Treasure Island

It is at the request of Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and other distinguished gentlemen that this account comes to be written—a full and honest reckoning of the affair of Treasure Island, holding back nothing save the precise bearings of that place, for there remains gold yet unhauled from its hiding. And so the pen takes up where memory begins: at the Admiral Benbow inn, kept by my father in those days, when a weather-beaten stranger first darkened our door and changed the course of all our lives.

He arrived like something blown in from darker waters—a tall, heavy, nut-brown man with a tarry pigtail swinging over a soiled blue coat, his hands rough and scarred, his nails black and broken. Across one cheek ran a sabre cut, pale and livid against his sun-darkened skin. I can still see him surveying our lonely cove, whistling to himself before breaking into that cursed sea-song that would come to haunt us all: *"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest—Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"* His voice was cracked and tottering, as though worn down by years of bellowing orders against the wind.

He called himself Captain and would answer to nothing else, tossing gold coins upon the threshold as payment and demanding only rum, bacon, eggs, and a clear view of passing ships. Though his clothes were ragged and his speech coarse, there was something in his bearing that spoke of command—a man accustomed to obedience, or else to violence.

The captain proved a silent lodger, spending his days haunting the cliffs with a brass telescope and his evenings drinking rum by the fire. He wanted no company, yet each day he asked whether any seafaring men had passed along the road. We soon understood he feared rather than craved such encounters. He paid me a silver fourpenny each month to keep watch for one man in particular—a seafaring man with one leg. That phantom figure invaded my dreams most terribly, appearing in a thousand monstrous shapes, pursuing me over hedge and ditch until I woke in cold terror.

Yet for all my nightmares, I feared the captain less than others did. When the rum took hold of him, he became a tyrant of the parlour, forcing the trembling company to join his wicked songs or suffer his explosive rage. His tales of hangings, of walking the plank, of the Spanish Main and the Dry Tortugas, chilled the blood of our plain country folk. My father despaired that such a guest would ruin us, though in truth the captain drew a strange fascination—some of the younger men even admired him as a "true sea-dog."

Ruin came in another fashion, for the captain stayed month after month without paying another coin, and my poor father hadn't the courage to demand more. The stress of it, I believe, hastened his decline.

Only once did anyone stand against the old buccaneer. Dr. Livesey, visiting my ailing father, sat smoking in the parlour when the captain began his drunken singing and demanded silence. The doctor ignored him utterly. When the captain drew his clasp-knife and threatened murder, Livesey never flinched. Cool as winter stone, he promised that if the knife didn't disappear, the captain would hang at the next assizes. More than that—as both physician and magistrate, he would see the ruffian hunted down at the first breath of further trouble.

The captain folded like a sail robbed of wind, grumbling back to his seat, and held his peace for many evenings afterward.

But peace, as we would soon discover, was not destined to last at the Admiral Benbow—for the one-legged man of my nightmares was not the only ghost from the captain's past still walking the earth, and darker visitors were already making their way toward our door.

The first of those mysterious events that would ultimately free us from the captain—though by no means from the shadow of his affairs—came upon us during that bitter winter when the frosts lay long and hard upon the land. My poor father was sinking daily, and it was plain to all that he would never see the spring. The burden of the inn fell entirely upon my mother and me, leaving us little time or inclination to attend to our sullen, unwanted guest.

I recall that January morning with perfect clarity—a pinching, frosty dawn when the cove lay grey beneath hoar-frost and the low sun touched only the hilltops, throwing its pale light far out to sea. The captain had risen earlier than his custom and set off down the beach, his cutlass swinging beneath that old blue coat, his brass telescope tucked under his arm. I watched his breath hang like smoke behind him as he strode away, and the last I heard was a great snort of indignation as he rounded the rock, his mind still churning, no doubt, over his quarrel with Dr. Livesey.

I was laying the breakfast table when a stranger stepped into the parlour—a pale, tallowy creature missing two fingers of his left hand. Though he wore a cutlass, he had not the look of a fighter about him, and yet something of the sea clung to him all the same. He ordered rum, but before I could fetch it, he called me close with an unsettling leer and began asking after his "mate Bill." When I described the captain—the cut on his cheek, his particular manner—the stranger's face twisted into an expression most unpleasant. "This'll be as good as drink to my mate Bill," said he, and I knew then that whatever reunion lay ahead would bring no joy.

The stranger kept me close, watching the road like a cat awaiting its mouse, his manner shifting between false friendliness and barely concealed menace. When at last the captain strode in, slamming the door and crossing straight to his breakfast without a glance aside, the stranger spoke his name.

"Bill."

The captain spun round, and all the colour drained from his weathered face. He looked upon that pale visitor as a man might look upon a ghost—or something worse.

"Black Dog!" he gasped.

They sat down together at the breakfast table, Black Dog positioning himself near the door with one eye on the captain and one on his retreat. I was sent away but strained to listen from the bar. For a time I heard only low murmuring, but soon their voices rose in anger. "No, no, no, and an end of it!" the captain bellowed. Then came a tremendous crash—chairs and table overturning, the clash of steel, a cry of pain—and Black Dog burst through the door with the captain in furious pursuit, both with cutlasses drawn and blood streaming from the stranger's shoulder. The captain's final blow missed its mark, burying itself instead in our signboard, where you may see the notch to this day.

Black Dog fled over the hill with astonishing speed despite his wound, and the captain stood staring after him like a man bewildered. Then he turned back inside, called for rum, and collapsed upon the parlour floor.

My mother and I were utterly at a loss when Dr. Livesey arrived to attend my father. The doctor quickly diagnosed what ailed the captain—not a wound, but a stroke, brought on by drink and rage, precisely as he had warned. He bled the man, revealing beneath the ripped sleeve a great tattooed arm bearing the words "Billy Bones his fancy" and, most ominously, a gallows with a man swinging from it.

"Prophetic," the doctor remarked dryly.

We managed to hoist the captain to his bed, where the doctor delivered his final warning: one more glass of rum, one more stroke, and death would surely follow. He ought to lie still for a week, the doctor told me privately—that would be best for him and for us.

But even as the captain lay senseless above, I could not shake the feeling that Black Dog's visit was merely the beginning of darker troubles yet to come.