Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the other gentlemen asked me to write down everything about the events connected with Treasure Island, from beginning to end.
They told me not to hide anything, except the exact location of the island. I must keep that secret because some of the treasure is still buried there.
So, in the year 17—, I begin my story. I will return to the time when my father owned the Admiral Benbow Inn, and when an old sailor with a scar across his face first came to stay beneath our roof.
I still remember him as clearly as if it happened yesterday.
He walked slowly toward the inn, while his large sea chest was dragged behind him on a small handcart.
He was a tall, strong, heavy-built man with sun-darkened skin.
His dirty blue coat hung loosely from his shoulders, and his greasy black ponytail fell down his back.
His hands were rough and covered with scars. His fingernails were broken and black from years at sea.
Across one cheek was a terrible sword wound, a pale and ugly scar that stood out against his weathered face.
He stopped outside the inn and looked around the small bay.
Then he whistled softly to himself.
A moment later, he began singing an old sailor’s song in a rough, broken voice:
“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
His voice sounded like it had been damaged by years of shouting orders over the noise of ships and storms.
Then he knocked on the door with a short wooden stick that looked like a small ship’s tool.
When my father came out, the old sailor spoke roughly.
“Bring me a glass of rum.”
My father quickly brought it to him.
The sailor drank it slowly, like a man who truly understood good rum.
While he drank, he kept looking around at the cliffs and up at our signboard.
“This is a good little bay,” he said at last.
“And this looks like a comfortable place to drink. Do many people come here, mate?”
My father told him there were very few customers.
He said that was unfortunate.
“Well, then,” the sailor said, “this is the place for me.”
He turned to the man pulling his cart.
“Bring my chest inside and help me carry it up.”
Then he looked back at my father.
“I’ll stay here for a while. I’m a simple man. I need rum, bacon, and eggs. And I want that hill over there so I can watch ships passing by.”
“What should you call me?” he asked.
“You can call me Captain.”
Then he suddenly understood what my father was thinking.
“Oh, I know what you’re wondering.”
He reached into his pocket and threw several gold coins onto the doorstep.
“You can tell me when this money is gone.”
He said it in a voice that made him sound like a commander giving orders.
Although his clothes were old and dirty, and although his manners were rough, he did not look like an ordinary sailor.
He looked more like a ship’s officer or a captain—a man who was used to giving commands and being obeyed.
The man who brought his chest told us what little he knew about him.
The sailor had arrived the previous morning by coach at the Royal George Inn.
He had asked about the inns along the coast.
After hearing good things about our place, especially that it was quiet and lonely, he had chosen the Admiral Benbow.
That was all we ever learned about our strange guest.
The captain was naturally a very quiet man.
During the day, he walked around the bay or stood on the cliffs with a brass telescope, watching the sea.
At night, he sat in a corner near the fireplace and drank strong rum mixed with water.
Most of the time, he refused to talk.
If anyone spoke to him, he would suddenly look up with a fierce expression and make a loud noise through his nose like a ship’s horn.
Soon, everyone who came to our inn learned to leave him alone.
Every day when he returned from walking, he asked the same question:
“Did any sailors pass by today?”
At first, we thought he simply wanted to meet other sailors.
But after some time, we realized the opposite was true.
He seemed to be afraid of them.
Whenever a sailor stopped at the Admiral Benbow while traveling along the coast toward Bristol, the captain would first look carefully at him through the window curtain before entering the room.
And whenever another sailor was present, he became strangely quiet.
I understood his fear better than anyone because I had become part of his secret.
One day, he pulled me aside and made me a promise.
“If you keep your eyes open for a sailor with one leg,” he said, “and tell me the moment you see him, I’ll give you a silver coin every month.”
From then on, I was always watching.
But many times, when the first day of the month arrived and I asked him for my payment, he would only stare at me angrily and make that strange sound through his nose.
Still, before the week ended, he would usually change his mind.
He would bring me my coin and repeat his order:
“Keep watching for the sailor with one leg.”
That one-legged sailor became a terrible figure in my dreams.
I do not need to explain how much he frightened me.
On stormy nights, when the wind shook every corner of our old house and the waves crashed against the cliffs, I imagined him appearing in endless terrifying forms.
Sometimes his leg was missing below the knee.
Sometimes it was missing from the hip.
Sometimes he was a horrible creature that had only one leg growing from the middle of his body.
In my nightmares, he jumped, ran, and chased me across fields and roads.
That little silver coin cost me many nights of fear.
Yet, strange as it may seem, I was not nearly as afraid of the captain himself as other people were.
There were nights when he drank far too much rum.
Then he would sit alone and sing his wild old sea songs.
But sometimes he forced everyone in the inn to listen to his stories or sing along with him.
I often heard the whole house shaking as everyone joined in:
“Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
The neighbors sang louder and louder because they were afraid of making him angry.
