Treasure Island, Chapters One and Two

In which there is a most obnoxious sea captain takes residence in the Admiral Benbow inn, where young Jim Hawkins observes an unpleasant reunion with an old comrade; and in which our narrator once again forgoes the use of a British accent, except when it appropriate to use the "pirate" dialect.



Whee, new book! I hope you had your fill of lady voices in Alice and Anne, because... well, I'm reasonably certain that in Mrs. Hawkin's one line in this installment, we've already heard most of what we're going to hear from who I'm pretty sure is the only female character in the whole book. This one's a bit dude-heavy.

Upon looking for illustrations for this, I stumbled across an online version of a 1909 edition of Treasure Island that conveniently contains chapter notes for much of the unfamiliar terminology (written, of course, from a 1909 perspective; thus, the reference to "bleeding the patient" being common practice "up to fifty years ago." Anyway, saves me a bunch of trouble.

A couple of things not covered there, though: the dedication to "S.L.O., An American Gentleman" refers to Samuel Lloyd Osbourne, Stevenson's at-the-time eleven-year-old stepson via Stevenson's wife, Fanny Osbourne. The two were very close, and Lloyd (as he was known) later went on to collaborate with Stevenson on several works.

The note "To the Hesitating Purchaser" makes reference to (William H. G.) Kingston, (R. M.) Ballantyne, and (James Fenimore) Cooper, all earlier writers of sea stories.

As for illustrations, I was not able to find any reference to illustrations in the original printing of Treasure Island (save one, which we'll get to later), but it seems the definitive set of illustrations are those from legendary illustrator N.C. Wyeth from a 1911 edition. In fact, it's this set of illustrations that really helped him make his name, and many (including himself) consider them to be his finest work.

We start out of course with his manly pirate men cover:

Followed of course by the colorful title page, showing the specter of a hanging looming over the frightened heads of the pirates upon finding a dead man's bones:

Then of course we move on to the illustrations in the text itself, starting with Mr. Billy Bones atop the rock with his spyglass:

5:04 - "All day he hung round the cove or upon the cliffs with a brass telescope."

And last, we've got the fight between Bones and Black Dog, with the former chasing the latter out of the Admiral Benbow and into the street and dealing an unfortunate injury to the inn's sign:

19:40 - "One last tremendous cut, which would certainly have split him to the
chine had it not been intercepted by our big signboard of Admiral Benbow."

One thing I guess those notes up there don't mention though: "chine" just means "backbone."

Looking over these illustrations now, perhaps I shouldn't have made Billy Bones quite so... old-sounding. Ah well. I'm stuck with the voice now.


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!