Treasure Island

Treasure Island is the original pirate adventure, the book that gave us buried gold, the one-legged sea-cook with a parrot on his shoulder, and the black spot. The story is told by Jim Hawkins, a boy who helps his mother run a small seaside inn on the coast of southwest England in the 1700s. A weather-beaten old sailor takes a room at the inn, drinks too much rum, sings songs about a dead man's chest, and seems to be hiding from something. He is. After he dies, Jim and his mother search the man's sea-chest and find a map — a map of an island where the pirate captain Flint, dead now, has buried his treasure.

Jim takes the map to two trustworthy men of the village, Dr. Livesey and Squire Trelawney. The Squire, who is more excitable than wise, sails to Bristol, buys a schooner called the *Hispaniola*, and hires a crew. Most of that crew turns out to be Flint's old pirates, signed on by Long John Silver, the cheerful one-legged cook who is in fact Flint's former quartermaster and the most dangerous man on the sea. Jim discovers the conspiracy by accident, hiding in an apple barrel on deck, and warns the captain. The decent half of the ship and the mutineers race for the treasure once they reach the island.

There is fighting at a stockade in the woods, a long siege, a strange marooned man named Ben Gunn who has already moved the treasure, a runaway boy alone in a coracle, a knife-fight up a ship's mast, and a final hunt across the island. By the end Silver has switched sides at least twice, the loyal party has the gold safe in the ship's hold, and Jim has sailed home a wealthy young man — though for the rest of his life he will dream of the shrill voice of Flint's parrot crying "Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!" The book is the source of nearly every pirate cliché in English, but Jim's voice — wry, scared, brave by accident — is fresh on every page.