During these drunken moods, the captain became impossible to control.
He would slam his hand on the table and demand silence.
He would suddenly become furious because someone asked a question.
Or sometimes because nobody asked anything, and he thought people were not listening.
No one was allowed to leave the inn until he had drunk enough to become sleepy and finally stumbled upstairs to bed.
His stories frightened people even more than his behavior.
They were terrible stories about executions, walking the plank, violent storms, the Dry Tortugas, and dangerous adventures along the Spanish Main.
According to his own stories, he had spent his life among some of the cruelest men who ever sailed the seas.
The rough language he used shocked the simple country people almost as much as the crimes he described.
My father often worried that the inn would lose all its customers.
He believed people would stop coming because they did not want to be frightened and controlled by this strange old sailor.
But I believe the captain actually helped our business.
People were frightened at first.
Later, they began to enjoy the excitement he brought to our quiet village life.
Some younger men even admired him.
They called him a “real old sea-dog” and a “true sailor,” saying that men like him were the reason England had such a powerful reputation on the oceans.
However, the captain did cause us one serious problem.
He stayed for weeks.
Then months.
Soon all the money he had given us was gone.
Yet my father could never find the courage to ask him for more.
Whenever my father mentioned payment, the captain would make such a loud noise through his nose that it sounded like a roar.
Then he would stare at my father until the poor man backed away.
I often saw my father sadly rubbing his hands after these encounters.
I believe the stress and fear he suffered because of the captain greatly damaged his health and shortened his life.
During all the time he lived with us, the captain barely changed his clothing.
The only thing he bought was a pair of stockings from a traveling seller.
One side of his hat had fallen down, and he left it that way forever, even though the wind constantly bothered him.
His coat became worse and worse.
He repaired it himself in his room until, in the end, it was nothing but patches.
He never wrote letters.
He never received letters.
He rarely spoke with anyone except the villagers, and even then mostly when he was drunk.
No one ever saw his great sea chest opened.
The only time anyone truly challenged him was near the end of his stay.
At that time, my poor father was very sick and close to death.
One afternoon, Dr. Livesey came to visit him.
After eating a small meal prepared by my mother, the doctor went into the main room to smoke a pipe while waiting for his horse to arrive from the village.
The old Admiral Benbow had no stable.
I followed him inside.
I remember how different he looked from everyone else around him.
He was neat and well-dressed.
His white powdered hair was clean, his black eyes were bright, and his manner was calm and polite.
Compared with him, the villagers looked rough and simple.
And beside him sat our filthy, heavy, drunken old sailor, looking like a frightening pirate.
The captain was sitting at the table with his arms crossed.
Suddenly, he began singing his usual song:
“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
When I was younger, I had thought “the dead man’s chest” meant the large chest upstairs in his room.
I even connected it with my nightmares about the one-legged sailor.
But by this time, everyone in the inn had become used to the song.
The only person hearing it for the first time was Dr. Livesey.
I noticed that he did not like it.
He looked up angrily for a moment, then continued talking calmly with old Taylor, our gardener, about a new treatment for rheumatism.
Meanwhile, the captain became more excited by his own singing.
Finally, he slammed his hand onto the table.
Everyone knew what that meant.
Silence.
The room immediately became quiet.
Everyone stopped singing except Dr. Livesey.
The doctor continued speaking in his calm voice, taking a puff from his pipe every few words.
The captain stared at him.
Then he slammed his hand again.
The doctor still ignored him.
The captain’s anger grew.
Finally, he shouted:
“Silence there, below deck!”
Dr. Livesey looked at him.
“Were you speaking to me, sir?”
The captain cursed and said that he was.
The doctor calmly replied:
“I have only one thing to say to you, sir. If you continue drinking rum like this, the world will soon be free of a very unpleasant man.”
The old sailor became furious.
He jumped to his feet.
He pulled out a sailor’s knife, opened it, and held it in his hand.
He threatened to pin the doctor against the wall.
But Dr. Livesey did not move even slightly.
He spoke calmly, looking over his shoulder.
“If you do not put that knife away immediately, I promise you, on my honor, you will hang at the next court session.”
For several moments, they stared at each other.
The captain finally gave in.
Like a beaten dog, he put away his knife and sat down again, muttering angrily.
“And now, sir,” Dr. Livesey continued, “since I know there is a man like you living in my district, you should understand that I will be watching you carefully.”
“I am not only a doctor. I am also a magistrate.”
“If I hear even one complaint about you, even a small one like tonight’s behavior, I will take action and make sure you are removed from this place.”
“Remember that.”
Soon afterward, Dr. Livesey’s horse arrived.
He left the inn and rode away.
That evening, the captain said nothing more.
And for many evenings afterward, he remained unusually quiet.