Robert Louis Stevenson

Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson

As one of the most frequently dramatised of all novels, Treasure Island was originally considered a coming-of-age story and is noted for its atmosphere, characters, and action. 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.