decide to make an expedition to the island, with Jim serving as a cabin boy. They set sail on Trelawney's schooner, the Hispaniola, under Captain Smollett. Much of the crew, as it is later revealed, are pirates who served under Captain Flint, most notable of which is the ship's one-legged cook Long John Silver. Jim, sitting in an apple barrel, overhears the conspirators' plan to mutiny after the salvage of the treasure and to assassinate the captain and the loyal men.
Arriving off the coast of the island, Jim joins the shore party and begins to explore the island. He meets a marooned pirate named Ben Gunn, who was also a former member of Flint's crew. The situation comes to a head after the mutineers arm themselves, and Smollett's men take refuge in an abandoned stockade. During an attack on the stockade, Jim finds his way there and re-joins the crew. Jim manages to make his way to the Hispaniola and cuts the ship's anchorage, allowing the ship to drift along the ebb tide. Jim boards the Hispaniola and encounters Israel Hands, who was severely injured in a dispute with one of his companions. Hands helps Jim beach the schooner in the northern bay, but then attempts to kill Jim with a knife. Jim escapes, climbs into the shrouds of the ship and shoots his pursuer.
Book Details
Author
Robert Louis Stevenson
Scotland
Stevenson's critical essays on literature contain "few sustained analyses of style of content". In "A Penny Plain and Two-pence Coloured" (1884) he suggests that his own approach owed much to the exag...
More on Robert Louis StevensonDownload eBooks
Listen/Download Audiobook
Related books
The Night Club by Herbert George Jenkins
It follows the adventures of a young man named Jimmy Pitt, who finds himself embroiled in a series of hilarious misadventures when he is mistaken for...
Tom Swift and His Aerial Warship, or, the Naval Terror of the Seas by Victor Appleton
Tom Swift is an inventor, and these are his adventures. The locale is the little town of Shopton in upstateNew York, near Lake Carlopa. While some of...
Annouchka: A Tale by Ivan Turgenev
It is a captivating and thought-provoking novella that delves into the complexities of love, societal expectations, and the pursuit of personal freedo...
Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders by Victor Appleton
Tom Swift In The Land of Wonders, or, The Underground Search For the Idol of Gold, is Volume 20 in the original Tom Swift novel series published by Gr...
Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov
Oblomov is the second novel by Russian writer Ivan Goncharov, first published in 1859. Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is the central character of the novel, port...
Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung by Victor Appleton
The US Government is very smartly letting Tom Swift Jr. handle the recovery of its probe to Jupiter. But a mystery missile suddenly intercepts the pro...
The Moral Pirates by William Livingston Alden
"The Moral Pirates" by William Livingston Alden is an exciting adventure book for young readers that takes readers on a thrilling journey with a uniqu...
Pickett's Gap by Homer Greene
It is an exciting adventure novel that takes readers on a thrilling journey through the rugged landscapes of Pickett's Gap. This captivating story cap...
Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers by Victor Appleton
Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers, Or, The Secret of Phantom Mountain, is Volume 7 in the original Tom Swift novel series published by Grosset & Dunl...
My Danish Sweetheart Volume 2 by William Clark Russell
Volume 2 begins as our hero winds up his story. But the question remains, what happened to the other boat? Hugh and Helga have been picked up by a sma...
Reviews for Treasure Island
No reviews posted or approved, yet...